A year ago today at the Wisconsin protests, I video'd Madison city salt trucks circling the Capitol Square, blowing horns in solidarity with the protesters.

"Two city salt trucks circle the block at least twice, with horns blaring. Only one is visibly spreading salt."

The protesters wave and hold up fists, indicating that it is their interpretation that the city workers are sounding support for the protests. Obviously, we taxpayers pay for the salt trucks and the employees who drive them and we expect those trucks to be used to make the streets all over town safe, not to circle the Capitol Square for other purposes.

The next day I would receive a death threat: "whoever video taped this has no life and needs to be shot in the head."

Inside the Capitol, the drum beating and hooting, the signs and the dazed, pacing protesters felt lurid and surreal.



"This is what class warfare looks like," reads one sign.

A sign indicates that people are staying overnight in the Capitol, and I talk to a security guard and find out that is indeed happening: "The doors are locked at a particular time, but people are not cleared out of the building."

This, then, was the day when things really did cross the line into weird. Late that evening, we got the word that Madison school teachers would take another day off from work, after a somewhat strange voting process in which union members were required to leave the meeting room and walk back in through one of 2 doors, to indicate a "yes" or "no" vote.

More Hitler comparisons:

"Do you think Scott Walker deserves to be compared to the Nazis?" I ask and the answer is "Yes, I do."