First they came….

This was originally written by my wife in 2011 right before the passage of the anti-public employee Act 10, and I think it’s worth posting as we head into the home stretch of the recall election against Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

You can’t blame me for trying. This is me, STILL speaking out about this cause I so passionately believe in. I am not a union member. Never have been. Never came from a family of unions. In fact, one side of my family is very anti-union. I consider myself a public servant, even though I don’t pay dues, have stellar health insurance, or much of a pension. My husband is a Probation and Parole Agent for the State of Wisconsin. He supervises sex offenders. Before that, he supervised Domestic Violence offenders, and was also part of a grant to help rehabilitate those offenders to become contributing, functioning members of society. He works hard every single day. He goes into the poorest, crime-ridden neighborhoods on almost a daily basis. He has no gun, no bullet-proof vest, no hand-cuffs, and no back up other than maybe one other person who also has no gun, no bullet-proof vest, no hand-cuffs or backup. He stands in the hallways of bug-ridden apartment buildings waiting for his clients. One time, he even looked over and there was a cockroach crawling on his shoulder. Does this sound like a glamorous job to you? Well, it isn’t. You might be thinking, “that’s a terrible job, why doesn’t he just look somewhere else?”. The reason he doesn’t? Is because he prides himself on the type of job he does and that is driven by his passion for helping to promote safety in the community. He takes great pride in having one of his clients move off of probation and become a functioning member of the community because HE helped them. He takes pride in the fact that he took part in removing one more child-molester, one more rapist, or one more wife beater off the streets. Does the public really believe that it’s for the lavish pay, benefits and pension? Because I’m going to be honest with you, I’m an ER nurse and I deal with some pretty disgusting stuff on a daily basis, and even I couldn’t do THAT job for the “Cadillac Benefits.” Not everyone can. They might try, but they can’t do it as well as my husband.

We don’t live in the lap of luxury. We both drive vehicles greater than 5 years old, mine has over 110,000 miles. We live in a modest home in the most “blue-collar” neighborhoods in Cudahy, WI. We both continue to pay student loans and probably will for the majority of my lifetime (lol). We have a special-needs child who has thrived TREMENDOUSLY from the Autism Waiver and Autism Insurance Mandate implemented by the hated Jim Doyle. Without that funding, I have no idea what kind of shape my son would be in right now. We know what poverty is, we lived it when I was in nursing school. I worked a measly 20 hours a week while my husband basically supported us on his “lavish state pay”. We are still working on repairing our credit that has become a little rough around the edges due to certain bills having to be put aside so we could pay the necessary ones like a roof, heat and food. We struggled through blood, sweat and tears to get where we are today, and we even still have a long way to go to even be anywhere close to “financially secure”. Last I checked my husband’s paystub, he is also a taxpayer.

You can be as anti-union as you want, it’s a free country. Despite my best efforts, this bill will probably pass. My husband will be forced to accept it and “quit the bitching” (as i’ve read from commenters), spruce up his resume and move on, or risk the “fire em all” attitude that some of my friends seem to have. You can never, ever fault us for speaking out against this, because it’s right on our doorstep. You have no idea how something can or will affect you until it does. May I ask my conservative friends, if you’re rights were going to be COMPLETELY stripped from you without ANY type of negotation, would you lay down and roll over, or would you fight? Would you just shrug your shoulders and say, “oh well”? I know alot of you, and alot of you wouldn’t. Why should you expect us not to do the same?

This current attack will not end with the public unions. Once he no longer needs the support of the Police and Fire unions to fend off all of us “union thugs” those unions will be next. It will eventually move on to private unions, and then the private sector. Maybe not in the same format, but I will GUARANTEE this will affect you in some way, shape or form really soon, and not for the greater good.

My family is your neighbor. A taxpayer. A Registered Nurse who may just save your life some day. A Probation/Parole agent who may just have incarcerated a sex offender near your children’s school. We are your friends, your family, and anyone who knows us, knows we would give you the shirts off our back if we could.

This whole entire thing is not about benefits and pension. It’s about having rights, and it’s about having a voice. I don’t think that is so much to ask, do you? SPEAK UP!