style of bringing civilization and the good life and high taste into the countryside. he always said that he thought that maybe god disapproved of his life, but approved of his work. >> madison, wiconson saw a fierce political battle after removing the bargaining rights. university police chief wrote a book, view from the interior, about those protests against governor walker. >> [indiscernible].

>> we will not run. >> until our rights are restored. >> we will not run. >> until our rights are restored restored. >> [indiscernible] [ cheering and applause ] governor scott walker introduced the budget repair bill, in which he was trying to fill a gap in the budget and at the same time, he pro -- he

proposed an end to it. they have the right to unionize and get together and bargain for benefits, pay, work conditions, work hours, were shifts. wisconsin was the first state, in the united states, to allow public employees to collect fshly -- collectively bargain for these things. it was difficult for the unions to agree with, essentially calling for their dissolution and having employees have to speak individual instead of collectively. this was met with some resistance from the collective bargaining units, all the different unions in wisconsin. they came together in january and february of 2011.

i thought it was really interesting story, especially because it was nonviolent, especially because there were so few people arrested and it's the way the system is supposed to work and we don't have a lot of examples of that, often, in our country that people can gather, have their voices heard and something really, really bad does not happen and that's a really good thing. and i thought it was just unique. and so, i was here, one day, and turned to somebody and said, nobody would believe the behind the scenes of what was going on here, i should write a book. the person said, yeah, you should. as it begain, the budget repair bill was introduced. the unions took saturday and sunday to organize.

on february 14, the students marched on the capital from campus. there were about 1,500 to 2,000 and delivered about 8,000 valentine's for the governor. they dumped them on the public desk and by the tuesday, february 15, they had organized and rallied and exp t expected between 10, 000 and 20,000 people. it was shut down to traffic. by the next day, the crowds grew even more and then the madison teachers and many of the teachers associations started a massive walk-out, call in sick. with the school shutdown, the crowds began to swell and we were up into the high 60,000 to low

70,000 people that descended upon the capital square. the following weekend, we had about 100,000 own the square

there was no limit to how many people could come inside. we had almost 26,000 people inside and the building is not built for that. and wea measuring, decided that it could hold 9000. they would turn over, it was stagnant. 9000 and 10 others would come in come of because people left. so then at one point we counted as many as 46,000 people that had come in and moved back out and come around the square. there was a stage set up on state street, that is a closed to vehicle traffic, but the natural kind of place where we set stages, the state street

entrance on a little of a hell - - hill, so it is natural to that stage see because of geography. people would gather near a state -- stage. and they wouldup stand and say speeches, sing songs, people like michael moore and federal representatives and senators came and spoke. other people would set of amplification, having crowds. the tea party did set up. they had smaller crowds. i have been in law enforcement

for many years and about 22 years ago i had an incident where the crowds on a university, we got into a situation where there was a crushing of people. now i try to develop an , you knowin crowds political crowds act differently than sports crowds. and people acted differently when they are being facilitated by police as opposed to confronted by police. been in iton, i have for about 21 years. i have all this background. we deal with crowds on a regular basis at the university for all types of settings. , hecapitol police chief looked at the situation and

realized that i had a strength in crowd management. at the department of natural resources have a huge expertise in logistics, they are good at moving people and resources out of remote areas, so the capital was a piece of cake for them. if you tell them to stand here, they will do what you ask them. they are very reliable. and the capitol police, they are worth their weight in gold. they know the building inside and out. the first thing, safety. making sure everybody regardless of who they are, remain safe. and then you need to make sure that people's constitutional rights are honored. and ensure the government, which is democratically elected, functioned. and could continue to function. when you have a democratically elected government, whether you not, that isem or

it the democracy works and we have to keep government functioning or else you have anarchy. those are my three priorities every day. that is what i start my day with and we make all decisions based on those. is it safe? ensuring constitutional rights? is the government functioning? not to say that there are not pickups -- hiccups. ofhad to cut down the number people in the building. people had free expression, but there are limits. you cannot go in and yell, "fire ." there are certain things that you limit. and with government function, they continued to have hearings and meetings. uniforms everye

day, we do not get into the heavy gear that you see unless you see a reason to do that. most days, you come to work looking like you would any other day. there was not a sense of putting batonelmets, taking out a , there is no need for any of that. there was no need to escalate in that way. there were tense moments, pushing and shoving. -- try to meet it, isolated isolate it, and begin a dialogue, how can we the scalate it.is -- de-e you want to give fair warning. the first thing -- the first 50

people in the crowd, they know what caused it, but the people beyond them do not know. they just know that the police are acting and as a response, they get tense and they start feets, but they are 50 deep. you get pushing and shoving, rocks being thrown. so one thing we want to do is to communicate give -- and give time, one day or two days. point we were scaling things down, we gave five days. closingy, we kept different portions, every day announcing ahead of time what we would do the next day, so they were not surprises.

it was collective bargaining for employees. that came to an end and the unions took a vote among membership to see if they would still be in existence. union dues usually taken out automatically from paychecks, stopped. employees could decide if they wanted to give money to unions. there was a series of things, the budget gap got filled. done andt repair was completed. was there, i believe it nine senators and the governor, they faced a recall. that took about one year for that to come through. some senators were recalled and the governor was not. and other senators were not. they went through the process area they held their seats.

then it moved forward. though -- many ways the wisconsin story is the story of many americans. they were letting a democratic government know that they were displeased in a way that was legal on both sides, and the process worked here. unrest or lots of arrests. nine people were arrested before , when they disrupted galleries in the first days. shows that democracy can work, it tells the story of be used asice can tool, if fodder or a

you are not careful. it is not our job to be used politically. it is our job to ensure safety and that the government functions and ensure the constitutional rights of everyone. ♪ tourw on the c-span cities , talking about the location and public policy of madison made it what it is today. david mollenhoff: the

personality of madison is a fascinating thing to study. historians look at cities the same way that geographers look at people. when i look at madison, i want to know the qualities of the city. in order to do that, you need to study the city and learn the essence of the city, and how it developed and why. so out of that process, i came to interesting conclusions. they begin with fax -- facts. madison leaders have always thought of themselves as living in a special place. a place that requires regulations to control the quality of the environment. because it is special, many leaders have been visionary in the way that they view the city. those qualities lead to certain