Creeping Militarisation: Why police policies are more about controlling the poor than fighting crime
“Lower-class culture is pathological.” So claimed American political scientist Edward Banfield in his 1970 book The Unheavenly City. For Banfield, unlike the middle class, “the lower-class person lives from moment to moment… unable or unwilling to take...
Milwaukee in May: Annual community march highlights immigrant rights and representation
Members of Voces de la Frontera Action, Souls to the Polls, Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES), The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and many Milwaukee residents marched on Saturday, May 1 showing support for essential and immigrant workers. This year’s...
State Interference: Mayor Tom Barrett blasts Senate Bill 117 as a “vicious attack on local government”
By Edgar Mendez • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service Mayor Tom Barrett called a bill passed on May 12 by the state Senate that requires the Fire and Police Commission to add members selected by the police and fire unions “a vicious attack on local government.” “It’s...
Leaving Afghanistan: How twenty years and $2 Trillion did not bring peace, democracy, or freedom
As the mother of an Army infantry officer who served for 13 months during former President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan surge, in the Zhari District of the Kandahar Province, I feel tremendous relief that President Joe Biden is calling the troops home from...
Finding an end to the “never-ending war” and dismantling an empire of military infrastructure
Here is the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up...
An obstruction of progress: The word “filibuster” was derived from the term for “pirate”
By Joshua Holzer, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Westminster College “The word filibuster derives from the Spanish filibustero, itself deriving originally from the Dutch vrijbuiter, ‘privateer, pirate, robber.’ The Spanish form entered the...
Big Tobacco: From racist roots to recent claims of allyship with the Black communities it has exploited
Black History month, intended to be a celebration and affirmation of Black history, has often been appropriated as a PR opportunity for corporations. Last summer, amid uprisings protesting police murders of innocent Black people and record approval of the Black Lives...
The state of air quality: Wisconsin has seen cleaner skies but smog is still a problem for some counties
Most of Wisconsin has breathed cleaner air over the last several years, according to the American Lung Association. But, the group gave failing grades to six counties along Lake Michigan over smog pollution as part of its annual national report card on the state of...
Amtrak proposal revives Milwaukee-to-Madison route as part of Midwest rail corridor for passenger service
Stu Nicholson has been trying for decades without success to get Amtrak, or any other passenger rail service, to come to Columbus, Ohio. As director of All Aboard Ohio, a passenger rail advocacy group, Nicholson helped explore possibilities, like creating a new route...
Vice President Kamala Harris promotes $2T infrastructure plan during visit to Milwaukee
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Milwaukee on May 4, where she promoted the president’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal and toured two university research centers. Harris highlighted the federal funding the Biden administration plan would allocate for research...
Why the public rarely hears about suicide as the leading cause of death for young Asian Americans
By Amelia Noor-Oshiro, Ph.D. Candidate, Public Health, Johns Hopkins University Racially motivated violence looks like the mass shootings that killed Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Chung Park, Hyun Grant and Suncha Kim in Atlanta on March 16, 2021. Racially motivated...
$15 minimum wage increase would substantially lift economic hardships for 3 in 10 Wisconsin workers
Doubling Wisconsin’s current minimum wage by 2025 would benefit nearly one-third of the state’s workforce without leading to job losses, according to a Wisconsin policy research group. A minimum wage hike would be especially timely because of the impact that the...
