Solidarity Knows No State Boundaries

by Clyde Weiss  |  June 05, 2012

Brian Stafford, president of AFSCME Council 48 and Local 550. (Photo courtesy AFSCME Council 24)

MILWAUKEE, Wis. – When Brian Stafford, president of AFSCME Council 48 and also of Local 550, picked up the phone yesterday he got a surprise. On the other end was a man Stafford met recently at a concert in Illinois. It was his union button or union T-shirt that had started the men chatting about the fight to restore workers’ rights in the Badger State.

That conversation must had stuck, because the man was now calling him to say “his whole family is behind us here in Wisconsin,” Stafford said, still amazed. “I guess it makes me feel that, at least, our message is getting out and that it’s not just a Wisconsin issue. It’s a national issue.”

It goes without saying that Stafford has been in the trenches for months in this battle to restore workers’ rights. He was there in Madison in February 2011 when tens of thousands of fellow union members protested Governor Walker’s plan to deprive 200,000 public service workers of their rights to collectively bargain to improve the conditions of their jobs, their benefits, and their wages.

He and thousands of others marched in the streets and occupied the state Capitol building. Later, after that corporate-driven law passed, Stafford and his AFSCME colleagues set out to do what they could to restore collective bargaining. Their effort culminates in today’s election to recall Governor Walker.

Over the past six months or so, Stafford said, “We’ve been talking to our friends and our neighbors, dropping literature, and making phone calls. We’ve been protesting our butts off, just trying to get our side of this horrible story out.”

They’ve been successful. The whole nation is watching what happens today in Wisconsin. They’re reading about the efforts of volunteers like Stafford all over the state to get out the vote for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

Throughout the morning, polling lines were long as Wisconsin residents waited to vote in what may be the largest gubernatorial election in the state’s history.

To those still working to get out the recall vote, Stafford has this to say: “Keep up the good work, keep up the faith – Solidarity.”