They’re trying to organize our UW-Madison grad students!
Remember how revolutionaries took over capitol hill in Seattle during the George Floyd/Jacob Blake hot summer of 2020? Declared a police-free zone of six blocks? Demanded that the police budget be cut in half? Actually set the police precinct station on fire and drove the cops out? !!!
With predictable results. Before the month-long occupation ended in the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), crime increased 525% over the same period in 2019. Drug overdoses, rape, robbery, arson, and shootings — one of them fatal.
At the center of it was an elected city council member named Kshama Sawant. She’s in Madison WI now. Or, at least, her organization is. It’s called “Workers Strike Back.” It is trying to organize UW-Madison teaching assistants. They already have perhaps the most militant labor union in these parts, the Teaching Assistants Assn — Local 3220 in Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers.
Playing the victim card
The UW-Madison branch of Workers Strike Back met here late last month and plastered the campus with their signage. Their pitch is a “demand” for a yearly salary of $50,000.
These are graduate degree students who help their professors grade papers, lead classes, and work at the lab. UW-Madison’s 5,400 graduate research and teaching assistants already make between $21,115 and $28,388 a year. That doesn’t count the $12,000 we pay toward their graduate school tuition, and $7,500 worth of health insurance. Plus a free bus pass, on-campus parking, access to the university health clinic, child care, no heavy lifting, yadda yadda.
You wanna make a college degree even more unaffordable, go for it! The Werkes thinks graduate students should suffer for their art. A teaching assistantship is not a career, it’s a rung on a ladder!
Workers Strike Back is Kshama Sawant
Ms. Sawant announced that “Workers Strike Back will be launched in early March in cities around the country.” Sawant offers the usual grab bag of grievances: “Fight racism, sexism & all oppression! Quality affordable housing & free healthcare for all! No more sellouts! We need a new party.” Oh, and “Free abortions!”
A rapacious and parasitic capitalist class has amassed untold fortunes off the labor of billions of workers. But their system is in deep crisis, and it cannot sustain itself. Capitalism needs to be overthrown. We need a socialist world.
— Kshama Sawant
Madison’s own John Nichols approves! He was a featured speaker at the Kshama Solidarity Telethon in 2021. Three years ago, Nichols’ hero led the mob to occupy Seattle city hall and led a march to the mayor’s house in support of the lawless CHOP. (More here.)
‘Deliberate indifference’ — The father of a 19-year-old man shot and killed after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct on Capitol Hill during racial protests in June 2020 has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit alleging Mayor Jenny Durkan, Council member Kshama Sawant and others acted with “deliberate indifference” to the lawlessness and contributed to his death. 11-04-2021. (More here.)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Any more “social and economic justice” from the raised-fist people and we’ll be done for.
Blaska Policy Werkes 
13 responses to “Anarchists strike back!”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/05/22/anarchists-strike-back/ […]
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The article you wrote in yesterday’s State Journal was / is excellent. Thank you SO much.
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First, I’d like to thank Kashama for her anger.
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I second your thank you.
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The talented Ms.(?) Sawant’s former stompin’ grounds have been burned, leveled, & salted, so she needs a new gig and impressionable, pudding pated, despicable Lefties for Indoctrication; the 77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Reality has a never-ending supply of them there, am I right?
Anywho, Socialistas need a new approach, why not harp on its baked in ability for…um…Population Management; fewer people, healthier Mother Gaia.
The Gotch
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The AFT Drinks Bud Light!
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“A rapacious and parasitic capitalist class has amassed untold fortunes off the labor of billions of workers.”
Reading between the lines of Ms. Sawant’s statement, she really meant “A rapacious and parasitic union leadership has amassed untold fortunes off the labor of millions of workers.”.
I speak specifically of the union called the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), especially under the leadership of that blood sucking leech Randi Weingarten.
Tell us what you are referring to, Scotty?
Back in 2009, Scotty was a State of Wisconsin employee who was a union member of AFT when Gov. Doyle imposed 8 unpaid furlough days on state employees for each of 2 years. Did AFT attempt to fight this pay-cut on behalf of their members? HELL NO! THEY COLLUDED WITH GOV. DOYLE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN! Not only that, but on top of this 64 hour per year pay-cut the guv imposed on us, around that same time, AFT sent a letter to its members stating that our dues were being raised since their costs were going up! So, while our personal costs were increasing along with the union’s, our take home pay was being decreased by both the guv and his partner in crime the AFT. To add insult to injury, AFT President Weingarten gave herself and her cronies who ran AFT pay raises because “their personal expenses” were rising. And at that time El Presidente Weingarten was pulling down $600,000+ per year in salary. Not bad then for a failed teacher – I am guessing 14 years later she is pulling down $1M as she destroys our education system along with the elected state and national Democratic Party hacks. Needless to say, when the AFT and my local tried to shake Scotty down for voluntary payment of union dues after Act 10, Scotty to them to stick their dues request where the sun don’t shine.
Yeah, Scotty still holds a grudge with AFT and El Presidente Weingarten 14 years later…
(Scotty apologizes for the length of this rant as it’s still a sore point with him).
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Of course, it’s a rung on the ladder. It’s also the best investment in town.
Any good capitalist knows your numbers are correct but woefully incomplete. Let’s look at what the competition is paying as well as how much revenue (if he stays in state) they can generate over a lifetime. And always remember: the UW Madison campus generates an estimated 30 billion dollars a year for this state. It is the economic engine that fuels the entire economy.
Take a potential bio-chemical engineering graduate assistant with a 4.0 average and undergraduate degree from MIT. Daddy is unable or unwilling to subsidize his academic lifestyle. Stanford is willing to pay him up to $48,000 a year. If he comes to UW, he will need to pay $1400 a month for rent and at least $400 in living expenses. That’s a lot of suffering.
If you want the economy to grow, you need these people in your state. They will become good citizens and good parents. Your $100,000 investment in the short term can generate millions of dollars, or, in a case like EPIC, billions of dollars.
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David,
Ah yes, I remember the good old days of living in a house on Few St. with 4-5 other people and all sharing the same economic poverty that the other had.
You say that ” Stanford is willing to pay him up to $48,000 a year. If he comes to UW, he will need to pay $1400 a month for rent and at least $400 in living expenses. That’s a lot of suffering.”
The question in my mind would be how much is the difference in cost between Stanford and in Madison? Best Places indicates, https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/madison-wi/stanford-ca/60000, that a salary in Stanford should go from 60,000 dollars in Madison to 261,000 in Stanford in order to meet current day prices. https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/madison-wi/stanford-ca/60000
That is a difference of 341%.
I’d say that Stanford is not the panacea that you make it out to be.
Oh, and that does not include taxes.
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Good catches, BC!
Stanford also supplies a redolent existence in San Fran$#!TSHOW and the myriad…um…challenges it, and the Land of Fruit Cakes and Nut Cases present.
The Gotch
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Now you’ve done it, Bill: provided facts and data. Lefty don’t like facts/data!
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Re: “unelectable” on the sidebar: if Joe, Kamala and Fetterman have proved anything it’s that there is no such thing in this country. Hell Sunny Von Bulow could make a run nowadays (she still might!).
Trump ahead of Senile Joe in latest polls. He’s going to need a very good woman as a running mate.
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When I was a TA at UW-Madison way, way back in the day, the TAA was just getting started. In my department (English) only two people refused to sign on: myself and another grad student who happened to be a nun (Sister Marge). The organizer, who could have come from central casting, and I got into a heated debate over whether a union was needed. I pointed out that we already had a generous salary and a very light workload for a part-time position, were getting valuable on-the-job training, and paid no tuition or health care premiums. His response was to spout the predictable lefty jargon about the need for solidarity among all oppressed “workers,” among whom he counted himself. Looking back, it was one of the highlights of my academic career.
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