What's at stake in Wisconsin.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Cover story

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The June 5 recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has huge implications for the country. After a year and a half of historic protests and unprecedented citizen activism, the recall is a referendum on whether grassroots, democratic action can overcome the power of money in the Citizens United era.

"This is about the ability of the people of Wisconsin to control their own destiny versus money from millionaires outside the state," says Lynn Freeman, executive director of United Wisconsin, the group that was formed to head up the recall effort.

Last year, Walker raised more than $12 million in campaign donations, shattering state records.

In fundraising letters, Walker portrays the recall fight as an epic battle to stop power-hungry unions. One such letter, featuring photographs of the same mass rallies at the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, that so inspired progressives, is meant to scare out-of-state conservatives into contributing to Walker's campaign.

"Big Labor Bosses know what they want, when they want it, and how they're going to get it," Walker writes. "Their naked power grab starts here in Wisconsin and then radiates across the country. Mark my words, if they barge and bully and get their way here, your state's next."

As anyone who was at the Wisconsin rallies can tell you, it was ordinary citizens, not "Big Labor protesters, many bused in from Chicago and Las Vegas," as Walker puts it, who led the recall fight. In February and March of 2011, Wisconsinites organized the largest sustained mass rallies for public sector workers in the history of the United States and the biggest outpouring of labor activism since the 1930s.

After the unprecedented recalls of two Republican state senators last summer, an organic, grassroots movement sprang up to recall Walker with an astounding 30,000 volunteers throughout the state gathering more than one million signatures on recall petitions. These same volunteers are now actively engaged in a get-out-the-vote effort.

The whole country is waiting to see whether or not citizens can overcome the corporate takeover of government in Madison. Meanwhile, for Wisconsinites, it's personal.

Walker has made the largest cuts to public education in the history of the state, eviscerating our top-tier public schools as well as a model university and technical college system. In the birthplace of the public employees' union, AFSCME, he overturned public employees' right to bargain collectively. He has moved to disempower the state legislature, do away with open meetings, and shred the robust regulatory apparatus that has made Wisconsin a model of good government, environmental protection, and progressive ideals.

Republican leaders are quite flank about their assault on progressivism.

As Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is the darling of budget cutters, put it at an Americans for Prosperity event in Milwaukee in March: "Progressivism was founded here in Wisconsin. The battle between conservatives and progressives is coming to a crescendo this year."

As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation. Take the "war on women." Even as Republican attacks on women were making headlines around the country, Walker was quietly signing legislation to make it illegal for women to sue for compensatory or punitive damages when they've been discriminated against in the workplace. He rolled back accurate, age-appropriate sex...