In the Wisconsin rotunda, high school students chant "We're with Walker" and drown out the anti-Walker "Solidarity Singers."

I missed this one. It happened last Thursday. I guess I'm not covering the "Wisconsin protests" story with sufficient vigilance! Blah! It never ends. Anyway, tons of teenagers were in Madison for the big high school basketball tournament. They came from all over the state, drastically tipping the political balance. As Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op reports it (and I'm getting to this belatedly, via Prof. Jacobson, via Instapundit):

On Thursday March 15, 2012 the afternoon Solidarity Sing Along was taken over by a large group of supporters from Lutheran High School in Sheboygan...

Shouts of “LHS” and “Stand with Walker” thundered through the rotunda and was met with wide approval from the LHS supporters. One student entered the circle to mock and taunt the singers with dance moves.

Taunting with dance moves! There's video, but it doesn't include the dance-taunt, which I can only imagine. What would it be, some basketball-madness-Walker-loving hula?



Ha ha. I love the way Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op — with its ability to detect dance mockery — fails to notice the students singing along with "Solidarity Forever" and making it horribly off key. Maybe the Co-op thinks the Solidarity Singers are always that badly out of tune. That's so sad for the folks who so diligently gather day after day to sing with their clenched fists thrust aloft.

Grabbing some Pussy Riot in Madison, Wisconsin.

Pussy Riot performed not a concert but a Q&A at the Wisconsin Union last night. The Progressive covered it:

Imagine if the colorful, costumed marchers protesting in the streets of Madison against Scott Walker in 2011 were rounded up and shipped off to a penal colony. Putin’s crackdown on dissent in Russia—after an outpouring of post-Soviet free expression—was just as much of a shock. When they started to make pointed critiques of the Putin regime, Pussy Riot caught the brunt of Putin’s backlash....

For my daughters and their friends, who took part in demonstrations against Walker, hearing from these radical young women who went to prison for their beliefs was eye-opening—especially in the wake of the election of Donald Trump....

Pussy Riot members Masha Alyokhina and Basha Bogina talked about standing up against Putin’s repression, why they felt a particular kinship with Wisconsinites during the uprising against Walker, and how they continued rebelling even in prison.

Their music, when they do play, is punk rock, but that didn't stop them from participating, the next day, at the Solidarity Sing Along at the State Capitol in some anti-Scott-Walker folksinging:



One of the Solidarity Singers quotes one of the Pussy Rioters: "She said last night that we have a good culture of rioting."

There are various old posts on this blog about the Solidarity Singers. From April 2013, there's "Solidarity Singers seek recognition as 'Longest continuously running singing political protest.'" There's this video I made of them singing in the Rotunda during the protests of 2011 (with me offering real-time commentary):



Then there was the time I got into what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called an "altercation": "'Capitol altercation involves Solidarity Singers, political blogger" — i.e. Althouse": " I was standing filming a man who was ranting about how Jesus would be on the anti-Scott Walker side. This man blows a vuvuzela right in my face more than once. He's yelling at a man who is a Christian minister, but was never given much of a chance to say anything. Then a very angry guy comes up and violently snatches my camera, but can't get it out of my hand. He tries a second time, and he also hits me. My son detached the man's hand from mine. Anyway, I have this on video... here."

IN THE COMMENTS: chickelit said: "Pussy Riot made a ridiculous anti-Trump propaganda video...."



I guess they're not the "trigger warning" type of feminist. That video is full of the graphic depiction of sexualized violence against women. I'm sure many people will find it sexually titillating in the old-fashioned way.

The Guardian gives its British readers an introduction to Scott Walker — "polarising figure in arguably the most polarising state in the US."

I'm highly amused by this piece — "Could Scott Walker be the elusive 2016 contender Republicans are looking for?" — because Meade and I have followed the Scott Walker story from here in Wisconsin, from the beginning. It's funny to see how outsiders are brought up to speed on the "polarising" that's been going on here in The North. The Guardian begins:

It’s midday in the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, and that means it’s time for a Solidarity Singalong. A circle of protesters have filled the central rotunda of the venerable building and are singing lustily to the tune of I’ll Fly Away, their voices spiralling up into the dome overhead.

We’re not going away, oh Scotty!
Until the day when justice holds sway.
You might think our mighty cause is lost, but
We’re not going away.

The singers aren’t here just for the harmonies – they really mean it. They aren’t going away. Though their numbers are down to a meagre 15 from the thousands that overran the capitol at the height of Wisconsin’s union battles almost four years ago, they have stuck it out. Every weekday since 11 March 2011, without a break – 1,006 days and counting – they have turned out to sing songs of defiance against the man they call “Scotty.”

I read this out loud to Meade and say "I don't even know the song 'I'll Fly Away," and Meade immediately — putting the Meade into immediately — launches into a few verses of the song, with the original words about dying and going to heaven. Meade sounds a little like this:



When I heard it sung like that, I remembered the old gospel song. Wikipedia says it may be the most-recorded gospel song. It was written in 1929 by Albert E. Brumley, who said he thought of it as he was working on the farm and "humming the old ballad that went like this: 'If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly,' and suddenly it dawned on me that I could use this plot for a gospel-type song."

That is, he took a secular song — "The Prisoner's Song" — and saw how it could be made into a religious song. The dream of flying out of prison became the vision of flying as an angel away from earthly life. That takes some of the edge off my criticism of the Solidarity Singers' appropriation of the religious song for a secular purpose. "I'll Fly Away" originated in the heartfelt but secular wish to escape from prison, and they've got their heartfelt desire to be free of Scott Walker. I guess that feels like prison to them.

Meade says "The Solidarity Singers are a little bit mental — I think that's what the British press is politely trying to say."

"Capitol altercation involves Solidarity Singers, political blogger" — i.e. Althouse

Here's the report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Solidarity Singers normally meet in the center of the Capitol rotunda at noon to sing pro-union protest songs, but they take their sing-along outside on Fridays.

A heated political argument ensued between one of the singers and another man who was observing the sing-along. Meanwhile, another singer confronted Althouse, who was filming the encounter. According to the singer, Kirby Jones, Althouse aggressively forced her camera in his face and he pushed it away from him. According to Althouse, Jones tried to grab her camera out of her hands and her son struggled with the man to hold onto the camera. Althouse's son had a small cut on his wrist after the altercation.

Of course, I have it on video. I was standing filming a man who was ranting about how Jesus would be on the anti-Scott Walker side. This man blows a vuvuzela right in my face more than once. He's yelling at a man who is a Christian minister, but was never given much of a chance to say anything. Then a very angry guy comes up and violently snatches my camera, but can't get it out of my hand. He tries a second time, and he also hits me. My son detached the man's hand from mine. Anyway, I have this on video, but I need to edit and upload.

UPDATE: I responded to the reporter's phone call and she's updated the text at the link to say:

... Meanwhile, another singer confronted Althouse, who was filming the encounter. According to the singer, Kirby Jones, Althouse forced her camera in his face and he pushed it away from him. Althouse denied that she forced her camera, saying Jones tried to grab her camera out of her hands and "swatted" her arm. Althouse's son struggled with Jones to hold onto the camera, and had a small cut on his wrist after the altercation.

I held my camera up with my elbow at approximately a right angle. The man yanked my hand toward him. Twice. He wasn't even anyone I was photographing, just a guy who got up in my face.

UPDATE 2: A post with video from Meade's camera and — soon — mine is here.

"I'm sorry, did Elbow just call the Solidarity Singers 'the gray-haired retirees and public workers that gather for the daily event.'??"

"Hahahaha! I mean, he is absolutely right but none of the SS would admit to the fact that they are just bored like-minded liberals scared to death that finances matter. One might think that Detroit would put some sense into this crew of 'gray-haired retirees' but I won't hold my breath. Carry on! Just get a freaking permit."

In the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda....

... a Christmas tree with lots of Christmas badgers.

I heard singing and experienced it as Christmas music — I was focused on the visual, not the audio — and finally I noticed the words — "Solidarity forever, solidarity forever..." It was the Solidarity Singers, a longstanding vestige of the 2011 protests. It's a free-speech forum, the Wisconsin rotunda. You don't have to sing about Christmas, but you can sing about Christmas.

ADDED: Did I hear "Solidarity Forever"? I'm not sure. I heard the word "solidarity," but I think it might have been labor union words sung to the tune of a Christmas carol. On their Facebook page, I see words like "God Bless You Very Wealthy Men."

"The ever-grumpy, constantly complaining union leadership at AFSCME and WEAC alienated non-union taxpayers who were paying the bills."

"They used language that sounded like they were defending Pennsylvania coal miners in 1911 instead of office workers and teachers with very good benefits and fine working conditions in 2011. If unions want to reclaim their relevance, it would be a good thing to ban use of the word 'solidarity' as well as anything that rhymes with 'hey, ho' forever more."

Writes Citizen Dave, Dave Cieslewicz, the former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin). He's saying that from the left and right after assuring readers (at the lefty newspaper Isthmus) that he "hated how Gov. Scott Walker demonized schoolteachers and public employees during the Act 10 debate" — which is ludicrous, Scott Walker was demonized by the protesters, but he was completely restrained, almost to the point of dead silence, and didn't demonize anybody — but my point here is that Walker-hater Cieslewicz is sick of the way lefties talk about government workers and their unions.

I read that part and said: "He sounds like me." I was thinking particularly of a post of mine from March 15, 2011: "In the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda, protesters — not noticing the self-dramatization — sing about how they're standing up to 'goons and ginks and company finks' and how one day they'll 'be free.'"

I edited [the video] to heighten the absurdity of appropriating the civil rights song "We Shall Overcome" (about not being free) and that "Stickin' to the Union" song (about facing union-busting violence).

The protests have been on behalf of well-paid people with excellent jobs — better jobs than the average Wisconsinite's. And the protesters got massive extra doses of freedom to express themselves in the state capitol for over a month, without any threats of violence or even arrest for the crimes they committed in full view of the police. I mean, I know they have their complaints, but they are not even the bottom sector of the Wisconsin economy. If there were to be a class struggle here, they would be taken aback to find themselves in the role they actually have in this economy: the oppressors!

AND: By the way, the singing group in my video called themselves "The Solidarity Singers," so Citizen Dave's saying "ban use of the word 'solidarity'" has got to feel like a direct affront.

Solidarity Singers seek recognition as "Longest continuously running singing political protest."

"If the category sounds a little weird... The Guinness website features such idiosyncratic categories as: Longest singing marathon (by an individual): 105 hours."

This is a singing group — documented on this blog a few times — that assembles, sings for a while, then goes home, and comes back again another time. That's nothing like one person singing for 105 hours. That's just a singing group that meets regularly. I'll bet there's a singing group somewhere that has met regularly for half a century. The SS only go back to the Wisconsin protests of 2011.

This group is hungry for publicity, seeking publicity for applying to Guinness with a ludicrous proposal of a new category consisting of the particular thing that they have done and plumping up the category name with a silly misuse of the word "continuously."

The (unlinkable) OED defines "continuous" to mean "Characterized by continuity; extending in space without interruption of substance; having no interstices or breaks; having its parts in immediate connection; connected, unbroken."

ADDED: Here's my video from March 14, 2011, showing the singers, with shots of the songbook and real-time critique by me.



As I said at the time, this was "edited to heighten the absurdity of appropriating the civil rights song 'We Shall Overcome' (about not being free) and that 'Stickin' to the Union' song (about facing union-busting violence). ... The protests have been on behalf of well-paid people with excellent jobs — better jobs than the average Wisconsinite's....  I know they have their complaints, but they are not even the bottom sector of the Wisconsin economy."

Blaska attempts to extract details from Lueders about his unnamed sources in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Blaska's at the Isthmus, where Lueders worked for 25 years before moving on to the mysterious outfit that calls itself the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Blaska asked Lueders about his “three knowledgeable sources” who supposedly had to remain unnamed to "maintain their professional relationships." Blaska said that his "inescapable conclusion" was that they were Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, "and their liberal court ally, Justice Patrick Crooks."

Lueders replied:

The sources are people we considered reliable. We very carefully represented that they alleged certain events. They did. Justice Bradley has now made the same allegation in her comments to the Journal Sentinel. Your ‘inescapable conclusion’ is incorrect. Beyond that I have nothing more to say.

It's like a logic puzzle, isn't it? It's like in "Clue" when you make an accusation like Mr. Green with the lead pipe in the conservatory. You check the secret cards, and it's the wrench, not the lead pipe, but you were right about Mr. Green and the conservatory. You slip the cards back into the little black envelope and tell the other players you were wrong. They don't know how wrong.

By the way, Blaska is making noises about a singalong in the Capitol today to rival the "Solidarity Singers who have been singing sad songs of dissent in the Capitol Rotunda for at least four months now." But for some reason, he thinks he needs a permit, and so — like that silent majority march the other day — he's proposing a silent demonstration:

Be there at 11:45 a.m. Bring your sheet music -- make 10 copies -- and signs (sans sticks). I’ll do likewise. We’ll stand silently in a group in the middle of the singers -- unless they have a permit for that day -- holding our pro-Walker signs but saying nothing. My sign will read “Can we have our Capitol back?”

What songs would the conservatives sing (if they could get permission)?

I’m thinking songs like “God Bless America,” the theme to the Flintstones, Gilligan’s Island and -- in honor of wheelchair-bound patriot Dave Zien, "Born to be Wild!" Sunny Schubert suggests the Beatles’ “Taxman.” 

Yeah, conservatives should show up and celebrate the signing of the budget bill, the momentous event that occurred yesterday. Maybe you didn't notice. It was overshadowed by the gigantic turd Lueders felt moved to drop at exactly that moment.

"Scotty’s been scorched by this firestorm, and just like a bratwurst, he’s fried!"

New lyrics for the Solidarity Singers, quoted in "Sha na na na, goodbye!/Walker is on his way out, but the Solidarity Sing Along might stick around a while longer" (Isthmus).

Isn't the headline writer mixed up? Sha Na Na was that band, but the oft-sung song, originally recorded by Steam, is "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." It was also recorded by Bananarama, or as Isthmus might call them Shananarama:



Interesting fashion and hairstyles there. For comparison, here's Steam:



By the way, it seems insensitive to liken Scott Walker to a piece of meat and, especially in this time of disastrous wildfires, to picture him fried and scorched in a firestorm. But that's okay. It illustrates the point I always make: Calls for civility in politics are always bullshit.

ADDED: Here's the Wikipedia page for Sha Na Na. The group — who sang doo wop oldies — got the three syllables from "Get a Job" a 1957 song about your mother yelling at you to get a job.

Remnants of protest.

The view from the top of State Street at noon yesterday.



The "Solidarity Singers" were there, as they are now only once a week. I kept my distance, except with the zoom lens. At one point, you'll be able to read the sign that says "Gun Nuts R Nuts." I can't make out the song from the audio track, but it was one of those old civil-rights spirituals that seem — to this outsider to their religion — out of place applied to the present-day economic issues that affect unionized public employees. I considered walking over to get some better pics, but decided to do a video panorama that emphasizes the context. It was a calm and beautiful day, and many people were enjoying the sidewalk cafés. I don't want you to get the wrong impression of this place.

"Solidarity singers hijack Scott Walker's 'Unintimidated' book title."

The Capital Times can't get enough of fawning over Wisconsin protesters. You'd think someone would have noticed that the "hijack" metaphor lacks the intended cuteness on September 11th.

"Who are these people? They're not even from Wisconsin... and they're calling it over?!"

The day after the recall election, protesters show their spirit... confronting the CNN bus....



The Solidarity Singers shall not be moved... but the CNN bus is leaving.

It's Recall Day, come 'round at last.

As the Solidarity Singers sang at the Capitol last evening, "Walker won't be Governor/Walker won't be Governor/Walker won't be Governor, some day-ay-ay-ay." I'm guessing that day is years in the future, but who knows? Get out and vote!

"Is this really the message we want to send to the rest of the world? That this is Wisconsin? A place where people can’t come and express themselves in their state capitol? That’s bologna."

So said state senator Bob Jauch, about the arrest of 22 of the "Solidarity Singers," for singing in the Wisconsin Capitol building without a permit. This singing has been a regular event since the big protests in 2011. The arrests followed a singalong that defied the police chief's message — posted on a sign — "I have determined that your group does not have the required permits. I am declaring this an unlawful event. Please either move outside or disperse immediately. If you do not, each participant is subject to arrest."

By the way, I think it's funny to write "That’s bologna." Normally, one sees the spelling "baloney," when the reference is to humbug/nonsense. My authority is the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the alternative "boloney."

"The End of the Jerry Lewis Telethon—It's About Time."

Says history prof Jon Wiener:

Every year it was the same. Jerry did his telethon shtick, parading little kids in wheelchairs across the Las Vegas stage, making maudlin appeals for cash, alternatively mugging and weeping, and generally claiming to be a friend to the doomed.

The pitch was always for “Jerry’s kids.” But two-thirds of the clients of the Muscular Dystrophy Association were adults, and they didn’t like being referred to as “Jerry’s kids.”

Time passed. The "kids" kept growing up. And Jerry got more and more outmoded.

For me, the worst moment of the telethon came in 1972 when John and Yoko appeared. They played some good music—“Imagine,” and a reggae version of “Give Peace a Chance.” But they were there for a political reason: President Nixon had been trying to deport them for almost a year, and they were desperate to say in the USA. So to prove they were deserving of residency, they stopped hanging out with Jerry Rubin and instead embraced Jerry Lewis. That’s why Lennon told the telethon audience “Jerry is one of our favorite comedians.”

Nixon! Still railing about Nixon over there in The Nation, where this article is published.

Elsewhere, in the same old lefty journal there's another Labor Day piece, "Top Ten Labor Day Songs," and there's John Lennon again, holding down the 2 position with "Working Class Hero." John Lennon, John Lennon, John Lennon. I wonder how he'd feel if he could know how closely American lefties would cuddle him 30 years after his death.

"Working Class Hero" is not one of the labor songs sung by the Solidarity Singers who do their singalongs every weekday at the Wisconsin Capitol. And it's not surprising. The unions that were fought for in the Great Wisconsin Protests of 2011 were public employee unions, especially teachers unions. Picture the teacher-folk singing these lyrics:

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

There's really nothing in that song stoking enthusiasm for labor unions. There's nothing about working. It's about a disabling fear of work. And it's not the boss who tortures and scares you in those first 20 years. It's the parents and the teachers.

"The heart-shaped balloon community must have heard about the loss of one of its own because it was out in force Tuesday at the Capitol."

"I counted a dozen trapped at the top of the dome and dozens more held fast by some of the 150 or so participating in the 'Solidarity Singalong' in the rotunda."

A day after a Department of Administration employee allegedly stabbed the balloon, shoved its owner, and somehow received a minor injury that scattered his own blood on the Capitol floor, attendance for the daily a cappella airing of grievances was running about twice what it had been, about 150 people, according to organizer Chris Reeder.

"We'll continue to be here every day," Reeder told singers, "even if they attack our heart balloons — or us."

See what happens when you give them a martyr?

UPDATE: The worker who popped the balloon has been arrested.