When Uprisings Aren't Spontaneous: The Lessons of Wisconsin

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Abstract

The Wisconsin Uprising not only was the early riser of the U.S. protest wave of 2011, it was also the largest, most disruptive, longest lasting, and most broad-based of those mobilizations. Nonetheless, to the extent that the Wisconsin Uprising has been the subject of interest to social movement scholars, it has usually been treated either as a precursor to Occupy or an alter ego of the Arab Spring, or at most as a case study in reactive mobilization in the era of social media activism. The full meaning of Wisconsin continues to be lost to social movement scholars and activists alike. It was no coincidence that Wisconsin’s was the insurrection that returned the slogan of Seattle – This is What Democracy Looks Like! – to the streets of U.S. cities, for many of the key organizers of the Wisconsin Uprising were in Seattle in 1999 and had remained engaged throughout the 2000s in various transnational networks of pro-democracy and anti-capitalist activists and intellectuals. What happened in Wisconsin was anything but a spontaneous revolt against austerity. The author draws on original interviews and archival research and on his own personal history as a protagonist in the Wisconsin Uprising, the Battle in Seattle, the Florida and Ohio Recounts, and other frontlines of the emergent democracy movement in the United States. He shows that major uprisings and movement expansions can be planned and that movement veterans, their networks, and their strategies matter.

Author

• Ben Manski, University of California, Santa Barbara