Jacqueline Marie Captain, 1957 - 2024

Jackie Captain, one-year anniversary of her passing — One full year has passed since my wife, Jackie, died.
What a life; man, did Jackie love people.
I do not know if I could have made it this far without the showering of love and good will that came my way.
From our neighborhood alone, Jamestown, powerful emissions of peace arrived like explosions.
We are going to have a great Summer.
If folks ever feel down, I can tell you the basic decency of humanity is so immense, decency is axiomatic.
Count on it.
Happy Summer!

Huntley-Cooper Silent on Scheme to Rename Fitchburg City Hall — After Her

Frances Huntley-Cooper Assumed Royal Bearing

Commentary

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — The scheme to rename City Hall after a one-term mayor who served in the early 1990s is looking a little sadder and sleazier two weeks after the private decision of Frances Huntley-Cooper and Michael Johnson was shared with the public, (Fitchburg Star. Wisconsin State Journal, Madison365).

The effort reportedly is the brainchild of Johnson, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County, and Huntley-Cooper.

Johnson is not a resident of Fitchburg, and was not a Wisconsin resident when Huntley-Cooper served one term as mayor beginning in 1991.

Still no public comment from Frances Huntley-Cooper after numerous local news stories. She is assuming a royalist posture that she has no public duty to explain to Fitchburg residents why we must  pay public paens to her alleged greatness. 

This monarchical silence is an interesting take from someone who wants the seat of local representative government and democracy named after her.

But we should not be surprised.

Our job as residents, as seen by Frances Huntley-Cooper and Michael Johnson, is to ratify their scheme  and sing public hosanna to the highest. Frances Huntley-Cooper has always acted like the public owes her.

Our most sacred traditions and cherished democratic values mean nothing to Frances Huntley-Cooper.

Effort to Rename Fitchburg, Wisconsin City Hall Is Politically Correct Theater

Commentary

Update: The Fitchburg Star is out with the story and guess what Frances Huntley-Cooper deigns to offer as comment: Nothing. As in, "Huntley-Cooper did not immediately respond to a Dec. 2 email from the Fitchburg Star asking for comment."

The narcissism and anti-democratic attitude towards the Fitchburg people of Ms. Huntley-Cooper are astounding. C'mon, don't we the people of Fitchburg deserve even a comment? Guess not.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Emily Hamer reports in the Wisconsin State Journal on an effort to change the name of Fitchburg City Hall to the Frances Huntley-Cooper Municipal Building, (Madison365).

Ms. Huntley-Cooper is the first African American mayor in Wisconsin history. She served one term, unremarkable, from 1991 to 1993.

The effort reportedly is the brainchild of Michael Johnson, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County, and others. Johnson told Madison365 he has considered his decision for about a year.

Johnson is not a resident of Fitchburg, and was not a Wisconsin resident when Huntley-Cooper served one term as mayor beginning in 1991.

Renaming City Hall is a foolish idea on too many levels to itemize here.

It seems redolent of the compulsion to establish a Ronald Reagan monument in every county in the United States, or plastering someone's face on public structures to honor their greatness, like Stalin, Mao or Saddam Hussein.

But characterizing, honoring or debasing any human being on the basis of skin color, even a one-term mayor who served some 30 years ago, honors racial classification schemes leading anti-fascist writers, such as Norman Cohn, Ashley Montagu and Marvin Harris, to note similar enterprises as meaningless myth, an idea that 'race' enjoys a status as anything but irrational, nonsensical and demonstrably false.

I don't know why Frances Huntley-Cooper endorses this effort.

Thirty-one years ago, I broke the news in The Capital Times that Ms. Huntley-Cooper would become Wisconsin's first black mayor in Nov. 1990 when she declared for a mayoral run.

Huntley-Cooper downplayed the fact of 'Wisconsin's first black mayor' in a phone conversation then, and I had to rewrite a draft incorporating her comments and stated campaign priorities before I filed the piece.

What has changed since then, in my view, is the rise of woke identity politics that glorifies and validates 'race' as a system purporting to have non-zero scientific status.

I don't think the liberals raising this flag of the cancel culture have the faintest clue how toxic and ridiculous is their performative theater in this proposed renaming, not seen since the great removal of the 42-ton boulder from UW-Madison because the pre-Cambrian rock was deemed racist.

Hey, nothing against Frances Huntley-Cooper, but I think I can make a good case for renaming City Hall after Doug Morrissette, Mark Vivian, Roger Tesch, Jay Allen, Tom Clauder, Dave Herbst or current Mayor Aaron Richardson, among dozens of others who have served our city honorably.

We could even emblazon the front of City Hall with a likeness of the chosen's face.

If we are going to brand and rename monuments, buildings and parks, then I want Western Hills Park by our home renamed after my wife, Jackie Captain, for her outstanding work on anti-fascist artists, Ben Shahn and Eugene Higgins.

Further, I want to rename my street, now Monticello Way in the Jamestown neighborhood — named after a seventeenth century indentured servant-cum-slave colony — renamed Don Kosterman Way in recognition of this Fitchburg resident's academic work on the Milwaukee Police Dept's unconstitutional effort to sabotage the publishing of Kaleidoscope in the 1960s-70s.

See what I am getting at here?

Representative democracy and municipal policy are not about one person, or even one body of elected persons.

Especially on the municipal level, democracy is about the people and their liberties that make democratic processes a breathing monument that lives forever for future generations.

If we are truly to rename a such a vital public building as City Hall, the process being contemplated — a Common Council resolution — is inadequate.

We need a much more deliberative process that would include and invite extensive public input, a long list of nominations, including a referendum that offers no-name change at all, because every present and future Fitchburg resident has a stake in this enterprise.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin Malarkey — Kierstin Huelsemann and Dorothy Krause

Identity Politics Goes Down the Sewer

Update: Dave Herbst upsets five-term incumbent Ald Dorothy Krause - 375 votes - 323 votes.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — There was a time not long ago when sticking up for neighbors against home invasions, break-ins, and vehicle thefts was politically axiomatic. 

Everyone was for the sanctity of the home, it didn't matter your politics, beliefs or commitments.

No more, not in Fitchburg.

The Fitchburg, Wisconsin. Spring elections have begun, and a Common Council race for Fitchburg alder district one is drawing attention on this score. 

The candidates are Dorothy Krause (inc) and Dave Herbst.

Herbst is a popular former youth coach, a hard-working old-school guy who helps neighbors all over the district with problems and advice.

Raised on a farm, now a general manager with a utility services company, Dave seems to know a lot about just about everything.

A branch had fallen down over the Winter, and when the snow thawed, I asked Dave if he had a saw I could borrow. Two mornings later before I even had my coffee, I saw Dave outside. He had cut up the whole branch, ready for pick-up.

This exemplifies who he is, and I want this guy on the Fitchburg Common Council, because Dave Herbst really likes to solve problems. 

Last weekend, after a big old couch was dumped on the neighborhood park-basketball court, Dave calls up neighbors and says, let's take an axe to this thing, break it up and get rid of it. Problem solved.

One of the problems Dave is working on now is building strong neighborhoods to defend against the vehicle theft and home break-ins in Dane County. It's bad; Google vehicle thefts Dane County WI.

Turns out the Fitchburg Council incumbent, Dorothy Krause, and her campaign, refuse to criticize the criminals terrorizing the region, and when pressed actually identity with the criminals against the victims.

Check out Fitchburg Politics - Facebook. A recent dialogue instructs.

A Dorothy Krause supporter wrote a pro-Krause piece, and I wrote in reply that the alder was out-of-touch with her constituents and unresponsive to crime victims in the district.

In sum, the families of criminals should be paying their victims, not the other way around.

So, one Kierstin Huelsemann writes in part, "What is funny to me is how you continue to claim to be progressive in your politics while championing inequitable solutions, out dated (sic) narratives, as well as solutions that continue to fail to actually change things in any meaningful way."

This is in reply to my criticizing criminal terrorizing homes. 

I tried again. "You again express no empathy for my neighbors whose homes have been attacked," I write.

The reply: "I really do feel sad that that is where your mindset is. Hopefully one day you will be willing to shift and build your analysis/understanding a bit more," and comprehend "transformative solutions" to the criminals' invasion of homes.

Krause just waves a flag and the Democratic Party comes running.

April 6 is Election Day. If Krause is where the Democratic Party is heading, there is a bad storm brewing.

Writes Fitchburg resident, Steven Karlin, after being sent to links spelling out "transformational politics.":

Kierstin Huelsemann,

Holy crap, it looks like those articles were written by a random text generator. As far as the chart goes, when the strategy is to create a strategy, you lose me. 

 

Is there a candidate who favors a social change model where the a-holes who stole my kids' bikes out of the garage in broad daylight have to give the bikes back and then go to jail where they can't steal anyone else's bikes? Because that person would get my vote.

Fitchburg Residents Defend and Clean Up the Park, Neighborhood

Fitchburg residents, Eric Podell, Dave Herbst and Alan Craig,
take an axe to old couch despoiling their neighborhood. On a
Saturday morning, they picked up garbage, trash and refuse
left on residents' and City property in an ongoing battle.

Update: Dave Herbst upsets five-term incumbent Ald Dorothy Krause - 375 votes - 323 votes.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — In Fitchburg's Jamestown neighborhood, an enclave of beautiful homes with immaculate yards and gardens dot King James Blvd in this city bordering Madison.

The families love their homes and take the interested on tours around the neighborhood with obvious pride. Lovely homes and community though, have become a point of contention.

This is because a small, unorganized group of folks in the same neighborhood adamantly believe in their right to dump garbage, litter in these same lawns and leave old couches and other trash in a nearby park. Outcasts and hooligans, right? Wrong.
They have support from a sitting City Council member and other supporters who regard complaints about the garbage as per force racist is another illustration of how deranged identity politics have become. 

Neighborhood residents have had enough. One resident, Dave Herbst, is running for alder against the pro-garbage-in-your-lawn incumbent, Dorothy Krause.

On a beautiful Saturday morning, Herbst and three neighbors canvassed the neighborhood picking up litter, and breaking up an old, very heavy couch dumped in a neighborhood park next to a basketball court.

The residents expressed disgust with Alder Krause, seen as perpetually defending the vandalism and destruction of a neighborhood she was elected to defend.

Dave Herbst is no stranger to complex municipal policy questions, but he is making this simple fight for clean and safe neighborhood a major plank of his campaign.

Fed-up, these residents literally took an axe to an old couch, and broke it up for the City to pick up, after taking away the bulk.

The pictures and video below chronicle the events of Saturday morning and the larger fight to defend a neighborhood, homes and a way of life. 

 

A job well-done, and the fight continues as Dave enlists new help for the future:

Wisconsin Children Send Message to Trump

Children at Madison, Wisconsin's Western Hills Park left a
message for the nation under assault from Donald Trump

Madison, Wisconsin — The Western Hills Park is a rest-and-recreational park on the Madison-Fitchburg border.

Joggers and passersby are treated to the pleasant hum of screams that only children can voice in range and casual oneness with their world.

In the nation meanwhile, a white supremacist movement led by a pathological president is directing a public-private engine of hate against the press, intellectuals, cities, the University, non-aligned civil servants, artists, many classes of people deemed decadent and dangerous, and even the sacred covenant of family.

The wolves of hate are loosed.

Cultivating military-clad municipal police, a collection of creepy billionaires and white supremacists the nation-over, Trump has discovered yelling 'fire' in an enclosed space causes chaos, as the smirking, strutting lunatic inflicts panic and trauma.

What to do?

Some children at Western Hills Park have a plan — fundamental and simple: Love, welcome and hope.

It's a simple message written in chalk by children on a walk-way through the middle of the park.

The young are always available to lead, if we are wise enough to listen their counsel.

As Robert F. Kennedy spoke in Capetown, South Africa on June 6, 1966:

Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.

Two years after the Capetown address, on June 6, 1968, RFK was assassinated at the age of 42.

Today, the extent to which we embrace progress and courage over timidity is our republic's margin for survival and indeed that of humanity's place in the biosphere on our planet.

Wisconsin GOP Ousts Elections Agency Chief—Good Riddance

Michael Haas ousted as Wisconsin elections chief

Madison, Wisconsin—Good news out of Wisconsin as a state bureaucrat, Michael Haas who does not understand the powerful, affirmative right to vote in this state, has been ousted as the state Elections administrator.

The state senate Republicans justified the action by making liberty claims concerning John Doe public integrity probes.

"The Wisconsin Senate voted Tuesday to oust leaders of the bipartisan state agencies charged with running elections and overseeing ethics laws, the latest move by Republicans to exact revenge on anyone connected with a now-closed investigation into Gov. Scott Walker and other conservatives," reports Scott Bauer, (AP).

There is little doubt this act by the Republican-led state senate is an act of political retaliation.

But there is little doubt that the now-defunct John Doe statute was an over-the-top mechanism to probe public integrity crimes.

Even less doubt exists that Haas sees his job as flacking for municipal election clerks who obstruct voting rights, an increasingly common occurrence in Wisconsin.
---
A victim of voter obstruction, Mal Contends on Aug 9, 2016, was obstructed from voting for a full 35 minutes on a ridiculous pretext in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

I have spoken with, and engaged in email conversations with Haas numerous times and the only tangible move from Haas is his suggestion that as an option I vote absentee to avoid hostile poll workers.

I should not have to vote absentee; Haas' suggestion that I vote absentee avoids the question I posed asking why Fitchburg poll workers feel empowered to obstruct voters with whom they have an animus.

Good riddance.

Out in the Cold—Fitchburg Kicks Black Children out of Shelter, Wisconsin Winter Looms

Beautiful children in Fitchburg Wisconsin
are relegated to picnic tables by City officials.
Those who dare care for minority children
are targeted by the Fitchburg Common Council
and white City Hall bureaucrats.

Fuck you, Fitchburg—An editorial

Update: Group is now meeting at an area church, Facebook reports. Good hope; one feels confident cops will not invade, harass, fine or kill there.
--
Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Fitchburg is a suburb just south of Madison run by white people, for white people, wrestling with the Black Problem.

It's August 2014 and a Fitchburg cop pulls outside of the polling place in district one with red and white lights flashing, creating a barrier between the polling place and King James Way, the black sector of the Jamestown neighborhood named after a 17th century Virginia slave colony.

I'm working as a poll worker and I point out the cop car outside the polling place: "Good," says the new chief election inspector, a white racist named Dale Zahorik.

Zahorik hates black people. Do you think communities of interest who don't trust cops should have to encounter a cop car with lights flashing as a condition of voting? I ask.

Zahorik evades the question, and I call up the City Clerk's office, and its reaction, from one Patti Anderson, vacillates between feigned indifference and hostility toward me challenging why I am questioning the presence of the cop.

The cop is but one example of white hostility towards black folks here. There's Zahorik's refusing to put out a polling place sign out on Election Day, April 2016, short-staffing the ballots table, open antagonism towards black voters, intimidation, stuffing the roster of polling workers with white racists, Ron Johnson and Pat McCutcheon for example, several instances of voter obstruction I have witnessed, challenged and documented between 2007 and 2016, most recently in a related civil case in Fitchburg Municipal Court where I testified under oath a detailed chronicling of the placing of the White Power Caucus in Fitchburg aldermanic district one polling place.

Zahorik and the City Clerk's attitude exemplify the white consensus towards black residents from City Hall. Blacks are not wanted here and they should leave.

Sometimes though, pictures tell a clearer story.

Wanda Smith runs an informal, after-school club to help out children with homework, structure, comfort, encouragement, a little something to eat, and a general peace-and-love gathering to help children not-quite-yet-traumatized by living in Fitchburg.

Fitchburg knows how to handle Wanda Smith.

For working with minority children, Smith has been unremittingly harassed by City Hall and the Common Council. In a piece that is shaking the conscience of Dane County Wisconsin, Nicholas Garton reports, "Fitchburg alder Dorothy Krause wanted to use police records and licensing requirements to shut down the after-school homework club run by longtime community volunteer Wanda Smith, who she considers 'not someone who should be in charge of groups of children,' according to emails obtained by Madison365."

This is pure character assassination and harassment of a peace-loving citizen.

There's a small, unoccupied park shelter off King James Way in Fitchburg in the black sector. Smith meets with the children near there.

Writes Amelia Royko Maurer in Facebook last night:

Wanda Smith has to conduct her after school program outside if they want to be near their homes, which they do because it builds a sense of place and community and saves on transportation costs. The city of Fitchburg won’t let them use the unoccupied park shelter without paying an unaffordable amount. [Alders] Dorothy Krause, Jason Gonzalez, Tony Hartmann, [and former Mayor] Shawn Pfaff, if you’re looking for criminal behavior, look no further than yourself and colleagues. This is unconscionable and your collective regrets and care are proven hollow by your willingness to let this continue.

Soon, the kids are going to get cold. But besides the weather, they have to cope with Fitchburg City Hall and the Fitchburg cops who relegate the kids to a picnic table.

Below are recent shots of these human children.

Fuck you, Fitchburg.

To Wanda Smith and those children blessed by her love, this is for you:

"Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Robert F. Kennedy
University of Cape Town, South Africa
"Day of Affirmation" Speech June 6th, 1966 

Wisconsin Voter Obstruction Is as Republican as Racism and Corruption

Fitchburg Wisconsin — Wisconsin is regarded by civil rights workers as the worst state to be black and brown in America.

But not only because most white Republicans work to ship minorities into prisons and segregated sectors in Wisconsin's few urban regions of significant populations.

Blacks are targeted at the polls.

Republicans and only Republicans engineered the transformation of Wisconsin election law in an ambitious project to "disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government," in the words of Judge Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in a major voting rights case still being litigated, (Mal Contends, Mal Contends, The Progressive).

Among those likely to vote against the Republican Party are the easily identifiable folks of black and brown skin color.

Though nationally the Republicans' obstructive photo voter ID law garnered wide attention, dozens of party-line statutes have been passed by Republicans since 2011, (Ferral, The Capital Times).

The Republican gerrymandering effort intended to stop non-Republicans from using the polling place to safeguard their interests is one major objective of the Republican anti-voting project, (ScotusBlog,  Election Law).

Obstruct Voters Locally

Other Republican initiatives include white poll workers interrogating voters at the polls, and in an escalation of conspicuous hostility the use of expensive civil citations against voting rights activists: Me.

This Summer Mal Contends will litigate two bogus disorderly conduct civil citations issued by the city of Fitchburg, Wisconsin against me.

One citation was written on August 9, 2016, Fall Primary Election Day. This citation will be argued in front of a jury this Summer in Dane County Circuit Court.

A second citation was written on May 10, 2017 alleging even more misconduct on Aug. 9, 2016 and served seconds after the litigation of the first citation in Municipal Court resulted in a judicial ruling of no fine. The presiding Municipal Judge, Hamdy Ezalarab, recused himself from hearing the second citation which will heard at trial on Aug. 3 at 6:00 p.m by a substitute judge

The Fitchburg City Attorney's office, Mark R Sewell and Valerie A. Zisman, is engaged in misconduct and malicious prosecutions, among other violations of ethics which I will pursue in the future.

Stay posted. This may appear light stuff from a small, corrupt Wisconsin city. It's not light stuff. From an email sent by me to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Aug. 5, 2016, four days before I was obstructed from voting on Aug 9, received the first two of four visits to our home by armed Fitchburg Police, and received the first of now two civil disorderly conduct citations:

From: Mike Leon [ ...]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2016 8:42 AM
To: Lowe, Diane - ELECTIONS
Subject: Polling Place
Importance: High

Diane,

Could you email me a URL or GAB (WEC) memo that would indicate how many election inspectors are supposed to hand out ballots at a table in a polling place? I believe it to be two.

A ... chief election inspector in our polling place, where I worked on April 5, positioned one election inspector at the ballots table, and predictably quite a voter bottleneck ensued.

Other elections to my memory featured two inspectors on ballots.

I need a memo or other publicly available authority on this two-people-on-ballots question.

I emailed our election and city clerk, around late April on this but no one got back to me. They are not too crazy about questions RE what they regard as their apparent turf, though I believe myself as a resident and long-time election inspector to be a stakeholder.

Administering elections should be about rules and regulations, to my view.

Mike
#

Voting Rights Battle in Fitchburg, Wisc; Pursuit of Poll Worker, Civil Rights Activist Proceeds

Fitchburg, Wisconsin Municipal Judge
Hamdy Ezalarab is a popular figure on the
 bench in Dane County, Wisconsin.
Photo is from 1969,
(Schmidt, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Memorial Union TerraceViews)

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Who knew advocating for voters would provoke the wrath of a handful of white bureaucrats of a small Wisconsin suburb?

If you knew Fitchburg aldermanic district number one like I do, you would know.

I've worked roughly 10 years as a poll worker in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, and voted at the same polling place for some 18 years.

Fitchburg is heavily segregated, stained by open racism, and my voting district's poll workers include a handful of white racists who loathe me, I calculate, roughly to the degree I regard them as miserable, xenophobic and deceitful.

The all-white Fitchburg City Clerk's office backs the racists, fervently.

On August 9, 2016, I was obstructed from voting by this group, and after I objected, citing election law and election authorities, I received a civil citation for disorderly conduct.

Why did this happen? The full context is I regularly embarrassed the City Clerk's office by pointing out defects in the operation of my polling place. I'll get specific in Dane County, (Wisconsin), Circuit Court.

The United States and Wisconsin Constitutions and state election law are diminishing under the white-power banner predominating among this small number of racists in our city.

On May 10, 2017, Fitchburg Municipal Court, (a fine, municipal judge), found me guilty of the civil citation, ordering no fine. No fine.

Clearly, I will avail myself of a jury trial in Dane County Circuit Court and appeal this bogus citation.

Not easy to hear racists, whom I explained are the "White Power Caucus," lie repeatedly in open court but at trial I followed advice of friends and more or less went along with a few objections.

I will prevail in Dane County Court in front of a jury, Dane County Circuit Court is a different forum.

Of note, before defamations from the City Clerk's office were ruled inadmissible, the City Attorney's office in the person of one asst. City Attorney Valerie Zisman, threatened in a conference in the hall to write a new citation for August 9, 2016, which is precisely what happened after court adjourned.

I am confident.

Now, however, I have two disorderly conduct citations, one going to Dane County Court, and the new citation in limbo for now.

The second citation was indicated by the City Atty's office in court, to which the judge replied, not in my court. The judge also stated, he was finished with the citation and the matter was closed, stating he had enough, (not a direct quote).

Stay posted. This may appear light stuff from a small, corrupt Wisconsin city. It's not light stuff. From an email sent by me to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Aug. 5, 2016, four days before I was obstructed from voting on Aug 9, received the first two of four visits to our home by armed Fitchburg Police, and received the first of now two civil disorderly conduct citations:

From: Mike Leon [ ...]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2016 8:42 AM
To: Lowe, Diane - ELECTIONS
Subject: Polling Place
Importance: High

Diane,

Could you email me a URL or GAB (WEC) memo that would indicate how many election inspectors are supposed to hand out ballots at a table in a polling place? I believe it to be two.

A ... chief election inspector in our polling place, where I worked on April 5, positioned one election inspector at the ballots table, and predictably quite a voter bottleneck ensued.

Other elections to my memory featured two inspectors on ballots.

I need a memo or other publicly available authority on this two-people-on-ballots question.

I emailed our election and city clerk, around late April on this but no one got back to me. They are not too crazy about questions RE what they regard as their apparent turf, though I believe myself as a resident and long-time election inspector to be a stakeholder.

Administering elections should be about rules and regulations, to my view.

Mike
--
More to come. Much more.

Wisconsin Republicans' Voter-Suppression Project Stopped 10,000s in 2016

Human Being, Gladys Harris of Milwaukee,
stopped by Wisconsin Republicans
from voting in 2016. From photo by
 Carrie Antlfinger, Associated Press.

2,976,150 Votes Is Less than 3,068,434 Votes
- "They prevented us from voting," says human being.

Update - See Berman, The Nation.
Fitchburg, Wisconsin — When Wisconsin Republicans began their massive voter-suppression project in 2011, mandating a new voting qualification in photo voter IDs, the prospect made Republicans "giddy," noted a staffer, Todd Allbaugh, present at a Republican Party caucus, (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sommerhauser, Wisconsin State Journal).

Associated Press writers, Christina A. Cassidy, Ivan Moreno, have a piece out showing Wisconsin Republicans' transformation of election law yielded significant results in stopping people from voting, lowering the total vote in Milwaukee and statewide, (Wisconsin State Journal). [See also Mal Contends, Mal Contends, Chris Carson and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

"Overall, nearly 3 million people in Wisconsin voted last November, about 91,000 fewer than in 2012. Milwaukee, a power center for Democrats, reported that 41,000 fewer people voted there than in 2012," note Cassidy and Moreno.

The 41,000 voting decrease in Milwaukee alone, where "urban" types reside as noted by Rep. Paul Ryan in 2012, nearly doubles Donald Trump's 2016 victory margin of some 22,000 votes.

In 2012, some 3,068,434 votes were cast for president in Wisconsin. In 2016, this figure is 2,976,150 votes.

The Republican voter suppression project, not often acknowledged, extends to the polling place where voters are harassed in a corruption of the voting process.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin

Today, at 5:00 p.m. (Central), this writer, a Wisconsin voter and a current, 11-year election inspector, will attend the Fitchburg, Wisconsin Municipal Court to challenge a bogus civil citation for disorderly conduct, issued in retaliation for years of sticking up for voters obstructed and harassed in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, an increasingly racist and toxic city of some 25,000 people.

I urge you to attend the proceeding, or view on on of these Charter Communication cable channels: Fitchburg City Channel 985, Fitchburg City Channel 986, or Fitchburg Access Community TV, (FACT) Channel 987, as possible.

A small number of white citizens in Fitchburg, Wisconsin aspires the community to become a white-dominated police state, and is making consequential strikes.

Fitchburg, Wisc Police Harassment Escalates Against Poll Worker Who Blew Whistle on Voter Obstruction

Rushed piece follows no sleep by author, and inflicted trauma to household by 1:00 a.m., police intrusion

First-person report- updated

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Somewhere deep in my life experience, I don't want to believe cops are lying, harassing pieces of human filth.

But I know better after living 53 years in Wisconsin.

Following the Aug. 9, 2016 civil citation given to Fitchburg, Wisconsin polling worker who blew the whistle on voter obstruction, police have harassed a home in a quiet, suburban neighborhood.

From an email sent this morning to Fitchburg, Wisconsin officials documenting what is one sense light harassment, but is in our home intimate betrayal and police misconduct, (see Mal Contends and Mal Contends).

James,

Would you forward to the judge? I want this documented in real time.

Judge H.E., please preserve this email as a record.

Tom Clauder, you have the most-heavy police background, read on and tell me this is acceptable behavior by police. Tell me this is the way it was in my Cap Times days when I covered Fitchburg.

This morning at approximately 1:00 a.m. Jackie and I were awakened to the Fitchburg police harassing our home. That's one in the morning, people, and I have not been back to sleep since. Jackie caught some two hours. We're clearing out calendars as we can, we do need to sleep.

This is the second time Fitchburg police have harassed our home is the last two months, both on laughably ridiculous pretexts.

Both times Jackie has been driven to tears. I can tell you that this is a less-than-gratifying experience. This harassment follows the Aug 9, 2016 harassment and the polls and our home.

The perp is Fitchburg police, and on both occasions cops shined powerful, (spotlight-intense), lights into our home after creeping around the outside of our home (in our quiet, peaceful neighborhood save the harassment by cops) and then lying to our face about what they were doing.

This is effectively terrorizing us in our home. I have alerted a civil liberties atty who asked to be kept posted after the last time this occurred earlier this year, calling him/her at 2:00 in the morning, for Christ's sake.

The pretext, the lie told to us after confronted the cops by phone, is about as credible as the Sgt with whom we spoke by phone at 1:30 this morning. Whatever you may believe about the character and nature of Fitchburg police, know these are not honorable individuals. Read on.

Two months ago, it was a car accident in the area that the cops said was "traced" to our address, which is easily disconfirmed, but resulted in no apologies to us. Moreover, when I walked outside to confront the two cops digging in the snow behind our bushes, I told them they looked "busy" but would like to know what is going on. I believe in retrospect the cops were planting evidence of footprints in the fresh snow for another purpose. This is felony misconduct, people.

This morning the Fitchburg Police Department said there was a 911 call "traced" to this address. On both occasions Jackie and I were dead-asleep, which is to say the cops lied, and their supervisors covered for them instead of investigating this harassment. "Traced," now, that is one bullshit word.

This kind of story is not one which is in the public sphere of consensus attitudes towards police, (but we are learning about the motivations and actions of these people).

This is a ridiculous situation, and the cops know this to be ridiculous but who will say anything? Writers, civil liberties activists, (and lawyers) that's who. I will say something, and will not stop until we are granted some measure of legal relief.

Therein is the motivation behind cops acting like thugs and prowlers in the night. Retaliation against me for what I write, and the civil liberties violations against others on which I have reported while working as a Fitchburg poll worker, (2007-2016).

I am taking legal measures of course, bringing these matters to the attention of newly elected city officials is one among many measures, but should I have to?

Neither Jackie nor I are is prepared or schooled on how to handle being harassed by cops.

With the approaching warm months, the only real concern we have Re safety, health and security is police harassment and being awakened at 1:00 in the morning, accomplished with bad intentions to inflict injury onto our household.

In any event this harassment, twice in two months, precedes my trial against the bogus civil citation. That trial is May 10, 5:00 p.m. I urge you to attend. My provisional conclusion is hostile cops wish to intimidate me and traumatize my disabled life partner so we will forgo our defense.

On the memory of my mother, I intend to litigate this citation and the harassment Jackie and I have endured. I will litigate first in muny court, then county district court, then federal dist court, and will be filling every complaint and making use of every civil defense against this apparent harassment project dating back to at least Aug 9. 2016.

Believe it. Oh, and pls consider acting.

A call to Fitchburg PD expressing concern would be a start, asking, for example, just what the hell do these people think they are doing?

Fitchburg Wisconsin Mayor's Race Heats Up

Fitchburg Wisconsin mayor goes negative on progressives
and neighborhood activists in mailer delivered March 13, 2017

Sitting mayor attacks residents and activists: Is this the new normal?

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — A corporatist, anti-grassroots mayor is running for reelection in a small liberal city in southern Dane County.

The mayor is Steve Arnold and he is running scared.

Three weeks out from the April 4 Election Day, Arnold is going nuclear-negative, a clear sign of increasing rejection from progressives and neighborhood activists who are opposing him and his bizarre sock-the-working class campaign.

Arnold has a text-heavy mailer out that accuses his many opponents and Fitchburg residents of "lies," and features a nine-point list of negative, false and incoherent attacks.

After the Feb. 21 primary in which Arnold was rejected by 61 percent of voters, Arnold said he would change "tactics a bit" in his campaign, (Girard, Fitchburg Star).

Changing tactics. It would appear that Arnold's opponent, Jason Gonzalez, who is running to become the City's first Latino mayor has so upset the autocratic and heavy-handed Arnold regime that going negative, to Arnold's way of thinking, is the only way to hang onto his seat. Twenty days out from Election Day and the incumbent goes negative. Not a good tactic for this city.

It would also appear that the lessons of 2016 fall on deaf ears: Listen to the grassroots and the people, not the hacks and Party establishment.

Fitchburg Wisconsin Mayor Steve Arnold targets progressives and activists

Progressives, Neighborhood Activists Want Jason Gonzales for Mayor in Bellwether Wisconsin City

Jason Gonzalez is running for mayor in Fitchburg Wisconsin.
Jason is pictured with James Kilgore who helps people
traumatized by the prison-industrial complex try
to reclaim their lives, (Gonzalez for Fitchburg mayor).
Gonzalez is the first Latino to sit on the Fitchburg Common
Council and would be the City's first Latino mayor.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Jason Gonzalez is running for mayor in this small, fast-growing city in south-central Wisconsin, in the most progressive county in the state.

Gonzalez has amassed a broad coalition—typical in Wisconsin municipal campaigns—that includes Bernie Sanders progressives and independents, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, neighborhood activists and labor unions, (Wisconsin AFL-CIO).

Fitchburg is a bellwether, part of Dane county's jobs-creating engine that powers the state, socially liberal, activist and in the middle of a hot real estate market.

Gonzalez preaches "inclusion" and "collaboration," and would become the first Latino elected as Fitchburg mayor.

He's running against incumbent Mayor Steve Arnold, who calls himself a populist.

The progressive label seems ironic for a mayor who wants $100s in property tax increases, (nine percent), for working-class homes, higher rents for tenants and who seeks to privatize City services for those living in cul-de-sacs.

As though living in a cul-de-sac, a small home, or on a rustic road were a bad thing. Arnold also apparently doesn't like the bucolic look of residents' front yards, so he has divined a grand vision to pave over people's front yards. Walkable urban neighborhoods and pedestrian approaches, he says, (Wisconsin State Journal), (Fitchburg Star).

Arnold is fighting a City and a grassroots-backed candidate in Gonzalez that does not react well to commissars working to decide what front yards and neighborhoods should look like.

Word from the campaign front is Gonzalez is the on-odds favorite to defeat Arnold.

In the February primary Gonzalez won 47 percent of the vote to Arnold’s 37 percent. Marc Jones finished with 13.8 percent of the vote. Jones has since endorsed Gonzalez. The election is April 4, early voting begins March 13.

The Pocan Problem

In a dynamic that has progressives shaking their heads, an increasingly corporatized U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, (D-Madison) decided to endorse Arnold in early March.

The move echoes perhaps the worst image of 2016 broadcast from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last July. It features Pocan reprimanding the Wisconsin Bernie Sanders delegation for wearing "silenced by the DNC" tape over their mouths. Hundreds of Sanders supporters walked off the floor as Pocan and DNC hacks preached "unity," a heavy-handed move that did not work out well in November.

Corporatized Democrats like Pocan have not seen the April 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary results from Fitchburg that saw Sanders win easily. If they knew and cared about the results, likely they would be backing Gonzalez.

"This is our community. I know there is no easy fit for which member of the political spectrum supports a candidate for mayor in Fitchburg. But this is a strength of our campaign. We need wide collaboration now," said Gonzalez last January after knocking on a door. "I'm proud of the wide support we have received. People need to know they are being listened to. That's the basis of my campaign."

It's a little rich to read give-me-more-money Mark Pocan endorse Steve Arnold for Fitchburg, Wisconsin mayor. What attracts Pocan: Nine-percent property tax increases, higher rents or privatizing cul-de-sacs? (WISC-TV).

What is clear is that residents of Fitchburg are looking pretty small now-a-days from the D.C.-based, money-infused world of Mark Pocan.

Come to think of it, that's the problem with Arnold as well: People just don't seem to matter so very much anymore.

Jason Gonzalez is working to change this.

Wisconsin Needs Voting Rights Training for Poll Workers

Brown human being - If you see this man, don't call the police

Madison, Wisconsin — Following the recount in Wisconsin, it's clear questions pertaining to the lawful administration of elections are met with hostility by local and state officials.

There are numerous explanations for this anti-democratic posture.

Among them are the Republican Party's declared policy against free elections and voting rights, combined with the less-than-sophisticated local poll workers, (election inspectors), populating the many white municipalities of xenophobic Wisconsin.

There is a mandate from Election 2016. The problem is the mandate is neither Constitutional nor lawful, (it's indecent): White Wisconsin wants its country back from brown and black folks working to pass themselves off as real Americans. And how about those damn Hmong—you know they're not going back where they came from.

Participation in elections by black and brown folk is down significantly in 2016, a long-term objective of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, abetted by the Party's official selection of local poll workers begun after Scott Walker assumed office, among many other partisan machinations transforming the culture of the polling place and Wisconsin election law. [Note: Under Republican rule the formally non-partisan Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau now offers a polemical explication of voting rights citing Republicans', (and only Republican), Wisconsin Supreme Court justices opinions, omitting federal voting rights litigation, civil rights case precedents and dissenting Wisconisn Supreme Court opinions. For a non-partisan online reproduction of the Wisconsin Constitution, see BallotPedia. See also Mal Contends 2013, and Mal Contends 2013 for related analysis.]

Reaction by the Democratic Party is one of moribund indifference and stultifying ignorance. Democracy is weak in Wisconsin.

There are remedies. One is to vote out Republicans, not a likely prospect in the near future in heavily segregated and gerrymandered Wisconsin.

But there's a local remedy: Easy-to-implement and requiring no new expenditures. Follow some of the advice of voting rights champions that has been around for decades and studiously ignored.

Here are two objectives of election officials culled from the California Secretary of State's office in 2006, found with little effort. Pretty simple: A. Poll Workers Must Know the Rights of Voters and B. Poll Workers Must Be Trained in Cultural Sensitivity

Poll Worker Training Guidelines, 2006
California Secretary of State

Poll worker training must include an overview of the mission or role of the poll worker, which is to assist every qualified voter to cast a ballot and to ensure that each ballot is safely secured until it can be counted. A large part of that role is to provide a positive voting experience for all, and to ensure that the rights of everyone seeking to vote are protected and ensured. Poll workers should be trained to process and assist all voters with a customer service mentality in order to make their experience as positive as possible. To fulfill that role, poll workers should be familiar with the rights of voters, be trained in cultural sensitivity, know how and when to assist voters with disabilities or other specific needs, and know their responsibilities and the limits relating to them. These four areas of knowledge are discussed independently below, but are inter-related components that must be integrated in the overall mandate of ensuring that the rights of voters are protected, respected and valued. 

A.  Poll Workers Must Know the Rights of Voters (pp. 1-6)

B.  Poll Workers Must be Trained in Cultural Sensitivity

Given the great diversity of the population in California, [and most any state], poll workers must be instructed to treat all voters with respect and to respond to each individual’s needs to ensure that voters of all backgrounds are comfortably and respectfully able to participate in the voting process. Poll workers must be trained on “cultural competency” – the ability to recognize and to respond to cultural concerns or sensitivities of various groups. ...

To ensure that each poll worker is skilled in cultural competency, the training of poll workers should include instruction on the following: 

Respect for Differences
Poll workers must be trained to understand the importance of cultural sensitivity. They must be instructed to treat all voters with the same respect, courtesy and level of service, regardless of how they look or what language they speak. They must be encouraged to be considerate and patient, anticipate voters’ needs, and offer assistance when possible. For example, when checking in a voter, the poll worker must politely determine how to spell the voter’s name. Train poll workers to politely ask voters how to spell their names, provide paper and pen for voters to write it down, or accept for spelling purposes if a voter offers to show his or her name in print on an identification card or other document. Poll workers may not require proof of identify except under the circumstances outlined previously (first-time voter who mailed in a voter registration card). ...

Use Three Tools of “Wait – Recognize – Listen.” 
Poll workers should be instructed to use three tools on Election Day:
• Wait - Slow down the instinctive reaction to launch into a quick response. Wait first to process the question, then formulate a reasoned, respectful response.
• Recognize – Poll workers must focus on how to recognize other people’s feelings and anticipate their needs and be sensitive, accommodating and courteous in assisting them.  
• Listen – Poll workers must listen before speaking in order to understand exactly what the voter is feeling, seeing, needing, and trying to say/communicate. It is most important to remember to put automatic assumptions aside in order not to stereotype and to better enable the worker to hear and understand a voter’s responses. 

Voter Privacy
Poll workers must be trained to respect the voter’s privacy. This is not only a courtesy, it is a legal requirement. Training must emphasize the importance of voter confidentiality and clearly detail procedures for handling each ballot, no matter which language it contains. ...

Cultural Competency
Training Training poll workers on cultural competency must include information about citizens who speak a language other than English; citizens from a racial or ethnic minority; citizens who have physical or mental disabilities, citizens with low literacy skills; and citizens who are elderly.  ...

Removing Insensitive Poll Workers
If a poll worker is identified on Election Day as being culturally insensitive, or otherwise unsuitable for a particular polling place, that poll worker should be reported to the election official and immediately relieved of their precinct duties.
 ---
Like that's going to happen.

I would offer a third guideline: Recognize that white Wisconsin racism is an unConstitutional toxic combustion that will not dissipate by inattention, and a corollary:  Just because a black or brown voter shows up to vote does not make this voter a threat. It's a civil liberties thing.