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| Yoda has advice for white Wisconsinites voting Republican |
Water and racist politics get around in the Wisconsin Peninsula
Updated - Nobody visiting Wisconsin likes cow shite in their beer and rightfully so.
But in their water, that's okay with a bare majority of folks who live here.
Consider the people living in Wisconsin's peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan, offering a political culture approximating the Badger State as a whole.
Two overwhelmingly white, sparsely populated counties—
Door and
Kewaunee—comprise the beautiful peninsula with a combined voting population of some 28,000 people in the 2016 presidential election, (
Wisconsin Elections Commission, County by County Report - President of the United States Recount).
And no matter how clear the value of fresh, safe water may appear with the massive Lake Michigan staring these folks in the face every day, there is roughly 50 percent of the voting population of the peninsula that will vote anti-water Republican and Scott Walker-and-Jesus-loves-polluters, (
Wisconsin Elections Commission) as the state abandons water protection under Republicans' anti-water agenda.
Political strategists looking for an effective counter to the white, rural and small-town Republican lock look at water politics with hope. But right now at this moment, despite huge organizing successes for clean and safe water citizen groups, electorally, polluting the water past safety and decency plays okay.
A reader today can visit the
Kewaunee County webpage and read about the stunning natural resources, a new
Revamped Tourism website, alongside of new Well Water Testing Presentations by
Dr. Mark Borchardt, and
Dr. Maureen Muldoon on the danger of cow feces in your drinking and bath water from Republican-supported factory farms, how to test for fecal contamination in your water, and how water wells work in different geological regions. Kind of sciencey so Republicans are not too thrilled with the presentations.
To be Republican in Wisconisn is as well to cast your lot consonant with the constant racist appeals to white Wisconsin that goes back decades. [In 1983 for example, Wisconsin supplied a full three of the 90 House votes against the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: racists Reps Tom Petri, (R-Fond du Lac), Toby Roth, (R-Green Bay), and
James Sensenbrenner (R-Whitefish Bay) (
Gov Track), (
Mal Contends)].
Racist politics are no problem as in no deal breaker. Northeastern and east-central Wisconsin remain white, racist and proud, for example.
Donald Trump could call for a final solution to the black and brown problem, and roughly 14,000 of the 28,000-voting gentle peninsula folk would go along.
This with, broadly speaking, heightened consciousness of the value of water and of Latino workers in the polluting factory dairy operations. Yep, Latino folks have a '
role to play' in Wisconsin, but this role has nothing to do with their humanity.
Two residents of the Wisconsin peninsula offer an analysis of Republican politics and the nascent destruction of safe water in northeastern Wisconsin: Don Freix, small business owner in Door County in the
Door County Daily News, and Nancy Utesch, small farmer in Kewaunee County in the
Capital Times. Both pieces are worth reading repeatedly.
Writes Utesch:
The Department of Natural Resources' recent low-key roll-out of help for Kewaunee County residents dealing with contamination so great that they cannot drink nor should they bathe in their water highlights the DNR’s continued failures, lack of integrity, and continued lack of urgency in responding to Kewaunee’s health and water crisis.
Lack of urgency, as in come to Wisconsin' peninsula but don't drink the water but at least there are plenty of white people and pretty leaves in the Fall.
