My health began to deteriorate after a few days in Madison. Sleep was hard to come by and my appetite remained unforthcoming. I aspired to full coverage, and spent most of my time trudging around the icy streets trying to be everywhere at once. Occasionally I’d grant myself asylum in a café and fill up on tea or coffee with my notebook in front of me, trying to stay awake. Muscles grew sore and waves of sometimes enjoyable lightheadedness came and went with increasing frequency.
I often toyed with the idea of passing out in the University library or a restaurant bathroom stall for a couple of hours. Maybe even a park bench next to a nearby frozen lake. The key deterrent was my bag, stuffed as it was with many indispensable tools and a dwindling bundle of carrots from which I refused to be separated. Falling asleep now would knock me into a coma immediately, leaving my sack at the mercy of any cruel prankster or mettlesome hobo who happened to wander by.
Better to endure this discomfort than risk theft, or even worse, failure in my quest to catalogue the Battle of Madison. Nothing less than the future of the American middle class was at stake, and the heavy fatigue setting in could not be allowed to sabotage a proper on-the-ground analysis, organ failure or no organ failure. I could sleep when I was dead. Until then, a mild psychosis was a small price to pay to fully observe the first great American rebellion of the Twentieth-first Century.
If the unions lost in a liberal state like Wisconsin, then they could be broken anywhere. This refrain could be overheard wherever more than three people gathered in public, whether I was squinting through gusts of biting wind wafting off the lakes or sitting indoors trying to get the circulation to return to my toes and fingers. The road to wage-slavery, where powerless individuals bid down each others’ standard of living for fear of losing work, went through Madison. The people there knew it, and it was a testament to their higher instincts that they were willing to step out of the warmth of their homes to help struggle for the common good.
Yet while this impressive upsurge in popular organizing enveloped the town, its fundamental character remained the same as always. Madison’s heart beat proudly to its own rhythm, and the ongoing protests were less a deviation from local values than their timely amplification. Nice, but fun, was the name of the game here: a mindset amicable enough for neighbors to frankly discuss the issues of the day without the conversation degenerating into acrimonious shouting, and creative enough to make the daily toil of political participation enjoyable.
This laudable spirit deserved to be investigated further, and my hosts facilitated my inquiry by offering to take me out on the town one evening. I was in pretty rough shape by nightfall, still sleep deprived and further worn out from the constant bustle of being outdoors.
“Hell yes,” I croaked, fighting the urge to crumple into a pile. “Let’s wade deeper into the soul of this beast.”
They led me out into the darkness and past the Capitol, the dome of which was illuminated by lights hidden on the rooftops of its four adjoining wings. Security guards ringed the building and told us not to walk too close to the doors. Maybe it was just the knowledge that a gang of autocratic brutes was ruling from within, but against the pitch black sky the Capitol looked as eerie and imposing as some kind of imperial command center. Lord knows what sinister decree would emanate outward by morning.
After a brief debate over whether Governor Walker had an escape pod installed on the premises, we arrived at the pub with only ten minutes left to its fabulous weekly deal of two beers for the price of one. I quickly weaved through a lively crowd of young people singing karaoke and ordered a couple of ales for myself before chatting with a young man whose father had gone to school with deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. He didn’t have any stories about his old man doing keg stands with Zelaya back during the López era, but saluted my choice of drink, something bitter called a Hopalicious.
The ale kept coming and the conversation drifted in and out of politics, a pleasant Canadian-esque cheer guiding the vibration. The patrons kept up a steady litany on the karaoke machine, bellowing badly but playfully, as so often makes for the best of sing-alongs. A lot of nodding and smiling ensued, with the most tanked bowing out before embarrassing themselves. The whole scene played like an adults-only version of church, the parishioners dutifully offering tithes to the House and receiving liquid sacrament from Pastor Barkeep, who warmly presided over song and ceremony. All were on their best behavior.
This was, I think, the essence of it. Even calibrating for the lack of age and ethnic variation, the range of tastes and behavior was much narrower than the grand spectrum to which I’m accustomed. A heavy politeness bound people together in enviable camaraderie, but softened the rough edges that so often provide a culture with its finest crop of freaks and geniuses. No frowning poet slamming vodka in the corner or disoriented cowboy making a mess in the bathroom, nor excluded weirdo in clashing clothes, nor any missing teeth or track marks. Those on the psychic margin were simply elsewhere.
What was responsible for this homogeneity? Certainly the deep roots of the population had something to do with it. When a few million people live in the same place for several generations, they mingle, adapt to similar circumstances, intermarry, and grow familiar with each other to the point where they even sound the same. The Wisconsin accent is a likeable twist to any inflection, its tone presuming amity but casual enough to easily read as sincere.
“How lang are you going be to in Wiscansin for?” asked one of my hosts.
“Til Tuesday, or whenever Scott Walker lets me out of holding should things turn ugly,” I said. “He strikes me as the trigger happy sort.”
My associates laughed uneasily. Don’t derail the mood; keep chuckling in sync with the lighthearted murmur of the background. The point of conversation is to weave the web of personal bonds tighter, not to challenge people until there’s an epiphany or repellant discomfort. The oddball in these parts is more likely to be cordially absorbed into the herd than run out of town, at least at first…so accept the invitation and abstain from provoking an unpredictable response. I was, after all, their guest, and here to observe as unobtrusively as possible.
We went home at closing time and I limped onto the couch, only to wake up five hours later to the sound of violent coughing. A man’s voice in the other room said something frantic about “hacking up blood,” and “my doctor immediately.” Contracting tuberculosis now would be an unbearable strain on my budget, but I was too tired to move, let alone vacate the premises. Sleep with a belly full of ale is hardly sleep at all, and by now I was in need of at least sixteen solid hours to avoid the risk of public embarrassment. Images of falling asleep in the street swirled in my head, with ugly visions of waking up later, bruised on a sidewalk with my pockets ransacked and carrots pilfered. I shuttered at the thought and buried my face in the couch.
Today was my last day in the apartment, and the transfer of my luggage a mile across town to a new couch would commence at nightfall. I knew little of my next two hosts, besides the fact that they were a few years out of college. Hopefully they wouldn’t panic and call the police when I showed up on their doorstep—ragged, puffy, and red-eyed with an obvious intent to pass out as soon as possible. “Yes, officer, a homeless addict of some kind is trying to get into our apartment. We’ve barricaded ourselves in but he’s clearly too strung out to realize he’s not wanted. No, we’re afraid that if we tell him, he’ll erupt in a fit of rage. Yes, very disheveled. Bring the dogs…”
Disaster would be probable without a few more hours of rest. But just as despair began to sink in, Wilma suddenly emerged from her room. She had the aura of an angel who’d been rained on, morosely granting my wish by stating that she was too ill for her morning classes, so go ahead, sleep in a little longer. I did as she commanded, promptly conking out after quietly offering a prayer of thanks to fate’s more accommodating pathogens.
I came to a little before noon and rolled off the futon. My joints ached and muscles seemed to require more effort to utilize than normal. But my mind had straightened out, not lost in a pitiful soup of stress and confusion as before. I packed up and left, wishing the roommate with the melting lungs good luck, and the same for dear Wilma with her seasonal cough.
The day hurled me from café to protest to elsewhere for more coffee and finally back again to another protest. The below-freezing temperatures and on and off snow battered my stamina, but did little to erode the town’s energy versus the Governor. On the contrary, it probably contributed to the success of the movement. In warmer months people might be too busy planning vacations or enjoying rooftop margaritas to march around the Capitol for weeks on end. Best to flood the streets with popular discontent in that long, dreary stretch between New Year’s Day and the vernal equinox when the holidays are scarce and the sky looks dead.
The ubiquity of winter attire probably reinforced a sense of solidarity among Wisconsinites as well. To what extent this influenced politics it would be hard to say, but for the culture as a whole it seemed quite obvious. Bundling up for the cold has a way of uniting people, as if the extra padding subconsciously convinces them that they’re more secure from physical harm, and thus less apt to shy away from strangers. Even if some ghoul with a crowbar were to successfully knock you unconscious, the snow and ice makes a clean getaway twice as difficult, a deterrent not lost on most savages.
The plain heavy jackets worn by the townsfolk also functioned as a kind of uniform, eliminating fashion as a factor of division. The most extravagant article of plumage on display was the common scarf, but even this was less noticeable than the plethora of political buttons, themselves hardly flamboyant. Maybe rank superficiality would erupt in June when there would be more opportunity for exotic jean shorts and glamorous tube tops, but for now all were focused on more cerebral matters.
As for myself, fixating on imagery was the best I could do with a brain operating at partial capacity. Puffy coats, compact development in the city center, a distant ice fishing tent on a lake, cracked sidewalks, a policeman on top of a building spying on demonstrators, leafless trees, a homemade sign in front of the Capitol saying the Governor gets in through the “steam vents”…observation was easy; processing less so.
After dark I dreamily lumbered to the address of my new hosts. If they responded negatively to my arrival, say, by macing me from behind the door chain, there was little I could do. Roll around on the porch for a few minutes before whimpering myself to sleep in the fetal position perhaps. Surrender in agony to forces beyond my control…total capitulation right there on the welcome mat. But as luck would have it, the door swung open and two smiling young women greeted me kindly.
I plopped my bags down in the corner and tried to stay awake as we introduced each other. They had both gone to the same high school, accompanied each other on trips around the world, and even worked together at the same fairgrounds in another state.
“So you’re a couple of carnies?” I asked.
“No, we only worked there for a little while,” one replied.
“So you’re a couple of ex-carnies?” I persisted.
Carniefolk have a serious sense of community, they explained, and newcomers must pay ample dues in the form of time and devotion before being considered part of the clan. If Debra, the shorter-haired of the two, had accepted the surprise offer of marriage as proposed by Henry, an ambitious operator of a dart-and-balloon kiosk, then she probably would have been officially inducted. But she turned him down, later fleeing with her roommate Jane via bicycle to New England.
How they got sucked into working for one of the most swindler-dense institutions in America in the first place is a little hard to remember, mentally debilitated at the time as I was. But it had something to do with them meeting an eccentric fellow at a bar who babbled to them about his fiancée, a middle-aged woman whose name he had recently tattooed onto his flesh. He loved her so dearly that he took topless photos of her and turned them into postcards he was selling so that all could appreciate her beauty. Somehow this guy was connected to the fair, and the rest is history.
“Wanna see the postcard?” Jane asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Yes I do.”
Jane went to her room and quickly returned. The woman in the picture appeared to be about fifty, but a lifetime of excess could have aged her prematurely. Early forties at the youngest, with a weathered face and charming smile. She looked like she had been riding on the back of a motorcycle for most of her life before finally deciding she was ready to settle down. Hopefully her new husband-to-be would treat her right, and in all likelihood he would, for the American flag he had incorporated into the picture was a clear indication that he was a man not without values.
“Some people are coming over in an hour,” Jane informed me. “Are you hungry? We’re going to make tacos.”
I sunk into the couch. Apparently sleep would be against the rules for the next five hours, possibly longer. As for the tacos, my withered belly was still resistant to anything more than the occasional breakfast carrot. In fact, I had lost so much weight over the past few days that my pants kept sliding down on my way to the house. So I helped them chop vegetables and drank tequila instead.
Soon the house was filled with about fifteen strangers, all pleasant and talkative, and indeed more so than myself, who kept murmuring questions in a lame attempt to be conversational. The bathtub looked like a reasonable place to curl up, but the temporary upswing of the tequila proved sufficient to carry me forth until the conclusion of the party. In the meantime I soaked up as much information as I could.
One beer-drinking fellow lamented that his renewable energy business was going to suffer the elimination of public subsidies from the state budget. Solar power was fairly close to becoming cost-competitive with hydrocarbon energy, he said, and if subsidies could be kept in place a little while longer, manufacturers of green technology could develop economies of scale large enough to render further help from the taxpayer unnecessary.
A bummer, but apparently not enough of a bummer to kill his smile. Twenty-somethings are difficult to demoralize in the presence of booze, tacos, and evenly balanced gender ratios. One exceptionally descriptive guy got me excited about the medicinal properties of Albanian goat milk. Others gushed about local bike trails in the summertime. For all their distaste for Walker’s offenses, they were clearly more appreciative of life than dispirited by politics.
“Is there anything you wanna see before you head home?” one of them asked.
I thought for a moment, sipping on my tequila. “The more locally significant the better,” I said. “Whatever makes people who leave this place get homesick. The symbol for which the diaspora yearns.”
“Ever had fried cheese curds?” Jane asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“What about a fish fry?”
“I’ve had fried fish,” I said.
She assured me that the fried food in question was a must for anyone seeking to experience Authentic Wisconsin. Fried fish is just something you eat. A fish fry is an institution. And while fried cheese sounded like a perfect caricature of food that really shouldn’t be eaten, she made plain that these curds were in fact the pinnacle of Wisconsinite high culture. We agreed to waddle up to a nearby trough the following evening.
Within a few hours the apartment had emptied out and I was asleep on another couch. It was a respectable thing from the early seventies with brown and orange patterns and the faint smell of vintage musk. When I woke up ten hours later I thanked it for its stubborn determination to survive at least six American presidencies—long enough to go from being in vogue, to tasteless, to so dated as to be coveted for its retro-symbolism. Now it had provided my first full night of sleep in Madison, and although I was far from fully recovered and the strange oils in the cushions irritated my skin, I was grateful to be at least partially rejuvenated.
I spent the afternoon writing in a café that offered free coffee to protesters. I did the honorable thing and paid for mine, but was flatly denied any kind of wrap or quiche. This was an all-vegan establishment, the barista explained, and eggs certainly counted as dead animal protein. I settled on black bean soup and went to work typing while doing my best to tune out the lo-fi garage rock screeching from the venue’s speakers.
By evening I left the auditory gravel behind and headed back to the house. A crisp twilight set in as the day sunk behind the Capitol building to the west, past the stretch of railroad tracks leading to downtown in the distance. Small industrial lots lined the rails, and what looked like a coal power plant softly released smoke into the darkening sky. It was good to know Madison had some grit, and better still that I was about to wallow in deep-fried tradition.
Fish has always been abundant in Wisconsin, but the modern fish fry of today grew out of a jumbled mix of historical peculiarities specific to the region. In the early years, waves of Catholic newcomers—particularly German but also Irish, Polish, and Italian—brought with them the religious practice of abstaining from eating land animals on Friday. Local taverns and restaurants adjusted their menus accordingly, and soon even the Protestants were turning down liver and hog fat to take advantage of weekly deals. When Prohibition came along, fried fish was served dirt cheap in many places as both a cover and a lure for the illicit sale of bathtub gin and whiskey smuggled from Canada. Since then millions have made it a ritual to combine heavy drinking with profligate fish consumption every Friday.
The walleye was good, as was the ale, as were the cheese curds. At one point I gave the cask beer a chance but quickly remembered why Britain is low on my vacation priority list. If I had any affection for warm, flat beer, I’d make a regular point of opening six-packs in the morning and leaving them out on a table to stagnate in time for dinner. The curds felt about as fattening going down as one could assume, but hypnotically appealed to some base part of my palate that mindlessly yearned for more. I drew the line at one dish, which I shared with Debra, Jane, and the latter’s boyfriend, the three of whom whisked me away after dinner to a party down the street.
It was the birthday of one of their college friends, a young man turning 23 or so. We met him in an old house filled with kids drinking cheap beer and liquor. He was celebrating by ferociously strumming his guitar, a feat he sustained for several hours with nary a break to refuel. Other guests had set up a hookah, discussing the issues of the day over a wobbly game of Jenga. The damn thing kept crashing onto the table every time I touched it, so I drank vodka out of a mason jar to hone my focus. When we finally left a spell of freezing rain broke out just in time to accompany us home. I wasn’t wearing my boots and eventually slid and lost control of my doggy bag, sending my leftover fish into a half-frozen puddle. I retrieved it, but not before slipping again and dealing my shoulder a rude introduction to the sidewalk.
I woke up the next day sometime around noon with blood on my face. The dry winter air had finally cracked my nasal cavity, an ordeal I had so far avoided by chugging a liter of water every night before bed. The dust from the building’s ancient ventilation system had finally tipped the balance, disabling my sense of smell and inspiring an urgent trip to the sink.
After stubbing my toe in the living room I looked into the mirror in horror. A kid at the party had offered me a can of gutter beer, which I drank to be polite. It had triggered an allergic reaction in my sleep, painfully swelling my eyes and lips. Meanwhile contact with the orange couch had given me a rash across the side of my head. The blood cleaned off easily but my skin was a strange feverish pink. I suckled at the tap in a vain attempt to reverse the damage from the night before, then stubbed my toes again on the way back to the couch.
A little later Debra came out of her room and sat down on the other side of the coffee table. I tried to fall back asleep before she could observe my hideous state, but she was eager to spend a lazy Sunday watching a movie and asked if I’d mind.
“As long as I can fall in and out of sleep while you play it,” I replied, hesitating to make eye-contact for fear of inspiring panic. She seemed not to mind my deathly appearance, or at least hid her concern like a master of composure.
“Of course you can!” she said with a smile, firing up the television while I desperately tried to fall back asleep.
As it turned out my mind was just active enough to stay awake, but too debilitated to propel me out of the house. Writing would be a pointless strain, and exploring the city was out of the question. The day had finally come to suspend my ambition and recharge, so I spent the afternoon drinking water and dreamily bearing witness to Debra’s film. It was a curious piece, about a pack of New York drag queens converting a Middle American country hamlet into an oasis of sass and flamboyance. By the time the queens had won the day, I felt considerably better, and fried up my leftover puddle-fish in Debra’s George Foreman Grill.
That evening we lounged at Jane’s boyfriend’s apartment, eating duck and watching a documentary special on Caligula. It was sublimely low-key, and I later went to bed appreciative that all were more interested in the Emperor who appointed his horse to high-office than my own visible infirmities.
The next day I went out to lunch with Debra, who showed me more of Madison. She had fond memories of the Mifflin Street Block Party, an annual spring festival of sorts where participating houses open their doors to strangers and drunks roam the streets in a frenzy of jubilation. The Party started in 1969 when students were denied permission to have a massive dance-protest against the Vietnam War. Hippies love to prance, and this bunch was no exception, skipping around on Mifflin in defiance. Soon the police were firing tear gas and the kids erected barricades, a conflict that went on for days leaving scores injured and over a hundred arrested. The mayor at the time, William Dyke, made a name for himself by blithely suppressing the long-hairs, a poor political calculation in a town like Madison. In 1973 he was unseated by one of the very students arrested in ’69, a humiliation he tried to overcome by later running for Vice President on a third-party ticket with segregationist fried chicken restaurateur Lester Maddox.
Madison is probably a very different place in the spring, when the pent-up energies of winter can finally flow free from the constraints of snow and ice. The Block Party serves as a focal point for seasonal catharsis, and for this reason the celebratory aspect of the event has outlived its revolutionary foundation. These days it’s more about staggering between kegs than civil disobedience, though neither activity is entirely without merit.
Debra walked me through the Mifflin neighborhood. It looked nice, largely consisting of old three-story houses with balconies and broad porches. The occasional Jolly Roger and string of Tibetan prayer flags marked it as a nest of college students, making it that much easier to imagine its natural transformation into a rowdy Midwestern Mardi Gras in two months’ time.
As the sun set I broke off from Debra to go hang out with Wilma, the gracious host from a few days prior. Debra had other engagements and I had already promised Wilma that I’d make an appearance at a show she was attending at the University. After slogging my way to the campus, I ordered a pitcher of beer and listened to some indie band thrash about youthful angst, a group I had difficulty gauging as they had the misfortune of playing on a poorly amplified sound system. Watching Wilma knock back a bottle of cough syrup and drift around the Capitol in a daze probably would have been more interesting, but she had already pulled the plug on that idea the day before.
She was an interesting creature, no doubt about it, but just as I was getting comfortable with the ambiance she informed me it was time for her midnight play, a strange musical number about a murderous transvestite.
This was too grand a commitment for my taste, so I called it a night and walked the mile or so back to the house. I slept soundly, and woke up in the morning intent on reentering the Capitol on my last full day in Wisconsin. It had been emptied of protesters and signage since my last visit, but supposedly restrictions were to be lifted by 8am sharp. When I got there the doors had at last been reopened, but the court order to “lift all restrictions” obviously meant something very different to Scott Walker than the demonstrators.
Next to each entrance was an easel holding a sign listing prohibited items. “Animals/snakes” were number one, followed by balloons, cooking equipment, tape, blankets, “signs or flags on sticks,” musical instruments (including buckets), and other threats to public safety. The police weren’t regulating how many people could go in, but the security checkpoints remained.
This was something of a surprise to the locals, who had assumed that the building would revert to normal come Monday. Only two weeks earlier anyone could wander in and out of the Capitol without even having to go through a metal detector. Wisconsin’s long tradition of open government is enshrined in Article 1, Section 4 of the State Constitution, which states that “the legislature cannot prohibit an individual from entering the capitol or its grounds.” The visitors fumed like the citizens of a country that had just lost its independence.
A guard checking bags for snakes and blankets randomly offered a consolation:
“We’re just making sure everything’s safe…”
“You know damn well everything’s safe!” snapped the man in front of me. Stunned, the guard lowered his head and said nothing.
About fifty protesters were under the rotunda, alternating between chanting slogans and giving impromptu speeches. Their presence nicely affirmed the vitality of the movement, but without the banners and posters that had previously covered the place, the environment felt incomparably more austere. I took the opportunity to explore the raw interior, snapping pictures while men in uniforms leered at me. It was impressive architecture, constructed in the heart of a city that was quite literally made for it.
Madison was founded by an ambitious ex-judge in 1836, who figured the Wisconsin founding fathers could be easily persuaded to make it their permanent headquarters by virtue of its strategic location. Situated between an important trading post, profitable lead mines, and the two biggest cities in the territory, certainly they would see the logic in choosing his site over any other. He was wrong, and ended up having to bribe them with plots of land to convince them to set up shop in his new settlement. A capitol building was quickly erected, but was replaced a few decades later on account of it being a ramshackle embarrassment. The second one burned down in 1904 about a month after the legislature voted to cancel the building’s fire insurance. The third remains to this day, three feet shorter than the US Capitol itself and easily accessible in the center of town.
A bust of former Governor Robert La Follette stands on the second floor of the building, where the east wing meets the rotunda. Probably the most popular governor in Wisconsin history, his outspoken support for labor made him a folk hero to generations after his death in 1925. Some of the demonstrators had been carrying signs asking “What would Bob do?” though guessing wasn’t entirely necessary. In his own words,
America is not made. It is in the making. It has today to meet an impending crisis, as menacing as any in the nation’s history…If we should preserve the spirit as well as the form of our free institutions, the patriotic citizenship of this country must take its stand, and demand of wealth that it shall conduct its business lawfully…that it shall keep its powerful hands off from legislative manipulation; that it shall not corrupt, but shall obey the government that guards and protects its rights. Mere passive citizenship is not enough. Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from those who are aggressive for what is wrong…the call comes to every citizen. It is an unending struggle to make and keep government truly representative.
In other words, stay active or corporate power will infest government until its control is total. His warning was all too prescient. For the past few decades far too many had indulged in “mere passive citizenship.” Now La Follette’s own Wisconsin was the last stand before the lines broke and the labor movement would have to be rebuilt virtually from scratch. At their peak in the 1950s, trade unions represented 35% of the workforce nationwide, but had fallen to 11.9% by 2011. With only 6.9% coverage in the private sector, the solid 36.2% of the public sector represented by unions was the backbone of labor movement. De-unionizing state employees would smash the last significant pillar of support for a beleaguered middle class that’s seen a declining standard of living ever since Reagan began his sleepwalk through the White House thirty years ago.
The American Dream was good while it lasted. Unions won living wages, 40-hour work weeks, paid vacations, sick leave, overtime, health insurance, retirement pensions, an end to child labor, and safer working conditions for millions. The wave crested with the commencement of the Cold War, when anti-communist hysteria convinced labor leaders to root out the most idealistic voices from their ranks. Thenceforth, organized labor would be dominated by conservatives willing to bend over backwards to appease employers and win over politicians, positioning themselves as moderates on the political spectrum rather than attempting to steer its direction.
Restricting oneself to defensive battles is no way to win a war, and that very losing strategy led directly to the mess in Wisconsin. The unions had enabled their antagonists to chip away at their numbers for decades until a brazen governor finally appeared who figured he could walk all over them and probably get away with it. With its back against a wall, the labor movement finally stirred to life, drawing tens of thousands out of the woodwork to participate in what many hoped would be more than the final twitch of a corpse on its way to be buried.
After singing a round of “This Land Is Your Land” with the crowd in the rotunda, dozens more trickling in from the streets to join them, I left the Capitol for the last time.
I desperately needed to write, but the vegan café was still blasting discordant noise so I relocated back to the house. Jane and Debra were preparing for a concert by playing music of their own, happily filling the air with lively dance beats. I set up my laptop but kept catching myself typing the lyrics to whatever they played. After about an hour they left, and I began to go over my notes.
Someone knocked on the outside door to the house but I ignored it, waiting for another tenet to come down the stairwell in the hall to greet their guest. No one came. The knocking persisted, so I finally got up myself, opening the door to find four police officers staring at me.
“Have you heard anything break tonight?” one of them asked.
“Uh, no,” I said.
“No shouting or yelling?”
“No. Nothing.”
“K, have a good evening!” the woman in the group said, shooing me out of the hallway and back into Jane and Debra’s.
Much arguing commenced after the police went upstairs. Some kind of domestic disturbance, with stern talk about someone “not being helpful” and grumpy voices insisting that there was “no problem here.” With a plane to catch in the morning, the window for writing had closed. I tried to go to sleep, but the door to the hallway had a crack in it large enough to see through and every word being exchanged upstairs was clearly understandable. The cops interrogated a woman right in the hallway for hours, trying to figure out if she had beaten her kid. In the end they seemed satisfied that no one had been hurt, and left just before my hosts returned home.
They went to bed relatively quickly, and I slowly dozed off. Then a small group of drunken women suddenly barged into the building, laughing and falling over each other in the hall on the way upstairs to their apartment. I jolted awake for a moment, but then shook it off and finally fell asleep.
I made it to the airport without much trouble, eating my last carrot on the way over. After checking in, I handed my large backpack to a seven-foot tall TSA employee who appeared to have recently undergone a sex-change operation. She flung my heavy luggage onto a conveyor belt like it was a pillow and told me “You’re good to go” with a voice far deeper than my own.
I found a seat in an empty corner of the airport, and began to write in blissful solitude. A flight attendant came over with her toddler and sat down nearby. The boy stood still about ten feet away, staring into space. Then he plopped onto the floor and started to cry. The attendant spotted a coworker and walked over to explain that it was “Take Your Child to Work Day,” leaving poor Junior in front of me pouting. Two missionaries sat down to my right and started to chat, not thinking I’d mind, so I put away from laptop and fled for the tranquility of the newspaper stand. Several hours later I finally made it home, but when I started to write the power went out in my neighborhood.
It seemed like a weird dénouement to the week of history I’d lived. Ill-health didn’t really hinder my mobility, and I saw everything I set out see, right? Normal people realizing their own power, a deeper understanding of the social context behind the revolt, and unfiltered access to the facts on the ground as they developed...everything besides a sense of closure.
Soon after I left Madison, reports started circulating that Scott Walker was on the verge of cutting a deal with the fourteen senate Democrats who had fled the state. The pro-labor movement was winning. But then something odd happened: the contentious anti-labor provision in Walker’s budget was taken out of the bill and rammed through the legislature separately. Broadcast on live television, the bill’s passage was in flagrant violation of a procedural requirement called the Open Meetings rule. Walker quickly signed the bill into law anyway, presumably aware of the strong chance that it would later be voided in court.
It may be pointless to speculate, but in all likelihood the legislative Republicans panicked at the prospect of impending defeat, and deliberately sabotaged their own bill. They could save face by simply blaming its eventual repeal on the judicial system, walking away without ever having to admit that they bowed to a historic remobilization of organized labor.
All conjecture, of course. The bottom line is that the struggle for the rights of working people continues, and my sense of closure will probably not come anytime soon. There was no decisive victory to celebrate from that unusually localized confrontation between privilege and justice, but there was no clear defeat either. Something dormant had been provoked, and it fed on its own self-recognition. After watching engaged citizens return day after day to a Capitol that didn’t want them, braving the cold when they could just as easily be ice fishing, I could say with certainty that whatever Scott Walker had awakened, it has the strength to endure.
