Legitimacy Not: The New
Crisis of Democracy
by C. L. Cook
 The bodies in Manama, Bahrain's morgue are mangled. Pulped by beatings, pocked with buckshot, and at least one missing a large piece of the skull, they are demonstrators, made martyrs by the king's men Thursday.
Bahraini protester
They came out into the streets and squares of the capital, as did their Arab brethren in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and Libya. The atmosphere was peaceful. Video and photographs show a cross-section of the citizenry, young, old, families bouncing kids on laps.
The peace was broken in the wee hours, when the police attacked while many of those gathered slept. Five are confirmed dead, scores injured, and hundreds missing, believed to have been whisked away by security forces.
The scene in Libya was even more grim, where Colonel Gaddafi's thugs shot down more than a dozen of their fellow citizens, most effectively from roofs using sniper rifles. Both Bahrain's King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, and Libya's Gaddafi, who has ruled as an absolute monarch for more than forty years, were not about to listen to the raised voice of the people they ostensibly serve and protect. Both proved yesterday they have no legitimacy; both proved they are despots and criminals.
UN Director General, Ban ki-Moon expressed his concern, cautioning all parties against violence, (as though the mothers and babes in arms rose violently from their slumbers to do battle with the riot police) while the worthies of the great democracies chimed their heartfelt regrets for the loss of life and injuries suffered by those asking no more than the ideals espoused by Mr. Ban and Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton be applied in their countries too.
What those braving the bullets and billy clubs across the Middle East perhaps fail to recognize is the great gulf between the democratic facts on the ground in America and the rest of the west, and the rhetorical fictions Obama and his international community fellows flourish with such dedicated gusto.
The Obama administration's painfully slow acknowledgment of the legitimacy of Egypt's uprising aside, and forgetting America's consistent engendering of and providing succour to some of the world's most odious regimes, this past week offered a couple examples of the extremely low esteem with which rights and democracy are regarded in Mr. Obama's America.
The Nation's John Nichols informs of Scott Walker, the Republican governor of the state of Wisconsin who, faced with mass demonstrations by unionized public employees upset with his attempts to break their unions, threatened to bring in National Guard troops.
The mobilization says Nichols is unprecedented both in its size and scope. Not content to merely assemble in the Capitol, hundreds of the public sector employees, some of the last workers in America to enjoy the protections union membership confers, travelled to the governor's suburban Milwaukee home to let Walker and his neighbours know how they felt.
Egyptians fresh from Tahrir Square would likely have felt at home at the Wisconsin demos, where signs begged the question;
"If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can't Wisconsin?"
Others likened the governor's autocratic behaviour to erstwhile Nile strongman, Mubarak calling the governor "Hosni."
In true totalitarian fashion, Governor Walker set the police out to block the roads and barricaded the building where his one-day hearing on proposed union-busting legislation was held. Walker's attempt to take away the union's right to collective bargaining and, among other measures, cut pay and gut benefits without negotiations, is being described as a dictatorial, top down power-grab.
John Nichols quotes Brenda Klein, a food service worker, saying;
“I went to the polls last November and voted to protect our freedoms from government threat and to create jobs. I never dreamed that this would be the result. The bill being rammed through the legislature does the opposite and it must be stopped.”
And, as with their Egyptian confreres, the Wisconsinites are defiant in the face of Governor Scott Walker's threat to bring in the big guns, one wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the sentiment of many;
"I am not afraid of the National Guard.”
There may be more to fear in Puerto Rico, where riot cops and SWAT teams were brought in to bust up student strikes against draconian rises in tuition fees and moves to privatize the state institution. Democracy Now reports, the students shut down courses last Spring in protest, and demonstrated again this winter.
In December, police moved in with clubs and pepper spray, occupying the campus, arresting trouble makers and protecting the Republican governor's newly packed board of school trustees. The police occupation lasted more than two months. The situation has now become so toxic, the faculty and support staff has walked out in sympathy for the students, and the president of the university has resigned.
Puerto Rican congressional representative, Luis V. Gutiérrez summed the situation up nicely in an address to congress, saying;
“What far-away land has seen student protest banned, union protesters beaten and free speech advocates jailed? The United States of America’s colony of Puerto Rico. Sound outrageous? It is. But true and well-documented. I ask my colleagues in U.S. House of Representatives to turn their eyes to Puerto Rico.”
It's clear, if those risking their lives and well-being on the streets and in the squares of distant Middle Eastern capitals expect to find support from the United States and its family of democratic paragons, they may be best advised to turn their eyes to Puerto Rico and Wisconsin, and those other centres of political high-mindedness for examples of functioning democracy.
They may too want to have a B-plan in mind.
John Nichols' links:
Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158609/more-10000-protest-wisconsin-governor-hosni-walkers-move-destroy-public-sector-unions
[1] http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_de45ba12-3935-11e0-9b64-001cc4c002e0.html
[2] http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_544e0402-385b-11e0-a610-001cc4c002e0.html
[3] http://www.afscme40.org/
[4] http://www.weac.org/Home.aspx
[5] http://www.aft-wisconsin.org/
[6] http://www.thenation.com/blog/158522/dictator-governor-sets-out-cut-wages-slash-benefits-and-destroy-public-unions
[7] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nationnow/id399704758?mt=8
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