10 years since the mass protests in Wisconsin It has been 10 years since the eruption of mass protests in the US state of Wisconsin provoked by anti-worker legislation introduced by Republican Governor Scott Walker. The mass upsurge, coming after decades in which the class struggle had been suppressed in the United States by the unions, contains important lessons for today under conditions of unprecedented social polarization in the midst of a deadly, uncontained pandemic. The protests in Wisconsin that erupted in February 2011 coincided with an international upsurge in the class struggle in the midst of a deepening crisis of the world capitalist order following the 2008 global financial crash. US-backed dictators in Egypt and Tunisia were toppled, and protests against austerity and social inequality spread across a number of countries, including Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Israel.