Chi Trib’s Dan Hinkel does protesters (as linked below). This morning he gave us a comfy-cozy, ain’t-we-havin’-fun account of Madison statehouse protesters. It’s front-page stuff on home-delivery hard copy today, including a 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 mid-page pic of college kids reliving sleep-over days in the house down the block in third grade.

“We all sleep together [in the statehouse], and we all wake up to the sound of the drums,” says protester Damon Terrell in a pull quote atop the picture.

Hinkel had spotted Terrell looking “as if he were headed off to his bedroom at home.” Instead, he was heading for what the protesters were calling “the people’s house.”

It was happening in “famously liberal-minded Madison — sometimes derided as an island of idealism in a sea of reality” — in a protest of “sustained intensity” such as Madison’s “longtime activists” could not remember.

Not only that, it had “diversity” — “construction workers wearing hard hats, firefighters playing bagpipes, liberal activists waving placards, students scooting into sleeping bags.”

Teachers too, as we know. Terrell wants to be one, and “so many teachers have protested that schools throughout the state have been forced to shut down.” But they are not part of this story, which is mostly a celebration of youth and activism. Hinkel is a UW-Madison alum, ’04, so you can’t blame him for getting nostalgic.

As for editors who asked for the story (I presume) and gave it such play (I know they did that), please: What kind of world do they live in and who do they think their readers are?

Nostalgia not from Hinkel directly, but from former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, who is running for mayor:

“There’s nothing like it,” said former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, who says he was tossed to the ground and beaten by police with nightsticks at a bloody war protest in 1967. [Three years before the UW
physics department was blown up and a
researcher killed as antiwar protest]

“In a decade of antiwar protests, we were never able to reach the building trades, the Teamsters and the nonunion people that this touched in the first 48 hours,” said Soglin, who is again running for mayor.

Money, money, money, Paul. The market has determined response. It’s the way people are. Teachers have a good deal and want to protect it. Unionists see theirs in jeopardy. Antiwar protests fizzled as soon as the draft was ended, Paul. No market for protesters seeking not to get killed or serve in Army. It’s as clear as the bushy mustache on his face.

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