wi protests

I just discovered a new blog, O'Keefe's Backyard.... and she's another art teacher in Madison!  (where I live)  Since I'm not part of the public school district (I teach at a private school), I don't know all of the art teachers in my city.  One of the posts she made was about some of the political art that has been cropping up in Madison because of the bill stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights.  So, this in combination with the budget (which will slash millions of dollars from things such as Medicaid and public education, while giving tax breaks to businesses) has led to months of massive protests, people camping out and large groups of people trying to get senators and the governor recalled.  It's been a non stop circus here in Madison.  Anyways, what i was saying is that the post she made about political art reminded me about some of the pictures I took of some pretty decked out political cars.

If you want to see more pictures of the protests check out this flickr group.

Here's a video about some of the protests.

Wisconsin Craziness

So unless you have been living under a rock lately (or not paying attention to ANY news) you probably have heard about what has been going on in Wisconsin.  Our governor is trying to pass a bill (and probably will) that will have state workers pay more into their retirement and benefits and cripple unions. 

This is baaaaaad for teachers.

Every day the capitol has looked like this with protestors:

My husband, who is a news reporter for Wisconsin Radio Network, has been working crazy amounts of hours at crazy times.  I really really admire single mothers after basically getting a small taste of it for the last 2 weeks.  Here is a picture that Andrew appeared in that was in the Wisconsin State Journal and Huffington Post online.

He is the one on the right side in the red sweater.  His head looks a bit elongated here because of the angle.

And here is a video I took at a protest this week.

What a crazy time we are living in and what a very exhausting couple of weeks. 

I teach in a private school and Andrew is not a public worker, so we are somewhat insulated from the direct effects of the bill, but of course we are ALL affected when education and public services are cut.

The Madison public schools were closed here for the past four days because approximately 40% of the teachers called in sick to go to the protests.

A cool thing is that supporters from all over the world phoned in orders for the local pizza place on State Street and they have been delivering tons of pizzas to the protesters at the capitol.  They pretty much stopped local business to take those orders.