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Late on a frigid
Wisconsin afternoon, an hour before another of the evening
demonstrations that brought thousands, then tens of thousands, then more
than 100,000 public employees, teachers, students and their allies to
the great square that surrounds the Capitol in Madison, Sarah Roberts
was sitting in the Ancora coffee shop warming up. With her blunt-cut
blond hair and hip retro glasses, the library sciences grad student
looked the picture of urban cool, except perhaps for the decades-old
factory ID badge bearing the image of a young man. “A few weeks ago I
asked my mom, ‘What made my grandfather such a civic-minded man? Why was
he always there to help someone who had lost their job? Take food to
someone who couldn’t make ends meet? Serve on the City Council? What
made him so incredibly engaged with his community and his state?’ Mom
looked at me and she said, ‘Labor.'”

So it was that
the granddaughter of Willard Roberts-a forty-five-year employee and
proud union man at the Monarch Range plant in the factory town of Beaver
Dam-pulled out her grandpa’s ID and pinned it to her jacket when she
learned that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was proposing to strip
state, county and municipal employees and teachers of their collective
bargaining rights. “This state was built by people like him; this
country was built by people like him. I think we all kind of forgot that
until the governor woke us up,” she said. “Walker thought he could bust
the unions, privatize everything, give it all away to the corporations.
But that was a great misfire. Because when he attacked the unions, he
reminded us where we came from. We’re the children and grandchildren of
union workers and farmers and shopkeepers. That goes deeper, way deeper,
than politics. This legislation is an affront to my whole family
history.”