{"id":1947,"date":"2011-03-03T21:11:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T02:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2011-03-04T19:38:59","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T00:38:59","slug":"about-that-wisconsin-capitol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2011\/03\/03\/about-that-wisconsin-capitol\/","title":{"rendered":"About that Wisconsin Capitol…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps I spoke too soon<\/a> about the virtues of the truly open and public nature of the Wisconsin Capitol.\u00a0\u00a0 Governor Walker has essentially closed the building down, slowly forcing protesters out in a war of attrition.\u00a0 Despite a court injunction that the building shall remain open during public business hours, only those with scheduled appointments are being allowed in, and even then they are escorted to and from their appointed room.<\/p>\n

The Capitol Square, however, remains open to the public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since last Sunday, the Walker administration has increasingly restricted access to the Capitol, making protests more and more difficult. But some protesters have refused to cave in.<\/p>\n

The harsh temperatures haven’t made it easy. For the last several nights, people have been gathering outside the Capitol near the King Street entrance, where they chant and take turns talking through a bullhorn.<\/p>\n

People are allowed into the Capitol if they have an appointment with a legislator. They can attend hearings or Supreme Court sessions in the building without an invitation, but only up to the capacity of the room. “If a hearing room allows 103 people, 103 people will be admitted,” he says. “Not 104. Not 110.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A shame to see this happen to a public building.\u00a0 What was once a part of the city’s fabric and a key element of the State’s civic space has been reduced to a Gubernatorial stronghold.\u00a0 There’s a huge police presence<\/a>.\u00a0 Many of those cops are certainly conflicted<\/a> between the need to follow orders and their solidarity with protesters seeking to protect collective bargaining rights.<\/p>\n

As the governor and his aides have attempted to limit access to the state Capitol\u2014which the Wisconsin constitution says must remain open to all citizens\u2014Sheriff Mahoney has steadily argued that he and his deputies are present both to maintain public safety and to defend the right of citizens to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances.<\/p>\n

As Walker\u2019s lawless approach has gone to extremes<\/a>, culminating in a failure by the governor\u2019s Department of Administration to obey an order from a Dane County Judge that the Capitol be opened, Sheriff Mahoney has become more explicit in his objections.<\/p>\n

The sheriff objected when Dane County deputies, who have been frontline officers from the start of the recent protests, were the doors of the Capitol were not opened. Finally, he pulled his officers from the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen asked to stand guard at the doors that duty was turned over to the Wisconsin State Patrol because our deputies would not stand and be palace guards,\u201d said Sheriff Mahoney<\/a>. \u201cI refused to put deputy sheriffs in a position to be palace guards.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a shame to see such a public and democratic space closed and silenced like this.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Matt Wisniewski has a third video installment of the ongoing protests at the Capitol:<\/p>\n

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Perhaps I spoke too soon about the virtues of the truly open and public nature of the Wisconsin Capitol.\u00a0\u00a0 Governor Walker has essentially closed the building down, slowly forcing protesters out in a war of attrition.\u00a0 Despite a court injunction that the building shall remain open during public business hours, only those with scheduled appointments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[299,93,85,179],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-capitol","tag-madison","tag-security","tag-wisconsin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-vp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}