Wisconsin's elimination of collective bargaining rights sparked a nationwide attack on labor that fueled the rise of right-wing populism and helped elect Donald Trump.
Wisconsin working people are at a cross roads. If we are to regain workplace rights we will have to show the employer how valuable we are. In the absence of that, even with effective political mobilization, the balance of forces will not change.
In 2017, President Donald Trump and the Wisconsin GOP struck a deal with Foxconn that promised to turn Southeastern Wisconsin into a tech manufacturing powerhouse. Three years later, the factory — and the jobs — don’t exist, and probably never will.
If Democrats want to win Wisconsin this fall—a big “if” still, according to Democrats on the ground—they will have to face down the ugly, and still largely unacknowledged, legacy of white supremacy in America’s Dairyland.
Records make clear the Bradley Foundation no longer simply favors groups promoting its signature issues: taxpayer-funded school choice and increased work requirements for welfare recipients. It now regularly funds nonprofits that are, among other things, hostile to labor unions, skeptical of climate change or critical of the loosening of sexual mores in American culture.
"I don't think that the model that Scott Walker has put forward is a model for success," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "That's the model that the Koch Brothers have tried to spread everywhere."
Charles and his brother David Koch operate one of the most powerful conservative groups in the nation and have supported efforts across the country to curtail union rights.
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