For Wisconsin Activist, A Long-Awaited Day Arrives
by Cynthia McCabe | June 05, 2012
Leah Lipska at home with her family. (Photo by Michael P. King)
MADISON, Wis. – It’s been 16 months and Leah Lipska is ready to do this. Ready to recall Gov. Scott Walker. Ready to win back Wisconsin for its working people. Ready to send a message to the rest of the country about the power of solidarity.
Lipska, a Department of Corrections information support technician and member of AFSCME Local 1 (Council 24), stood in the freezing cold in February and March of last year when Walker attacked collective bargaining and other workers’ rights, and more than 100,000 amassed in protest. In the months that followed, she lobbied everyone she knew to first sign the petition to get Walker’s recall on the ballot and to ultimately vote him out of office today.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” said Lipska, pausing for a second to explain to a co-worker where her polling location was. “I’m not nervous. I’m excited. This is history, one way or the other.”
It wasn’t always easy for Lipska to participate in the Wisconsin recall effort. Aside from her full-time job working for the State of Wisconsin, she works a part-time job at local pizza joint Rocky Rocco’s. But even that’s not enough to make up for her pay cut since Walker stripped public employees of collective bargaining rights. She’s also the mother of three children, including one who arrived in the middle of the Wisconsin fight, in September.
“I average about five hours of sleep a night,” says Lipska, who is also a member of AFSCME’s Next Wave, the union’s youngest members. “I’m angry. I work 50 hours a week and I see my kids basically just on the weekends. No one should have to do that.”
The 30-year-old Lipska grew up in Madison. She now lives about 45 minutes outside of the city in a town called Mount Horeb. Since Walker’s law passed, the young family came close to losing their car and they were on the verge of starting the foreclosure process on their house, but her parents helped them out.
Lipska serves as the president of Local 1, which she says brings added personal significance to her fight.
“Local 1 is the first AFSCME local in the country,” she says. “That’s a huge responsibility and I’m not going to let it die on my watch.”
And she knows that today’s vote has implications for far more than the Badger State.
“We have to win this, to show the other states that we’re not going to take it,” she says. “This isn’t just about state workers. It’s about all of our families, all of our friends.”
