Photo by Cathy Kaye
Julie Enslow
Julie Enslow
For Julie Enslow, fighting for a better, peaceful, justice-forward world has been a lifelong odyssey. She tries to live by the source-unknown quote, “Serving others is the rent we pay for taking up space on the planet.” As a peace activist and founding member of grassroots organization Peace Action of Wisconsin, Enslow has been involved in community organizing for more than half a century and remains a committed freedom fighter to this day. “One thing that’s always amazed me is how a human being will respond to an emergency situation and save the life of a complete stranger, putting their own totally at risk,” she affirms. “It’s an instinctive part of human nature to help others survive.”
Since its founding in the ‘90s, Peace Action of Wisconsin has advocated against U.S. war intervention and increased defense spending while supporting nuclear disarmament and the reinvestment into community needs and environmental protections—all from a nonviolent, anti-racist and gender-equal lens. Peace Action organized against the First Gulf War as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while currently mobilizing against war in Iran and providing weapons to Israel. The group has done substantial work around Palestinian human rights, Indigenous self-determination, labor movements, climate justice and mutual aid.
Originally from East Troy, Enslow grew up with progressive parents who instilled in her the value of service to the community and others from an early age. As a kid during McCarthyism, Enslow remembers when her family first got a TV set and watched the McCarthy hearings. “My dad couldn’t stand Joe McCarthy. That was my first political memory (laughs).”
Artist and Organizer
Having loved painting and drawing, Enslow studied art at Cardinal Stritch University and worked as an art teacher in inner-city schools and community centers for many years, plus she brought her creative wits to organizing spaces. “I painted more banners and signs for demonstrations than any drawings or paintings I had ever done (laughs). It became a way I integrated both parts of me as an artist and organizer.”
Upon moving to Shorewood in the early ‘60s, Enslow’s first exposure to activism was during the Civil Rights Movement when she plugged into a group of Shorewood activists campaigning for open housing ordinance. From there, Enslow joined the anti-war and anti-nuke movements during the Vietnam War. Issues frequently overlapped through the ‘60s and ‘70s, exposing the overarching problems of capitalism, patriarchy, racist imperialism and corporate greed. Enslow explains, “You had the Civil Rights Movement, and the anti-war and anti-nuke movements, and the farm workers and anti-poverty work, then the women’s movement came along in the early ‘70s. All of those things were happening at once, but you started to see the interconnections.”
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Enslow also participated in food cooperatives, community meal programs, school open enrollment initiatives and caring for unhoused folks, plus she got involved with the United Farm Workers (UFW). “We would go out every Saturday to the supermarkets and leave leaflets outside asking people to boycott grapes and lettuce,” Enslow mentions about UFW. “That national boycott really put pressure on the owners of large farms and it enabled workers to get contracts and form a union. Through that, I had the opportunity to meet Cesar Chavez.”
Nuclear Disarmament
She also became good friends with late Milwaukee socialist mayor Frank Zeidler. “He always had hard candy in his pockets, and he would give everybody some hard candy, then go on a socialist rant about how this candy was made by a socialist family in Chicago,” Enslow says. “He was one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met.”
Enslow co-founded the Milwaukee chapter of national organization Mobilization for Survival (MFS) in the late ‘70s, which combined the nuclear disarmament and anti-nuclear power movements. In just a couple of years, the organization’s membership had numbers in the thousands. Once the MFS national organization folded in the early ‘90s, however, its Milwaukee chapter morphed into Peace Action Wisconsin. Initially based in a Downtown office, Peace Action operated out of Riverwest for many years before relocating to Zao MKE Church (2319 E. Kenwood Blvd.) on Milwaukee’s East Side.
In the early 2000s, Enslow and partners George Martin and Brian Verdin formed the Milwaukee MLK Jr. Justice Coalition. In 2008, Enslow was honored with a Lifetime Peacemaker Award by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. Recent years have found Enslow continuing to spearhead programming focused on the link between militarism and climate change. “The U.S. military is the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world and is the world’s largest polluter,” she notes.
Comparing peace activism then and now, Enslow observes that the three main pillars of organizing—education, lobbying and public witness (demonstrations, civil disobedience, etc.)—remain largely unchanged. However, she points to how there is now a far more significant youth element to social justice movements. “I am so pleased to see this new crop of organizers who are doing these mass demonstrations around Gaza, around ICE and for the No Kings movement. It’s fabulous. Having organized lots of demonstrations and rallies and events over the years, I know how much work that takes and that there’s a real skill to that. Seeing people take up the mantle and doing this kind of organizing is so encouraging.”
One thing Enslow knows for certain is, we have so much more power as a united voice than as individuals, and that once the working class prevails over the Trump administration and its attempts at fascist authoritarianism, it is imperative we as a society build something new. She elaborates, “I’ve had to learn the lesson that you might not see any big successes in your lifetime. None of these things are going to happen overnight, and we’re not always going to see the fruits of our efforts in our lifetime. But we stand on the shoulders of people who come before us, and we hope to inspire the next generations to do the same.”
Peace Action of Wisconsin “stands for peace” at a different Milwaukee intersection every Saturday. For its schedule, visit the organization’s website.
