State Rep. Mandela Barnes is giving up his Assembly District 11 seat to challenge Sen. Lena Taylor for a place in the state Senate. Two Democrats are vying for this open Assembly seat: community organizer Darrol Gibson and former state Rep. Jason Fields. Both candidates spoke to the Shepherd about their campaigns and their goals for this district. Since no Republicans have jumped into this race, the winning Democrat in August will take office in January.
Darrol Gibson
Darrol Gibson took a leave of absence from Wisconsin Jobs Now, where he was the political director. Gibson grew up in the district and after experiencing homelessness for a period as a child, attended Rufus King High School and graduated from Messmer High School. With the help of the Educational Opportunities Program, he attended and graduated from Marquette University.
“I want to make sure that someone from the district is representing the district,” he said. “Who understands what it’s like to not know where your next meal is coming from, who understands what it’s like to have a sobbing mother who is struggling, who understands what it’s like to go to school and understands what it’s like to be successful and have done something with your life and not have your circumstances dictate your future. We need that fight in Madison, desperately, more than ever.”
Gibson said that while he doesn’t want to abolish the voucher system, he wants to invest in public schools and enact more accountability measures for charter and voucher schools so that the students who attend those schools receive a high-quality education.
“I think the concept of the voucher school system is great,” Gibson said. “But the execution, practice and implementation of it has been detrimental to my community. There needs to be stricter policies, regulations and standards for the voucher school system.”
He opposes the Republican-mandated Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program (OSPP), saying that Milwaukee legislators, teachers and residents weren’t involved in the Legislature’s decision to impose a Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) takeover.
“The community doesn’t want this,” Gibson said.
Gibson is also prioritizing criminal justice reform. Funding for corrections has increased at the same time public schools funds have been slashed, which he said sends the wrong message to young people.
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“There definitely needs to be a chokehold on funding our prisons,” he said. “If we made sure that the money we are spending on prisons goes to education, that kind of defeats the purpose of having a prison system. When you have a better education system you are more likely to have a good job and a stable family and less likely to go to prison.”
He said he would like to legalize medicinal marijuana and eventually recreational marijuana, since African American men are disproportionately jailed for low-level drug offenses even though people of color are not more likely to use drugs than white people.
He also said he’s troubled by the police shootings of unarmed black men, and said that police officers need to undergo more cultural sensitivity training, which is especially critical now that the state Supreme Court terminated residency requirements for city employees, who now can live in the predominantly white suburbs and work in Milwaukee.
“To police the community, you have to be a part of the community,” Gibson said. “You’ve got to know who to talk to and where to go and where the kids hang out.”
Gibson supports a $15 minimum wage, larger investments in workforce training, better access to small business loans and improved public transportation.
“We need a well-trained and educated workforce that can get to where the jobs are,” Gibson said. “We cannot attract businesses with cuts to public education and higher education.”
To learn more about Darrol Gibson, go to darrolgibson.com.
Jason Fields
Jason Fields represented Milwaukee in the state Assembly for eight years. Since leaving office in 2012, when he lost to Barnes, Fields has launched consulting firm, and has written two books—a self-improvement title, currently in revision, and Let’s Talk Business, an introductory business book for young adults who would like to become entrepreneurs. He is in the process of obtaining a bachelor’s degree from Cardinal Stritch University and has worked as a stock broker and financial analyst. He said he’s in the process of moving back into the district.
Fields said he’s running on his experience in the Assembly as someone who can get bills passed, even when he’s in the minority party. He said he was the Wisconsin Democrat with the most bills signed into law in the 2011-2012 session, including a law on procedures following youth concussions.
“I decided to run because I looked around at the City of Milwaukee and what was happening in Wisconsin and I thought there needs to be more solutions-based leadership,” he said of his current campaign. “There needs to be people who will go into office and have a priority to get things done in the areas of jobs, crime and education.”
Fields said that if elected he would work to reduce crime, specifically targeting car thefts in Milwaukee by teens and young adults, many of whom are repeat offenders.
“Through legislation you could look at the sentencing structure, what is the process of when you make a decision on increasing time or the penalty,” Fields said. “Or is it mandatory community service that they can do? Whereas now they’re going into the courts and they’re getting let out.”
He said he would use his position as a leader in the community to foster more partnerships and dialogue between the police and residents.
“As a legislator, you have the ability to pull those parties together,” Fields said.
To spur job creation, Fields said he would focus on jobs that will help Milwaukee become more competitive in the regional and global marketplace, such as those in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and agriculture. He said he’d like to partner with the nonprofit JASON Learning, which helps students, especially African American students, learn more about STEM careers. He’d also like to bring thinkLaw to Milwaukee, which helps students become critical thinkers. He said he also has a plan to help adults get certification and training in software platforms.
“My whole shift is to complement what we’re doing,” Fields said. “To really position the city and the 11th Assembly District on a competitive scale. We can’t do that if all we’re focused on is the supply-side jobs and hotel and retail management. There’s a place for those but that cannot be the core of what we do.”
Fields said he’d want to halt the cuts to the University of Wisconsin System and support K-12 education in all systems—public, voucher and charter.
“On K-12, I want to focus on quality education, that’s throughout all education, and making sure that regulations and standards are comparable across the board so that parents have the option to look at the value of the school and placing their child there,” Fields said.
Fields said he’s well positioned to work across the aisle in the Republican-dominated Legislature, especially on education issues.
“There has to be the political will to do something,” Fields said. “Unfortunately, when you have so many grownups in the room, this is where the problems begin. The grownups are fighting for what the grownups want. Rarely will you hear someone say and mean it that this is about the children.”
To learn more about Jason Fields, go to Jason Fields for 11th Assembly District on Facebook.
