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In an email to 13,000 Wisconsin members, it said:
"The idea that a governor can use the military to impose his personal, political will on the people he governs is a primitive relic of the past - one that resulted in a century of bloodshed in this country."
Howard Zinn wrote poignantly about the 1913-14 Ludlow, Colorado coal strike and subsequent massacre, killing 75 or more strikers, strike breakers, and bystanders for defying what he called "feudal kingdoms run by (coal barons that) made the laws," imposed curfews, and ran their operations more like despots than businessmen.
In 1968, force was last used against US workers during Memphis' sanitation strike, days before Martin Luther King's assassination, there to support them.
The last time in Wisconsin was in 1886, days after Chicago's Haymarket massacre killing police and striking workers, when state militia forces fired on striking Milwaukee steel workers, killing seven.
Citizen Action of Wisconsin (CAW) also condemned Walker's threat, its February 14 press release calling it "shockingly extreme, without modern precedent, and an attempt to coerce public workers," violating their First Amendment rights.
CAW's executive director, Robert Kraig, said:
"It is hard to ascribe any motive other than the coercion of public employees to deter them from exercising their Constitutional right to speak out and protest against unjust government actions. It is a classic union busting tactic to use the threat of dire consequences, and even violence, to deter legitimate protest and speech."
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