What's at stake for workers.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment

The signs at the initial rally for workers' rights in Madison, Wisconsin, caught the historic moment. "Welcome to Cairo," said one. "Hosni Walker," said another, comparing the Wisconsin governor to the dethroned Egyptian dictator. "This Is Our Tahrir Square," said a third. There is something infectious, in the best sense of the word, about seeing people fight for their rights. So people in Wisconsin fed off the energy of the Egyptian people, who showed what civil disobedience can accomplish. Then workers in Ohio, seeing the sight in Wisconsin, swelled into the streets of Columbus. And across the country, working class and middle class Americans threw off the veils of propaganda, recognized their shared economic interests, and pushed back.

They simply would not take the line, shoved at them by the Koch brothers, Republican governors, Fox TV, and the corporate media, that public sector workers have it easy, and deserve to get their benefits cut and their union crushed.

During the protests in Madison, I talked with many such workers. Here are a few of their stories.

A t that rally on February 15, Kelley Cory was carrying a sign that said, Stop the Attack on Wisconsin Families." Cory has worked as a secretary for the University of Wisconsin for thirty years.

"The cuts are going to cost my family over $5,500 a year. That's $462 a month out of my paycheck," she says. "I've got a daughter in college and a son in high school. I know we have to sacrifice, but this will put people out of their homes." Cory isn't getting rich.

"I make less than $40,000 a year after thirty years in the workforce," she says. "I haven't had a pay raise in four or rive years, and I lost $1,200 last year in furloughs."

Cory is recovering from breast cancer. She completed her chemo and radiation treatments a year and a half ago.

"I missed only fourteen days of work, and I was sick," she says. "Now I'm living through this."

L atanza Joshua is a caregiver at the Southern Wisconsin Center for the mentally disabled. She has worked there for ten years now and makes $15 an hour, and it's a half hour commute from her home.

She has a five-year-old and a two-year-old and doesn't know how she's going to make ends meet. 'Tm already living paycheck to paycheck," she says. If the cuts go through, "I would be basically working to get to work."

She has a message for the governor: "I want Scott Walker to live on my income for one month and see how well he could handle it, and then I'd like...