When President Clinton and Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited Milwaukee May 23, the local news media and city officials pulled out all the stops to whip up public enthusiasm. This was to be a great day for civic pride.
But Milwaukee’s face was ground in the mud when, just five days before the visit, Clinton came out in support of Gov. Thompson’s W-2 slave labor "welfare reform" bill. This was front page news in The New York Times and other national newspapers. For those who still harbor illusions that Clinton is some kind of defense against the right-wing, this must have come as a cruel shock. If ever a visit needed a protest, this was it.
And protest we did.
Members of AJRC positioned themselves early at Pere Marquette Park. We had our signs and leaflets and a big yellow banner that said "W-2 = Slave Labor for Wisconsin Corporations! Unite to Stop W-2!"
When we unfurled the banner, a couple of suits from rally security came over to try and run us off, but we stood our ground. Then two cops and some kind of plainclothes specialty officer offered us a choice: take the banner off the poles, or the whole banner would be confiscated. Under protest, and explaining what was happening to the curious onlookers, we surrendered the poles but kept the banner.
Members of Repairers of the Breach and the Welfare Warriors also came with their signs and together we chanted "Hey hey, Ho ho, W-2 has got to go!"
Behind us was a group of Serbian Americans who had come to denounce the U.S./German role in the former Yugoslavia. When they realized we were the group that held the forum on Bosnia last February, they became quite supportive in our struggle to hold our protest. "You stand up for democracy!" shouted one older woman.
Across the street was a delegation from the Milwaukee Coalition for Normalization of Relations with Cuba, there to oppose the U.S. blockade of Cuba and to support the struggle by Pastors for Peace to ship humanitarian aid to that beleaguered island. We had also endorsed their protest and had leafleted and postered to help bring people.
All three issues, W-2, Cuba and Bosnia, received coverage on the evening news and daily paper. Clinton may have had his photo op, but we had our voices heard.