Packers Back the Protesters

Dave Zirin's article in the New Yorker on the Green Bay Packers supporting the protesters in Wisconsin:

Several players took the Green Bay ethos to heart and immediately backed the workers. Current players Brady Poppinga and Jason Spitz, and former Packers Curtis Fuller, Chris Jacke, Charles Jordan, Bob Long, and Steve Okoniewski said,

We know that it is teamwork on and off the field that makes the Packers and Wisconsin great. As a publicly owned team we wouldn’t have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans. It is the same dedication of our public workers every day that makes Wisconsin run…. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work. The right to negotiate wages and benefits is a fundamental underpinning of our middle class. When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards.

Rookie tight end Tom Crabtree tweeted, “i fully support wi unions and i think Gov. Walker is out of his damn mind.”

None of these players have a particularly high profile. But as the struggle intensified, the team’s defensive captain, Charles Woodson, couldn’t stay silent, as I reported in the Nation.

A former Heisman trophy winner at the University of Michigan, N.F.L. defensive player of the year, and perennial pro-bowler, Woodson is also the team’s co-captain and union rep. His words landed in sports pages around the country:

Thousands of dedicated Wisconsin public workers provide vital services for Wisconsin citizens. They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. These hard working people are under an unprecedented attack to take away their basic rights to have a voice and collectively bargain at work.

It is an honor for me to play for the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers and be a part of the Green Bay and Wisconsin communities. I am also honored as a member of the NFL Players Association to stand together with working families of Wisconsin and organized labor in their fight against this attempt to hurt them by targeting unions. I hope those leading the attack will sit down with Wisconsin’s public workers and discuss the problems Wisconsin faces, so that together they can truly move Wisconsin forward.