OLBERMANN: We are live from the M.C. Escher Studio Complex in New
York each night at 8 p.m. Eastern. And then we send it again at 11, 2,
7, noon and 3 p.m. We call "Countdown" our little miracle.
The real-life impact of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's anti-union
ways is now taking shape, manifest in a mass exodus of public workers
choosing to retire in lieu of accepting the draconian cuts to benefits
some collective bargaining rights. In the third story on the
"Countdown," twice as many Wisconsin public schoolteachers retired in
the first half of 2011 as did in each of the last two years. Days
before students return to class, many in the state worrying veteran
leadership has been lost, vacancies will go unfilled, and the size of
classrooms will skyrocket. Tom Morello, guitarist of Rage Against the
Machine, activist, son of a public schoolteacher, joins me in a moment.
Throughout the end of June 4th, 935 school district employees --
correction.
June, 4,935 school district employees have retired this year. It was
2,527 all of last year. 2,417 the year before. And it's not just
teachers. 1,966 employees at state-run agencies have hung it up. Over
1,000 retired from the University of Wisconsin system alone. In total,
9,993 public workers retired by the end of June of this year. That was a
93 percent increase over 2010. Earlier this month, Democrats took two
Wisconsin State Senate seats in a recall election against Republicans.
They beat a faux Democrat in July and defended two more seats against
recall on the 16th of this month. While the effort wasn't enough to
flip the balance of power and take control of the State Senate, it has
voters primed for the battle to recall the Governor Scott Walker, and
under Wisconsin's laws, elected officials must serve one full year
before they are liable for a recall, and Governor Walker's one-year
anniversary -- circle the calendar -- January 4th. And as promised,
here is Tom Morello gearing up for his "Justice" tour to benefit the
Nation Institute.
Madison, Cleveland and Flint next month. His third full-length solo
album, "World Wide Rebel Songs" dropped yesterday, as the kids say. And
last month, he released the EP "Union Town," pro-union songs inspired
by his experience performing at the protest against Governor Walker's
anti-union bill in February. Pleasure to have you here, sir.
TOM MORELLO: Nice to be here, thanks.
OLBERMANN: What moved you to take part in that protest against Walker? What was the tipping point?
MORELLO: I was watching the news, and there were 100,000 people
in the streets of Cairo, and then it switched to 100,000 people on the
streets of Madison. My wife was just about to give birth to our second
son. We were about a week away. And I turned to her and said, "I'm
sorry, I think I have to go to Madison, honey." And she surprised me by
saying, "Our sons are going to be union men. You need to go." And I
got on the first plane, and the next day was on the Capitol steps
performing with some friends.
OLBERMANN: I mentioned your mom was a public schoolteacher, union and everything.
MORELLO: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: We think of this attack on unions as having started
recently with the Koch brothers or even the elections last fall. Is it
really -- do we really tie it closer to the day that Reagan fired all
the air traffic controllers, or does it go even further back than that,
in your opinion?
MORELLO: I think the PATCO was really the starting point. But
now, it's, you know, they're trying to sweep away our last line of
defense. For me, this fight is very, very personal.
My mom taught for almost 30 years in the Illinois public school system.
And we were a single- parent family. We did not have a lot of money,
but we always had enough food on the table, because my mom was a union
high school teacher. So that's when I heard that, you know, this
right-wing governor was attacking folks like my mom, I was on the first
plane out there. I took it very personally.
OLBERMANN: Right, because you had confidence that no matter how
bad things might have been for you in that household, how limited --
let's not say bad -- they were not necessarily going to get any worse?
MORELLO: Exactly.
OLBERMANN: You had that, sort of -- the floor beneath your feet,
which is all people are asking for. They are not asking for riches and
wealth and six-day weekends. They are asking for the floor to stay
beneath their feet, not people coming in and saying, "I need that wood
to, you know, for my fire so I can roast my golden hickory nuts."
MORELLO: Well, it was very inspiring what I saw on the streets of
Madison. I played at hundreds of protests and demonstrations. This is
the first time where there were union police officers and anarchist
students standing shoulder to shoulder demanding justice.
OLBERMANN: Music as protest, it is one of the nation's
traditions. You immediately think of Woody Guthrie, you think of the
Weavers, half of the songs of the '60s. Has it been alive in the time
since the '60s, and we just haven't been paying attention, or has it
been resuscitated? Where do you see the two things interacting?
MORELLO: Well, certainly in the '70s, you know, one of the bands
that helped politicize me and drive me to a life of political activism
was The Clash and there are groups like Public Enemy, in the '90s there
was a band called Rage Against the Machine.
There are plenty of artists now who are, you know, links in that
continuing chain. But, like, I think it's very interesting what, you
know, the story about the teachers retiring early. It's like the
slow-pitch general strike that some of us were calling for back in
February. You know, it's interesting, like had everyone not gone to
school that next Monday after there were 100,000 people in the streets,
would Governor Walker still be in office?
OLBERMANN: Yeah. What, you see it then, as that. What are the
implications for further actions, or it pretty much just sort of zeroed
in on January 4th on Walker recall?
MORELLO: Yeah. Well, that's a hope. What I felt in the rotunda
of the capitol building and on the streets of Madison when there were
100,000, next day was 150,000 people in the streets. There was so much
torque, and it really seemed like this could be something that was about
much more than stopping one bad law. Like, this could be a watershed
moment in labor history for the United States, and the solidarity that
was a glow -- I got this really inspiring e-mail from one of the
organizers of the protests in Cairo saying, you know, we've got your
back. This is something that's happened -- tyrants are falling on a
global scale from the Mideast to the middle West. But -- and then I
think the Democratic Party didn't know what to do. They didn't know
what the hell to do with that. I think they were a little bit afraid
that the river might run the banks. You know, and so the recall
elections, of course, were very important, but I think if the demands
have been bigger back in February, we might be in a different -- be in a
very different place right now.
OLBERMANN: It's interesting, we were just talking about this
before we started the interview, the idea that the Republicans when they
try to push back against, again, the floor for ordinary people, not
riches and wealth.
MORELLO: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: But, the floor.
MORELLO: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: They always go too far.
MORELLO: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: They get a plank of the floor, and then
they want the roof as well.
MORELLO: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: This is almost, the one thing that we can still depend
upon is overreach and just to -- it almost -- it's almost as if you
just need to remind people what was happening now and how much of a
deterioration it is from the past and they will take care of the rest.
MORELLO: That's correct. I think they very much miscalculated by
starting in Madison, starting in Wisconsin. Because, I know, I mean, I
grew up across the border, and I know -- and you know, the time I spent
there, the night after we spent one night in the rotunda, the capitol
building and then after, late that night, went out to one of the local
pubs where there were these kind of big, burly pack -- drunken Packer
fans, that when I'm on tour normally the people you might sit on the
other side of the bar. But, they were much more staunchly pro-union and
against Governor Walker than, you know, anybody else in the capital.
So, it's -- they picked the wrong place to pick this fight.
OLBERMANN: This is what I found out in spring training in
baseball which is a good litmus test, because they're all conservatives,
because they all have new money --
MORELLO: Right.
OLBERMANN: And they want to keep all of it. Like, we all want to
keep all of the money we possibly can -- and they all went, "What's all
of this about unions? We're in a union," and you
forget --
MORELLO: Exactly.
OLBERMANN: -- there are Republican members of unions.
MORELLO: Exactly.
OLBERMANN: Oops.
MORELLO: Exactly.
OLBERMANN: Tom Morello, whose new album, "Worldwide Rebel Songs,"
just came out yesterday and who's going back on tour to hit the message
home. Great thanks and good luck with that.
MORELLO: Thanks very much for having me.
OLBERMANN: My pleasure.
Glenn Beck explains that things are all better now for black people in
this country. Well, being a black man, obviously, he would know.
"Worsts," next.
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