Interview with Ashley Anderson

MM: OK, so, if you could start by telling me what brought you to the Capitol in the first place, if there was maybe one event that drew you there, or something you heard about. Anything specific?

AA: Yeah, well, I was involved in the Valentine's Day rally with the T.A.A., and I came at the very end of that rally. I had another appointment going on that morning that ended not too soon before that rally was supposed to start, and I didn't think I would end up going, but at the last minute, I decided it was important to go to the rally. So, I showed up at the very end, well after people had already started exiting the Capitol and were mostly exited from the Capitol, and I think... I looked at videos on You Tube of that rally, and it looked pretty boisterous, actually, inside the Capitol, and then we just went outside for ten or fifteen minutes and had another... There was another speaker there. I 00:01:00don't remember who it was, but we just sort of finished up the rally, and that was kind it. Some people left after that to go to the T.A.A. office and volunteer and make phone calls and things like that. I did not do that that day. I just sort of went about my day as usual until the following day, which was on the first major rally on Tuesday, February 15th, and again, I just sort of attended the rally. Sat outside with a couple of friends who, when we got to the rally, we went to the A.F.T., the American Federation of Teachers of Wisconsin's 00:02:00booth, and they had a bunch of pre-made posters and buttons and things like that. So, I picked up one of those, and sort of... the things I remember about this rally were, I remember seeing kids there. Like I have a picture of, you know, a kid on top of his father's shoulders. These are just some things sticking out in my mind of that rally. The firefighters came that day, and that was... I can't remember. They had bagpipes at that point. I think they always had the bagpipes, and that was, you know, a pretty major thing. And I just remember thinking, "I can't believe how many people are here." It just seemed like a large number of people. The rally, you know, lasted about an hour. It was all outside, and the hearings were going on inside that day, and I actually 00:03:00didn't go inside the Capitol until later that night. That day after the rally, I kind of had to come to school, and I had a meeting I had to go to, and then I went home and I did some normal things. I even ate dinner with some friends, and in the meantime, the T.A.A. had been sending out e-mails like, you know, "We really need people to come and stay the night at the Capitol." And so you know, I was kind of half- heartedly considering it while I was eating dinner with my friends who are not T.A.A. members. They're not grad students. One is connected to the university, but they were sort of not really in the loop, I guess, in all of what was going on. And I left dinner, and I thought... I just felt like, I 00:04:00felt some sort of personal responsibility or something to do it. Like somebody has to go there and be there that night. So, my boyfriend and I ended up going up to the Capitol around nine, which was right around the time that they cut off the hearings in terms of they weren't letting work people sign up. So, we kind of went up to the second floor of the Capitol, where there were a bunch of people waiting, coming down... the hearings were going on the fourth floor, I think. And then people were sort of coming all the way down stairs to the second floor. And we found some scrap of notebook paper and put our names on it, and we were really... we kind of went into the Capitol right at that time, and we had 00:05:00heard that they were, I think over Twitter or something, that they weren't letting anybody else speak. So, we weren't... we were like, "Well, we'll just go in, and see what's going on." And trying it on the list, but we didn't actually think we were going to stay the night. And then once we got there, you know, they said, "We really want people to stay and at least show that you know whenever they, they'll probably cut this up around 2 or 3 A.M...." For some reason, they knew that somehow. I don't quite remember that detail, but, "We need to show them that there are still people here at that time when they decide to cut off the hearing." So, we had, you know, we had just sort of come without anything because we didn't think we would actually be staying away all night. There were several people there who had sleeping bags and had their laptops with them. There were... They had pillows and all this stuff, but, you know, we just 00:06:00sort of came, and so we decided to stay. And that night, we didn't do a lot. Like we just kind of hung out and waited, basically. In the rotunda on the first floor, they had four large televisions with the hearings going on. So, you could listen to the testimony by watching from the rotunda. At some point, I went up to the fourth floor where the hearings were actually going on and tried to get into the overflow room. But yeah... So basically, we just kind of waited at some point after midnight. Most people decided to gather on the first floor rotunda, and so we just went down there and sat with a group of friends, basically. 00:07:00And... I don't know. I just remember thinking... I don't remember what I was thinking. [AA laughs] Oh, I remember thinking, "Is this even worth it? Is anyone actually going to care that we were here and notice that we were here?" And I come from... the whole time I kept my whole perspective was from the media. I kept thinking, "Is the media even going to cover this because it doesn't..." In some level, I was like, "It doesn't even matter if the media doesn't cover this," which in the end, like obviously it mattered for other reasons because it drove the whole movement more, and then which ultimately got media coverage . So, anyway. And then at the end of the night, around 3 A.M., the Republicans 00:08:00left and I think--and I just stayed in the rotunda--I think some people went to like try heckle the Republicans who left and try to find them. I don't really know where they went. At that point, nobody was really organized about any of this. And so, we stayed in the rotunda, and a little bit later, maybe twenty or thirty minutes later, the Democrats came down. I don't remember who was there. I'm sure other people do. I only knew Taylor was there, but other than that, I don't remember who was there. I should look that up. And they just, you know, there were like, I don't know--I'm not very good at crowd estimates--but maybe a hundred people in the rotunda, and they gave just a little impromptu rally, I 00:09:00guess in the rotunda, and it was, you know, we all kind of gathered around them on one side of the rotunda and... they... let's see. I mean, they just... it was pretty hard to hear them. I remember thinking, "I can't really hear anything they're saying," but it felt good to have that sort of impromptu rally because at that point, at least, I felt a little lost. You know, "What have I been doing here for the past six hours?" Or however long I had been there. And obviously, some people had been there a lot longer. They had been there all day. You know, "Why is it 3 A.M., and I'm still awake?" And I remember feeling like that was really good that they sort of gave that rally because it just sort of gave us 00:10:00purpose or something. And the other funny thing about that was there were some people, I remember thinking, there were some people still sleeping, and I just I thought, "How can you possibly be sleeping through this?" I mean, later, like a couple weeks later, that would have been totally normal because at that time, you know, there were tons of people just like sleeping anywhere in the Capitol under the most odd conditions, but that first night, I felt like, "How can you still be asleep in the middle of all this going on?" And that was the first night that we had Ian's Pizza at the end of their little rally. I remember Lena Taylor saying, "Oh, and by the way, there's some pizza here." And they had only brought over three or maybe four pizzas, which was nowhere near enough for 00:11:00all hundred of us. We all got really excited, but I didn't get a piece of pizza. And somebody else had cookies at that point. So, there was already sort of that food sharing going on. Yeah, and so, then the Democrats announced that they were going to keep listening to, and they were going to find a room to get set up, and keep listening to people. And that was about 4 A.M. at that point. And I've never been one to stay up all night, so, at that point, I actually went home, got some sleep, and came back the next day for the next rally, which was even bigger, at eleven or twelve or whenever it was. Yeah, so that was sort of 00:12:00initially what drew me to the Capitol. And things become, you know, kind of blurry after that. At some point in the next couple of days, I did testify at the hearing that was going on around the clock, and I think that was on Thursday night. So, Wednesday was the next day, and then, Thursday night, I ended up testifying. But... Yeah, basically from then on, I spent at least some time at the Capitol every day until... I don't know. Until they had the like, a couple weeks later when they had the sort of Sunday showdown, when people were told they either had to leave by 4 P.M. on that one Sunday, which was I think three 00:13:00weeks later, and then people ended up staying and nobody ended up getting arrested, but it was this whole thing where they thought people would be getting arrested. Yeah, so basically, from during those three weeks, the first week was pretty intense spending a lot of time in Capitol, the first week and a half or two weeks were the most intense, I guess. The T.A.A., you know, set up in 300 NE, and that became kind of what looked like Campaign Central even though it wasn't a campaign. So, let's see. It's probably easier just for me to pick out 00:14:00like various memories, I guess, rather than trying to tell one long boring story. So, just like things, I'll just say things as they pop into my mind. This is something stupid, but I trained my iPhone to recognize "N.E.," like "Capitol N.E.," as a word because I would, you know, text my friends like, "I'm in 300 N.E.," or, "Let's meet at 300 N.E.," and my iPhone now recognizes that and will change other words to "N.E.." Yeah, having a cell phone came in really handy. Obviously, we all had cellphones. I do have one friend in the T.A.A. who doesn't 00:15:00have a cellphone. I'm not sure what she did. But I have a smart... Yeah, I have an iPhone, so it's a smartphone, and so, I was... I checked Twitter basically constantly for information because the interesting part about being like in the sort of epicenter of what is going on is that it's really hard to get information. And... So, having Twitter available was just an easy way to find out what other people were posting and... Let's see. Yeah, so I kind of check 00:16:00that constantly and... Trying to figure out where to go. The first time that I was in the rotunda was... I mean, I had been in the rotunda on Tuesday night, obviously, but the first time I was in the rotunda when there is a large protest going on was on that Wednesday. After the rally, I went inside, and I think that had been going on the previous day, I just quite realized. And I remember thinking, "Wow. This is, you know, pretty incredible." You could barely move. It was really hard to get inside the Capitol, and once in, you could barely move. 00:17:00And at that point, there were already, you know, people in the middle of the Capitol drumming with drums and dancing. And I remember thinking, "Yeah, this is..." Well, actually maybe the drums... That could have been on Thursday. But those first couple days, I remember it really struck me how much energy those drums brought and how much... I don't know. Yeah, basically how much energy the drums brought and how packed the Rotunda was. You got kind of used to it after a couple weeks, but the first couple of days was pretty awe-inspiring. And... OK. 00:18:00I have like a million strong memories. [MM laughs] A couple other things that happened that were pretty memorable were we had our T.A.A. meetings at the Capitol. So, we were having general membership meetings, which prior to all this, I had maybe one or two general membership meetings in my whole career At U.W., and I've been here for... this is my fourth year. So, I've always been a member of the T.A.A. from day one. I remember signing my dues card like immediately when I got here, but I've never been actively involved. And so, it was interesting to suddenly be like pretty active in the organization and to go 00:19:00to like our general membership meetings. And we held them in like the Senate hearing room one day. I don't actually know if that's the name of the room, but I remember meeting in places like that, and that was kind of memorable. We would have... We had pretty big name people come speak to us. At one point, Richard Trumka, the president of AFL-CIO came. Maybe not to a formal meeting, but he at least came by 300 NE and talked to us, kind of pumped us up and rallied us. Oh, another huge memory for me is that Thursday when the Democrats fled the state, and there was a sit in. That morning, I was at the Capitol trying to figure out 00:20:00where I would be useful, and around late morning, you know, somebody said to me, "Oh, we really need people to make phone calls at the T.A.A. office," which is not in the Capitol obviously. It's actually on State Street. And I said, "OK. I can do that way. That's fine. I'll go over there for like an hour and make some phone calls." And as I was leaving to go do that, I remember hearing somebody say like, "We need to send out a message over Twitter that we need people to sit in front of this room and that room to block the senators from meeting, basically." And I remember thinking, "I don't know if I want to do that because technically, that's not legal." Because we had been talking about it, so I had 00:21:00sort of heard some of the legal talk around it. And I was like, "I'm going to go make phone calls." So, I went and did that. And then in the early afternoon, I left and I headed back to the Capitol, and I was like, "I think I'm going to join the sit-in." I don't know why, I just decide... Like I was following it over Twitter, and I read that they still needed some people, and so I ended up sitting in on one of the upper floor. Like there were two floors that people were sitting in, and I was on the third floor in front of a door, and a good friend of mine had been sitting there since morning, and we just, you know, hung out and talked. And I remember that was the first... Well, not the first time, 00:22:00but I remember one of the bigger unions, I forget which one, made brats. They were outside like grilling brats or something, and they brought them to the T.A.A. office. I remember reading later in the sort of labor newspaper or whatever that they had a little story about how they decided because the T.A.A. had been there for two days straight that they needed to bring us food. So, they brought a huge thing of brats, and some of the brats got sent up to where we were sitting in. And I remember having one of those and thinking like, "Wow, this is so cool that people are bringing us food." And... It was really.... I mean, there was a lot of energy in the Capitol that day. It was really loud. I remember just sitting there, and all the sudden, there was like tons of 00:23:00cheering, and none of us could really see what was going on in the rotunda. We didn't have a good view even if we stood up and peered over. And that was, you know, people were... somebody had released some helium balloons with a huge like solidarity sign. I think it just had a fist on it and maybe it said the word 'solidarity'. I didn't actually see it. I think I watched a video later on YouTube. There were just like things like that were happening sort of all day. There was just a ton of energy, lots of noise, lots of drumming, and you know, with the T.A.A. people, who were sort of organizing the sit-in--I'm not even sure who it was--they kept coming up and saying, you know, "You have to let 00:24:00people out. Like if anybody wants to get out of that room, they have to be allowed. But nobody can get in." So they had some sort of saying like, "Everyone can get out. Nobody can get in." I don't remember exactly what it was. Yeah, so I sat there for... I think I was there a couple hours maybe. Maybe it wasn't that long. Seems longer probably than it actually was. And then finally, you know, we had heard that the Democrats had left, which meant we wouldn't actually have to be sitting there anymore if they had left, but we weren't sure, so we just kept sitting there. At one point, there was an elevator that led from, you know, like the doorway was there, and then kind of right next to it, there was an elevator. So, we are sitting in front of the door, but then also right next to the elevator. And at one point, the elevator opened, or we saw that somebody 00:25:00pointed out that it was going down and coming back up. And so, at one point the elevator... so we all got like ready. We weren't sure who was going to come out of the elevator, and it ended up being like a woman in a wheelchair who was a pretty regular protester--after that, I saw her a lot--just coming up to join the sit-in, basically. But we were really scared that somebody was going to come out of that elevator. We were actually going to have to block somebody from getting into the room. And then it was shortly after that that we decided, or that it was announced that the Democrats had definitely fled the state, and so there was really no point in being there. So, I remember Governor Walker was holding a press conference that day, around five or something, and so they said, "Everyone go outside his office." And so, everyone got up and went to his 00:26:00office. I didn't actually make it to his office. I got sidetracked into another project before we got there, but I remember that sort of how the sit-in ended, I guess. Yeah. So, that was like a pretty big memory of partaking in that. Just like other little things about a weekend or something, you know, there were sort of rumors flying around that the Capitol was really dirty, and there was a lot of trash everywhere, and they... so, I remember one of the T.A.A. members came up with this idea. I think it was all his idea; it was a good idea, to every... at that point, we didn't have marshals yet, but we had these vests that the marshals ended up wearing. But he took the vests and put them on and sort of to 00:27:00officiate people as trash collectors. I think he said, "After the noon rally, we're going to... We're going to go pick up the trash and like make a big like commotion about it." This is like strategic to show people that we are clean and neat and picking things up. And he made up a chant that went something like, "Picking up the trash. Put it in the bag." And he's a pretty like boisterous, like friendly person, so he totally got away with that. And so people did it, and that was a really... that always strikes me because it was such a good strategy. I think the whole time we were in the Capitol, we somewhat struggled with the image, and we were trying to sort of maintain a positive image, and that was definitely one thing that helped maintain a positive image for us 00:28:00because the media totally covered that. You know, I distinctly remember seeing stories in the Isthmus and maybe bigger media outlets about how protestors were going around picking up and cleaning things, which was cool. And then, so, about a weekend, I guess, we established like more systematic things where we had a food table outside at 300 NE that we like kept stocked, and we had people who were acting as marshals. And I never did this job, but their job was sort of just to maintain order and walk around the Capitol. They wore these yellow vest, 00:29:00bright yellow vests, and sort of took care of any like, you know, struggles that were going on. Sometimes they would pick up trash, I think. So, we had that as a job, and then there was like all these different things going on, like data entry. We were entering all of the people... there were people signing petitions like outside of the hearing room where the Democrats held a hearing for like eight days straight or something. So, we were entering data into our computers, and then emailing it to some guy. I don't even know anything. Like I was never... I wasn't... I just sort of helped out here and there. I wasn't... I 00:30:00didn't lead any of these projects, so I don't actually know the details of them. And I also... I know that like a more organic community developed in the Capitol, who later became, I think, the Autonomous Solidarity Organization. And I would then... Like they were, they definitely have their own system going on and their own information desk, and the T.A.A. was helping them with that obviously. I wasn't involved like leading or directing any of that. I would help out occasionally at different things, but... yeah. Another thing I did that sort of strikes me, that first Friday night, I don't know why I remember that night, 00:31:00but I somehow got signed up to do a shift at the outside of the Democratic hearing room, where the Democrats were listening to people, and I did that for about four hours until midnight, and it was Friday night, and it was the first week of the protests, and there were a lot of people in the Capitol, and there were a lot of people who were, you know, coming to sign up to speak at the hearing, and the hearing had been going on all week since that Tuesday when the Republicans left. And basically, from what I understood, the Democrats were kind of signing up for shifts. Like they would sit there for two hours, especially overnight. I think during the day, like as many as could be there would be there, but they basically signed up for shifts. From what I could tell, because we handed a shift list at some point. Like, "This will be this, you know. The 00:32:00representative will be there from two to four," or whatever. And there was a lot of confusion, I remember, as to why the Capitol was remaining open overnight, and at first, the first night, it remained open because the hearing session was going on, and because this was an unofficial hearing session, sort of all week we had been told that it's really important to keep people coming to this hearing, the Democrat hearing, because that was what was keeping the Capitol open, and it was important to keep the Capitol open because, you know, it just sort of maintained the momentum and kept people around and sustained. And so, the T.A.A. worked pretty hard in getting people to testify overnight. And that night, I remember... So, I was working at the hearing, and we got very mixed 00:33:00messages about what we were actually supposed to be telling people because we had gone all week from like trying to maintain this momentum and keep as many people as possible testifying overnight so we can keep it going. And they... we just got mixed messages from leaders in our organization and also staffers for the Democrats about as to whether we really needed to keep people there overnight, or if it was OK to sort of let dwindle off. And... That was like kind of hard to deal with because we were getting all those people coming like, you know, "I could stay late if it's needed, but otherwise, I'm not going to," kind 00:34:00of thing. And in the end, I actually don't remember. I don't know if I know exactly when the hearings ended. I left that night around midnight. And I know the hearings kept going that night, and I think they kept going over the weekend, and they maybe, they would take breaks occasionally, but I'm not totally clear on when the hearings actually ended. But at that point, we got organized, and we got different unions to say like, you know, "We'll get our members to come and stay like a night in the Capitol." So, it would be like, "Monday night is Nurses' Night," and "Tuesday is Firefighter Night," and different things like that. So, after that, for whatever reason, the Capitol 00:35:00remained open. You know, we didn't really have a problem getting people to stay, and I ended up staying a total of three nights in the Capitol. The first one was that Tuesday, and then the second one was sort of the second weekend, or third weekend, just before they like had the Sunday showdown where they were maybe going to arrest people, and I just, I had stayed really late some nights just working on things, but I hadn't actually slept over. So, it was the first night. And so I was like, "I want to do it before they like kick us all out." I just felt like it was something to do. So, my boyfriend and I spent like a Friday or Saturday night there, and we met a lot of people that night, but I distinctly remember talking to this one cop who, I don't remember his name, but I see him 00:36:00in like all the You Tube videos, in all the like photographs online. He's like the cops' like spokesperson or something. And he was really nice, and he talked to us for a while about how, you know, just like friends of his, and how he had these conservative friends who are now not conservative because of all this. And he... and it was like the Cops Night. Like we happened to be staying there the night that the cops were going to stay there, which was pretty cool that the cops did that because there was some concern that they were going to be kicking people out that weekend. I mean, obviously, they formally--supposedly formally-- were going to do it on Sunday, but there was some concern about whether people were going to be able to sleep there, but once the cops were like we're staying here tonight, it was like, "What? Are they going to kick out of bunch of cops?" 00:37:00So, that was cool. And then the third night that I stayed at the Capitol happened to be after the Sunday night that they had, that they were supposed to have their arrest, I wasn't actually inside the Capitol at that point. I was outside the Capitol. And that night, like six hundred people, you know, were--or I heard there were about six hundred people inside--stayed that night to like get arrested, if they needed to. And basically, the next day, most people had left by morning because most people didn't actually sleep in the Capitol that night. And by morning, you know, the numbers had dwindled down a lot. And that was the day that they really started locking things down, and they weren't 00:38:00letting people in unless people came out. And at this point, I had been doing some publicity work for the T.A.A. and working on the communications team, and so I decided that, you know, there were obviously like plenty of people inside, but I wanted to get in there to like see what was going on because we had sort of set up a system where like we were an information source for what was going on at the Capitol, and we need somebody on our like communications team inside, and I just wanted to find out what was going on. So, I heard that it was pretty much impossible to get in. So, I made myself like a press pass, and I just like 00:39:00put--I didn't lie on it--like I just put that I was like communications manager of the T.A.A. and DefendWisconsin.org. I'm not communications manager, but like, you know I'm on that. Like I work for those. I volunteer for the T.A.A. and DefendWisconsin.org, so I just put my picture on it and like printed it off on my computer at home, and like put it, you know, I found an old name tag from a conference with a lanyard, and I just like stuck it in to the old conference nametag. And when I got to the Capitol, I went to the sort of main door where people were not getting in, and they said, the policeman who was standing there said, "We were told we can't let anyone in, even if like a Senator comes or 00:40:00something, where not supposed to let them in." And I was like, "OK. Great." So, I went to the West Wash entrance, which is where I think the media were supposed to be getting in, and I made it in. I just like showed them my press pass, and they were like, "Who are you with?" And, you know, I just told them, and they kind of examined it. They were like, "I don't know. OK, fine. Let her in." Which, if I had tried that a day or two later, they would have never let me in. But that Monday was still like, they weren't letting people in, but it was still like relatively easy to get in. And so, I got in, and it was really weird inside because there were some people in the center, like of the drum circle, like were in the center playing drums, but there were a lot more police and security 00:41:00around just the ground floor, and you weren't... There was like no way you could get anywhere besides the ground floor. There's no way to get upstairs. Basically, every step you took, there was a policeman. They were like all over the place, and I remember being a little scared because I wasn't sure where... I had heard there were some people who were not in the right place in the building. Like I think they were on the first floor, and that was... They were, the department of Administration was claiming that's why they kept the Capitol like closed and weren't letting people in because there were people on the first floor who were not following their recommendation, which was to either like to stay on the ground floor basically. And so, I was worried I was going to walk into the wrong place, and there were all these policemen around, and there were 00:42:00very few protesters in the center, and I finally ran into somebody I knew. And I figured out it was because most of the protesters were in the Democrats' offices around the ground floor, and they were meeting in there to have discussions and talk about things because... And so, I finally like found a group of people I knew meeting in somebody's office--I don't know whose office it was--and there were... Yeah, so it was just like a really strange feeling in there, I guess. So, that was kind of mid-afternoon, and I was like, "OK, I'm going to write a press release about this." So, I ended up writing a press release for the T.A.A. about what was going on even though it turned out like the media outlets were covering sort of the fact that it was closed down. And there was all this like rumors flying around and like no sort of information that you can verify, which 00:43:00makes it really difficult to write a press release. So, I decided, "Well, I'm just going to get a quote from somebody." I couldn't figure out anything else to write about other than if I got a quote from somebody. So, I went to Brett Hulsey's office, who's one of the Democratic representatives, and he was like, "Yeah, come on in." And he let me.... He like sat there with me, and he was like, "Hang on. I need to make a few phone calls." And he made some phone calls about rallies that were happening the next day, and getting permits, and all that stuff. And he ended up, you know, giving me a quote for my press release, and he let me like sit in his office and finish the press release because there was, I mean, there was nowhere to like work like in the Capitol because there 00:44:00were police everywhere, and there were, basically, you couldn't be anywhere in the rotunda or around the rotunda, which was basically the only place there was to go without either the possibility of being on a live news feed, like Fox was there that day, or like having one of the police overhear you, which at that point it was unclear like which police were friendly to us and who weren't. Like nobody looked friendly. So, I sat in his office and did the press release. And then after that, it was like 6 or 7 P.M. and, you know, I walked out and was hanging out in the rotunda, and everyone was like, "Are you staying tonight?" And I was like, "I hadn't planned on it. I just sort of came to the Capitol with my press pass today. Like I don't know what I was thinking." I just sort of got in, and they were like, "It would be really good if you could stay because we need people here." So, I decided to stay that night, and I just sort of, at that 00:45:00point, all this... we had had a bunch of stuff sort of all over the Capitol, but at that point, it was all on the ground floor, and there was one wing off of the rotunda that had at least all the T.A.A. stuff in it, and I think most people just had a bunch of stuff sort of stored there. And there were a bunch of sleeping bags, and I was able to like find a sleeping bag to use that night because it was really cold in there. I stayed that night and slept, and I remember it was a really strange feeling. I was talking to a friend, and we called it reverse prison because it felt like you can get out but you can't get in. So, it felt strange. And they were getting things inside. Like they had food 00:46:00and everything they needed, but it just felt really limited because for all that time, we had just been going freely like in and out of the Capitol. I mean, with the exception of the night they would close it, we decided mainly for our protection, which is why they were doing it, but it felt really weird to just sort of be stuck in there, and not be able to like freely come and go. And I just remember thinking, "This isn't healthy. Like this is for mental health." I couldn't handle it. Like I slept there that night, and that next morning, we got up and I stayed for a couple hours, but I ended up leaving mid-morning like around ten or eleven. I left the Capitol. I had to come to school for a meeting for work anyway that day. So, I didn't really have a choice of staying, although I definitely had friends in the T.A.A. who were telling their professors like, 00:47:00"I'm inside the Capitol and not leaving." "I can't come to work today," kind of thing. So, yeah that was a pretty crazy experience, and I didn't get back in the Capitol the rest of the week because it was pretty impossible to get in. And then later that week was when they finally got everyone to leave the Capitol like on Thursday, I think it was. So, I mean that Monday night that I stayed in there, we counted how many people were in there, and it was like seventy or seventy five, I want to say, because it was really easy to do a head count whenever everyone's in the same spot and, you know, there aren't that many people. And you know, I don't know how many people were left in the Capitol at the end. And you know, there were people who were getting in and out for people had their ways, kind of. Like if you got creative and made a press pass or 00:48:00things like that. [MM laughs] And I guess they were maybe letting some people in when people left. I remember that Tuesday morning when I left the Capitol, I made sure like that they let somebody in when I left the Capitol. Yeah, and so they finally saw all week it was like this big to do. Like the Democrats were doing things like hosting office hours on the lawn. Like they brought their desks outside. And... Which was brilliant. That was such a good media story. And I... Governor Walker introduced his budget that Tuesday, and there was a huge rally outside and people were really... I mean, angry basically about the budget being introduced, but also the fact that nobody was getting in the Capitol, and 00:49:00people sort of felt locked out. And so yeah. And I don't know, I don't remember all the details about how they ended up getting people out of there, but I remember it happened on Thursday or something. Oh, and there was that, there was like a court hearing about it. And... I don't remember all the details. It's funny. I like know them, but they're not coming. It's all like jumbled in my head. I would need to write it down or something. Yeah. And the following week, after that sort of presence at the Capitol died down a lot I think, I actually 00:50:00didn't really go to the Capitol after that. I kind of had to like take care of some normal life stuff, and then the following week was when the Republicans decided to pass the collective bargaining law, when they stripped down the budget repair bill, like they stripped all the fiscal items out, so they didn't have to have the Democrats there to vote on it. And... that was pretty amazing because I was at, it was I think it was a Wednesday, and I actually had to leave that night to go to a conference in Chicago, and for you know an academic conference, and I didn't... I came home late in the afternoon, and I took a nap so that I would be like rested to go to drive all the way down to Chicago. And I woke up from my nap and I checked Twitter, which was like what I always did 00:51:00immediately to like find out what's going on, and I figured... and I read the news that the Republicans had announced that they were going to be voting on this. And I called my boyfriend who was downtown, and he was like, "Is this real? Like what is going on?" So, yeah. Within you know an hour, there were like thousands of people at the Capitol, and I didn't actually go that night because I had to go to the stupid conference, but I stayed at home and kind of watched the news and sort of watched what was going on online for a couple of hours. I ended up leaving pretty late for the conference. I ended up finally packing and leaving around seven or eight to drive all the way to Chicago. But that was like a pretty exciting night that I was... like I was sorry I had to miss that 00:52:00because I felt like, "Oh, I've been so involved," and like, "How can I be missing this?" And the next day at the conference, I was just like watching my Twitter feed on my computer to see what was going on. But... and that following weekend, I had to stay in Chicago, and I also missed the like ginormous like 180,000 person rally or however many people ended up being there. And I felt sad to miss that, too. But I watched it online and talked to people about it, and yeah, it looked pretty cool. Like it was a cool event. Yeah, I could go on about other things [MM laughs], but that's sort of like the crux of my experience, the most interesting things that I can offer.

MM: OK, I was curious about kind of more towards the beginning, you were talking about feeling kind of hesitant about getting involved and whether or not you should go, whether or not it would mean something, kind of maybe not knowing what to expect. So, I'm kind of wondering if there was something that change your mind. If you could maybe describe like what you were feeling hesitant about and maybe what convinced you to get more and more involved in that this might be kind of a meaningful event.

AA: Yeah, on the Tuesday before I decided to go and end up staying the night, even though I didn't know I was going to do... I mean, the T.A.A. just like put out a call, like, "We really need, we like urgently need people to come and be 00:54:00here," and... And, I mean, like I got the point of it. You know, I understood they were trying to do sort of a citizen filibuster to keep the hearing going. And I just sort of... and then I also got an e-mail from a friend of mine who used to be in the T.A.A., who is now a professor on the East Coast, and she was like... I mean, I kind of think like if she actually were still here in school, I don't know that she actually would have stayed the night that night. Maybe she would have; I don't know. But she like sent an e-mail to like all our friends who are still here and said, "Do this for everyone else who can't be there," and you know, that sort of helped motivate me, and I just sort of felt like this is 00:55:00like one small thing I can do, and I have the power to do, so let's do it. And I kind of went there... I mean, as I said, I went there thinking I'm not actually going to stay all night. Like I didn't actually think I was committing myself to being there until 4 A.M. But once I got there, it was like, "Oh yeah, I can totally do this," and it definitely helped that, you know, my boyfriend went with me, and I had friends there. And then just after that, in the following days... I mean, I think that the teachers who called for sick- outs on Thursday and Friday really brought a lot of momentum to the rallies and the protests and that freed up the high school students to come who did amazing things like, you 00:56:00know, walk all the way from high school to the Capitol like the first day of the rally or the second day. And that brought a lot of energy and momentum to the protests, and those first few days, like it just was really clear to me that like once you got there and like all the people were there, it was like that's like really cool like thing to be a part of and it was like easy to get involved then. And I just, those first few days, I kept thinking, "These people are going to get tired and like people are going to leave, and they're not going to..." I don't know why I had this like pessimistic... I have this pessimistic trait in me to like think of the worst. So, I guess I was just channeling that into the protests. But you know, they didn't leave. You know, that Friday night that I stayed until midnight working the table, I left at, you know, I was working that 00:57:00shift at the table, and I left at midnight, and I just remember thinking, "Wow! There are still people like here and there. They're not leaving, and you know, they're in the drum circle, like still down there, still have energy." And it just became clear at some point that weekend that the momentum wasn't going to die down. Like I stopped worrying about it, I guess. Basically, as things sort of like picked up and moved on, I just I had this feeling that this was like something really... it felt really big to be a part of it, and it felt important, and it felt like, you know, one of the more important things I can do in my life. So, yeah.

MM: Is there any particular message that you think you'll remember or take away 00:58:00from this? Maybe not a particular memory, but kind of an overall sense of what happened and what it meant that you think you'll carry with you?

AA: This is a good question, and I think a lot about messages because like I still work for publicity. And... I think I don't know if I could put it in terms of a message, but I do know that the experience that like people have here was... It was definitely something that like... I don't know how to put it. An 00:59:00example of what I'm thinking of is all those students who had that experience of being at the Capitol, like they have that exposure to this like huge showing of activism that, you know, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I don't, you know, I didn't have... like I got involved politically, eventually, when I got to college, but not right away. Like it definitely took some major events for me to get involved in, and I just think that there is the sort of collective memory 01:00:00that people have now that will have some sort of impact like for, you know, decades because, especially because young people had that exposure that is really unique, and you know, let's face it, not very common. Even young kids like children who were there, they're going to think it's normal that like one hundred thousand people came to a rally one Saturday . That's pretty amazing. So, I guess, I don't know what the message would be, but it's sort of around the like... I don't know. I can't think of the word. Just sort of the feeling of activism, I guess. Yeah.

MM: To wrap things up, I guess, do you think... is there something that you would want other people who maybe didn't experience this to know about it or remember about it, whether it's something you experienced or just kind of your general opinion of it that you think is important to communicate?

AA: I think that... I think of the people I've talked to, and this obviously 01:02:00will change as the years go by and people look at things differently, but I did, you know, that weekend I was in Chicago, I talked to some friends who I know there, and you know, just at various points around this, I was able to talk to different people who weren't in Madison, and the perspective of what was going on outside of Wisconsin versus like my experience of what was happening were pretty different. And you know... I guess people very easily form opinions without getting all the information, I guess. And... you know. I don't know. 01:03:00I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. Basically, that like if this was just like a group of regular people who wanted to fight for their voice and their rights and it wasn't like, you know, it was just like regular people like policeman, teachers, nurses, like all these different people coming together, people the community who aren't any particular union member, who felt strongly about this. Yeah, I guess that's the only thing I would say. There is more, but I can't think of it right now. [AA and MM laugh]

MM: OK. Well, those are all the questions I have.

AA: Yeah, sounds good.

MM: OK thanks.

AA: Thanks.