February 11 marks the one-year anniversary of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's formal announcement about his plans to strip collective bargaining rights from most public employees in the state. This announcement, made on a Friday last year, was followed over the following weekend with a flurry of organizing for demonstrations the following week and social media activity, with several small protests held at the Capitol and Governor's Executive Residence in Maple Bluff.
Massive demonstrations around the Capitol Square started the subsequent Monday, and the rest is history.
Activists and organizations that participated in last year's unprecedented demonstrations and occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol are marking the anniversary of their opening with a week of action titled "One Year Longer, One Year Stronger" -- a series of rallies, panel discussions, benefits, book readings, and other events held to both commemorate and extend the legacy of the protests.
The anniversary commences with the Wisconsin Day Rally on the Capitol Square in downtown Madison. This demonstration is hosted by Wisconsin Wave, which is commemorating February 11 as a new holiday: Wisconsin Day. Speakers at the rally will address the next steps for the movement and the ongoing issue of voter suppression, and include Madison firefighter and labor leader Mahlon Mitchell, John Nichols, UW-TAA organizer Charity Schmidt, Ben Manski, and outgoing Dane County supervisor Barbara Vedder. Follow live tweets, aggregated reports, and discussion throughout the day and evening here.
To add your own observations to the stream, simply tweet using the hashtags #wiriseup and #wiup1yr. We'll also have commenting enabled on the live-blog window below at various points during the day.
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