Dogging Walker.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Scott Walker

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Frank Emspak knows a thing or two about organized labor. His father was a leader of the United Electrical workers, and he himself was a shop steward in that radical union. Later he became a professor at the University of Wisconsin's School for Workers, and he's the founder and executive producer of Workers Independent News.

So when he stops by The Progressive's office one day in April to speak with my colleague Elizabeth DiNovella and me about where the struggle for workers' rights in Wisconsin stands, I pay attention.

Emspak says he's worried that the energy of the historic mass protests in Wisconsin this year may soon dissipate. He says progressive leaders need to do more to shape the "inchoate anger" of the protesters.

"I think we're in trouble here," he says.

He's not the only one. A lot of veteran labor activists and scholars share his concern, as do I.

In February and March, we witnessed what Howard Zinn used to call "the flash of the possible." In huge numbers, workers and their supporters, across occupational lines, came out to demonstrate against Governor Scott Walker's assault on the right of public sector employees to collectively bargain.

"The breadth and depth of the solidarity was just incredible," says Dave Poklinkoski, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 2304. "We were all brothers, we were all sisters. People actually meant that. It was pretty powerful stuff."

But by April, the size of the protests was dwindling, and the energy appeared to be waning.

"You've got to make hay when the sun shines, and we soon will be paying the price for not making hay. We blinked," says Bill Franks, a senior steward for AFT-Wisconsin. "It was a lost opportunity. We had to shut this motherfucker down." (AFT-Wisconsin was formerly the American Federation of Teachers of Wisconsin, but it has broadened its membership to include other professionals.)

Franks believes that when organized labor had 100,000 people marching in the streets, it should have called for some direct action and possibly a general strike. "You can't put 100,000 people in jail," he says. "When you have those numbers, the math is all of a sudden on your side."

Franks says the labor leadership didn't know what to do with the power that the outpouring represented. "At the moment when we had some general strike potential," he says, "the bureaucrats of labor backed off and effectively got in lockstep with the Democratic Party."

What started as a fundamental challenge to Walker's power, he says, turned into a narrower effort to recall state Republican senators. "This has...