#milwuakee

[onceuponatown]

The Pabst Building, Milwaukee Wisconsin, Grand Avenue and Water  Street, circa 1900.

[uwmarchives]

Happy First Day of Spring Semester, Panthers!

Today marks the first day of Spring Semester here at UWM, and the first day of virtual classes for many of our students.  As many of you log on from the comfort of your beds today, we hope you enjoy a photograph of UWM students past also starting their semesters in bed!

This undated black and white photograph shows UWM fraternity and sorority students participating in a bed racing contest sometime during the 1950s or 1960s.  We wish you the same steady concentration as you race into a new semester!

This photo can be found in Box 11 of our UW-Milwaukee Photographs Collection here at the UWM Archives, as well as online in our UWM Photos Digital Collection.

[doubleclutch]

[cinematicwasteland]

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Black votes matter

Trump’s campaign to steal the election hasn’t stopped. It still depends on stealing Black votes.

By Stephen Millies 

More than 40 years of political reaction in the U.S. have included vicious attacks on Black voting rights. The voter ID laws passed by over 30 states are deliberately crafted to limit voting by Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx and poor people in general.

[justtaz]

Drove 5 hours to Milwaukee for the best moments of my life!

[berniesrevolution]

DISSENT MAGAZINE

“It’s only fitting the Democrats would come to Milwaukee,” said Mark Jefferson, Executive Director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, soon after the Democratic National Committee announced the location of its 2020 convention. “No city in America has stronger ties to socialism than Milwaukee. And with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American left has come full circle.”

Of course, the Democrats did not pick Milwaukee because of its socialist past. It is the largest city in a swing state that could help decide who wins the White House. In 2016, Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by a mere 22,748 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast. A Republican-sponsored voter ID law had a chilling effect in Milwaukee, where voter turnout declined by 41,000 people between 2012 and 2016, with the biggest drop-off in African-American and low-income areas.

But the choice of Milwaukee does give left-wing Democrats an opportunity to remind the nation that socialists once played a key role in improving life for many Americans. In 1912, some 1,200 members of the Socialist Party of America (SP) held public office in 340 cities and towns. There were Socialist mayors in Buffalo, Minneapolis, Reading, Schenectady, and Berkeley.

The SP had its greatest and most enduring success in Milwaukee. From 1910 to 1960, the city’s voters elected three socialist mayors, as well as a number of city council and school board members.

Victor Berger, an Austrian immigrant, spearheaded the party’s rise to local power. The school teacher, editor of two newspapers (one in German, another in English), and dedicated organizer founded the SP with Eugene Debs in 1901 and built the Milwaukee branch into a formidable political machine. He secured the backing of the unions (including the powerful brewery workers local) and most German and Polish immigrants. In 1910, Milwaukee voters sent Berger to Washington as the country’s first socialist Congressman. He won four subsequent victories (although in 1919 his colleagues refused to seat him because of his opposition to the First World War), lost twice, and left Congress in 1929. Berger sponsored bills for old-age pensions, government ownership of the radio industry, abolition of child labor, self-government for the District of Columbia, and a system of public works to provide relief for the unemployed. He also put forward resolutions for the withdrawal of federal troops from the Mexican border, for the abolition of the Senate (which was then not yet elected directly by the voters and was nicknamed the “millionaires’ club”), for women’s suffrage, and for federal ownership of the railroads. Unlike Debs, however, Berger was a racist who believed that African Americans were inferior to whites, opposed organizing black workers into the labor movement, and supported the exclusion of Asian immigrants.

While none of Berger’s proposals gained much traction in Congress, his comrades in Milwaukee were often a dominant force in the city’s life and politics. They sponsored carnivals, picnics, singing societies, and even Sunday schools. Among the Socialists elected to municipal office was Meta Berger, Victor’s wife, who served on the school board for three decades. In 1910, the SP swept the city, electing City Councilman Emil Seidel—a woodcarver and union leader—as mayor along with a majority on the city council and a slate of candidates for city treasurer, city attorney, comptroller, and two municipal judges. “The workers of our city are its most valuable asset,” Seidel said in his inaugural address. During his two-year term, the city adopted an eight-hour day for municipal employees and increased their minimum wage from $1.75 to $2.00 a day.

Seidel lost the next election but in 1912 he was the SP’s running mate for presidential candidate Debs. They gained 6 percent of the national vote, including 8.4 percent in Wisconsin and 27 percent in Milwaukee County.

In 1916 the Milwaukee Socialists made a dramatic comeback, catapulting city attorney Daniel Webster Hoan into office. Hoan served as mayor until 1940. In 1936, Time put Hoan on its cover and praised Milwaukee as “one of the best-run cities in the U.S.” Hoan was followed by Frank Zeidler, elected mayor in 1948 and re-elected twice before stepping down voluntarily in 1960.

Milwaukee’s voters kept putting Socialists in office because they ran efficient and humane administrations. They constructed the best municipal park system in the country, preserved and created additional public access to the city’s lakefront, and constructed decent housing for working-class families. They also expanded public education for the city’s working-class children (including free textbooks, lunches, and dental and medical programs), created an adult education program for workers, expanded the public libraries and playgrounds, and improved teachers’ salaries. The Socialists adopted tough factory and building regulations and inspections, reined in police brutality against striking workers, improved working conditions for rank-and-file cops, and sponsored public markets. They gave preference to union shops for city contracts for everything from printing to horseshoeing. They forced the city’s private streetcar company to pave the streets, lower fares, improve service, and pay fees to the city in exchange for its monopoly. They opened a municipal quarry to provide crushed rock for street projects, built a municipally owned water system, and created a pioneering sanitation infrastructure, earning them the nickname “sewer socialists.”

(Continue Reading)

[franklloydwrightfan]

Wright row houses.