Author Archives: William Garcia

Democrats Nationwide Working Hard to Guarantee Ballot Access for All Americans by Alice Benson

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Democrats Nationwide Working Hard to Guarantee Ballot Access for All Americans by Alice Benson

The freedom to vote, to have our voices heard and have a say in choosing our leaders, is fundamental to democracy. Generations of Americans fought and died for our right to vote. At a time when Republicans are focusing on restricting voting rights, Democrats continue to dedicate themselves to increasing participation among all eligible voters.

Wisconsin Republicans recently passed bills limiting access to absentee ballots, in a blatant attempt to keep people from voting and to make our elections less inclusive.

People with disabilities are disproportionately affected by these voter suppression bills and representatives from state organizations spoke out this week.

Barbara Beckert, Disability Rights Wisconsin:
“Absentee voting is a lifeline for many people with disabilities, because they experience so many barriers to voting in person, including lack of transportation, mobility restrictions, inaccessible polling places, and difficulty obtaining a state photo ID for voting. These bills will create new barriers that may disenfranchise many voters with disabilities, and criminalize some forms of assistance. We want to work with policy makers to protect the rights of voters with disabilities.”

Beth Swedeen, Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities:
“These bills make it harder for voters who already face significant challenges to have their voices heard and their votes count. Adding more administrative hurdles and penalties for voters or people trying to help voters is not fair or wise. For a truly representative government, the goal should be to make it easy for everyone to participate in elections.”

Fortunately, we can count on Democratic Governor Tony Evers to veto any anti-voting-access legislation the Republicans push through.

State and federal courts and election officials have confirmed many times that the 2020 election was free, fair, and accessible. Using disingenuous rhetoric and lies about election integrity, Republicans are leading an all-out assault on democracy and attempting to suppress votes from as many Democratic-leaning areas and voters as is possible.

Democrats continue to develop and propose plans that are popular with the majority of Americans. Republicans realize that they can’t compete on a policy level. Knowing that they will lose on a level playing field, Republicans have turned to targeted voter suppression.

The For the People Act, proposed and advocated by Democrats in the US Senate and House, is our next great civil rights bill and would help repair the damage from Republicans’ attacks at the state level. Unfortunately, Republican Senators, such as Ron Johnson, have blocked debate of the bill, and continue to stand in the way of progress.

Democrats, from President Biden to Governor Evers to grassroots activists in every community, are pushing hard to attain the basic principle of democracy: one person, one vote. They aim to expand opportunities for all eligible citizens to vote, and they will continue to fight for voting rights, regardless of race, place, or political party.

We all need to raise our voices to preserve and strengthen democracy.

Biden Visits La Crosse to Tout Progress on Infrastructure

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Biden Visits La Crosse to Tout Progress on Infrastructure by Ben Wikler, DPW Chair, & Ron Malzer, LCDP Board Member

“This will be a generational investment to modernize our infrastructure,” President Joe Biden declared, while visiting La Crosse on Tuesday June 29. He was describing the progress he has made in moving Congress toward passage of landmark infrastructure-building legislation.

President Biden had announced that the White House and a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators have reached an agreement on an infrastructure bill. Biden and Democrats in Congress had advocated effectively for working families across the country and in the state of Wisconsin. Biden also used his La Crosse visit to drive home the need for passing his “American Jobs Plan.”
President Biden came into office with the promise of working across the aisle to better the lives of American families—and he’s delivering on that promise. This agreement would represent the largest investment in American infrastructure in a century, the largest investment in public transit in American history, and the largest investment in clean drinking water and waste management in American history. And President Biden is seeking to pair it with another bill that, among many other key provisions, would make the child tax credit permanent.

Every neighborhood in Wisconsin will see the benefits of this plan, from expanded broadband access to investments in the physical infrastructure that keeps our cities and towns moving. We need federal support to build on Gov. Evers’s record investments in broadband and infrastructure and the nearly half a billion dollars in transportation funding in the governor’s first budget. President Biden, Gov. Evers, and Wisconsin Democrats in Congress continue to prove how good leadership can better our country and state.

Biden paid a surprise visit to the Pearl Ice Cream Shop, where he bought cones for Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Ron Kind, before ordering himself a two-scoop with strawberry ice cream and cookies-and-cream. Customers at The Pearl are now ordering that combo by asking for “The Joe Biden”, the Pearl’s owners report.

La Crosse’s Mayor Mitch Reynolds called the Biden visit “fantastic and really truly an honor.”

Biden left La Crosse with a message that goes beyond infrastructure, one that calls us to join him in working to heal America from the damage done by the Republican Party in the four years preceding Biden’s inauguration:

“When I was sworn in five months ago, I pledged to put my whole soul into bringing America together. I said I was running for three reasons, the last one of which I said is unite America,” he said. “I admit it’s difficult, and I think some of my friends in the press thought it was impossible. I still don’t think it is but — because I believe that there’s nothing we cannot do.”

Progressive Patriotism: Truth-Telling on the Fourth of July by Ron Malzer

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Progressive Patriotism: Truth-Telling on the Fourth of July by Ron Malzer

As we head into the July 4th weekend marking the 245th anniversary of independence from King George’s England, we have a new battle on our hands. It was launched this past year, in the form of a right-wing campaign for the whitewashing of America’s centuries-long history of structural racism.

Critical race theory, a decades-old perspective on structural racism, is currently caught in the crosshairs. The hard right, usually secretive, Koch brothers-funded organization ALEC, declared in December: “The 1619 curriculum is infecting our schools. Diversity training is taking over our workplaces. How do patriotic Americans respond?”, then replying with a call for “reclaiming education and the American Dream.”

Note the use of the word “infecting”, and ALEC’s wrapping into the American flag its call for history suppression, labeling this distorting of history “patriotic”.

Florida’s Republican Governor Rick DeSantis responded to the call, signing into law last month a ban on teaching critical race theory. With zero evidence, he denounced this history approach as “teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.” Never one to avoid advocacy for re-writing reality, Senator Ron Johnson urged right-wingers to “run for school board. Don’t let them teach critical race theory.”

There is no honest way to describe America’s multi-century history of chattel slavery, “Indian removal”, and other atrocities of America’s 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries other than as government-sponsored genocide. A full accounting of American history names that, and then can rightly claim those actions in American history that led to progress, and advanced the common good.

A progressive patriotism honors as heroes those who fought, and those who supported, America’s revolution against the British monarchy. It amplifies our appreciation for those who risked or gave their lives to terminate the Confederate dream of slavery forever. And it praises in gratitude, those, who in the 1940s, saved the world from a horrific nightmare. Without their heroic deeds, we may have had a globe dominated by a German fuehrer, an Italian dictator, and a Japanese emperor.

Progressive patriotism also honors women’s liberationists, both early-20th-century suffragists, and later-century feminists. It gives reverence to Dr. King, whose life was taken at age 39 as he fought for racial and socioeconomic justice. And we remember John Lewis, for the head-bashing he endured as a civil rights marcher, and for decades of tireless work promoting voting rights for Black Americans.

Progressives fully affirm the inspiring and beautiful aspirational words in our Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

May we as progressives carry the torch to illuminate our past, cast light on the realities of our present, and shine a bright light as we journey toward a more racially just future. This is how we as Americans truly honor the Declaration of Independence this Fourth of July.

Democrats Win Big on Healthcare Access & Juneteenth Federal Holiday by Ron Malzer

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Democrats Win Big on Healthcare Access & Juneteenth Federal Holiday by Ron Malzer

Thirty-one million Americans will continue to have healthcare access under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Thanks to a US Supreme Court ruling just issued on June 17, the ACA is here to stay.

Passed into law by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama in early 2010 , Obamacare has been fought relentlessly by Republicans for eleven years. Republicans have spent massive amounts of time, on the taxpayer dollar, demonizing Obamacare, they have no replacement to offer.

The Supreme Court is ruling shuts down the latest GOP ploy against healthcare access for ordinary Americans. Red states had asked the US Supreme Court to throw out the ACA, based on the bizarre theory that a tax penalty, currently zero, made the ACA unconstitutional. Seven members of the Court had no trouble writing a legal ruling that can be summarized in one word: “Baloney!”

Governor Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul worked together to withdraw Wisconsin from this privilege-based lawsuit, one which had the full support of our GOP-controlled legislature. A big thanks to Governor Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul for being tireless champions of healthcare access for every American!

This decision is a huge relief for the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who’ll continue to have access to affordable health insurance under the ACA.

The court’s decision delivers a blow to Senator Ron Johnson and Republicans across Wisconsin, who’ve made it a top priority to strip health care away from millions of Americans, including Wisconsinites.

Going forward, the state GOP almost certainly will continue working to limit BadgerCare coverage. And so, healthcare will again be on the ballot in 2022. Gov. Evers remains committed to expanding BadgerCare to cover more Wisconsinites.

Wisconsinites need to build a strong voter turnout to turn out of office those GOP legislators who are working to limit healthcare access.

Runaway medical costs are locked in place by the GOP. Democrats have been and will continue working to lower health care and prescription drug costs. Thanks to Democratic leadership and President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, more Americans than ever are now covered under the ACA.

And on Thursday, President Joseph Biden signed into law a bill that never would have seen the light of day with a Republican president or a Republican congress. It was a bill that is a symbol of progress on America’s reckoning with systematic racial injustice, and symbols are important. Starting next June 19th the day in which slavery was finally ended by an 1865 decree, Juneteenth will be celebrated as a federal holiday.

Let us make every day a day to reflect on the 244-year American genocide, and our failure as a country to address the severe long-term impact of white supremacy. And let us pledge to work tirelessly between now and Election Day 2022 to work toward healthcare access for all!