Wisconsin’s Will Is Stronger than Walker’s Bill
Wisconsin’s progressive tradition is a beautiful, inspiring rarity.
It shines not only with Fighting Bob La Follette’s forceful defense of worker and farmer rights against cruel depredation by robber barons at the tail end of the Gilded Age.
It includes, also, the sterling record of efficient, honest municipal governments in Milwaukee and several other cities headed by socialist mayors, mainly of immigrant German origin, who were steadfastly devoted to serving society’s wage-earning majority, its indispensable backbone.
Up north, there were the Finnish-American labor partisans who organized an influential publishing house, consumer cooperatives in communities throughout the region, and collective sports and theater activity even in the smallest rural towns.
Then there’s Wisconsin’s capital, which affectionately came to be known as the People’s Republic of Madison during the turbulent Vietnam years, when