This morning, I woke early, and came out to do emails and read the news. I found an email from the Rock River Patriots that the Milwaukee AFL-CIO was planning an early morning (6:30) protest at the home of Republican Aseemblyman Evan Wynn, and we should be there to counter them. I got cleaned up and went. Was the first to arrive, actually. The Whitewater police came out to monitor the situation. Whitewater ordinances call protesting in a residential neighborhood "disorderly conduct" and could issue citations to noisy or unruly persons.
Evan greeted me and another patriot who came just after I did. He invited us into his garage to get out of the wind. Since we were now "invited guests", the police said we could not be removed unless there was a disturbance.
By 6:30, almost 30 patriots had assembled, with many homemade signs, and finally about 11 people collected across the street with two small preprinted signs - probably Union-made - stating under a large STOP sign symbol, something about hurting Wisconsin families. They were too far away and the signs were too small to make them out clearly.
There were a total of six or seven police present, including Walworth County and Whitewater. A reporter / photographer from, I believe, the Janesville Gazette came out to take pictures.At 7:30, Mr. Wynn had to leave to get to Madison for another try at passing the union-busting bill, so we all started to leave.
During the whole time, the union people said nothing loud enough for us to hear, and at one point Evan went over to talk to them. Pretty sad protest by Chicago standards!
There was talk of the Demonrat senators who fled to Illinois rather than allow a quorum in the Senate, thereby preventing the bill from being voted on. The news of those cowards running away convinced eight Republican fence-sitters to come over to supporting the bill, so the poly had the opposite effect for the Demonrats. It was also brought up that, under Wisconsin law, it is a felony for a state representative or senator to miss a vote unless incapacitated. I dearly would like to see some charges brought - my local senator, Tim Cullen, is one of those cowards.
I took a picture of the union "thugs" on my phone, but Motorola requires a driver you have to pay for to access the phone, so nothing to post there.
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