Recall Reflections

This morning I woke early. Today is a day Wisconsin has waited a grueling 16 months to arrive at, and if we are successful, a day we declare Wisconsin Independence Day.

June 5, 2012.

As a Wisconsin woman Veteran and SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin Nurse, I am proud to have been one of the Wisconsin Winter Soldiers who have been fighting tirelessly in defense of our state and our constitutional freedoms that have been so abused by Governor Walker’s TEA Party since February 2011.

Seeing great turnout at the polls being reported, I was surprised to hear our TEApublicCon Governor gloat on the news about how he feels “Wisconsin just wants this over” so we can get our TV and radio back! We want our Wisconsin back, freed from the clutches of his dictatorial Fitzwalkerstan Regime.

Scott Walker looked a bit surprised at the turnout as he waited in line to vote. This gives me hope that tonight, we Wisconsin Winter Soldiers will win the battle to reclaim our state! Wisconsin wants this over, but not because we want to go back to business as usual. We want to prove that politicians who spend more time collecting out of state campaign funds instead of fixing our state economy, will fall to the power of the vote of our taxpaying citizens. And to ensure that those politicians who steal from our veterans do not profit politically from that act.

As a Reagan Republican, I joined this fight because of how the effects of Act 10 were about to harm our Wisconsin public employee unions, and our staff who care for our veterans in the Wisconsin state facilities. I continued as I saw our Veterans Trust Funds disappear into Act 32, the Walker Budget Bill that gave our assets to the state, and as AB 97 gave Gov Walker , a likely suspect in the John Doe probe where money was stolen from a charity for veterans’ families, total control of who is appointed to the Board of Directors and the power to appoint the Secretary of the WI Dept. of Veteran Affairs as well.

No real Republican would ever betray our war heroes this way, and it started to open my eyes to the great TEApublicCON that his party had perpetrated on our Progressive Wisconsin Republican voters. My union nurses voted overwhelmingly to remain union as we re-certified our public sector bargaining unit in October 2011. I fight yet to ask OSER to bring us back to settle our contract even today, 6 months later.

I have stood side by side with some of the greatest grassroots activists in this Wisconsin Uprising, union and non-union, male and female, through my involvement with the non-partisan We Are Wisconsin, both the SD14 and South Central groups.

The Wisconsin Recall is a true non-partisan fight. Fighting Bob La Follette said, “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.”

“Recalls are part of the political process, not as pretty as letting an official serve his/her term, but a necessary check to curb those who take off their mask and ravage the system. When an elected official reveals him …or herself as something other than what his election campaign promised, and is also revealed as a puppet of an out-of-state political organization (other than the national political party he was nominated by), he should be removed. A Governor should represent his state, not the agenda of out-of-state cronies. In Wisconsin this recall is not being considered lightly. This is not a California whim. The new wave of protest began here. It is not about economics, or budget, but the backlash against a system that has gone too far. Where’s your backbone?” said a life-long Republican living in Wisconsin

No words are more true than this for me, and I want to express my sincere thanks to each and every one of those Wisconsin Winter Soldiers, who stood with us through the snow and cold this past winter; who rallied in freezing tempuratures in the early months of 2011; who have inspired the rest of our country to stand up and fight back against the attack of our Democracy by the John Birch, ALEC, Bradley Foundation and Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity.

I am proud to be one of the many, and so inspired by the efforts today as we unite to reclaim our Wisconsin – our progressive, working class family heritage. I want to thank each and every one of you for keeping this alive. The whole world is watching as we vote. No matter what the outcome, we should be proud to have been the original 99%.

Now get out there and GET OUT THE VOTE!!!! If each recall signer brought just one friend or family member to vote  we win this hands down, no recount.