Madison, Wisconsin, last weekend outdid the Tea Party, but couldn’t top pro-immigration forces.

 

Decrying Republican attacks on organized labor, a crowd estimated by police to number 85,000 to 100,000 people showed up at Wisconsin’s state capitol on Saturday to protest a new law that revoked almost all collective bargaining rights of many state workers. The demonstration was the state’s largest since the Vietnam War.

 

It also was larger than any of the Tea Party rallies, including the one held on September 12, 2009, in Washington, DC, that voiced opposition to the policies of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. That gathering totaled 60,000 to 70,000.

 

The Madison protest was far smaller, however, than the 500,000-strong demonstration that Los Angeles hosted on March 25, 2006, to complain about GOP efforts to crack down on illegal immigration with tough new laws and to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. A similar rally in Dallas on April 9of that year drew more than 350,000 people and on May 1, 2006, rallies attracted hundreds of thousands of participants in both Los Angeles and Chicago.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Up To 100,000 Protest Wisconsin Law Curbing Unions (by James Kelleher, Reuters)

Tea Party Protesters March on Washington (by Russell Goldman, ABC News)

500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills (by Teresa Watanabe and Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times)