The following letter was issued by March Forward!
To our brothers and sisters in the Wisconsin National Guard:
We are writing to you as veterans and active duty troops, who are watching closely the growing protests in your state.
Your governor, Scott Walker, is preparing to use you to
smash the right of your family, friends and neighbors to peacefully
demonstrate.
There are two sides in this fight.
On one side stand thousands of teachers, high school and
college students, public sector workers, steelworkers, janitors,
firefighters and nurses.
On the other side stands a tiny group of multi-millionaire
business executives and corporate fat cats, represented by their good
friend Scott Walker.
Those protesting are from the same neighborhoods and
communities we all come from. They work the same jobs and attend the
same schools. Many of you probably have family and friends
demonstrating.
We know why most of us joined the military: for a job,
access to health care and the ability to go to college. That is the very
same reason why over 10,000 people have risen up in protest—for jobs,
decent benefits and education. Those rights are under attack. Hundreds
of thousands of Wisconsin families are at risk.
There is an economic crisis in Wisconsin, just like the rest
of the country. And like his counterparts in the rest of the country,
the Governor of Wisconsin wants to make working families shoulder the
cost instead of cutting into the pockets of the wealthiest 1 percent.
We have nothing in common with Walker and his millionaire
buddies. None of us own any factories or take home million-dollar bonus
checks. In fact, unemployment for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is 15
percent, nearly double the national average. We have everything in
common with those exercising their right to demonstrate—because we are
dealing with the same economic hardships that they are. Their struggle
is our struggle.
The Wisconsin National Guard already has a dark history of
acting against their own communities. Over the years they have been
ordered to enforce racist segregation laws, intimidate and attack civil
rights demonstrations and crush workers on strike, including the
Milwaukee firefighters union in 1973.
The workers and students in Wisconsin are making history
right now. If you are called upon, you will make history too—either
notoriously, by following bogus orders from corporate lackeys to rob
your community of their right to demand a better life; or heroically, by
standing with your brothers and sisters and refusing to use force to
defend the bonus checks of a few CEOs.
Stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the students, teachers, and
working families who are courageously fighting for their lives, not
against them! They are not our enemies; our enemies are the ones pulling
the strings from corporate boardrooms. It is your right to enter the
history books as heroes who stood with your community, not as thugs for
big business.
