While many remember the Capitol protests that thrust Madison into the national spotlight one year ago as surrounding the right to collectively bargain, the movement first started as an organized action supporting UW System funding.
In the face of proposed budget cuts to the UW System, the Teaching Assistants' Association, AFSCME 171 and activist student groups began planning the "I ‘heart' UW" rally in December and collected 5,000 signatures from supporters across the state.
Just three days before the rally was to take place, Walker announced his budget repair bill that would limit collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin.
"It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we had already mobilized for that entire week of protest," said Beth Huang, a former Student Labor Action Coalition member who slept on the Capitol floor for four nights during the protests.
The Joint Finance Committee public hearing began at 10 a.m. Tuesday and lasted into the morning. The drive to keep the public hearing list filled with speakers kept the building open through the night, and allowed community members to stay in the building.
Huang recalled a moment Tuesday night when a woman testifying in front of the committee began singing "Amazing Grace."
"Everyone got kind of quiet, and then everyone started to sing along. There was this incredible echoing affect of everyone singing Amazing Grace together on the first night of the Capitol Occupation," Huang said.
Damon Terrell, a third-year UW-Madison student who became a recognizable figure in the Rotunda, spoke at the Capitol for the first time at the public hearing. He has been arrested numerous times for resisting a police officer and continues to protest at the Capitol after most demonstrators left.
"Just seeing person after person share their personal story really got me engaged. The next day I came back and I didn't leave," Terrell said.
Over the following days, 6,000 students across 12 campuses participated in student walk-outs organized by the Teaching Asisstants' Association and various student groups, according to the TAA.
Fourteen Democratic senators fled to Illinois Feb. 17 to block the bill, leaving the Republican senators without the 20 required for a quorum on budget-related bills. Students dressed in Badger red filled every floor of the Capitol building and cheered when the word spread.
Huang said the amount of student-labor solidarity was both the foundation and the continual driver of the protest.
"[The fact] that people who weren't directly affected still showed up ... that says something, I don't know what exactly but it says something," Huang said.
The "Capitol occupation" eventually evolved into a "protest village," as demonstrators were allowed to stay in the building after the hearing ended.
The Capitol Rotunda was the epicenter where, through the first two weeks, there was always a group of protesters drumming and chanting.
Terrell recounted seeing a man with a wheelbarrow overflowing with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for protesters. "People just started to see needs and fill them," he said.
Volunteers set-up medical, food and electronic charging stations, and one section on the first floor eventually became a designated children's zone with assorted toys and volunteer sitters. Ian's pizza deliveries came in from 43 states and 15 countries, including Egypt and South Korea.
People began filling more than physical needs as well. On a Friday evening, a rabbi led a Shabbat service on the second floor.
While student participation was high the first week, by the second, national unions were the dominant presence.
For the first time in years, 100,000 people gathered in a mostly peaceful way. When 3,000 Walker supporters came to the Capitol on Feb. 19, joining 60,000 protestors, there were no arrests.
"We continue to talk about how it's amazing that that many people were able to keep it peaceful, how is it that that's incredible?" Terrell asked. "That's an anomaly that that many people can gather and keep it peaceful."
But that's not to say there were no violent incidents. After the Department of Administration restricted public access, cameras captured state Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, being chased by angry protesters.
Andrew Welhouse, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said it was tough to walk through the Capitol if people knew you worked for a Republican legislator. At one point, Fitzgerald received death threats, and his office was alerted that 40 rounds of live ammunition had been found at different points outside the Capitol.
"[Protesters] pat themselves on the back for it being nonviolent, but there was definitely an uneasy tone that could've broken either way," Welhouse said.
As the number of protesters increased, so did the police presence, especially when the Department of Administration announced they would close the building on Feb. 27 to clean it.
On Feb. 26, groups met at the Concourse Hotel and planned to get 20 students, 20 private sector union members and 20 firefighters to stay in the Capitol one last night, preparing to be arrested Sunday. Between 500 and 1,000 people stayed in the Capitol that night.
But Sunday came, and though some resisted police, no one was arrested.
"We were getting ready to make the protest slightly more militant, but that never happened," Huang concluded.
Following that Sunday, the DOA set up metal detectors, put up lists of forbidden items to bring in, including sleeping bags and any item that could be used as a drum. The hundreds of signs that once covered every inch of the Capitol marble were taken down. The medical and food stations were gone, and the drum circle was silenced.
When the Senate passed the parts of the budget repair bill related to collective bargaining limits, protesters rushed to the Capitol once more. But, in Huang's words, the tone changed from "Don't do this to us" to "How could you?"
The protests dramatically subsided, and the matter of the budget repair bill went to the courts as both parties began collecting signatures to prompt recall elections of Republican and Democratic senators.
"[The movement] still became a lot more institutionalized., which is something that is kind of strange in my mind," Huang said. "A lot of political energy became dispersed. [It] went from a grass roots effort in Madison to Democratic party offices across the state."
