Wisconsin innovations: worker's compensation, public employee unions, The Wave and now: Protest pizza via the Web

September 20, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

Egyptians send pizzaIt's historical fact that Wisconsin was the birthplace of many progressive ideas, including worker's compensation, public employee unions, child labor laws, and more. Some even have advanced convincing arguments that the nationwide sports stadium phenomenon known as The Wave originated at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison during boring late '60s Badger games.

Now add to the Wisconsin innovation list this: Protest Pizza via Web. During last spring's massive protests in Madison relating to Gov. Walker's union-busting bill, sympathizers in Egypt and nearly 50 other countries ordered pizza by email for hungry demonstrators surrounding the state Capitol. The idea originted with sympathizers across Wisconsin and quickly spread worldwide. 

Pizza by Web has now become a part of long-form, sit-in protests elsewhere. The current mass protests on Wall Street in New York City are the latest venue. From a post at FireDogLake.com:

... the organizers appear to be benefiting from past occupations elsewherre this year. Individuals from all over the world placed orders for pizza last night at a place called Liberato’s Pizza. The orders totaled $2,800 and the place ran out of dough and ingredients, which meant the protesters had to shift to wings orders. The website where orders were being placed crashed and the owner asked people to stop placing orders. As one protester tweeted, a real-life DDoS attack just took place on a pizza place.

The owner reportedly told protesters the place would name a pizza after the Occupy Wall Street action. Protesters are to vote on the toppings that they think should be on such a pizza. The pizza place is excited to be feeding the occupation, as it , “We’re restocked and ready for orders!” and “Firing up the Ovens, today is gonna be an awesome day!”

The organizers should find it refreshing that what they are doing convinced a number of people around the world to donate pizza. They should be even more energized if they can convince a number of people to donate food for the next days or weeks.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Ian’s Pizza became the pizza place of choice for the occupation at the Wisconsin Capitol, which was challenging Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union bill to eliminate collective bargaining for most public sector unions in the state. The place from Morocco, France, Antarctica, Czech Republic, South Korea, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, England, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Poland, Mexico, Singapore, Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Armenia, Israel, Hong Kong, Haiti, Iceland, Egypt, Belgium, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, India, Qatar, Taiwan, Lithuania, Afghanistan, Slovenia, Uganda, Nigeria, Ireland, UAE, Kenya, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Hungary, Senegal, Peru, Sweden, Philippines, Greece and Pakistan.

Ian’s Pizza delivered more than 300 pizzas during the first days of the Wisconsin occupation (which many know on Twitter as ). They, too, received more orders than they could handle. The Wisconsin occupation lasted from February to March.

If all these countries had people donate to an occupation in Wisconsin, surely the world can expect thousands of orders to come from around the world in support of an occupation on Wall Street? Anyone who saw the Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Job knows the reality: the kind of casino capitalism Wall Street engages in has profound impacts upon global economy. (In fact, one might expect most of the pizza orders to come from Iceland.)