Was a local movement co-opted?
As its title suggests, Divided We Fall is not another nostalgia film about the Wisconsin Uprising. Like other movies about the popular response to Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, it has footage of Wisconsinites marching, drumming and sleeping in the Capitol. But it doesn’t stop there. This documentary by first-time director Katherine Acosta, who has a sociology Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, looks deeply into the mechanisms of the uprising and why it fizzled and, ultimately, failed. Weaving citizens’ videos with numerous interviews, the film offers new information, revealing what happened behind the scenes.
If you thought that the months of protest happened organically, you’d be partially correct. People wanted to express their rage in response to Walker’s attack on unions and cuts to social and environmental programs and agencies. However, behind the scenes, UW-Madison students, members of the Teachers Assistants Association and others were orchestrating a movement. They even had a room in the Capitol where a lot of the organizing originated. It was a somewhat uncomfortable role for the students, who pride themselves on the nonhierarchical, “flat” structure of TAA and who recognized that the uprising itself was nonhierarchical.
Unions, a major target of the Walker administration, showed up a little later, bringing organization, money and hierarchical thinking. While students organized an info station, child care, medics and food, unions brought large numbers of people from all over the state. And while the TAA and others, including Madison Teachers Inc., were mulling a general strike, organized labor leaders were thinking up ways to work with Walker.
As for state Democrats, 14 of them left the state as a strategy to make a vote on Act 10 impossible after the Republicans ended a hearing, which continued as a “listening session” for five more days. Former Rep. Brett Hulsey of Madison, who eventually ran an unsuccessful bid for governor, nominated himself a leader in more than one instance. He later collaborated with those who decided to end the occupation of the Capitol, bombastically declaring that “the most important part of this campaign is when you follow me out of here.”
As the film reveals, many Wisconsinites were committed to continuing the fight, but most of the unions decided — without consulting their members — to end the occupation, capitulating to Walker in the hope of getting a few crumbs. Madison Teachers Inc., which had organized a teachers’ sick-out that was supported by students, found itself betrayed by WEAC, AFSCME and SEIU. Says John Matthews, MTI’s longtime head, “Selling out pulled the rug out from our efforts...the [union leaders] were willing to buy their way out of it. That’s like authorizing theft.”
When the occupation ended, the unsuccessful campaign to recall Walker began. Like the Arab Spring, the people of Wisconsin failed to overcome the dictates of the political upper echelons.
According to the film, this failure happened because of the actions of the major unions and at least one Democrat — an assertion that is sure to provoke discussion,
I believe this film will be studied by future historians, but Madison audiences have the opportunity to see it now: Divided We Fall plays at Sundance on Oct. 20.
