We marvel at the outbreak of democracy in the American Midwest.

 It's kinda nice when we remember we're strong. The extraordinary pro-worker demonstrations that started in Wisconsin two weeks ago -- and have since spread -- give lie to the conventional wisdom that the labor movement is dead. Wisconsin's new governor, Scott Walker, made busting the state public employees' union his first order of business. The union, along with sympathetic Wisconsinites of all stripes, busted him right back -- hard. And they show no sign of backing down.

And and Joe tackle the movement afoot among American workers, and look back at the history of organized labor in the United States, the (not-coincidental) rise of the middle class -- and at the decades-long campaign by the ruling class to cut them back down to size.