(ThyBlackMan.com) So, anti-labor Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has survived the highly anticipated recall vote of June 4. What’s that saying about a coward living to fight another day? Scott Walker was fighting for his political life on Tuesday, not just to stay in his current job but for the raison d’ etre of his entire Republican career – the fate of the elitist Reagan-Bush era “trickle-down” economic philosophy that is at the core of the Republican platform, and is of late the rallying cry of every conservative politician with his hand out.
Scott Walker cravenly allied himself with well-heeled financial backers on Wall Street against teachers, policemen, and firefighters, among others, when he called for a reduction in collective-bargaining rights in Wisconsin all those months ago, and now Wisconsin voters have incomprehensibly validated his cowardice. Didn’t the citizens of Wisconsin realize that a vote for Scott Walker was a vote against the aspirations of the middle-class in Wisconsin and across the country? That manufacturing and public sector workers, the backbone of the Wisconsin economy for decades, who had already been struggling to save 
up a college fund for their kids and keep their homes out of foreclosure, would be more vulnerable than ever with Walker as governor, and that would mean more economic insecurity for everybody? I don’t know about you, but I now feel like I’m living in a country out of a George Orwell novel.
How do you persuade people to vote against their own interests? Actually, it should come as no surprise that conservative special interest groups and Wall Street tycoons won the day in Wisconsin. Scott Walker’s supporters spent nearly $46 million on his campaign, compared to the almost $18 million spent by backers of his opponent Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. Walker’s victory, while distasteful among people who want to preserve the living wage and basic employment benefits in Wisconsin, was predictable, and a sad testament to the power of Wall Street and K Street lobbyists in the Republican party to influence the outcome of elections in this day and age.
Worse still, Scott Walker’s victory, and all it implies, may be a sign of impending doom for the Democratic Party and the labor movement in other states; if Wisconsin middle-class voters can be duped into sacrificing their wages and benefits on the altar of austerity, why not elsewhere?
Obviously, Scott Walker’s electoral survival doesn’t bode well for the Black community, either. Here’s the problem with Scott Walker’s cowardly, anti-union, pro-big business “Reaganomics” philosophy: it never did anything for Black Americans; not in the 1980s, and not now. In fact, it never did anything for the middle class in this country across all ethnic, religious, and social categories. Moreover, in times like these, with the unemployment rate among African-Americans nearly twice that of Whites in the month of May, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and many households in our communities struggling to make ends meet, the long-term survival and financial security of the Black middle-class doesn’t lie in tax breaks for a mythical “job-creating” 1% or wage reductions for people who can’t afford to make any less money – it lies in the income stability necessary for a consumer class of Black families to buy homes and automobiles and other goods. Stability long-enjoyed by factory workers, teachers, and firefighters in Wisconsin – until now.
If the frightening trend represented by Scott Walker’s victory continues across the U.S., we may see Black home ownership become a thing of the past, much like the middle-class itself. I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think so.
Staff Writer; David Christopher Steele, M.A.
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