How strange and wondrous it must be to gaze from some celestial perch
and see history -- your history -- being relived. From their great
Progressive Precinct in the Sky the family of Robert "Fighting Bob"
LaFollette surely must be smiling as they observe the throngs of workers
and sympathizers flooding Madison to protest the Koch brothers and
corporate America's drive to cripple and ultimately destroy Wisconsin's
public service unions. The LaFollettes have seen and lived it all
before.
I know the LaFollettes. I spent four years researching and writing a safety

valves
book about them. And I'll wager that they would see the growing
resistance in this fourth year of the so-called Great Recession --
which, for those who have lost jobs, homes, and futures is
indistinguishable from a Depression -- as a turning point, a wake-up
call that begins a counter-revolution against the steady encroachment of
the political and corporate Right, with help from Democratic
"centrists," on the shrinking contours of the social contract they
fought so hard to advance.
That's up to us. If we ourselves light candles from the flame kindled
in Madison and carry them to our communities, then the tumult in
Madison could resemble events in the 1890s that provoked a political
revolt against the first Gilded Age, like our own, dominated
politically, culturally and economically by an elite of super-rich
securely entrenched behind their golden walls, indifferent or hostile to
the protests of debt-stricken farmers and exploited workers, the
thwarted hopes of small businessmen and professionals crushed under the
weight of the great trusts and their legions of bought lawyers and
editors , the sufferers from the poverty that festered in the shadows of
the great cities' monuments to progress.
But year by year as the twentieth century dawned, a new breed of
thinkers and activists who labeled themselves "Progressives" --
journalists, academics, enlightened businessmen and financiers,
officeholders in state capitals and city halls -- along with anonymous
and rebellious workers and farmers who pushed from below -- chipped away
at the golden walls. They pushed through three amendments in the
Constitution -- a deliberately long and hard process -- between 1909 and
1920: a progressive income tax, the direct election of Senators, and
votes for women.
Campaign by campaign, local, state and national, navigating through
the endless grind of assemblies and petitions and public events
sometimes supported by striking workers who risked their jobs, their
physical safety and even their lives for equal justice, they gained
other protections and guarantees. Workers compensation, occupational
safety, guarantees of pure food and drugs, conservation of natural
resources, restriction of child labor, regulations of railroads, trusts,
and insurance companies, strengthened defenses against financial panics
ignited by reckless speculation. Protections for all, especially that
vital middle class on whose shoulders democracy rested. Achieved through
a political process made accessible to all by machine-fighting reforms
like the secret ballot and the open primary.

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