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Wisc. Activists Gather 1 Million Signatures to Recall Walker

January 20, 2012

Pro-worker activists throughout Wisconsin made history Jan. 17, submitting more than 1 million signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker. This is 400,000 more than required by state law.

Says Racine Local 430 Business Manager Chris Gulbrandson:

It’s a huge victory for working people.

Teachers, firefighters, college students and electricians spent many chilly Wisconsin nights knocking on doors, and standing in front of plant gates to reach the 1 million milestone.

As Mother Jones magazine reports:

That's almost as many signatures as votes Walker received in his 2010 gubernatorial election (1.12 million), and hundreds of thousands more than the 720,000 signatures Walker predicted on Rush Limbaugh's show Tuesday.

Gulbrandson says IBEW members actively assisted in the effort:

We had people at every meeting getting signatures, and a lot of our folks worked with We Are Wisconsin, giving up their days off to go door-to-door.

Walker’s decision to strip bargaining rights from public employees last winter led to an eruption of protests throughout the state. Two of Walker’s allies in the state senate who backed the anti-worker legislation were successfully recalled last August and activists are hopeful that Walker will soon be joining them.

Says Gulbrandson:

I don’t think anyone expected the all-out assault on the middle class we got when Walker was first elected. But his attacks have sparked a huge grassroots movement across Wisconsin that can turn things around for workers.

 Supporters also turned in 123 percent of the required signatures to force recall elections of Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, as well as the state’s lieutenant governor and two other state senators.

The full impact of the enormous response to the recall drive was summed up by the Washington Post:

[T]he mere fact that there’s already so much support for the recall suggests that despite the Democratic failure to take back the Wisconsin state senate last year, there’s still a tremendous amount of grassroots energy on the ground on the Democratic side — nearly a year since the fight in Wisconsin first began — in a key swing state in a presidential election year.

The Wisconsin elections board will need to verify all the signatures. The drive was coordinated by We Are Wisconsin, a grassroots coalition.

If verified, voters will go to the polls to elect a new governor sometime in the spring.

Says Gulbrandson:

There are some good potential candidates out there who understand that the government should be in the business of helping working families, not engaging in cheap political attacks on behalf of big-bucks lobbyists. We will stand with any official who works to represent Wisconsin’s 99 percent