"........Massive demonstrations have gone on for days in Wisconsin, as public workers and their supporters protest Republican Gov. Scott Walker's so-called "budget repair bill," which would scale back public workers' benefits, as well as their collective bargaining rights.
On the campaign trail in 2007, Mr. Obama had this to say: "If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States."...
....Organizing for America, Mr. Obama's political arm of the Democratic National Committee, has played a role in facilitating the protests in Wisconsin and across the country, but the organization has downplayed its role....
Leaders of the House Progressive Caucus are calling on the president to go to Wisconsin and continue to voice his support for unions.
"Of course I'd like to hear more from President Obama," Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said on MSNBC on Wednesday. " He's made some statements, he should get credit for that, we'd like to hear him make some more statements. I think President Obama should come to Wisconsin and stand with the workers."
On a conference call on Wednesday, co-chair Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said, "There's a bully pulpit there that the president has and I think it needs to be used."
Amy Dean, a labor activist and former AFL-CIO official in California, told the Wall Street Journal the president could do more as the leader of the Democratic Party.
"Everybody is looking to the president on this one," she said...........
Protesters in Wisconsin said the same to the Huffington Post.
"He owes it to us," said Kathie Free, a retired Milwaukee public school social worker. "Obama was not put into office just by the big money. He was put into office by millions of poor and middle-class people who walk the neighborhoods, talking to neighbors, getting the votes, and that's how Obama got in, and he has to start remember how he got in. He'd better start working for the middle class and poor people.".........
Photo by Joe Rowley
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