AFSCME leader Marty Beil battled Scott Walker on behalf of public employees and the public good.

"Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?"
--Florence Reece

Marty Beil knew which side he was on.

He was a union man. Indeed, as Congressman Mark Pocan noted after Beil's death last week at age 68, "Marty embodied the longstanding Wisconsin tradition of fighting for workers' rights and protections."

Beil's commitment to trade unionism was old-school and unequivocal. He was ready to bargain; but if the deal was no good, he took the fight to the streets. He marched. He rallied. He occupied the corridors of power, and interrupted the best-laid plans of the worst-intended politicians. He made few apologies.

Yet, Beil was never just a labor leader. His commitment to the cause of working families was shaped by the unique traditions of his union: the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees.

AFSCME traces its roots to Madison, the Wisconsin capital city where state employees began to organize more than 80 years ago -- in the depths of the Great Depression. AFSCME started with an idea. The idea was that state, county, and municipal employees needed fair compensation and fair treatment in the workplace, not only to protect their own self-interest but also to protect the interest of a society that is at its strongest and most productive when public employees are respected and public services and well and ably delivered. A first priority of the founders of what would become the Wisconsin State Employees Union was the defense of the state's civil-service system as an alternative to the corrupt and politicized "spoils" systems that had once been used to fill public posts.

Beil, who died unexpectedly just a few months after his retirement, understood and embraced the AFSCME ideal of public-sector unionism.

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Authors Bio:

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.


Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.


Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.


Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."


With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.


Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."