Message from AFSCME Council 24 Executive Director, Marty Beil

Supreme Court Election

Last night was an enormous victory for the hundreds of thousands of ordinary middle class people in Wisconsin who stood up to have their voices heard and to take back their government. Remember, just a few weeks ago in the Supreme Court primary election, Prosser lead Kloppenburg by a 55% – 25% margin. At the time, Prosser actually told the New York Times that he would “win this race going away”. But then along came Scott Walker who put Prosser and the Republicans in an extremely difficult situation, by trying to strip middle class workers of their collective bargaining rights.

The real credit for this victory belongs to the hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, nurses, correctional officers, administrative support staff, hospital workers, CNA’s, firefighters, police, and others who spent weeks in the streets using their voices and coming together at the grass roots level to stand firm against Walker’s overreach and attacks on working men and women.

The final vote is in, and Joanne Kloppenburg has won by a little more than 200 votes. Prosser and his right wing cronies are already clamoring for a recount. We must all take every caution to ensure the integrity of the recount process is protected, because as we all know over the last few months Walker and his minions have shown no respect for the law. We are concerned that this disrespect for the law will carry over into the recall process. We have to stay strong on our message that the voices of Wisconsin, standing up for our rights, will not be silenced.

Today’s victory propels all of us into a full court press on the recall efforts against those Republican senators who blindly followed Scott Walker as he attacked our rights. We are pumped. We are ready to continue the battle.

Over the next couple of days, the Joint Finance Committee will hold hearings in four locations around the state regarding the budget proposal. On Thursday, 4-7 they will be at UW Stevens Point; Friday, 4-8, at UW Superior; Monday, 4-11 at State Fair Park in Milwaukee and on Wednesday, 4-13 they will be in Arcadia. We know there will be hundreds if not thousands of working people attending these hearings, but there is always room for you, too. We strongly encourage all members and leaders to attend these JFC hearings. We suggest that you visit the SEPAC website (wseu-sepac.org) to make sure the meeting sites haven’t changed.

We thank all of you for your continued support, and urge you to draw stamina from this Supreme Court victory to keep up the good fight. Our success over the last 53 days is really defined by the Steel Workers slogan: One day longer. One day stronger.