Missing Wisconsin Dem speaks: We're MIA until GOP drops assault on workers rights

By Greg Sargent

I just got off the phone with Wisconsin State Senator Chris Larson, one of the Democrats who has left the capitol in order to stall the GOP's plan to rolll back the bargaining rights of public employees. Speaking to me by cell phone from an undisclosed location, Larson said he and his fellow Democrats would not return until the GOP takes its assault on organizing rights "off the table."

"Each of us is in a secure location," he told me, confirming that they were not all together but were monitoring events on the Web and on Twitter. Larson refused to say whether he and his fellow Dems had left the state, as some have speculated.

"We're going to be staying away until we hear that they are taking the right to organize seriously," Larson continued, referring to Republicans. "They're going after 50 years of history in one week. Until they take that off the table, it's a non-starter."

Larson said Dems are not worried about law enforcement pursuing them and dragging them back to the capitol. Though the current proposal exempts state police, he said that individual officers had privately expressed solidarity with the Dems' and public employees' cause.

"They understand the importance of workers banded together to protect workers rights," Larson said, characterizing his conversations with officers. "They understand why we're here."

Dems will not return, Larson vowed, "until the Republicans are prepared to listen to the effects of this bill on workers and what it will do to our state."

