"The Spirit Of Democracy Is Abroad In The Land"

Photographer Christopher Guess:

"the people's house" feels as much like a university student union as the government's legislative home.

Guess posts about the key organizing role played by the UW-Madison Teachers Assistant Association:

In Wisconsin, teacher assistants carry the same labor rights as state employees. The TAA has played a critical role in the organization of the protests running bus shuttles, doing food distribution, coordinating with police to prevent removal of signs and posters, organizing petitions, etc. Although they just lost their 24/7 access to this conference room where members where working and sleeping, they remain the "central brain" of the protest activity.

More Guess photos, in another post here.

That sculpture above commemorates the man; it's easy to imagine how palpably the spirit of "Fighting Bob" La Follette is felt at the Capitol these days.

Seventh-generation Wisconsin John Nichols observes—

This has happened before, of course. More than a century ago, Robert M. La Follette battled for the governorship in election after election until, finally, he beat the corrupt Republican machine and ushered in an era of progressive reform that redefined our politics for generations.

Just as La Follette had to fight the robber barons and their political stooges, so today's progressives are battling out-of-state corporate interests (including Koch Industries) and their local appendage, Scott Walker.

The fight will not end immediately, or easily. The "money power" -- as La Follette referred to it -- is arrayed to advance Walker’s legislative and political agenda. But the people power is on the march, as was seen last Saturday when a crowd that numbered well in excess of 100,000 protested in Madison, and tens of thousands of additional Wisconsinites went to their city, village and town squares to demand that the governor and the Legislature serve the people of Wisconsin as opposed to billionaire campaign contributors like David Koch.

As the progressives defeated the Scott Walkers and Paul Ryans of their day, La Follette declared that "the spirit of democracy is abroad in the land." But the great governor and senator warned against thinking that one election victory or one policy battle success would be transformational. "We are slow to realize that democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle," explained La Follette. "It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can even be nearly approximated."

Meanwhile, in another part of the world Nicole Tung takes portraits of people standing up to a dictator.

Bloodshed is not over; yet, there's this—

Benghazi, Saturday, February 26: I was walking out of the main square where Friday prayers and protests take place — it's in front of the courthouse in Benghazi where the revolution effectively started. This guy couldn't have been older than 22 and he was leaning out of the sunroof of a car in this costume yelling and shaking his fists, imitating Qaddafi. Everyone who walked past laughed out loud. It was pretty extraordinary that this kind of mocking could take place so openly, and everyone could feel the lighter spirit and a weight being lifted.