A New Civil Rights Movement

Two videos out of Wisconsin are definitely worth the time to watch today.

In the first, a Wisconsin farmer, Tony Schultz, explains, among other things, that the previous "support" from farmers for Scott Walker's plan to gut Badgercare (Wisconsin's implementation of Medicare) were actually from large factory farms; family farmers from Wisconsin would be hurt by Walker and his Republican cronies:

WATCH THIS VIDEO and please share it widely. Republicans have ruled red and rural America for a generation, playing off of fears, driving wedges, creating sterotypes. And Democracts, it must be said, have too often given them an open field to do so. It took Scott Walker and his minions to bring it fully to the surface here in Wisconsin. Tony passionately states the common threats we face, and the opportunity we have to rebuild the connections across the landscape for a progressive future. Ironically, Scott Walker is ignorant of rural and small town Wisconsin, and the social fabric that keeps small town life healthy -- the schools, health care, environmental stewardship, the local cops and firefighters. Tony reveals that here.

In the next video, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) breathes the fire of the righteous in his address to the Madison Workers' Rights Rally when he lays out for all to witness how our American democracy is being sold down the river to corporations, primarily by the Republicans:

What we have here today in Wisconsin is the beginning of a new civil rights movement.

Best line of the speech? "Economic democracy is a predicate to political democracy!" Will post a transcript when one becomes available.

By the way - where are Obama and the Democratic leadership on the labor rights protests in Wisconsin? Where are they on supporting workers' rights? Silent. Mute. Absent without leave. It's as if they don't care about the millions of Wisconsoners that elected them. The uncomfortable, but most rational, conclusion to draw is that they approve of Walker's actions. And why should Obama support workers' rights, after all? He was never a worker himself, only organizer, professor, and professional politician.

It's time we demand that the Democratic Party return to its roots as a party of the people. It's time the people took its party back.