Labor’s Excellent Adventure: ‘Truth Tour’ Urges Recall of Wis. GOP Senators

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from In These Times:




Labor’s Excellent Adventure: ‘Truth Tour’ Urges Recall of Wis. GOP Senators

Thursday
Jul 28, 2011
1:31 pm

By Roger Bybee



The Wisconsin Truth Tour makes a stop at the Milwaukee Area Labor Council lot on July 26, 2011, for an activist meeting, rally and cook-out. (Photo via Wisconsin State AFL-CIO )


Much of Wisconsin has soured on the overtly anti-worker, anti-democratic nature of rookie Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s harsh new policies. So Wisconsin AFL-CIO leaders have been conducting a bus tour of the state, holding local rallies in dozens of towns and generating support for recalling six Republican state senators August 9 and retaining two Democratic senators August 16.

Tuesday afternoon in Milwaukee, State AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt explained the tour’s purpose to a crowd of about 200. “It all goes back to the theme of an extreme power grab. Scott Walker has been waging an all-out assault on the middle class and collective bargaining, and expecting everything to be OK,” he thundered. “But he is looking out just for the big corporations and the Koch brothers at the expense of working people.”

A net gain of three seats will flip control of the State Senate to the Democrats, giving them the power to block Gov. Walker’s agenda, which has been shaped heavily by such groups as the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, Americans for Prosperity, and Club for Growth. If successful, the recall effort would also add immense momentum to the mounting campaign to recall Walker himself early next year, whose popularity hit a new low with a disapproval rating of 59 percent in a University of Wisconsin poll released July 13.

Walker’s popularity has been plummeting since February 11, when he began his campaign to virtually eradicate the right to union representation in the public sector, de-fund public education to the tune of $800 million and add $300 million in tax breaks to corporations, many of whom have already shifted their best-paying production jobs out of Wisconsin to Mexico and China. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11760/labors_excellent_adventure_wis._truth_tour_urges_recall_of_gop_senator/