The Walkerly Reader
Second Edition November 28, 2011
301,000 signatures collected in just two weeks....!!!
Announcing volunteer needs and events for next two weeks!
1. Volunteers at the Office in Ashland (715-817-6567)- sign up for one or (preferably two)-hour shifts! The office is a busy place and needs volunteers seven days a week! We also need a coordinator for the Ashland door-to-door blitz on December 10, and a volunteer assistant coordinator to help Kaeleen Ringberg in the office.
2. Volunteers to go for door-to-door blitzes* for the next two Saturdays in Washburn (Dec 3 - contact Colleen Geisen 373-5052 to sign up) and Dec 10 in Ashland, (call Office 715-817-6567). Your time commitment: 8:45 a.m. to 11:00 or so.
* The purpose of a "blitz" is to create a safe and energized environment to accomplish the task in the least amount of time with the highest amount of team energy. Blitz rhymes with glitz and wits.
3. Suggestions for circulators - Send an e-mail to your friends in Wisconsin, asking them to sign your petition (if they live near you) or look up the Recall Walker Offices on the United Wisconsin website. Also, please return petitions you may still have within a week to the Office in Ashland. Check out this first-hand article explains why we've reached the 301,000 mark within less than 2 weeks! - Mary Rehwald
Blog announcement!
This newsletter has now become a blog so you can check it out any time you want online at our blog at http://walkerlyreader.blogspot.com. On the blog you can sign up to have each post emailed directly to your email box. Please consider sharing the blog posts on your Facebook page and/or sending the link to someone else.
Read the article below to see how satisfying this can be. The few of us who have gone door to door locally have met with huge success.
"It sure looks like rural Wisconsin’s for recall"
By: Ben<http://www.recallscottwalker.com/author/admin/>
I wasn’t expecting the reception I got on Saturday in the small southwest Wisconsin town near our family’s cabin. I walked both sides of a long residential street, taking petitions door-to-door for people to sign in support of recalling Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.
In my first three houses, eight people signed. A wife apologized for making me wait, but took the petitions into another room because her husband wanted to sign.
A grandmother and her daughter stopped cleaning out toys from their house long enough to sign. “Do you know how hard his policies are on us?” the daughter asked. “And he’s tried to do even more damage than he’s done!”
Four people moving out of a house interrupted their move to sign. “Walker’s policies are costing me $200 a month,” one of them said. “You bet I’ll sign.”
I had expected a few hostile responses. And about a fifth of the people I asked did decline to sign, though most were cordial. But there were some surprises. The elderly couple with the “We support our troops” sign on their door stopped cutting up their Thanksgiving turkey for a Sunday gathering of the clan to wash their hands and sign. “What he’s done to health care and education is just wrong.”
Several people expressed concern about the Walker administration’s efforts to stifle voting and fair democratic practice.
Three hunters turned their truck and trailer around and pulled up to where I stood on the sidewalk. I explained that I was with the Recall Walker campaign. “It’s why we turned around,” the driver said. He had already signed, but his father wanted the chance. First, he checked to see that I had a campaign volunteer badge. “Some people pretending to be with the campaign are destroying petitions,” he said.
While his father signed, I told him about the woman losing $200 a month. He held up four fingers. “For me, it’s four hundred a month.” He’s a prison guard, and the cut in health care and retirement benefits is hitting his paycheck hard.
I believe that the Recall Walker campaign leaders significantly underestimated discontent in rural areas. When the Iowa County office opened up to train volunteers several days ago, over 100 people showed up. And in five days, they have gathered well over 50 percent of the total signatures they expected to gather in that county in the entire two months of the process.
An office volunteer recounted having a senior couple come in, seeming uncomfortable as they approached the counter. The wife said to her husband, “I don’t like to do this, but it’s got to be done.” Yes, he agreed, “It’s got to be done.” They were Republicans, they said, and it was difficult to abandon the party, but the state’s well-being was more important than party.
It was drizzling much of the afternoon as I walked, and many people invited me in. Probably the visit that I remember most was the elderly lady on oxygen, who apologized as she struggled to write, but was adamant that she wanted to sign. “How did Walker ever get elected?” she asked. “Didn’t people see what he did to Milwaukee County?”
My Saturday afternoon walk in one small town taught me that many more people care about this recall than I had imagined. And it’s not confined to Madison and cities. If southwestern Wisconsin is any example, people in many parts of rural Wisconsin are informed, they understand the issues, and they are deeply distressed by Walker’s policies.
Posted by Mary Rehwald
