Deri and Rob and Avery happen to have arrived on a pivotal day in the protests. While she delights in the spectacle inside the capitol, the mood among the pizza-fueled protesters has become grim. At 1 a.m., the Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly, the legislature’s lower chamber, abruptly ended sixty nonstop hours of debate on Walker’s budget bill. Without a motion to end the debate, and with fifteen filibustering Democrats in line to speak, the Assembly’s Republican leader began the vote on the governor’s plan. The vote lasted ten seconds. Before most of the Democrats even realized what was going on, the bill passed. The groggy GOP legislators then filed out of the chamber, separated by capitol police from the Democrats, who wore orange T-shirts, with “fighting for WORKING FAMILIES!” scrawled across the front and who hurled sentiments seldom heard in civilized times among state legislators: “Shame!” “Coward!”
By the afternoon, the Assembly’s passage of the governor’s bill is not the only reason that the protesters are in a sour mood. The capitol police are now saying that the encampment inside the capitol must move out by 4 p.m. on Sunday, two days away. The protesters want to stay. The sneaky vote by the Assembly Republicans shifted the drama to the legislature’s other chamber, the State Senate, whose Democrats have already executed a sneaky move of their own. Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators have fled the state.
No comments:
Post a Comment