I’ve been doing a lot of Madison related stuff here on the blog lately, and have received, shall we say, polite criticism for drifting off the main topic a bit, so I think it would be useful to outline precisely why the current struggle here in Wisconsin matters for Zombies and for the Zombie Rights Movement itself.

1) Human Rights are Zombie Rights

I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, but the right to, say, form a trade union, or peaceably assemble and petition your government for redress of grievances, are basic human liberties enshrined in law and the Western tradition. Denying them is a violation of human rights, and Zombies, being human, are thus injured just as much as the Living when these actions are taken.

2) Union Rights are Zombie Rights

It is important to remember that Zombies are natural movement builders, and that their movements are also looked upon with scorn and distrust by society and authority figures. Of course, Zombie groups aren’t usually described as ‘unions’ by our biased press; typically, the word they use is ‘horde’. Nevertheless, what is a Zombie ‘horde’ if not a union? Zombies in such groups agitate for better food, Unliving conditions, personal safety and the right to hold their government accountable. (Often, in the movies, this government is represented by either a gun-toting Southern sheriff or Tom Savini) If the right to participate in a union is removed, how can Zombies hope to protect their own populist groups? Can a horde-banning bill be far behind?

3) When Police Overreach, Zombies Always Suffer

Think about it this way: in an Anti-Zombie movie, comic, book, what have you, is it ever a good thing when the authorities show up? Is it even typically a good thing for the Survivors? No, and the reason is simple: an overly active and self-important authority system is inherently bad for Zombies, the political underclass, outsiders or, eventually, anyone not in the movement itself. By standing up against police brutality today, we stand up for the future safety of Zombies in general.

The specific provisions of the bill(s) are offensive to the Differently Animated as well. The Budget ‘Repair’ bill and the Walker budget, as well as related legislative initiatives, contain numerous troubling provisions aside from Union Busting. Below are some of our lowlights of recent actions taken here in Wisconsin.

4) The Walker Administration Wants to Disenfranchise the Zombie Voter

We’ve talked about this one before at the ZRC blog pretty extensively. Basically, Walker wants to make it almost impossible for those without stable long-term residences leading up to an election to vote. His intended targets are students and poor urban voters, most likely, though vicious Anti-Zombie prejudice is not out of the question. At any rate, these vote suppression tactics harm Zombies.

5) Walker’s Plan to Gut Medicaid Hurts Zombies, Refuses to Pay for their Resurrections

Governor Walker wants to make the state’s highly successful medicaid program vulnerable to cuts or outright elimination by a far-right ideologue. That in itself is bad enough, but what’s more, it discriminates against Zombies directly. Even as he slashes funding to Medicaid, he plans to increase funding for burying those who die destitute, in other words, the poor people who will die when their Medicaid is cut.

Gruesome as this is, it gets worse. Nowhere in this budget is there a request to pay for Zombie-related resurrection services, even though the Governor intends to kill people with his policies!

Folks, hardworking mad scientists and Voodoo Practitioners like Baron Mardi deserve to be fairly compensated for their work. Not all Zombies naturally resurrect themselves, despite the movie mythology. If the Governor is going to create vast swathes of death the least he can do is compensate those who will be tasked with cleaning up after and mitigating the damage done by his policies, the hardworking Zombie makers of the world. But of course, he does not; perhaps mad scientists are a demographic that leans toward the Democratic Party?

6) Wisconsin GOP Plan to Allow Contaminated Drinking Water Risks a ‘Crazies’ Outbreak for Which Zombies Will Be Blamed

(An example of the tragic way such an outbreak would be treated by both the media and government)

First I’ll let Think Progress outline the plan:

3. DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER: Republican lawmakers have introduced bills in both the Senate and the House which would repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water. Conservatives have said that the clean water rule — which went into effect in December — is simply too expensive. Yet the rule only affects 12 percent of municipalities and the price may be worth it. In 1993, 104 people died and 400,000 fell sick when the Milwaukee water supply became infected. Even two decades later, the Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Board notes that 13 percent of acute gastro-intestinal illnesses in municipalities that don’t disinfect their water supplies are the result of dirty water. Municipalities can keep their water clean for as low as $10,000 per well — but apparently for the Wisconsin GOP that is too high a price to pay to keep citizens safe from deadly microorganisms.

One big unstated risk here is that the subsequent outbreak of, say, a highly contagious aggression altering condition like the one found in ‘The Crazies’ will negatively affect Living-Zombie relations. I mean, just look at how things turn out for the people in ‘The Crazies’, hunted down and exterminated by their own government rather than treated. Did anyone think that a little counseling might be better than an army crackdown? Of course not. The ‘Crazies’ look too much like Zombies to the Army, so they have to go. Once again we get a military response to a situation requiring social work, the adjustment to a profoundly altered state of being, and once again we can find a key root of that prejudice in George Romero’s work. And what happens after such a crackdown in the name of public health? People conflate the situation with existing Zombie populations. That’s not even considering the active debate over whether affected populations (ala these movies or 28 Days Later) are even Zombies to begin with, though the ZRC takes an expansive view and tries to represent everyone who is Differently Animated.

Zombification, or Crazification here if you like, should be conducted under rigorous and controlled circumstances by a well trained and compensated professional (see #5 above), not via mass contamination of our drinking water to save a few bucks. Not just because it’s crass and wrong, but because Zombies will catch the blame for any mishaps involved in such an event.

The preceding items have just been a sample, but I hope they help illustrate the cause for ZRC’s concerns and involvement with this emerging social justice movement and the crisis it is in response to. We remain completely and utterly dedicated to The Cause, but especially in these times we have to, in the name of solidarity, sometimes reach slightly outside of our comfort zone to work on behalf of our clients.

We therefore thank you again for your patience and understanding, and will strive to bring as much news in the traditional ZRC vein as possible to the blog as well in the future. I apologize for any shortcomings in the recent past.

Tags: Madison Protests, Movies, Social Justice

This entry was posted by John Sears on Friday, March 11th, 2011 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Zombie Media, ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.