It Didn't Matter Koch's Tea Party "Protesters"

were in Wisconsin to try and con the masses into believing they are representative of anything other than their billionaire backers. Some 75,000 people came to Madison to protest the Koch-sponsored governor's attempts to destroy unions once and for all:

A mood of militancy and confidence filled the air as teachers, firefighters and other public employees were joined by steel, auto, construction and other private sector workers, along with high school and college students, in a march that surrounded the state capitol.

The events in Wisconsin are a sign of what is to come. It has been an entire generation since workers in the US have been able to participate in mass social struggles. The AFL-CIO trade unions have worked to artificially suppress every sign of working class resistance. The betrayal of the 1981 PATCO strike—and the unions’ complicity in Reagan’s firing of 12,000 air traffic controllers—was followed by a decade of isolated and defeated strikes.

The virtual disappearance of strikes from American life coincided with an explosive growth of social inequality and a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the richest one percent of society.

Social tensions have now reached a breaking point. Two and half years since the eruption of the financial crisis, more than 26 million workers cannot find a full-time job. State governments, under both Democrats and Republicans, are responding to budget deficits by closing schools, libraries, clinics and other public facilities, and carrying out attacks on state and municipal employees.

The class war by the few against everybody else is out there for everybody to see. The Wisconsin workers' fight is OUR fight, and it's just a matter of overcoming apathy and 24/7 propaganda by the likes of Fox "News" for this to succeed.

The WSWS was right there Saturday observing and reporting on the protests by tens of thousands of people.