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Farm Events: |
Farm News: Tractor Rally Planned At CapitolcommentsPosted: 03.09.2011
Farmers, many driving their tractors, will show their support of state workers Saturday with a planned tractorcade to the Capitol.
The farmers will be part of the Farm Labor Tractorcade, hosted by Wisconsin Farmers Union (WFU) and Family Farm Defenders. The rally on the capitol square and at the capitol will include music and presentations by farmers speaking out against the governor’s proposals.
The event will start at noon.
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden, a Westby-area dairy farmer, says many of the items contained in the "budget repair" bill would hurt the states farmers and rural communities. “Our members have been telling us they want their voices heard, so we’re giving them the forum for the governor and Legislature to get the message that there are problems with the bills.”
Wisconsin Farmers Union says the budget repair bill would threaten BadgerCare, which more than 11,000 state farm-family members depend on. It would also nearly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees. WFU says the biennial budget takes more than $800 million from public schools while allowing 0 percent levy increases without referendum -- which means small rural schools each would have to either increase farmers’ property taxes by hundreds of thousands of dollars or drastically cut programs. Shared revenue cuts to municipalities also would make it difficult for townships to offer services.
Organizers of Saturday’s event say they're just as concerned about efforts to cut public workers’ collective bargaining rights. WFU says it's "an affront to the collective bargaining process, in which family farmers participate through cooperatives and pooling."
“Farmers need to stand behind workers and their freedom to collectively bargain,” said Family Farm Defenders vice president Joel Greeno, a Kendall-area dairy farmer. “All farmer cooperatives depend upon the same principle, so any attempt to take away that right needs to be challenged. If you lower the bar for anyone, you ultimately lower it for everyone else. Just because farmers are going bankrupt due to unfair prices doesn’t mean workers should lose living wages, too. There is no way to repair the budget until we restore fairness to the whole economic system.”
“A lot of family farmers depend upon BadgerCare because they have no other insurance options,” said Tony Schultz, a member of WFU and FFD and an Athens-area community-supported agriculture farmer. “Many of our CSA customers also happen to be teachers, nurses, and other public workers so this backward proposal has a direct impact on our future livelihood.”
Von Ruden said the bills, which together would remove $1.25 billion from school and municipal aids, shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
“Many of these important programs were implemented by Tommy Thompson’s administration,” Von Ruden said. “He saw the importance of creating two-thirds state school funding and BadgerCare, which was backed by the Doyle administration. Gov. Walker keeps saying he’s giving schools and municipalities the tools to cut costs and somehow be able to operate better than they operate now. But the only tool we see the governor providing is a hammer to smash things.”
Farmers who take their tractors to the event will gather in a downtown Madison parking lot and drive their tractors to the capitol. Anyone interested in driving their tractor or providing a tractor for another farmer to drive should contact Greeno at (608) 463-7634.
Donations to help offset farmers’ expenses for taking their tractors to Madison are being accepted at http://www.razoo.com/story/Farmer-Labor-Tractorcade-Fund?1299566160
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