Democrats Do Refuse to Follow Fascist Laws
Here at Milwaukee Beagle, we think there’s utility in giving even the most morally bereft, psychotically moderate Dem power player a point when they occasionally do something right. And even our closest, most reliable allies should be held accountable when they fuck up. With that, we bring you Democrat Dos and Don'ts: a weekly-ish feature highlighting the good dogs/gallants/ballers and the bad dogs/goofuses/scrubs in (mostly!) Milwaukee politics.
Democrats Do Refuse to Follow Fascist Laws
Senator John Jagler currently represents Wisconsin’s 13th Senate District, a Republican-leaning district that leans even more Republican under Evers’ new maps. It mostly covers Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, and Marquette Counties. Note that none of those are “Milwaukee County.”
Like a lot of bored, sad conservatives in Wisconsin, Senator Jagler is obsessed with Milwaukee, a place he seemingly rarely visits (except, perhaps, in his nightmares).1 Milwaukee, of course, is one of the only big economic engines in Wisconsin, alongside Madison and a few other cities.2 Senator Jagler’s district directly benefits from Milwaukee’s economic output, receiving a disproportionate share of revenue generated by our super scary, Mad Max-vibes metropolis. That’s because we have an unfair revenue sharing agreement that can be accurately summed up as Milwaukee makes, Watertown takes.3
Another part of this stupid, unfair shared revenue deal further punishes the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County by setting arbitrary requirements for police expenditures and hiring. This includes, along with inflating our police budgets at the expense of everything else, requiring MPS to hire and place 25 kindergarten cops by January 1, 2024. Senator Jagler, Wisconsin’s self-designated hall monitor, noticed that this has seemingly not happened, even sending a formal, self-righteous letter of concern to MPS Board President Marva Herndon.
Presumably Senator Jagler’s concern for his own district here is that without an armed police presence, feral MPS students will occupy and ruin Watertown’s famous Octagon House.
In any case, MPS leadership has seemingly, correctly refused to comply with this arbitrary, stupid requirement. MPS Martha Herndon, who was the subject of a laughable, failed recall attempt that we will get to shortly, publicly opposed the idea. Board’s Vice President4 Jilly Gokalgandhi has correctly, flippantly dismissed the requirement at a public forum, saying “we’re going to continue to focus on restorative justice as the main lever of serving our kids.”5
Sometimes all you need to do with a bad law is ignore it –pretend it doesn’t exist, and its power might just go away. Often this is as simple as jaywalking across a badly designed street, but it can also be done with something as seemingly toothy as a commandment from the state legislature and Governor Tony Evers.
At Milwaukee Beagle, we sincerely believe that it’s an ethical imperative to ignore and depower bad laws whenever and however we can. Consequently, we commend President Herndon, Vice President Jilly Gokalgandhi, Board Member Missy Zombor, and every other board members rolling their eyes at the idea of spending $1M a year to put armed agents of the state in our schools. We urge them to stay the course.
Democrats Don’t Commit Fraud (Afor Charter Schools
Sometimes it’s ok to mock our enemies. Reactionaries and conservatives are, on some basic level, ridiculous: they hate a lot of popular, common sense things that people like (universal health care, diversity, being kind to and supportive of trans kids), they make themselves feel like victims even when they’re in power, and they are –as the Harris/Walz campaign has repeatedly, successfully pointed out– deeply weird.
Unfortunately, there are also reactionary and conservative Democrats. And when they lose, it’s still very, very funny.
Pro-charter school and pro-school voucher dinguses recently tried, arrogantly and incompetently, to recall four members of the Milwaukee Public School board. They used MPS’s recent financial woes as a pretext to attack four reliable allies of public education –Board President Marva Herndon, Vice President Jilly Gokalgandhi, Board Member Missy Zombor and Board Member Erika Siemsen –while leaving be several members of the board’s Accountability, Finance, and Personnel (AFP) committee. The committee responsible for overseeing, you know, finances.
The recall effort was a disaster, one that its core organizers can and should be held accountable for. A casual review of a fraction of the submitted signatures to force a recall of MPS President Marva Herndon shows multiple pages that are very obviously entirely written in a single person’s handwriting –a clear violation of Wisconsin Statute 12.13(3)(a).6
Recall campaigns –and signature-driven campaigns in general– are supposed to have a specific, democratic function: they should demonstrate that a huge number of people are individually demanding a chance to kick someone out of their elected or appointed position. That’s why you have to collect individual signatures, via having hundreds or thousands of conversations, enough to show that the regularly scheduled elections or appointments we’ve already had need to be overturned or redone. And it is, frankly, despicable to invent a fake grassroots demand for something that only a few cynical people actually want.
This is a key difference between the aforementioned fascist law forcing cops into MPS schools and the longstanding statutory requirement that a “recall petition or petition for a referendum” be built on individual signatures. The former is something a few Republican assholes put together to punish Milwaukee and put MPS students under even more violent state scrutiny. The latter is a check on the powerful –but only when done correctly and honestly.
It’s difficult to know who, exactly, is to blame here, apart from those publicly, clearly associated with this failed campaign to undo and undermine what little democracy we have left in Milwaukee. We at Milwaukee Beagle have no interest in blaming folks on the ground for the incompetence of their superiors. So, with that in mind, here is a short list of everyone who has publicly, purposefully, clearly associated themselves with this mean, cynical, failed recall effort:
Tamika Johnson, the “organizer of the MPS School Board Recall Initiative,” according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Johnson denied any knowledge of forged signatures, in classic incompetent boss fashion. She was also the petitioner against MPS board member Erika Siemsen.
Chantia Davis, petitioner against Herndon
Kahrilynn Phelps, petitioner against Gokalgandhi
Nicole Johnson, petitioner against Zombor
That’s… actually about it. There were some folks identified as attendees at the initial recall press conference, but we won’t name them individually. It’s entirely possible that they were persuaded to join what seemed to be a good faith effort to make MPS better, and not one that would mostly incompetently harass Milwaukee public education’s most consistent defenders.
We will, however, name Aisha Carr and City Forward Collective. The former is a now-disgraced MPS board member credibly accused of lying about where she lived to get on MPS’ board. She is also a recent board member of City Forward Collective, an organization that, along with its political expenditure arm CFC Fund, consistently finances and supports pro-charter school and pro-school voucher candidates.7
Carr was repeatedly praised and defended by recall campaign organizers during the campaign’s kickoff press conference, despite the already public evidence that she lied to gain power over public education. Recall organizers seemingly gave out City Forward Collective fundraising information while gathering recall signatures. City Forward Collective founder Howard Fuller is one of the creators and consistent defenders of school vouchers, a program that now mostly funds rich suburban white assholes and their asshole kids’ private school educations.
Make of all this what you will. But we will continue to praise and support defenders of public education, especially those who work to keep it free from police violence, against those who undemocratically, sometimes incompetently, undermine it. So there.
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For your convenience, an image search of “John Jagler visits Milwaukee.”
Gross Domestic Product is a reductive measure but a useful shorthand for the economic value a place creates. In 2022, Wisconsin’s was about $400B. The Milwaukee area generated about 30% of that.
Compare the % revenue share increases for municipalities in Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, and Marquette Counties and compare them to the 10% increase for the City of Milwaukee here. Again, this is what municipalities are getting back, not what they’re actually generating.
No, not Vice Chair, John. But you were so close!
While Senator Jagler doesn’t seem to know how to link to a specific time in a YouTube video, we do.
We invite the reader to review pages 3 and 5 of this document and ask yourself, “Did ten different people actually sign these ten signatures?”
See City Forward Collective’s 2021 990, where Carr is listed as a “Director”
From Up North News: “The majority of students who attend [Wisconsin] voucher schools are white, and four-fifths of voucher students have never attended public school—meaning Wisconsin taxpayers are subsidizing costs for many families who have already demonstrated they can afford to send their children to private schools.”
