Chomsky on the Wisconsin Protests
It was heartening to see that there are tens of thousands of people protesting in Madison day after day. That’s the beginning, maybe, of what we really need here: a democracy uprising.
There has been a huge attack against private sector unions [in America]. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War. After the Second World War, business was terrified about the radicalization of the country during the Depression and then the war, and it started right off—Taft-Hartley was 1947—huge propaganda campaigns to demonize unions. It really—and it continued until you get to the Reagan administration. Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs—hadn’t been done for a long time, and it’s illegal in most countries—in the air controller strike.
