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Electrical fires pose a higher risk to poor Black renters in Milwaukee

The majority of Milwaukee's suspected electrical fires are in rental units, many in low-income neighborhoods. Video by the Milwaukee Police Department.

Lou Saldivar, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

With a rare open mayoral race in Milwaukee on the horizon, and with changing views nationwide about what forms of government best serve the public, a possibility has emerged that would, at the very least, intrigue history buffs.

Would Milwaukee, which had the last Socialist mayor in the United States six decades ago, embrace another one?

Frank Zeidler, who was the last of three Socialist mayors elected in Milwaukee,held the top job at City Hall from 1948 to 1960. No other American city of Milwaukee's size elected threeSocialist mayors.

Now, two factors are at play that would make it possible for a credible run for office, in the wake of longtime Mayor Tom Barrett's nomination to become ambassador to Luxembourg.

The first is that no candidate has been able to make a dent in Barrett's hold on the job, and with him leaving, the field could be crowded.Common Council President Cavalier "Chevy" Johnson will become acting mayor whenever Barrett's nomination is confirmed, and he says he will run for the permanent job.

Johnson has filed a Campaign Finance Registration Statement with the election commission. Former Ald. Bob Donovan andNicholas McVey have also filed an intent to run.

Milwaukee County SheriffEarnell Lucas has indicated his intention to enter the race.

Ald.Marina Dimitrijevic has said she's excited to consider the position. State Rep. David Bowentold a local television station that it's "something to consider," but also said in a tweet that he is focused on getting other Democrats elected.State Sen. Lena Taylor who ran against Barrett in 2020 said it's "not off the table."

State Reps. Daniel Riemer and Chris Larson as well as Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Borowski have also expressed interest in vying for the job.

Gov. Tony Evers has said he believes it will be a big field, and he's not alone. The more candidates, the greater the chance for the vote to be divided multiple ways. The more divided the vote, the more possible it becomes for a dark horse candidate to get some traction.

The second factor is the dramatic change in political philosophy in recent years.

More: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett nominated to be ambassador to Luxembourg by President Biden

More: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's eventual departure opens door to generational change, comes during trying time for city

More: Bice: Who's in, who's out and who's undecided in what should be a crowded field for city's next mayoral race

A June Axios/Momentive pollfound that while the country overall still embraced capitalism, it had fallen dramatically in the eyes of young adults. People ages 18 to 34 werealmost evenly split on having a positive or negative view of capitalism, whereas two years ago the gap was 20 percentage points in favor of a "positive view."

Among adults ages 18 to 24, 54% hada negative view of capitalism, the poll found. Even young Republicans, ages 18 to 34, showed a 15% decline in positive views of capitalism from 2019.

The Axios/Momentive poll showed many similarities to earlier polls. ASeptember2020Hill-HarrisX pollreported that 56% of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism and53% of Democrats said the same of capitalism, which is within the margin of error and statistically a tie.

And a February 2020NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist pollfound that Democrats are open to the idea of socialism.

The Democratic Socialists of America countamong its members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Cori Bush of Missouriand Jamaal Bowman of New York, all of whom serve as Democrats in the U.S. House. In the U.S. Senate, socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont has made two strong runs for president, although he is not a member of DSA.

Further, DSA memberIndia Walton is set to become the next mayor of Buffalo, New York,after defeating incumbent Byron Brown in theDemocratic primary in June. Brown has vowed to remain in the race and is attempting to get his name on the ballot for the November general election.Walton would become the first Socialist mayor of a major American city since Zeidler.

Tom Hansberger,committee chairman of the Milwaukee chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, said no decisions have been made about the mayoral race.

After the publication of this article, Milwaukee DSA sent the Journal Sentinel a statement, which can be found in full here.

Hansbergersaid the organization has been discussing internally the idea of running a candidate in the mayoral race but said anydecisions wouldn'tbe announced until it is put to a vote ofits membership.

"I don't know that we are going to run in the mayoral race," Hansberger said. "We haven't made a decision on that. And we'll only decide to run if we think that we have a good candidate who can get our message across and win the election."

Milwaukee County Supervisor Ryan Clancy is a member of DSA and has been mentioned by some as a mayoral candidate, but hetoldthe Journal Sentinel that "there are no such announcements currently scheduled."

Hansberger said the organization is no stranger to "David vs.Goliathsort of runs."

"And I think that's what we would expect, running against candidates who are likely to be better funded than our candidates," he said. "But DSA believes in organized people more than organized money, and we think that we can win."

Earlier this year, the Milwaukee chapter endorsed two candidates for school boardand one for County Board. All three lost, although county board candidate Darrin Madison Jr. lost his race for County Board to Priscilla Coggs-Jones by just 12 votes.

Milwaukee voters electedthe first Socialist to the U.S. House of Representatives, Victor Berger in 1910. The three Socialist mayors were Emil Seidel (1910-1912), Daniel Hoan (1916-1940) and Zeidler (1948-1960).

Themayors were dubbed "sewer socialists,"a pejorative label that came to be embraced because something like a working sewer system wasexactly the type of public infrastructure work they were fighting for.

Sewer socialists are credited with building up much of the city's public features, including developing the first Department of Public Works, Fire and Police Commission, public housing, taking steps to improve the drinking water andfreeway expansion.

"Socialists turned Milwaukee from an open cesspool of corruption into one of the best-governed cities in the United States," said Milwaukee historian John Gurda. "Their guiding star is what they called public enterprise and that meant working for public parks, public schools, public libraries,public housing ... anything and everythingto increase the quality of life for the working population of Milwaukee."

The party does have some embarrassing history.

Victor Berger was a racist who considered Black people inferior and opposed Asian immigration.

But by 1956,Zeidler was such a proponent of civil rights that rumors circulated he was posting billboards in the South urging Black peopleto move north to take advantage of public housing and social welfare policies.

"One thing that's really exciting about the contemporary socialist movementisthat it's better on issues of race, gender, inclusivity," Hansberger said."That's an area we've built on and we're always working to show that. What we need is a movement of the multiracial working class of working people, regardless of their background."

Hansberger said the strongest bond between today's socialists and sewer socialism is wanting to organize a broad base of working people.

"Several things that we have in common with those older socialists is wanting to build better public goodsand infrastructure for Milwaukee residents ... things like bringing We Energies into public ownership, making sure that everyone has access to affordable electricity and utilities.It's things like supporting lead remediationto get the lead out of our pipes, and it's other projects that would makethe life of ordinary Milwaukeeans better."

Contact Drake Bentley at (414) 391-5647 orDBentley1@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DrakeBentleyMJS.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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A lot has changed since Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor. Could there be renewed interest? - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Democracy exists if and when a community organises its self-governance around the full participation, on an equal basis, of all the members of the community. Its other, autocracy, exists when a community organises (or allows) its governance by an individual or subgroup of that community, a ruler. Universal suffrage is clearly a step toward at least formal democracy because voters elect leaders. How real this formal democracy is, depends on the inclusivity of the population voting and the concrete reality of voters equal influence on the elections outcome.

Residential communities in many parts of the modern world operate in formal democracies. However, they usually allow individuals with high levels of income and wealth to use these means to influence others in their voting, whereas individuals with low levels of income and wealth can and usually do wield less influence. The capitalist economic system generates precisely that unequal distribution of income and wealth that creates and sustains a wide gap between formal and real democracy in the world today. That gap in turn reinforces capitalism.

Workplace communities are those collections of interacting individuals comprising enterprises: factories, offices, and stores. In societies where capitalism prevails, enterprises are very rarely organised democratically. Instead, they are autocratic.

Inside most workplace communities in todays world, an individual or small subgroup within the workplace community, a ruling group, governs the workplace community. An owner, an owning family, a partnership of owners, or a board of directors elected by major shareholders comprises the ruler in capitalist enterprises. Their autocratic governance reinforces and is reinforced by the unequal distributions of income and wealth that they generate.

The democratic impulses that were provoked and suppressed in turn by monarchical autocracies occasionally matured into social movements. These movements were sometimes able to alter relations between the ruler and the ruled, but usually succeeded only to a limited degree and temporarily. Eventually, some of these social movements gathered enough strength to dislodge those rulers and end autocracies in residential communities. Kingdoms, czarisms, and oligarchies were then overthrown as a result of this. In their places, revolutionaries often established representative (parliamentary) democracies.

Democratic impulses, similarly provoked and suppressed inside workplace autocracies, have not yet matured into social movements that are strong and focused enough to overthrow autocracy inside workplaces. Social movements did develop far enough to form labour unions and labour-based political parties, and to win greater diversity of race and gender among workplace participants. Unions utilised collective bargaining to alter the terms of the relations between employers and employees. Labour-based political parties used suffrage to yield laws that also changed the terms of the employer-employee relationship.

Yet labour unions and labour/socialist parties rarely targetedlet alone achievedtransforming workplace autocracies into workplace democracies. Even at moments in history when labour unions and Left parties coalesced to build impressive social powersuch as the New Deal of the 1930s in the United States or social democracy in 20th-century Europethey could not or did not move to end the social prevalence and dominance of capitalisms autocratic enterprises. No revolution occurred in the sense of a transition beyond the capitalist organisation of enterprises and its autocratic division of participants into an employee majority and a governing employer minority.

Autocracies inside workplaces have endured in both private and state enterprises. In private enterprises, the rulers have often been individuals, partners, or corporate boards of directors: all persons with no positions within any state apparatus. Alternatively, rulers have also often been state officials positioned inside state enterprises (owned and operated by the state) in ways parallel to the positions of private corporate boards of directors. In such cases, the label socialist applied to such state enterprises might refer to some aspects that differentiated them from private capitalist corporations. But such socialist enterprises were not different in their autocratic internal organisation.

Over the millennia, democratic impulses were occasionally able to establish democratically governed workplaces in some places and during certain times. In them, all members of the workplace community had equal voting power to determine what, how, and where the enterprise produced and what was done with the enterprises product. We shall call these democratically governed workplaces worker cooperatives (as they sometimes named themselves).

Across the many centuries when slavery, feudalism, and capitalism were the chief sorts of economic systems, worker cooperatives were marginal forms of workplace organisation. The conditions, objective and subjective, were absent for worker cooperatives to become the socially prevalent forms of workplace organisation.

However, their scattered presences kept alive the notion that democratised workplaces were a possible alternative to the socially prevalent autocratic enterprises. Critics of autocratic workplaces often supplemented their opposition to them with advocacy for worker cooperatives.

Marxisms criticisms of capitalism in the century after Marxs death might have led it to advocacy for worker cooperatives. Instead, Marxisms anti-capitalism focused on pinpointing which agents could accomplish a transition from capitalism to socialism. There were two key agents considered: first, the working class, and second, the state.

The consensus that emerged was simple. The working class as societys majority would seize the state. This might happen via voting, or it might require a revolution. Either way, once state power was won by an organised working class, it would use that power to make the transition from a capitalist to a socialist economic system.

That consensus led both socialism and Marxism eventually to an excessive focus on the state and all it might do to negate, overwhelm, and displace capitalism and its baleful social effects. Government regulations of enterprises, government ownership and operation of enterprises, and government control of the market: these became the various definitions of what socialists would do once they had state power. As history shows, that is what most socialists and Marxists did in fact do when they acquired state power.

What happened was another historic example of a movement for basic social change mistaking one step taken toward its social goal for the achievement of that goal itself. Socialisms including and since the 1917 Soviet revolution increasingly defined and declared their state-regulated and controlled workplaces to be socialism. That socialism, however, included an enduring autocratic organisation of the workplace.

Developing socialism thus became the continuous refinement and shaping of the governments great influence on the economy toward approved social goals. Socialism might even advocate giving its working classes greater civil liberties and freedoms.

What Marxism and socialism had lost sight of was the internal organisation of workplaces. Those stopped being seen as sites of profound class struggles once socialism was proclaimed. The need to transform the organisation of enterprises internal relations of production from autocratic to democratic dropped from most socialists focus.

Thus, the Soviet Union, China, Sweden, and other socialist variants experimented with differing kinds and degrees of state interventions in the economy. For example, Sweden chiefly regulated private enterprises with autocratic internal structures. In contrast, the Soviets took over, owned, and operated state enterprises with autocratic internal structures.

China now experiments with a combination of both Swedish and Soviet socialisms to produce its socialism with Chinese characteristics. Chinese socialism operates with autocratic organisations inside both its private and state enterprises.

If we define capitalism in terms of the employer-employee internal structure of its enterpriseswhat Marx termed their social relations of productionmost socialisms to date have not yet accomplished transitions beyond capitalism. To do that, they would have to change the prevalent internal organisation of their enterprises to democratic worker cooperatives. Indeed, that has now become the task for 21st-century socialism.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York.

Source:Independent Media Institute

Credit Line:This article was produced byEconomy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Task for 21st Century Socialism Lies in Grasping Basics of Democracy, Autocracy, Capitalism - NewsClick

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The whole problem with socialism is that its like sharing a banana with a gorilla. You never get a bite of the banana. And you will probably get mauled anyway.

Young, socialist sensation Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got herself elected to Congress on the rosiest of promises about how the government can solve all your problems. Just give her all your money.

In gangster movies, this is called robbery. In politics, its called governing. This is why Miss Ocasio-Cortez and all the other socialist central planners are drawn to the government in the first place.

Who can blame them, really? Thats where all the money is. I mean, that is why criminals rob banks and not bathrooms.

Likewise, socialist central planners are drawn to government because that is where all the money flows and all the power resides.

But to keep the whole thing going, you have to con the people into thinking it is working for them. This is why socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders an old and experienced man goes to such lengths to hide his own high living, private jet travel, and multiple dachas. After all, the lavish lifestyle of socialist luminaries such as Adolf Hitler does not sit well with the American electorate struggling to pay all the bills.

Miss Ocasio-Cortez is young and unwise. So she flaunts it.

So thrilled she was to be included in a swanky Manhattan fashion party with the uber-rich that she ordered up a tailored dress that gripped her back end the way she wants to grip all the money you earned last week. You have to almost admire her for her honesty and stupidity for flaunting how socialism really works.

Under socialism, central planners like her go to $30,000-ticket parties with rich and powerful people while schlubs like you get to sit at home and watch on your crappy television.

She gets the whole banana. You get nothing. But, as always with socialism, there is the big lie.

In Miss Ocasio-Cortezs case, she was wearing it on the booty end of her expensive fashion dress. Tax the rich, she had scrawled in red ink in a font that was described as that of the Chick-fil-a logo. Apparently, in perfect keeping with socialist kleptocracy, Miss Ocasio-Cortez stole the design from a California street artist named The Velvet Bandit.

Yet, all freedom-loving Americans know what to do when you hear a politician scream, Tax the rich! Grab your wallet and run!

But it is not just all the money that socialist central planners demand. They want a monopoly on everything, including all the speech and all the comedians.

Take the recently departed Norm Macdonald, who ended life in a tie with cancer earlier this week. The crazy Left and hopelessly unfunny despised him. Partly because he was truly funny, and they are not. But mainly because he refused to go along with their grand, central planned visions.

One of the funniest clips going around is where Mr. Macdonald went on The View twenty years ago and casually suggested that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster. Because he refused to stop talking about it, one of the hysterical ladies got up and physically tried muzzling him by covering his mouth with her hand.

Barbara Walters, who was old even then, squawked like a flustered hen who had been rousted from her nest while trying to lay an egg.

Mr. Macdonald famously got fired from Saturday Night Live because he insisted on telling jokes about OJ Simpson killing his wife even though the Juice was big golfing buddies with the head honcho at NBC.

So, they fired him.

Mr. Macdonald was hardly some kind of conservative. He told wildly offensive jokes about 9/11 and mercilessly lampooned 1996 Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole.

Mr. Macdonalds crime was his refusal to pander. He seemed to love most when his comedy routine bombed because it was another opportunity for him to refuse to bow to the audience. He reveled in the awkwardness and the powerlessness of the mob to stop him.

Similarly, he refused to pander to the socialist central planners who control Hollywood and the media.

After the January 6 riot in the Capitol, Mr. Macdonald tweeted out a picture of protesters wandering through the building in a tidy line, careful to keep within the cordoned walkways.

I loved when the violent terrorists made sure to respect the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall, he wrote.

Mr. Macdonald spent a great deal of time wondering about a powerful God but was no preacher or politician. He was just wise enough to despise mortals here on earth clamoring for so much power over other mortals lives.

Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at the Washington Times.

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Norm Macdonald refused to pander to powerful socialist planners - Washington Times

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A new coalition of trade unions and other groups is taking up the fight for socialism in the Labour Party. Set against the backdrop of Keir Starmers ongoing purge of the left, the group is looking to build the resistance. And on Saturday 18 September, Unite the Union assistant general secretary Howard Beckett will take the lead in launching the groups manifesto.

Labour Left for Socialism (LL4S) formally launched in August 2021. Its a coalition of trade unions and other groups. LL4S came out of the Dont Leave, Organise movement. Its aims are broad. They include:

The groups supporting LL4S include:

LL4S said in its August statement that Labour is not effectively opposing the Tories. In fact, it said that on some issues the party has echoed the government. LL4S also called out the ongoing purge. It said:

the democracy of our own party is under threat. A growing number of local parties have been taken over by unelected officials; the Forde inquiry report has not been published; many members who have spoken out have been suspended or expelled; proscriptions have been introduced against socialist groups; Jeremy Corbyn remains without the Labour whip. As a result, over one hundred thousand members have resigned from the party over the last year.

We will not stand idly by and allow this to continue. We are, therefore, coming together in solidarity not only with the people who are being so gravely disadvantaged by this government but against the purge of the left, which is key for the Leadership to achieve its aim of reversing the socialist policies brought in under Corbyn and to make the Party a safe place for capitalism.

Now, LL4S is taking things a step further.

Read on...

On 18 September, LL4S will hold a virtual meeting. Called Building the Resistance, it will take place on Zoom from 11am. You can register here. LL4S said in a press release that its:

launching a manifesto setting out an agenda of unified defiance on major issues affecting all sectors of the labour movement. It is also backing calls for delegates at party conference in Brighton later this month to reject Keir Starmers ally David Evans as general secretary.

LL4S continued:

speakers at the online launch on September 18 will include Andrew Scattergood (FBU) on workers rights, Ekua Bayunu (Labour Black Socialists) on the fight against racism, Chris Saltmarsh (Labour for a Green New Deal) on the climate crisis and Matt Wrack (FBU General Secretary on Public Services.

Barry Gardiner MP will also speak about the campaign for his private members bill to outlaw fire and rehire, which has its second reading in parliament on 22 September.

Beckett will chair the event. LL4S noted that this is in a personal capacity.

Beckett said in a press release:

This is the start of something for the whole of our movement, the result of months of work by members of left groups and unions working together to confront attacks from the Tory government and also from Labours right wing.

With the ferocious ratcheting up of suspensions and expulsions in recent weeks, its clear that delegates to Labour Party conference in Brighton next week need to follow the lead of Unite the Union and vote down Evans as party general secretary.

The right have got away with a full-scale assault on the left of the party, to rid it of socialism, to become a party of the establishment, because the left has not been united. Now we are putting down a marker that we are united and we are not going anywhere. We are calling on all socialists in the party to come together around common goals and join us in setting in motion the process of left mobilisation.

Whats also interesting about LL4S is that the Labour Party has proscribed (i.e. banned) one of its signatories. It outlawed membership or support of Socialist Appeal back in July. At the time, Dylan Cope from the group told The Canary:

Were certainly going to fight this purge. I think the whole left needs to come together and resist this by all means

This is now what appears to be happening. But with Socialist Appeal involved with LL4S, whats unclear is whether or not being a member of LL4S will incur disciplinary action from Labour. The party has form on this. Recently, it threatened to expel prominent member and activist Graham Bash. This was for signing an open letter from a proscribed group, Labour Against the Witchhunt. Labours action against Bash was despite him signing the letter around 18 months prior to the partys banning of the group.

It appears LL4S has thought of this, though. Because it says on its website that:

Signatories demonstrate their support for the principles in the statement, not each others organisations.

But whether this is good enough for Labour not to try and expel people associated with LL4S remains to be seen.

The new group seems to be picking up where Corbyn left off. It also represents another attempt to operate an organised fightback against Starmer and Evans ongoing purge. The left-wing of the Labour Party will surely be watching closely to see where this group goes next.

Featured image via Labour Left for Socialism and Going Underground YouTube

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Howard Beckett is now helping lead the socialist fightback in Labour - The Canary

In his Sept. 1 column, James Edwards beats the socialist drum when describing our Democratic presidents agenda.

He even now goes so far as to infer that socialism is another way of saying communism. The usual hard right arguments he uses to somehow support this claim are:

Open borders spreading COVID, stopping the pipeline, defunding the police, the federal government taking control of elections, etc.

There is no evidence that COVID is spreading from the border, yet Republican governors in some states are doing everything they can to fight mask and vaccine mandates.

The defunding the police rally cry by Republicans is basically noise and simply untrue.

The Keystone pipeline, with only 8% being completed, would carry heavy tar sands oil that would be an environmental disaster and is not a factor in current oil prices.

Most importantly, Edwards attempt to assert that Democrats are trying to gain control of our once-free elections is ridiculous. Many red-state legislatures have been working overtime to successfully pass voter suppression bills directed at Democratic voters.

His argument is that this will lead to stacking of the Supreme Court. Just last week, the Republican-stacked Supreme Court failed to act against the absurd Texas abortion bill, which is restricting womens reproductive rights in that state.

This type of bill will soon move toother states.

All of this is summed up as a choice between big government or freedom.

Edwards should attempt to explain his views about freedom to the women of our country.

Tom Stewart

Windber

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Letter to the editor | Beating the socialist drum | Readers Forum | tribdem.com - TribDem.com