Bankers' Holiday

The great battles of this turbulent era will keep going on for years to come. The ideologues who want no check whatsoever on the power of big business have declared war on the middle class, and want no one to get in their way. Governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich will brook no compromise in trying to destroy unions. Right-wing politicians who have long wanted to do away with Social Security and Medicare and pretty much all safety nets for the poor are getting more and more brazen: Speaker Boehner made clear last week his plans to go after Social Security and Medicare sooner rather than later. And it is not just economics: the extremists are coming after not just a woman's right to choose, but even birth control itself with their attempts to shut down family planning funding.

The good news is that, as I wrote in The Washington Post this weekend, these attacks on the things we hold dear are putting the "movement" back in the labor movement (and the women's movement, and the progressive movement). We are going to march and demonstrate, we are going to recall Wisconsin legislators and, once a year has passed, the Governor. We will win a citizen's veto ballot initiative fight in Ohio. And we will take on the ultimate patrons of conservative politicians, the billionaire extremists like the Koch brothers and the Wall Street bankers who are providing the money and pulling the strings for this attack on the middle class.

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