Saving our Democracy: Aug. 2-8, 2018

Jul. 31, 2018

5:19 p.m.

Scene from Poverty, Inc. playing as part of UW-Milwaukee's Summer Film Series at the Student Union on Monday, Aug. 6 at 7 p.m.

The Shepherd Express serves as a clearinghouse for all activities in the greater Milwaukee area that peacefully push back against discriminatory, reactionary or authoritarian actions and policies of the Donald Trump administration, as well as other activities by all those who seek to thwart social justice. We will publicize and promote actions, demonstrations, planning meetings, teach-ins, party-building meetings, drinking-discussion get-togethers and any other actions that are directed toward fighting back to preserve our liberal democratic system.

Thursday, Aug. 2

CLOSEmsdf and Prison Strike Day of Visibility @ Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (1015 N. 10th St.), 11:30 a.m.-11:30 p.m.

Starting at 11:30 a.m. and ending before midnight, activists will take a variety of actions at and around the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility to increase public awareness of jail conditions and express support to community members trapped inside this and other prisons in Wisconsin and the U.S.

100% Clean Energy Campaign Kick-Off @ Plymouth Church (2717 E. Hampshire Ave.), 6-8 p.m.

The Milwaukee Economic and Climate Justice Coalition is launching a push for Milwaukee to adapt a clean energy strategy. Embracing clean energy will address the climate and employment crises and result in better health and wellness for the entire community.

Friday, Aug. 3

Party for Progress @ Company Brewing (735 E. Center St.), 10 p.m.-2 a.m.

DJ DriPSweat and DJay Mando are the featured acts at a late-’90s and early-’00s R&B and hip-hop dance party with proceeds supporting the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Saturday, Aug. 4

Peace Action Wisconsin: Stand for Peace @ the corner of Kinnickinnic and Russell avenues, noon-1 p.m.

Every Saturday from noon-1 p.m., concerned citizens join with Peace Action Wisconsin to protest war and, literally, “Stand for Peace.” Signs will be provided for those who need them. Protesters are encouraged to stick around for conversation and coffee afterward.

Monday, Aug. 6

Resist Prison Slavery@ the Milwaukee Central Library (814 W. Wisconsin Ave., Meeting Room 2A), 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Come and support the Industrial Workers of the World and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee in their campaign against arbitrary regulations at Columbia Correctional Institution, for shutting down the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, and for working to connect different networks inside prisons’ walls.

Summer Film Series: ‘Poverty, Inc.’ @ UW-Milwaukee Student Union (2200 E. Kenwood Blvd., second floor), 7 p.m.

Drawing from more than 200 interviews filmed in 20 countries, Poverty, Inc. unearths an uncomfortable side of charity we can no longer ignore. It exposes the industry of “doing good,” whose results have been mixed and sometimes catastrophic.

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Tuesday, Aug. 7

Night Out for Safety and Liberation with Black and Pink MKE @ Cactus Club (2496 S. Wentworth Ave.), 8 p.m.-midnight

In observation of the annual national Night Out for Safety and Liberation, Black and Pink MKE will be gathering to redefine and reimagine what public safety means for our communities. Planned is a night of poetry, dancing and celebration to raise funds to support folks who are currently incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons.

To submit to this column, please send a brief description of your action, including date and time, to savingourdemocracy@shepex.com. Together, we can fight to minimize the damage that Donald Trump and others of his kind have planned for our great country.

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Comments (3)

Comment Feed

Mixed feelings on the Democratic Message, part 3

1) We know that making it better for the "producer" is not working well.

2) We also know from labor history that helping the "worker" has not worked well either.

3) But have we ever done things to help the "consumer"? Like consumer protection laws, for both product quality, for health insurance without pre-existing conditions, for sound financial advice that is not tainted by the broker's own greed. But none of them gave consumers more money to spend, the true creator of jobs.

So I have been wondering how to push for a new party platform that serves the consumer. Creating more paying customers is the best job creation program there is.

I think that making sure consumers all have enough money to live at least a room and board life plus enough to serve the for profit economy would be a good thing.

One important thing we all know as consumers is we don't like when we are being served by incompetent workers who do not want to be there, they only have the job because they need to pay their bills, feed their family, but they really don't care about being good at the job.

As good and conscientious workers, we also don't like to have those kinds of workers around us. Is it possible to pay those worthless workers to stay home? We once thought that "welfare" was doing this, paying able-bodied people to stay home, or was it really paying people we did not want employed to stay home? People that our racist members thought should not even have a job.

True, these racist thought that by denying a class of people a job they would starve them out or make them go away, or at least keep them out of the Woolworth lunch counters. But by them not having money to spend, they also were not valuable to the private, for-profit economy, all the more motivation to cut them out of American life.

I guarantee you, business will serve ANYONE who has a dollar in hand ready to spend, makes no matter what color hands it comes from. Suddenly, these people become valuable enough to want to reward the good ones with a job, maybe they will spend even more in the economy.

Remember I wrote that most people will quit their job if they win the lottery, they do so because they never really wanted to do that job anyway. But there are people who really do like their job, it gives them purpose, and they want to do well at that job. It's about matching people to the right job, and not overworking them beyond their capabilities.

At the same time, keeping bad workers out of the workplace may also help make jobs for good workers more enjoyable, no more having to cover for other people's mistakes, or having more work for you to do because a co-worker did their job wrong.

This will improve product and service quality, as well as improve job satisfaction.

Plus, by letting bad workers have the money needed to cover their basics, it gives the good workers more business, more opportunity to earn a good income. That creates GOOD jobs.

SE Wisc. Citizen more than 5 years ago

Mixed feelings on the Democratic Message, part 1

Both Republicans and Democrats usually focus on the money, that is why top 1% money controls the message that actually reaches the voter. People with money only care about money, as it is their tool of power and control over those who do not have as much money.

How do I mean? The Reagan message of "lower taxes on the rich, let the rich VOLUNTARILY choose how to spend (or deny) their money". The Hillary, Pelosi, Liz Warren message was about take it from the rich and spread it among the poor, in a way that leaves the poor unaccountable for what they do with that money. That is all coming to a head again.

But Trump's base really does not care about the money, what they care about is keeping people who are "not like them" out of their communities, out of their personal business. They kind of don't care that the top 1% can still keep "earning" money much faster than the Trump base does, life is good when they feel free to do their patriotic, Conservative power games against their neighbors with no government intervention. Using guns, religion, peer pressure, and local concentrations of wealth worked.

Democrats lose sight of why we in Wisconsin, the Midwest, much of America's heartland are the way we are. Who are we? We are European immigrants, many are Catholic, many are Lutheran, and are ancestors left "Old Europe" when they were still recovering from centuries where common people were mere squatters on land owned by the nobility, essentially "taxed" at 2 units of work output for 1 unit kept.

Our ancestors came here to get away from "working for the man", to be their own "king of my castle", to get away from having to live shoulder to shoulder with people that marched to a different drum. They came here with lifestyle values that said "nobody owns me, nobody tells me what to do, and I refuse to share with outsiders." I think the EU is largely "socialist" today because the ones that believed in sharing stayed there, they did not "escape to America".

Note that it really was not about the money, it was about how they spent their time. We are all blessed with 24 hours each day, regardless of being born rich or poor. It was all about who was in control of my 24 hours, me or somebody else. Regarding taxes and redistribution, as long as it was locally done and our more talented people's tax dollars stayed in my local community to help our own less talented people, we were okay with that.

That's why the Trump base calls itself "very fine people" and refuses to be labelled as greedy and un-sharing.

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We still live in a state with strong segregation between our various communities. For the Democratic party to succeed here on a statewide or US congress district level, they must respect and accommodate that.

As long as 3rd party issue ads can place focus on race, ethnicity, religion, LGBTQ, even guns and abortion, a message of integration and equal sharing is not going to work here. It is why we "gerrymandered" too.

SE Wisc. Citizen more than 5 years ago

Mixed feelings on the Democratic Message, part 2

But there is another part of "time" that we are all blessed with each day.

The vast majority of us are no longer in a "farming" culture like we started with in Colonial times. We turned into a money-based economy where we are no longer guaranteed a family supporting subsistence level of room and board in exchange for our labor.

We see our money-based economy of working our jobs and paying for the goods and services we need as totally unfair, not paying us for what our work is worth, and paying too much for what our goods and service are really worth... (taxes not even considered.)

Our segregation of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference and such still exists, and it affects our living next to each other in neighborhoods, children in school, who we work alongside, and who we sit near in our places of entertainment and dinner outings.

It's no wonder so many of us say we will quit our jobs and move to a new place if we win the lottery jackpot. We hate our jobs, we hate our being stuck in a living situation we do not think we deserve. We hate this both because the money is not fair, and we cannot get some separation from those we do not want to deal with.

So it is not just the "Trump base" need for control of our time and surroundings, it is also brings in the money problems. Two huge reasons for our division today, exactly how the people with the money can control our votes by constantly reminding us of our problems.

Can we solve it through government control of the money stream? Some think so, and you see this on both the Republican and the Democratic side. Can we solve it by forcing people to integrate and "play nice"? Some think so, this is pretty much the Democrats only, and what gives the Trump base its power.

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What people often do not realize is that this country's history lies in granting the power of the democratic vote to the "producer", that meant the land-owning farmer back in colonial times.

Our American roots were colonial farmers. Lots of farm laborers living and working on the owners land for room and board. Only owners voted, his wife, grown children, laborers could not. So naturally, the laws made were in favor of the land owner.

As we industrialized and mechanized, and our population moved to the cities with the factories, the power was still in the hands of the business owners, the "producer".

We lost sight of two things, valuing the "worker", and valuing the "consumer". The producer would be nothing without both of those. Our producers eliminated the need for many American worker by outsourcing to places with lower pay-scales and lower costs of living, but they still desperately need the paying consumer. There would be no need to run a business if there was nobody who could afford to be buying.

When making money, a producer really does not care if that dollar was from credit money or from hand-out money. Just so this money does not come from them.

This needs to be fixed, please vote accordingly.

SE Wisc. Citizen more than 5 years ago