First They Came For Wisconsin

This blog announces the return of Ms. Fredonia Woolf, Esq. from a long hiatus. Recent events compel me to speak and take action, and I am here to tell you, brothers and sisters, they should compel you, too.

Once Ms. Freddie’s wits left her momentarily, and she considered leaving her warm, cozy Florida home for places more ideologically compatible. A liberal publication she subscribed to published an article on “livable cities,” and Ms. Freddie ventured forth on a sunny May day to visit them. She travelled across our fair land, from Burlington, to Madison, to both Portlands (Maine and Oregon), and many other places: all cold. IN MAY. Let us make one thing perfectly clear. Ms. Freddie in cold is like the Wicked Witch of the West in water. She doesn’t melt, but it ain’t pretty. The one thing about cold, though, it can sharpen one’s senses. Ms. Freddie considered that it was easy to be liberal in places like Madison, where most everyone else was liberal, vegetarian restaurants abounded, and people read books. Being liberal in places like Madison was actually conforming, and Ms. Freddie likes conforming about as much as she likes cold.

But that was then. This is now. And my how things change. This, brothers and sisters, is not the “change” Ms. Freddie was “hoping” for in 2008.

What is happening in Wisconsin – an “easy place to be liberal” – is a very scary example of how rights are being taken away from us, one by one. Republican legislators defied their constituency and the legislative process itself to dismantle public service workers’ collective bargaining rights. That means people like teachers, police officers, and firefighters (the very people who are supposed to teach us how to be good citizens and defend our freedoms, right?) can’t organize and negotiate for fair pay because THEY are called a drain on the public budget. In what universe is this democracy? In what universe is this freedom? In what universe is this America?

Do you remember that infamous statement by Martin Niemöller that came out of Nazi Germany:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.



Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.



Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.


Then they came for me,
but there was no one left to speak out for me.

Well, Ms. Freddie woke up this morning to read on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times, her newspaper of choice, this headline: “Next in line: Florida unions.” It is not just the unions, brothers and sisters. Voting rights have already been targeted. So have reproductive rights. In Florida, these are code words for minorities and women. The Times headline was just to the right of another from the national stage that read, “Tension, tears, and terror: A congressional hearing on Muslims is both defended and called a witch hunt.”

There is no place left where it is easy to be a liberal. There is no place left where it is easy to be a thinking, feeling, moral person who can remain silent and passive. Your only choice, brothers and sisters, is to live in the swamp like me. I don’t mean the literal swamp, with cypress trees and alligators. I mean that mental place that is outside of the mainstream: a space of radical resistance, philosopher bell hooks calls it. The swamp is the opposite of McDisneyworld, where your mind grows lazy from too much time in front of the shiny box, force-fed a diet of sugar and fat. The swamp is that free space inside you from which you think, organize, and act.

Ms. Freddie used to think she could go it alone in the swamp. She would be independent, a survivalist. Now, caught between a Marco Rubio rock and a Rick Scott hard place, she calls upon others to join her, sound their barbaric yawps, take up their word-weapons. They are coming for you, brothers and sisters, so don’t just sit there in silence. Remember Audre Lorde’s words: your silence will not protect you.