“When firefighters see an emergency, we respond,” says Mahlon Mitchell, the new president of the firefighters’ union in Wisconsin. Scott Walker left the firefighters and the police out of his drastic cuts to union employees’ rights, but the firefighters have been rallying in solidarity with the rest of the public employees all week. “It’s not a movement, it’s a way of life. It’s not just a union way of life, it’s letting them know that labor is important,” Mitchell notes.
Mitchell spoke with Oliver Dykstra from The Uptake inside the Capitol building this weekend.
Not everyone can pay for the news. But if you can, we need your support.
Truthout is widely read among people with lower incomes and among young people who are mired in debt. Our site is read at public libraries, among people without internet access of their own. People print out our articles and send them to family members in prison — we receive letters from behind bars regularly thanking us for our coverage. Our stories are emailed and shared around communities, sparking grassroots mobilization.
We’re committed to keeping all Truthout articles free and available to the public. But in order to do that, we need those who can afford to contribute to our work to do so.
We’ll never require you to give, but we can ask you from the bottom of our hearts: Will you donate what you can, so we can continue providing journalism in the service of justice and truth?