I struck up a conversation with Ethan following Representative Baldwin’s press conference, as we were packed into the hallway. I asked him what compelled him to attend the event, and he laid out his rationale, along with the political history that shaped it. As a Roman Catholic who grew up in a Republican household mere minutes from Governor Scott Walker’s home in Wauwatosa, Ethan probably wouldn’t have been caught dead at a Democratic event prior to his political conversion. In fact, not that long ago he was so conservative that he was the “token” Republican in his Government class at Cornell University in high school.

But Ethan’s worldviews started to change, in part, after he began to study Industrial Labor Relations in college. The more he learned, the more he realized that he could “no longer defend” Republican principles and policies, as he said they contributed to inequality and poverty in this country.

Ethan did not take his decision to switch parties lightly. Being Roman Catholic “carries with it interesting political connotations” and while he “doesn’t have a problem” with gay marriage, the issue of abortion is “complicated” for him, which is why he espoused Republican values until he found himself supporting Barack Obama at a mock political convention a few years back.

That’s around the time Ethan realized that “there is a whole other side of Catholicism” that includes “the importance of standing up for the poor” and “worker’s rights.” Said Ethan, “It’s a terrible indictment of this country how we’re treating the least amongst us.”

Ethan is concerned that, unlike in the 1930’s, when “the reaction to having global and financial crisis was that we actually made reforms that…solved the crisis,” nowadays “it seems that whatever attempts have been made to solve the crisis have been under attack, making it worse and worse.” Ethan said he supports Tammy Baldwin for Senate because, instead of “blaming everyone else,” she “represents the best chance of standing up for the New Deal Roosevelt values,” and that “if we connected with that FDR sensibility” it would “go a long way” toward helping Wisconsin workers hurt by the recession. “If she were in the Senate, she’d be…standing up for the…kind of values that Ted Kennedy and Wellstone really championed.”

Ethan also appreciates Tammy Baldwin’s views on the importance of unions. He told me that unions provide an “immediate way of bringing people out of poverty” by “making sure they have a living wage, health care, pension, and dignity at work.”

Ethan, himself, plans to look for a job as a union organizer upon graduation, and says he’ll run for public office at some point, so that he, too, can help shape public policy. So much of public policy, he said, affects opportunities, and government policy can provide opportunities to those who have not been “blessed” with them, as he was. When asked to respond to the Republican assertion that people should be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, he replied, “You can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps if you don’t have any boots in the first place.”

Amen, Ethan.

Ethan

Photo op- Senator Kohl

Happy Holidays!!!

Well, Scott Walker’s doing it again, though this time there may not be such furor.  Still, the evergreen in the Capitol Rotunda in Madison has been called a “Holiday Tree” for 25 years.  Scott Walker has decided to rename it a “Christmas Tree” by fiat this year.  There can be no interpretation of Walker’s act other than that it is an act of poking the people of Wisconsin in the eye once more.  From the Racine Journal Times: 

The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has opposed the term Christmas tree, saying it offends nonreligious people and amounts to a government endorsement of Christianity.

The president of that group, Annie Laurie Gaylor, called Walker’s decision rude and insensitive to non-Christians.

“The reason that it was turned into a holiday tree was to avoid this connotation that the governor chooses one religion over another,” she said. “It’s essentially a discourtesy by the governor to announce that. He intends that to be a slight and a snub to non-Christians, otherwise he would not do it.”

It should be noted that the Walker camp is downplaying the action, despite that they know it is purposely antagonizing to many Wisconsinites.  Here’s their response: 

Walker, in a press release, downplayed any potential controversy by simply referring to the decoration as a Christmas tree and not noting any change. His spokesman Cullen Werwie confirmed that the designation and change from past practices was intentional.

“It’s a Christmas tree,” Werwie said. “In all honesty, I don’t know what more to say about it.”

How cute of Cullen Werwie to pretend this is not an act of antagonism.  To be honest, this isn’t a crucial issue, but it is another sign that Walker doesn’t care at all about the wishes of the people of Wisconsin, nor, evidently and especially, about people of faiths different from his own Christianity.  Perhaps his calculus is that the War on Christmas is a good issue for him to run on as he faces a prospective recall election.  So this is unsurprising, as it is yet one more instance of Scott Walker pitting Wisconsinite against Wisconsinite. 

It’s about character.  Scott Walker’s character is evidently all about creating divisions among the people of his own state.  He did so quite effectively with the collective bargaining issue, angering tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens as he and the Fitzgerald boys villified state workers and teachers along the way.  This action will probably not creaate a whole lot more anger, but it sure shows Walker’s character as a bully. 

You honestly can not make this stuff up!

Is calling the President of the United States of American what passes for civility among the Christian right?