Universities In The Face Of Fascism (Hour 3)

Live across the Civic Media Radio Network, live from Wisconsin, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Critello.

Sitting in for Pat Critello today is Matt Rothschild.

Good morning, Wisconsin.

Another beautiful day in Wisconsin.

Welcome to Mornings with Pat Critello.

And as Greg said, Pat's not here.

I'm Matt Rothschild, co-hosting this morning as I did yesterday and as I'll do Wednesday and Thursday with Angela Lang.

My favorite co-host, she's the executive director of Block.

She's also a prize-winning, two-time prize-winning op-ed writer for the Reconbobulation Area and Dan Schaefer, who's now the political editor over here at Civic Media.

So it's exciting to have you with me as always.

Angela, how are you this morning?

I'm good.

I am caffeinated this morning.

Yesterday I was not, and what a world of difference it makes.

I guzzled in my first cup down right before I left.

You know, it's odd coming on at six.

I'm 20 minutes away, so I got to leave at 5.30 if I'm not going to give Greg a heart attack.

And I barely have time to slug down some coffee and also get the bird feed out because, especially this time of year, I want to get the oranges out.

put a little grape jelly in the orange halves.

The orils are addicted to grape jelly.

So it's kind of weird feeding them a product that's not a fruit like just orange.

Because when I was growing up, that's all we knew.

Just put oranges out, the orils would come.

And then people figured out, I don't know who discovered it.

Grape jelly is great for the orils too.

At least they like it a lot.

And so I start doing that.

I threw some seeds out for the rosebreasted growth beaks.

I want to encourage anyone to give us a call.

Tell us what birds you got at your feeder.

How are you liking the spring migration?

It's 855-752-4842.

That's 855-75 Civic.

It's been a great bird migration this spring.

But yeah, I'm barely able to do my little chores at first light at 5.15 in the morning.

And the hummingbird feeder I got to fix too.

The weird thing there is if I'm smart in the evening at 8.30, I'll take the hummingbird feeder down because

the raccoons come and get them and they spill it they can't knock it out entirely though they've done it once before usually they just tip it over so that the nectar spills onto the railing and then they lick the railing it's pretty gross so but I didn't take it in last night so I had to go out and fill it this morning then make sure I washed my hands before I touched anything else because

I don't want any of those raccoon germs.

They can carry rapes, too.

Yeah, you don't want to get that nastiness all over the place.

So that was my morning.

And then I, of course, I was up earlier in that just trying to make sure I can read the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Journal Sentinel, and the State Journal.

What is your morning reading routine of the news, Angela?

Yeah, I think for me, I'm up this early, generally.

I'm just not always functional, I guess.

But I am naturally an early riser, up by 7 AM.

And honestly, I reach for my phone, and I'm one of those people that's just like, let's look at the news of the day.

Is there any breaking news, any push notifications?

Twitter sometimes, there's, I always say Dan Schaefer is always a really good follow on Twitter or ex, because that's where you see a lot of breaking.

news but then oddly enough being able to kind of just even scroll TikTok and I am I'm a millennial I'm 35

Um, I am not the TikTok generation, but it's so interesting to kind of see some things that aren't always talked about in the media.

Um, and kind of having that first hand account of people's perspectives and, um, you know, any overnight breaking news.

So it's like, it's very strange lately.

There are times I've gotten my breaking news from TikTok and also like ABC and things like that are on there.

Um, so it's just casually scrolling in bed until I realize, oh, I should hurry up and jump in the shower and get on.

of the house.

So it's interesting.

We have two different, I'm very old school, I do the old traditional news sites and you get them in different

ways.

That's just, you know, I'm 66.

And that's the difference, I think there.

So you mentioned Dan Schaefer, he'll be joining us at 830.

We've got Jane McNair coming on at 845.

We've got Karine Henriksen, a child care activist.

This is Child Care Week coming on at 630.

And Bill Fletcher, an activist we talked to.

right after the election, Angela, who's one of the smartest left-wing activists in this country.

I'll talk to us at 7.05.

And then at the 8 o'clock hour, we've got one of the University of Wisconsin professors who was instrumental in getting the faculty of the University to come around to say, we've got to join the compact of the Big Ten and resist Trump's incursions.

Her name is Professor.

Professor Leah Horowitz.

I'm looking forward to the show today.

As always, you mentioned breaking news, Angela.

There's breaking news this morning at the Journal Sentinel that there's a grand jury sitting today on the Judge Dugan case.

I'm very curious about what's going to happen there.

I wonder even if they'll come through with an indictment.

The case against her is so paper thin and she's got great lawyers and, you know,

grand jury of her peers, are they going to really say this judge should be hauled in on felony charges by the Trump administration?

Be very curious about that.

What's your take on it?

Yeah, you know, somebody asked me, because any time I'm talking to folks that don't live in Wisconsin, that's like one of the first things they ask is like, so that judge, I know you're in Milwaukee.

And I was telling someone they were like, well, that case is gonna like, it's gonna get thrown out, right?

Like she didn't do anything wrong.

And I'm like, yeah, that's my understanding.

I think, again, as a non-lawyer, I like to argue, but I'm not a lawyer.

I'm like, I feel like, yes, it does feel paper thin.

It feels like it's more for theatrics and show than anything else and to really try to have a chilling effect.

But I think if somebody were to have confidence in the criminal system or the justice system,

then maybe people would say, all right, you know, she didn't do anything wrong.

This is clearly a thing, you know, it's all performative.

But we're living in a time where like rules and laws aren't really exist.

Like they don't matter to some people.

Hey, the Constitution doesn't even matter to

some people.

Yeah, like the Constitution doesn't matter.

We're just, you know, going off of vibes, I guess.

And so I think under normal.

landscapes, which this wouldn't even happen under normal circumstances.

But if we were living in normal times, I think I would feel a lot more confident.

But we're not living in normal times.

Like the Constitution is being shredded day by day that I don't know how this is going to play out under this kind of fascist regime that we've been talking about.

Yeah, that's the real question and and the follow-up to you know whether they're gonna indict Judge Dugan is whether you know they're gonna come after Governor Evers or where they're gonna come after AOC or they're gonna come after some of the other legislators at that New Jersey ice facility after they you know hauled off Mayor Baraka It's just an amazing time and so, you know, we just have to see what happens today in Milwaukee

at that grand jury.

Now, I'm not sure how long that grand jury sits or when the decision comes out as to whether they're going to come up with an indictment.

Of course, the old cliche and as an editor, I ate cliches, but I will repeat it, although it pains me that usually prosecutors are able to indict a ham sandwich is the old cliche on

that.

In bizarre, she will get indicted if that's any indication.

But

my bet, and I'll take the long bet, is that she doesn't get indicted.

But we'll see.

In any event, she shouldn't have been hauled off in handcuffs and ankle cuffs.

And that was just a disgraceful act of bullying and

intimidation,

intimidation, you know, I'm I'm of the view that it's kind of sadism that what we're seeing from the Trump administration is exhibits of an exhibitions of sadism.

We saw it with Kristi Noem down in El Salvador.

That probably was the most grotesque.

incarnation of

picture is published in every history book.

It is really it is just so disgusting and people were focusing on her.

I'm some of the media were focusing on her fancy purse or her attire.

But what got me was all those prisoners half naked crammed in like sardines and a tin can.

That's what was so disgraceful about it.

And that's what they seem to live on thrive on.

And Trump has always been a bully.

He's always been a pathological narcissist.

And he seems to admire that in people he has around him.

One of the people he has around him is Roger Stone.

Now, I saw this thing over the weekend.

It was on Twitter, and I'm not on Twitter.

I used to be on Twitter when I was at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign because I thought it was important to self-perloat and all that.

Anyway, for whatever reason, laziness maybe.

I got off it in any way.

It's probably a good life

choice, actually.

I mean, I've always thought that, you know, Facebook and Twitter were just cold words for procrastination, but in any event, here was Roger Stone talking about Senator Mark Kelly, you know, the astronaut who almost was vice presidential candidate with Kamala Harris.

Kelly had the audacity to post on Twitter on May 7th about Trump's

You know terrible ethics when it comes to cashing in on the presidency He said Trump is cashing in and making millions from his own crypto coins.

It's corruption and broad daylight I'm co-sponsoring a bill to make it illegal for the president the vice president administration officials and members of Congress to issue sponsor or endorse crypto assets for profits time to put a stop to this well shortly after that Roger Stone who is one of Trump's longtime advisors kind of is

His uncle, his dark uncle or something, his evil uncle, said that Senator Mark Kelly's cashing in on his U.S.

Senate seat as a partner in a Chinese communist company that makes surveillance balloons.

And here's the kicker.

He should be charged with treason and if convicted, executed, consistent with federal law.

And this is, you know, Roger Stone just throwing a brushback pitch, as we'd say in baseball, but it's a nasty one.

Rightening him with death.

And that's what these guys do.

Anyone who criticizes the president, whether it's Governor Evers or whether it's Senator Mark Kelly or whether it's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they're threatened.

This guy with Senator Kelly with death and Evers and AOC with getting charged, Judge Dugan now in shackles, it's quite a way to run a government.

Yeah, and can we just like back up and talk about like how just weird not even Disney villain Marvel villain that like Roger Stone is like Years ago.

I watched there was like a documentary about this man on Netflix and I think it still might be up very strange and odd man And it's so fascinating to see how he's been able to kind of like weasel his way into

this like political climate and almost still have some sort of reputation.

I don't like the man is strange and unhinged.

And I think that is that's part of their brand is like they don't

have to be polished.

They don't have to know how to run campaigns.

They don't have to say the right things.

They can get away with having these gaffes and what used to be breaking news and something that would be seen as like, you know, not okay in campaign terms.

He kind of tends to normalize.

And I think that's like an indicator of the rest of like Trump's enablers too.

Like that's part of the criteria.

Nothing is disqualifying for these folks.

That's the amazing thing.

Nothing Trump does.

Nothing Roger Stone says and of course Roger Stone was instrumental in the January 6th interaction his fingerprints were all over that baby You know he's an old-time Richard Nixon dirty trickster my son watched that Netflix documentary and said the guy's got a I think he's got a Nixon tattoo on

Yeah, yeah,

like

a giant one on his back like it's weird

Yeah, it's just not a guy you really want to have in your circle or a guy next to the most powerful person

in the world, Roger Stone, Stephen Miller, these are the people who are, you know, whispering in Donald Trump's ear.

And it's just a government of intimidation, bullying, and scary kind of fascist actions.

And we're just seeing it unfold before our eyes.

And it's just almost breathtaking, actually.

So...

We'll be back in just a second.

You're listening to Matt Rothschild and Angela Lang here on Mornings with Pat Freitlow on the Civic Radio Network.

We'll talk about Ron Johnson coming up next.

Hey, welcome back to Mornings with Pat Price.

Look at the location today.

I'm Matt Rothschild, co-hosting today with Angela Lang and Block.

And we welcome your calls and your texts at 855-752-4842.

That's 855-752-4842.

You're listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.

It's always fun to be on Civic Media.

It does a great job here of giving us local commentary, local news, local conversation, nice entertainment with Pete Chihuahua Nightlight, which I was listening to on my way in because it's replayed, I think, from four to six in the morning.

So it's a great offering that Civic Media has.

We wanted to start talking about Ron Johnson and this Medicaid bill.

For background, I just want to quote a paragraph from the Washington Post today on what the Medicaid bill that Republicans are trying to push through Congress right now would do.

To meet budget goals, Republican plans to cut Medicaid spending could strip coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured Americans over 10 years.

The legislation calls for new requirements for beneficiaries, including co-pays for those above 100% of the federal poverty level, which is super low, by the way.

And work requirements for many able-bodied, childless adults.

It would also tighten eligibility verification rules and limit taxes, states, charge medical providers as a roundabout way of collecting more federal Medicaid dollars.

That last bit, hard to grab, but I've read deeper into that article.

The result of those changes for nursing homes would mean the closing of many nursing homes and the impossibility of many people who are poor, elderly and disabled people from finding a bed in a nursing home.

So it's a pretty severe proposal on Medicaid.

But for Ron Johnson, not severe enough.

Ron Johnson says it should be cut even more.

I mean, it's just amazing to me, Angela, that

this senator from Wisconsin so unresponsive to the needs of his own constituents here in Wisconsin?

I mean, maybe he would know if he showed up and actually talked to his own constituents, right?

Like he doesn't, he's not available.

He's not hosting town halls.

So it's not a surprise that he's out of touch.

When I first saw that article of like the headline specifically, I was like, I'm not reading this right.

I just assumed it was, oh, he's on board with this terrible

And I'm like, wait, no, it doesn't go far enough.

Yeah, that

wasn't terrible enough.

I had to do a double take when I was reading it.

I'm like, one of the first things I thought of was like, this man must not be running for reelection when his time is up.

Because I don't understand this need to constantly try to punish the poor in the working class.

to know that we have this like backdrop and this like juxtaposition with someone like Elon Musk and these, you know, crypto, bitcoins, whatever people are doing and how people are making profits.

But yet we're stripping, you know, health care coverage, we're stripping basic necessities, you know, even thinking of our conversation yesterday with state rep Christian Phelps, we're denying kids food at schools.

But yet people like Elon Musk are able to continue to have to

tax breaks or, you know, get whatever kickbacks that they need.

And I think we need to have both of those conversations.

Yes, this is terrible.

But let's also talk about how people are also profiting at the same time.

I mean, it's so true that the economy is just so glaring, you know, the folks who are super rich and able to speculate on the stock market over the last, you know, couple weeks, including yesterday and the day before, or the people were making like bandits on Bitcoins.

you know, they're not going to worry that, you know, their mom or their grandma might not have a bed in a nursing home because they've got plenty of money to put them in the fanciest settings possible.

Most people listening to the show don't have that luxury.

And the other consequence is just cruelty to poor adults who don't have health insurance, make them through jump through many more hoops.

make them pay taxes on the benefits that they're getting.

And the consequences of that, if they're thrown off of Medicaid, of course, is they'll be jamming the emergency rooms like they used to even more so than they do today.

And that is a crisis of our crazy messed up healthcare system already and would only compound it further.

And Ron Johnson, you're right.

I mean, who does he show up and talk to?

He shows up on Fox.

He doesn't show up for town halls.

He's not representing the people of Wisconsin.

You know, a majority of people who have to put their folks or grandparents in nursing homes, they need this Medicaid coverage.

And to make it harder for them to, you know, get to a nursing home and a lot of these nursing homes aren't great places anyway.

They're pretty depressing.

And to make it even harder and harder for disabled and elderly people to get the coverage they need.

to get even in the door at the nursing home where they need to be, you can't really get much more chaos than that.

That and taking money out of the mouths of children, like they're doing here in Wisconsin in the

state

legislature, as you mentioned Angela by now, providing free meals to everybody, like the governor so wisely and prudently proposed and like they have in Minnesota.

And yet here in Wisconsin, we don't get it because we have this,

these right-wingers in control of our legislature.

And we have this right-winger in the US Senate who isn't representing the needs of his people here in Wisconsin.

We really got to get Ron Johnson out of there.

And I

don't know, maybe Mandela Barnes will run against him again.

Maybe we'll get another candidate who can run against him.

But somehow we can't get Ron Johnson there anymore.

He's not supposed to be there anyway.

He said he was only going to serve two terms.

What happened to that

promise?

Yeah, that time's long gone.

It's just particularly cruel, you know, I think.

that's something that we should just mention is like, yes, they're power hungry, but it is also incredibly cruel.

These policies.

Yeah.

And cruelty is the order of the day, according to Ron Johnson and Donald Trump.

And that whole gang, you're listening to mornings with Pat right lower, not cruel here.

Angela Lang and Matt Rothschild here, subbing in for Pat and we'll be right back in the civic media radio network to talk about the child care crisis.

Hey, welcome back to Mornings with Pat Tritlow.

Pat's on vacation this week, so I've been sitting in with Angela Lang, the Executive Director of Block.

I'm Matt Rothschild.

You're listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.

You can join our conversation by calling or texting 855-752-4842.

That's 855-75CIVIC.

We're all across the Civic Media Radio Network and pleased to be with you this morning and joining our

conversation this morning is Karine Henriksen.

She's a child care provider in Nouglaris.

It's called Karine's Little Explorers and she's a great activist.

I admire your activism Karine.

She's been very active this week as this is a week where and yesterday was a day without child care all across Wisconsin.

Tell us how that went.

So the day without childcare was the fourth annual one nationally.

Wisconsin again took the crown for the most actions happening across the country.

And very exciting.

Lots and lots of representatives came.

Unfortunately, Senator Marklein did not show up at the Nouglarist one to tell his constituents what the plan was.

So that was a little disappointing, but unsurprising.

Lots of great energy.

And then meanwhile, I was also working on today's continuation.

So the childcare change makers community.

community change is the one sponsoring and helps support all of the national information and actions.

Sorry, it's still early.

And so they are continuing with the state without childcare here in Wisconsin.

So they are fully supporting us in that endeavor as well.

And we are heading up to the Capitol today at 10 o'clock.

And what do you want to see happen in the Capitol today?

Well, we would like to see lots and lots of people.

This is open to every single person who cares about children.

And even if you don't care about children, do you really want them everywhere with their parents when they could be in care instead?

So you should come and join us as well.

We are looking for $480 million to be put back into the budget as an amendment to go directly to the child care program so that we can help support the wages.

Because without this funding, our wages will go down to $10.66 an hour.

we will lose 25% or more of our programs across the state, and it's going to be chaos.

Yeah, I saw that.

One quarter of childcare providers might have to close their doors if this $480 million isn't put back into Evers' budget.

You mentioned Howard Markline, State Senator.

He's on the Joint Finance Committee, and he has the power to convince others on that committee to reinstate that money.

He could also do a.

Yeah, he definitely does.

And he is my state senator.

He inherited me under the new fair maps.

So excited about that.

So we've been having a lot of conversations with him.

Our child care network actually met with him for about an hour, a month and a half ago.

And we offered to let him talk with us about any legislation that he wants to propose so that we could sit and have a conversation about what is your intention?

What do you think's going to happen if you do this?

And we could talk about what we know and the data we know and the other information we have.

And yesterday he put out a bill with Representative Hurd to do refundable tax credits for businesses who want to open up their own child cares.

And that is not something that we support.

It's not something that has ever worked in any state.

And it's interesting that they made it refundable for them.

But the Child Independent Tax Credit last year, they voted down the amendment to make it refundable for the hardworking

parents.

This would be a crisis not only for the childcare providers and the childcare centers, but for the parents, of course, who want to send their kids to childcare.

I read something like 87,000 slots for kids would not be available anymore.

Is that

right?

Yes, and it would be far more in the rural areas because in the rural areas, we already cannot charge enough because we don't have enough wealthy families or well-connected families or

employers who have, you know, the capacity to do that as well for their employees.

And so really, it's very intriguing to me that the Republicans who vastly represent the rural areas are literally hurting their constituents far more than Madison and Dane County because they have, yes, it's still going to hurt the families no matter what, but they have more people who are financially viable to be able to keep some more programs open.

And that will also help.

keep more kids in care.

We're in the rural areas that child care accounts revenue has been a far larger percentage of our revenue because we can't charge as much.

But across the state, they fairly allocated the dollars.

And so that's why it's going to hurt us even more in the rural areas.

I mean, Angela Lang was talking about this in the last half hour.

Just how are elected officials, some of our elected officials who are Republicans aren't

caring about their constituents.

I mean it's amazing whether it's Ron Johnson with his Medicaid cuts or whether it's Howard Markline with the cuts to child care.

I don't understand Howard Markline must know people in his district like you and a bunch of other parents out there who know the importance of child care also know how excruciating

It is to pay for childcare and how hard it is to find a slot for their kids.

And this is an everyday concern of most parents in Wisconsin who have to send their kids to childcare.

And why someone like Howard Markline, a super powerful person on the joint finance, doesn't get it or doesn't care enough to respond to his own constituents like you.

It's just kind of baffling.

It really is.

And he's actually admitted twice now on camera that his wife

Watch as the grandkids because they can't find care.

which, hello, it's affecting your own family.

You clearly know that that's the problem.

And then it's just, like I said, it's mind-boggling, it's baffling, and I don't know if it's because they don't understand, because they don't care, or they're just plain evil.

And I don't care to know which of the three it is, because at the end of the day, those people are harmed.

The wealthy and well-connected will continue to find and access care, but everyone else will be continuing to fight for the scraps.

And that is not okay, and that's why we will not sell for anything less than the $480 million.

If they want to add other things to

the package like in that dabble around the edges to try and see if they work and we will make it clear like you better have data in there so that you can decide in two years if this is.

worth continuing, then fine, so be it.

But we know over 6,000 programs closed between 2010 and 2019.

The only thing that stopped the hemorrhaging was COVID money, because

we

finally had dollars to go in so we could pay our people more than $10 an hour.

We're up to 13, but we lost ground.

We're now bottom 2% of all wage earners, because everybody else went up that much more.

And so we have people applying for jobs, and then they see we're paying 10, 11, 12 bucks an hour, and they go to Mcdonalds, anywhere else where they can make

1920 and get benefits.

It's just not right.

And I just doesn't make

sense.

I mean, this is kind of a weird situation where people who are working in childcare aren't making a living wage.

And yet the cost of childcare for the parents is so high.

I mean, that's a paradox.

How do you explain that?

So the biggest reason that number is high is kids are expensive.

Buildings are expensive, utilities, food, all the things that go into it.

But then whatever is left is what we have to pay ourselves as family child care, which is around 740 an hour.

And reminder, we work 50 hours a week with kids because parents need care for 10 hours a day or group centers who have the same thing where they have to staff for that many more hours than most businesses do to accommodate those parents hours.

They pay 13.66 and it's because four child's brains to develop 90% of it happens in those first five years.

You have to have solid relationships between the parent and the child and the caregiver and the child.

And we also support the parent.

So yesterday during our day without childcare, DPI and DWD both referenced that as a parent, they really, really, really leaned on their childcare provider to help them understand what to do this tiny human.

that they got without any directions to come home.

And so they said, not only are they caring for and educating our kids, but they're caring and for educating their parents.

So to me, we should be asking for double because we should be getting paid for the parent, you know, support and the child support because we're doing that outside of our hours.

And I just, if we want healthy communities, if we want our rural communities to stop hollowing out, we have to support them.

We need absolutely need to have affordable housing, affordable

child care and that would help stop the exodus from the schools that would stop the exodus from our volunteer fire departments who can't keep people because people aren't moving in and young people aren't able to like volunteer because they're working three different jobs.

It's just all connected and we keep coming back to that and they refuse to

the Republicans refused to sit down and talk with us.

So we also sent out a memo to all 132 this morning, letting them know about the press conference starting at 10 a.m.

at State Street, inviting them to come and speak.

And then we also have rooms reserved and we let them know.

Let us know.

We'll come and meet with you.

We'll talk through all of these bills.

We'll talk through why it matters.

We'll give you the resources and data, even though you have your own legislative staffers, and I've had five years to figure this out and read the information that we're giving them and talking to them about.

And I just don't understand why they don't believe us.

We are the owners.

We are the professionals.

I highly doubt you decide to throw a bill out there for the WMC or the AG and don't bother to ask them what they think.

They're probably writing the bills for you.

I'm sure they are.

You're inviting the public to come to this protest or event at 10 o'clock at the State Street entrance of the Capitol.

Yes, absolutely parents.

We we actually those of us who are closing have had extremely supportive parents They're asking they're thanking us because we're doing this with them because our Republicans are doing it to them and they cannot afford the 40 50 $60 a week interest, you know increase in weekly tuition and yes Somebody else has I just actually found out Representative Armstrong's in his district the business he kept referring to in the last session of that he was helping because you know, we don't understand

and how to run a business, just sent notice yesterday to the families that they're closing as of June.

And there were public hearings held about the budget proposal all across the state of Wisconsin.

I'm sure you and other childcare providers and parents gave the joint finance folks a year full.

Did they listen?

Doesn't appear that they did.

No, clearly they did not.

And I was one of them.

I went and I actually stood in front of Senator Mark Line when I made my statements and I said it.

Childcare was one of the top three issues that was brought up by the people that came.

Also, to go along with Ron Johnson and Medicaid, over half of us rely on Medicaid to stay in the field.

We will not have health care.

We will leave because of that on top of the loss of

pay.

because you're getting Medicaid for your healthcare.

And then if it's taken away, or

if you

have to pay extra because they're going to start taxing you, if you're over the poverty line, then it's going to be unworkable for you.

Exactly.

Oh, so that's a double whammy.

Yep.

I think one of the things I noticed is that this is such a like ripple effect that if you could talk more about how it like continues to impact other industries, because I'm looking at this email where you

Thank goodness, like broke down.

Each district will lose this amount or that amount.

What does that mean for each of those districts?

So what that means is those parents can't work.

What that means is those employers will not have employees.

What that means is those parents will not have money to spend at the restaurants and the local businesses.

And they will also then have a double whammy.

Not only will they not have employees, they won't have customers.

And so by putting this money into the economy, what you're doing is you're increasing the amount of money parents have.

You're increasing the amount of stability and money the employers have because they're not constantly churning and burning employees.

And your overall lifts up the entire economy.

Remember during COVID, they begged us to stay open because the hospitals needed us.

The grocery stores needed us.

That hasn't changed.

They still need us.

The need is extreme and the cuts are savage.

And this was $480 million.

This is one of the 600 provisions in Governor Evers' budget that on Thursday, the Republicans who dominate the Joint Finance Committee.

It's not really joint because it's so tilted toward the Republicans that they just slashed out these 600 items, including $480 million to support the childcare industry here in Wisconsin.

And that was among one of many things, including other important things like legalizing marijuana work.

medical marijuana and we're the last state in the world on that too.

But it's just amazing that they can't understand the child care crisis that the providers like you, Karine Hendrickson, face and that parents, every parent in Wisconsin who's sending their kids to child care has as well.

And so we need to keep the pressure on joint finance, go to the protest at 10 o'clock today at State Street, join Karine Hendrickson and her

Tremendous activists in the child care industry here in Wisconsin try to get this money restored.

I'm Matt Rothschild.

I'm co-hosting today on mornings with Pat Tritlow along with Angela Lang.

Karine, thanks so much for being a guest today on the show.

And again, I so admire your activism.

We need thousand more people like you out there.

I know there are others.

Welcome back to Mornings with Pat Krylo, Pat's on vacation today and Angela Lang and I are co-hosting.

We're gonna be co-hosting tomorrow and Thursday as well and it's a pleasure to be on the Civic Media Radio Network with you.

You can join our conversation 855-752-4842.

That's 855-75 Civic.

You can text or call Tony Zimmerman called and said texted and said Korean always has lots of good information to share.

She was a wonderful guest.

Don't you think Angela?

Yeah, she's great and I really appreciate her like lifting up, you know, childcare because I think that there's a lot of times as we said it touches everyone.

It also has a ripple effect in other communities and being able to see her level of organizing and bringing attention to all this I think is just.

amazing and more, we need more, more of this.

And just really applaud what she's doing.

Yeah.

And so if you're listening and you can make the protest today at the Capitol here in Madison at 10 o'clock on the state's free side, please, please do so.

Pat usually does this day in history in this segment.

And I've added a little bit of historical context, not just music.

So this day in history, Winston Churchill in 1940.

gave an incredible famous speech, defiant speech against fascists.

Of course, they were fighting the Nazis at that point.

And I just wanted Greg to play a little of that for us if you

could.

where before it's many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

You ask, what is our policy?

I will say, it is the wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us.

The wage war against the monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalog of human crime.

That is our policy.

You are.

What is our

aim?

Our aim is victory.

That's Winston Churchill taking on the fascists in 1940.

An amazing leader for his time, an amazing writer too.

I mean, you could tell that wasn't written by a ghost writer.

I'm sure that was Winston Churchill himself.

He was an author of many histories and you know, it's eerie though for me.

since we're fighting fascism here in the United States.

It's such an echo 85 years ago.

My father fought in World War II in Europe, always warned about fascists.

And we need to recognize the risk that we face here in this country.

And the weird thing is that there are hundreds of millions of families here in the United States who had

parents grandparents or great grandparents who fought against the fascist last century and and why?

half the voting population decided to go with a crypto neo fascist This time around so baffling to me Angela.

I think I don't know.

I guess and I think what's I think maybe some people's like analysis is like, oh It can't be that bad like

Yeah, you know, it's he's not going to do all of those things.

And I think about how people were really skeptical to believe that Project 2025 was a thing.

There are people like that's ridiculous.

Half of that is unconstitutional.

That would never happen.

That's just a fear mongering tactic to get you to vote for the Democratic Party.

I think there was just some real denial, I think, of what

This administration was actually capable of so I think that there's like there was an acknowledgement of like yeah It's ridiculous, but people didn't think that it would act we would actually be here And I think people are regretting that now, but I that's part of like my I think like theory is that people?

I thought these things were so ridiculous and while a good chunk of us took them seriously Other people thought that it was just so outlandish.

We would never see anything like this in our lifetime

and they're still warning us that they may not follow a constitution, they may surrender avius corpus.

So, you know, we've been warned in the Winston Churchill speech is a great reminder too.

This day in music history, Richie Valens' birthday, Richie Valens on February 3rd, 1959, the day the music died, died in a plane crash in Iowa that also claimed the lives of Buddy Holly and the big bopper, here he is.

Also, the birthday of the great Stevie Wonder today.

You've seen Stevie Wonder in concerts, right?

Yeah, it was in October, actually.

Just a few months ago, I snuck away on a Thursday night in front of mine, and we went to the Pfizer, and it was such a good show.

Very nostalgic as some of that grew up with Stevie Wonder.

it was also socially acceptable to sit down the majority of the concert as well.

It was one of the most diverse concerts like age, gender, just ethnicity.

There were so many folks and I think it goes to show like his music and how he's able to bring folks together too.

Yeah, I've never seen Stevie Wonder in concert.

My wife saw him in concert in Milwaukee.

45 years ago or something.

She's still talking about it.

So, Stevie Wonder's birthday, happy birthday, and of course he has the great happy birthday song for Martin Luther King too, among other things.

Also, birthdays today in popular music, Mary Wells was born in 1943.

She died in 1992 at the young age, wow, 49.

There she is, Mary Wells with my guy.

Angela Lange and I will be right back after this break.

We're going to be talking with Bill Fletcher, a political activist and union guy who's got a lot to say about how we resist Trump and all the reactionary politics of the Trump administration that we're facing.

We'll be right back with Mornings with Pat Freitlow on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Live from Wisconsin across the Civic Media Radio Network, you are listening to Mornings with Pat Critello.

Filling in for Pat, we have your hosts, Matt Rothschild and Angela Lang.

Good morning, beautiful morning here in Wisconsin.

Welcome to Mornings with Pat Critello on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I am Matt Rothschild and I'm delighted to have Angela Lang co-hosting with me as she usually does.

We're a team whenever it's possible.

And also delighted to bring a great thinker and activist about politics in our country to you.

His name is Bill Fletcher.

Bill has worked for labor unions.

He was a senior staffer at the AFL-CAIO.

He was the former president of Queens, Africa.

He's the author of several books on unions, including They're Bankrupting Us and 20 Other Myths About Unions, which was...

which is a really useful book debunking the entire group of propaganda that we have to deal with all the time.

He's also a writer of mystery novels.

The man who fell from the sky is one of them, Bill Fletcher.

Welcome back to the Civic Media Radio Network.

Well, although you got me up early, Matt, it's a real pleasure to be here.

Well, it's great having you because Angela and I talked with you shortly after the shocking re-election of Donald Trump.

And we weren't able to pursue the conversation as we wanted to.

And I thought we'd get you back on to delve more deeply into it.

And right off the bat, I just kind of want to get your temperature taking here of, you know, how far down the hill are we here toward a kind of fascist

government?

The short answer is that it's very difficult to determine that What we can say and it relates to something Angela you were saying before the break Too many people Too many intelligent people Completely underestimated What Trump was going to do and what the MAGA movement intended to do despite the fact

that much like Hitler with Mein Kampf, they had laid it all out in Project 2025.

So it was actually inexcusable.

And I've talked to people about this.

And so that's problem one, but we're correcting that.

What's interesting about this administration or this regime is that what they are doing, they learned a very valuable lesson from

the 2017 to 2021 period, they have as a simple test for people to be in the administration, that of loyalty, personal loyalty, competence, that's what makes this whole thing the struggle that they're waging against so-called DEI absurd.

The level of incompetence is just astounding, but that doesn't matter the issue is loyalty and that becomes very important to me in terms of them crossing the constitutional line and Whether or not there will be actions taken against them if they proceed actions either by the military and or by the courts So I would say that

Their objective is to essentially replicate Orban's regime in Hungary in the United States.

I think that that's their motto.

Some version of Orban and Putin.

The good news is that there's a hell of a lot of resistance going on.

I mean just all over the country.

Speaking of the resistance, one of the things that I keep really sitting with and thinking about is there is on one hand a lot of people who are participating in protests and demonstrations for the first time, which we love.

And we also have to be reminded that not everybody has shown up in a way that was the most left or the most radical, right?

There were some

protests that were documented where somebody was like it was my first protest and my kids were bored was it too much to ask for a bouncy house or you know I felt really safe because the cops were there or there was one report that had a woman joined the protest from the hotel restaurant across the street and she was kind of walking through the crowd with a glass of wine and

I think in some of that, it's kind of missing the plot of the resistance.

But at the same time, we all didn't step into our own analysis thinking fully formed.

So I'm wondering your thoughts of how do we make sure that these protests aren't one co-opted by the Democratic Party and people actually see it as a level of resistance and not more of a status quo.

that also wasn't working for folks, but then also being patient enough to meet folks where they're at to build their analysis that is more comprehensive.

So I would respond two ways.

One is that I'm glad to hear about someone walking through a demonstration with a glass of wine.

I think we should encourage people that would not ordinarily protest to come on their own terms.

And I think that that is the beginning of a journey.

Now, the other part of the journey is that you need a guide map.

And the guide map really needs to be by organizations and organizers who are conducting education.

See, this is what the far right does, and they do it very well.

Back in the 1970s, when they started promoting right-wing mass movements like anti-bussing, anti-panema canal, anti-abortion,

The bar of entry was very low to get into those mass movements.

But once you were in, they had people there that were drawing connections between the right-wing view of the Panama Canal and the right-wing view of abortion.

And that helped to spawn a whole set of activists that went on to play major roles in the Reagan years and others.

We should learn accordingly and it's not learn is we should relearn because we've done it in the past So we need to be educating people who are coming in And and welcoming them now welcoming is going to be hard for many people on the left because so many of us are so pure You know and that we we we demand that people have identical politics with us and find it

almost reprehensible when there are people that have politics that are a few degrees off of ours.

If we can shift that, we will win.

Yeah, the purity test is really a dangerous one, Bill Fletcher, for sure.

And we need to get beyond that.

You initially said that maybe the things that might be stopping Trump are judges.

and the military.

I

mean, I know the judges, I'm curious about the military side.

What are you suggesting there?

Well, you know, it's interesting, Matt.

I grew up with an image of the threat from that the military would play the role that they threatened to play in that iconic film, Seven Days in May, where, which if your listeners have never seen it, go to YouTube, it is really an amazing film.

screenplay by Rod Serling of Twilight Zone.

And it was about a proposed right-wing coup against the president.

That's what I assume.

I always assume that.

What I'm coming to see is that the military is much more complicated, up and down, from the enlisted personnel to many of the officers who actually believe in the Constitution.

Now they may not have the same worldview as we on the left, but they actually believe in the Constitution.

And so the question will be at what point will Trump go past a wine?

Either in calling out the military against protesters, that's probably going to be the trigger.

And using deadly force.

And to what extent will the Trump administration attempt to federalize the National Guard, thereby enlisting them also, and what will the National Guard do?

I think these are speculative issues.

But one of the things that it tells me is that progressives need to not treat military personnel

as somehow contagious with chickenpox, that we have to be engaging them and their families.

And there are some organizations out there that are actually doing that.

So I think that that's going to be very important.

The thing about the courts is that the courts have been overwhelmingly siding against Trump.

So the question will be, what will the Supreme Court ultimately do?

with some of these things.

And to the extent that Trump decides to ignore the courts, what will the courts do?

What are they capable of doing?

And all of this is in really uncharted territory.

And it's not that speculative either, because you have, you know, Donald Trump shrugging off whether he'd follow the Constitution or not, as though it's, you know, whether he's going to go to this restaurant or that restaurant tonight.

It was that nonchalant.

You've

got

Stephen Miller talking about suspending habeas corpus and Trump himself considering it according to CNN.

The question, the real threshold question is if the Supreme Court rules that he can't do something and then he goes ahead and does it, what's going to happen to our country?

And the other question that you were raising, is he going to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to bring tanks down Main Street?

and would the military respond?

Now, I think in his first turn, the military wanted to have saluted and say, how should I jump?

But with Pete Hegseth there at the top, certainly he'll follow orders.

And the question is, the Joint Chiefs, are they going to follow orders?

And then further down that hierarchical chain of command, I mean, they'll find, don't you think they're going to find someone to salute and follow the order?

They will find some people.

The question is whether

the military will literally pull the trigger.

I mean, the display of troops is going to be one thing.

But will they pull the trigger?

And you see, this is where the anti-Maga forces need to be thinking about various forms of non-cooperation and other forms of resistance.

I mean, many people talk about they'll need to be a general strike.

I don't engage in that discussion since

The last general strike was in 1946.

And so in the United States, and so no one really understands how to put one together.

But what we can say is that we should be preparing for various forms of civil disobedience, other forms of non-cooperation, and what they call in South Africa, stayaways.

where you have a broad segment of population, it's just simply withdraws from daily activity, including work, but not just work.

So I think we're gonna have to be thinking along those lines.

But the last thing is, I mean, really the question, what we've seen, and we see it now with Trump and the tariffs, is this guy's a bully.

And you push back and frequently you can get in the back down.

Yeah, absolutely.

We're speaking with Bill Fletcher, longtime political activist, labor activist, thinker, worker for the AFL-CIO author of books on unions.

We're going to talk about the labor movement when we come back.

You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow.

I'm Matt Rothschild, joined by my co-host, Angelo Lang, and we'll be right back.

You can join the conversation, 855-752-4842.

Good morning, Wisconsin.

Welcome back to Mornings with Pat Tritlow.

I'm not Pat Tritlow, I'm Matt Rochelle.

I'll be in for him today along with Angela Wang, my co-host Angela's the second director of block black leaders organizing for communities.

She's also

a prize-winning op-ed writer, two years in a row here in Wisconsin.

And we're joined by one of the smartest political activists and observers that I know.

His name is Bill Fletcher.

He was a senior staffer at the AFL-CIO.

He wrote a great book called They're Bankrupting Us and 20 Other Mists About Unions.

He's also the former president of TransAfrica and a mystery novelist in his spare time.

Bill...

Last time we had you on Angela asked you about how to bring the labor movement together in resistance against Trump and we barely had time to talk about that.

So I wanted to give you the opportunity right now.

Trump has been trying to divide the labor movement, obviously.

Yes.

So I've been saying that labor's response to Trump

falls into three categories.

There are the collaborators, those who think that they can cut a deal with him.

There are the ostriches, which are basically hoping that they can put their head in the sand for the next four years.

And then there are the resistors.

So I've been concentrating on the resistors.

The resistors are unions that in varying ways and to varying degrees are opposing Trump.

But it's not very well organized.

There's an effort that I'm helping to lead a form called standing for democracy that emerged out of a failed effort by a number of trade union leaders to get their act together.

And there's a new effort called Labor for Democracy, which is some union leaders that have come together to stand against what Trump is doing.

One of the real challenges within labor, Matt and Angela, is a reluctance to use the F word.

F word meaning fascism, not the other F word.

Because plenty of people use the other one or the word authoritarianism there is this this I've had discussions with trade union leaders who will say something like this They'll say bill we agree with you But we have Many of our members who voted for Trump who are MAGA people and we've got to figure out how to deal with them and It gets a little touchy now

That may sound rational and understandable.

The problem is that politically it takes you into cul-de-sac.

Because the question is, what do you do with people who are in one way or another embracing fascism?

And do you basically think that they're pretty much just kind of misguided souls but otherwise really good people?

And therein lies part of the problem.

that what we're facing is not simply a maniacal president or a maniacal president and his friends.

We're facing a maniacal president and his friends and a vast social movement that represents at least 30% of the electorate.

And that permeates into the trade union movement.

And you can't avoid that.

But many unions, because they've spent so little time on internal education, really don't know how to respond.

Well, how should they respond?

Well, there's a few things.

One thing that really inspired me was a friend of mine is writing a book about the domestic situation in the US during World War II.

And he has this chapter he showed me that deals with the hate strikes.

That went on between 1941 and 1945 now for your listeners that may not be familiar with this in 1941 under pressure from a Philip Randolph and a large segment of black community Franklin was developed signed an executive order opening up jobs in the developing manufacturing Military manufacturing sector to black workers basically said companies had to hire them and

There were strikes by racist white workers against the hiring of black workers.

And this is from 1941 through 45, including during those years when the outcome of World War II remained in doubt.

These strikes were nevertheless happening, so much for patriotism.

Many union leaders across the board

took very strong stands against the hate strikes and worked against them, despite the fact that these were their own members.

That's the example.

That's what we have to replicate, that the fact of being a member is secondary to what politics of people actually putting into effect.

So the education and the courage of leaders is the critical thing right now, taking a stand.

There's other things, but maybe after the break, we can get into

that.

Are there some union leaders who are exemplary in this?

I try not to name names.

That gets me in the trouble.

I can say that there are some that are better than others.

There are some that are very good with rhetoric, but the internal operation is left wanting.

Most unions have something that

Let's say a very poor record on education, internal education.

Well, we're going to pick that up and also how we're going to get through this ultimately with Bill Fletcher, political thinker and activist.

You're listening to mornings with Pat Tritlow.

Pat's out this week.

I'm Matt Rothschild with Angela Lang co-hosting for you all across the Civic Media Radio Network.

You can join us at 855-752-4842 and we'll be right back with Bill Fletcher.

Good morning.

You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Pat's not here.

He's on vacation this week.

I'm Matt Rothschild joined by my usual co-host Angela Lang of Block.

And we're speaking with a tremendous guest, Bill Fletcher, a union organizer, union activist.

political observer, author of several books, including their bankrupting us and 20 other myths about unions, which anyone in the labor movement, anyone interested in the labor movement should read.

He's also the writer of mystery novels.

Bill, we were talking before the break about the labor movement, how crucial and its resistance to Trump and how crucial is the labor movement as part of a larger resistance movement?

As small as the labor movement has become as a percentage of the workforce, now roughly 10%, it remains an invaluable component for a number of reasons, including it's one of the few institutions in the United States that brings together men and women, people of different so-called races and ethnicities, and whether they like it or not, they have to collaborate.

And that's different from many self-segregating or forcibly segregated institutions around the United States.

So the labor movement demonstrates the potential for democracy.

It doesn't mean that the labor movement is thoroughly democratic, but the potential exists there.

And it's also clear

globally that in opposing authoritarianism the role of the labor movement is critical that it's often the spine in the resistance and in our case we've got to give the spine a little bit more spine and that's part of that's part of the challenge right now.

I know it was hugely influential in Chile and

in opposing Pinochet and ultimately taking Pinochet down.

But it was part of a larger movement that included religious organizations, members of other civic society institutions, universities.

I mean, it's not for nothing that Trump's going after the universities either.

That's right.

And therein lies part of the problem for organized labor, which is it doesn't necessarily play well with others except at election time.

And so

You have labor leaders who basically don't want to interact, particularly with non-governmental organizations or with community-based organizations, unless they're forced to.

And that kind of narrowness is going to put us in a grave.

And that's a lot of what I fight against.

And aren't they starting to realize that they need to play well with others?

For instance, here in Wisconsin, Scott Walker,

was a great organizer for those of us in the pro-democracy movement.

And I would think similarly, Trump should be a great organizer of the pro-democracy movement, because people have to put aside their crap and get their acts together.

You would

think that, except there is a sentiment.

I always like to refer to the man who jumped off the Empire State Building.

And when he was falling past the 40th floor, he was overheard saying, so far, so good.

That really is part of the problem, not just in labor, but more broadly than many people excuse away a disastrous approach, a disastrous situation approaching us.

And you have within labor, among others, those that basically think it's really not that bad.

It could be worse.

As people said before the election, Trump is running all this rhetoric.

He's not going to actually do what he's talking about.

Or in the case of labor, maybe we can save our particular union if we cut the right deal.

That's the kind of thinking that will, again, put us in the grave.

And that's what we have to actively oppose.

Yeah.

I mean, we saw that with the teamsters leader speaking at the Republican convention.

It

was horrible.

Yeah.

It's horrible.

You know, you are the former president of TransAfrica.

TransAfrica was a leading organization here in the United States that fought the apartheid regime and helped organize the anti-apartheid struggle here in the United States and around the world.

I have to ask you as the former president of TransAfrica, what you make of Donald Trump's decision to allow or embrace

Afrika with

open arms.

Yeah, the only immigrants he's ever embraced are the white Afrikaans from South Africa who were the Who were the folks who were running a Parkside,

right?

What do you make of

that?

It didn't surprise me But it nevertheless sickened me it didn't surprise me because He's a racist I mean, let's go back to the Central Park five,

right,

you know, let's go to

the comments that he made during his last administration about asshole countries and wanting people from Norway.

So he, his views, he's a racist and anti-Semite and his views are fairly clear.

So in that sense, it didn't surprise me.

It nevertheless sickened me and it demonstrated why

people actually need to study history and why his absence of actually studying and understanding history is so glaring that he could look at South Africa and ignore the history of colonialism and apartheid, ignore the theft of the land by the settlers, ignore the fact that there's immense pressure and has been,

on the South African government since 1994 to rectify the problem of land theft and that even then the steps that the government has taken have been fairly minimal.

So this idea of some sort of anti-white racism is absurd.

There's absolutely no foundation for it, but it's

consistent with his entire worldview.

And I was so glad to see that the Episcopalian Church denounced him and said that they were not going to cooperate in the settling of these so-called refugees.

It's completely absurd.

You know, you mentioned his worldview, and one of the things that annoys me is when I hear folks say,

Trump doesn't have a worldview.

Trump is just a narcissist and just a grifter.

And to me, that is missing the point.

He does have a worldview.

He's a racist, as you pointed out.

He's an ultra-nationalist.

He's anti-Semitic, as you pointed out.

And he's ultra-hyper-masculine.

That's all part of an ideology.

That's all part of a worldview.

And for people to miss that, you're missing the components of a fascist personality.

That's precisely right, you know whether whether Trump could actually sit down and write a book that articulated anything is a different matter what's important is precisely what you said that the components are all there and And and you could sum it up in one word revanchism revanchism is a term very much used in in Europe

for politics of resentment and revenge.

Politics that basically says something was taken from me and I'm gonna grab it back.

So after World War I, the German nationalists were revanchious.

They basically felt the Versailles treaty had taken stuff from Germany.

They were gonna get it back.

And Trump's politics are revanchious.

And he's appealing to a sentiment.

among a large segment of white people and a large segment of men who basically are arguing that something was taken from them.

Now, some of these folks that are his part of his base, or at least his voting base, are people that their lives have collapsed.

And their lives have collapsed not because of people of color or women or LGBTQ people.

the alliance of cause because of capitalism and and what trump and the mega folks have said is like no let's you know ignore that person behind the curtain right focus over here focus on what i want you to focus upon and that are uh that includes various scapegoated populations that's what he's done so in the current in the situation with south africa the the idea that

there is anything wrong with a democratic government in South Africa saying we need to reclaim land that was stolen from the people.

And we've got to do something about it.

This is the problem with truth and reconciliation.

It's missing an R. The R is rectification.

So you can't have reconciliation if you don't have rectification.

So

basically just having the truth and then saying, okay, let's sing kumbaya.

No, let's have the truth.

Then let's rectify the crime.

Then we can have reconciliation.

So South Africa missed that middle R. And I think that Trump is not playing to that by basically saying a part that is over, everything should be fine.

We don't need to rectify anything, just all saying kumbaya.

And to the extent that there is any rectification, he wants to embrace those folks who had any bit of rectification against, you know, their own property.

That's right.

That's right.

Exactly.

Because he's basically saying that, you see, it's very typical American thinking.

It's what I call the from now on thinking.

See, in the United States, A, we oppose history and we embrace myth.

We actively oppose history.

But the second thing is we have this really strange notion that, you know, I could have merged your family, but from now on, I assure you I will not do that.

I may have stolen your land, but from now on, I'm assuring you I will not.

But we're not going to pay attention to the fact that I merged your family and stole your land.

We're going to ignore that.

because that's in the past.

We're just going forward.

That kind of thinking permeates the United States, which is one of the reasons that certain forms of civil rights law is no longer accepted.

And why you can have people like Trump that will say oppose DEIs and oppose so-called critical race theory because they don't want to grapple with history.

And they want to deny it.

Or they want to say, we don't want to be victimized.

They claim the victim role.

That's Trump's whole appeal.

That's precisely right.

Enough is enough.

You black people have been complaining too much.

Native Americans have been complaining too much.

Yeah, you lost 80% to 90% of your population.

But that's in the past.

From now on, everything will be cool.

And that's what it's all about.

That's the attack on DEI, as you said, which is just code for.

you know, taking away civil rights protections, code for being racist in a way.

That's right.

I'm not racist.

I'm just against DEI.

But essentially, they are taking away people's people of color's rights.

There's no doubt about it.

Bill Fletcher, unfortunately, we're running out of time with you.

I want to thank you for being our guests today on warnings with Pat Cradleau.

It's always edifying to listen to you and be in conversation with you.

And thanks for all your great work.

My

pleasure.

And my best to both of you.

Take care.

Thank you.

And we'll be right back with Mornings with Pat Critello on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Matt Rothschild.

You can join our conversation 855-752-4842.

Welcome back to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow-Petz off this week.

So I'm Matt Rothschild-Submanin for Pat, along with my co-host, Angela Lang, the executive director of Block, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities.

And you're welcome to join the conversation, 855-752-4842.

You can call her text.

That's 855-75CIVIC all across the Civic Media Radio Network.

Tony Zimmerman enjoyed the union conversation we had with Bill Fletcher.

As did I, I mean, Bill Fletcher is such a knowledgeable person, such a perceptive person, and he's got a great historical grasp, too, that I could have talked to him.

For hours.

Yeah.

For as long as he'd sit still.

Yeah.

And I think he said so many important things, but one was the importance of engaging the labor movement in a mass movement of resistance.

and the labor movement's got to be a part of it.

I know there are segments of the labor movement, and he divided up between the collaborators, those ostriches and the resistors.

I love that way he spelled it out.

And yeah, we had the Teamsters Union collaborating, the UAW resisting, but then Trump tries to divide auto workers who are...

Opposed to him versus auto workers who are in favor of him with his tariffs and all that so it was interesting to hear that there is organizing going on within the labor movement about how to resist and Bill Fletcher himself who's been there for decades is part of that movement and not the only person trying to do that hard and important work I had mentioned Chile and in the Pinochet era the copper miners there were crucial in

opposing, um, Pinochet's rule, but they too couldn't, they, they had thought about doing a general strike and it, they had concluded that it would just be too dangerous for them.

Uh, and so rather than doing a general strike, they had kind of like a slowdown or works everybody.

They told all of civil society.

I mean, just like we had the childcare providers here in Wisconsin today without childcare.

And just as we've had, uh, voices to our front era,

do days a day without immigrants, you know, we're going to need to do a day of resistance across the board or a week of resistance at some point.

If Trump continues along the path that he's going in, I have no doubt that he's going to continue along the path that he's going.

I mean, one thing that we have going for us maybe

his level of incompetence, which is a term that Bill Fletcher also used.

I don't want to put all our eggs in the basket of his incompetence and the incompetence of his cabinet people, because I think they're going to go forward anyway.

And yeah, they'll blunder, just like Elon Musk blundered, but the direction is still way downhill.

And so, you know, he may blunder us all the way through this constitutional crisis we're in already.

And so we're just going to have to up the nonviolent resistance.

And it was it was great to hear Bill Fletcher talk about the importance of that.

Didn't you think, Angela?

Yeah, you know, I'm really just thinking about in the Scott Walker days and that that dark chapter of Wisconsin, it was very clear.

I mean, through audio, leaked audio.

the tactic was divide and conquer.

And I don't think that we've ever really gotten over that.

Like it was like divide the state, but also divide the labor movement.

And we saw how folks, you know, police and fire were excluded from things like act 10 and how significant it was for the firefighters to stand with the rest of labor and to have that solidarity.

And like, how do we replicate that?

And I think it's being able to see things for what they are, but also not wait until something hits your doorstep for you to care about it.

And I think we've seen that a lot with folks who may have supported Trump in the election, because maybe they liked what he was saying about other communities, but didn't expect it to happen to them.

And so how are we

not falling for this like divide and conquer and understanding that these are tactics to limit the labor movement.

And it's something that I think we've seen time and time again.

And you know, I really do appreciate the corroborators, astroges and resistors because like as someone that worked in the labor movement, I had like names and faces for all of those, right?

And I get, you know, as a president of a labor union wanting to do the most that you can to protect your members.

But there also needs to be a long term solidarity for the labor movement.

And how are we bringing in folks too, who may be interested in the labor movement, but their particular work site is not union, right?

I'm not saying it's the labor movements.

specifically that needs to bring them in, but somebody does, right?

How are we having this like broader class conscious conversation that people see these intersections and it's not just necessarily

Oh, you know, I'm going to support this particular president or this particular administration because of one singular policy.

You know, people have said all the time we are not single issue voters.

And so what does that mean and how does that extend to the labor movement in a way where there's a lot more energy and I think folks are trying to harness what does it look like to build.

And one thing I'll just say very quickly.

is the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO and the reaction, the public reaction of how they defended the alleged shooter, Luigi, and whether you think it was a good thing or a bad thing, there's something to be said about that level of reaction that people were so upset at the healthcare system that they're almost celebrating this person.

So I think that there's something to be said about how we're

taking this moment to broaden out to other issues too.

Yeah, you know, I was in the Capitol when the firefighters came in and when cops for labor came in.

And what a great example that was.

So I'm glad you brought that up, Angela.

I mean, it is important, as Bill Fletcher said, for the union movement to work well with others.

And it's also important for those of us who aren't in the union movement to work well with the union movement.

That's how we're going to move this thing forward.

And it was just great having his insight and yours for that matter Angela on this crucial subject of how we're gonna continue with this resistance against Donald Trump, which is our ongoing conversation on mornings with Pat Crite low I'm Matt Rothschild joined by Angela Lange and we'll be right back with a professor at the University who is doing her part with the faculty to resist Trump So stay with us and join the conversation 8 5 5 7 5

Welcome to Mornings with Pat Kreilow, Fats on Vacation.

I'm Matt Rothschild, subbing in as a co-host with Angela Lange.

And we are all across the Civic Media Radio Network.

We hope you'll join our conversation by calling or texting at 855-752-4842.

That's 855-75 Civic.

You know, we're going to continue the conversation on how to resist Trump.

And I'm delighted to have actually in studio with me our next guest who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin here in Madison.

Her name is Leah Horowitz.

She's the Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and American Indian and Indigenous Studies here in Madison.

Welcome to the program.

Thanks so much.

Great to be here.

Well, I saw your name in an article about the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison trying to stand up to Donald Trump and passing a resolution in the last two weeks or so to urge the university to join a compact with other Big Ten universities in saying

We're not going to be bullied by Donald Trump.

Tell us more about that and what that vote or what that meeting of the faculty was like.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, the motivation behind this resolution is the fact that, as you probably know, we're in an urgent situation where universities are under attack and in multiple ways all at once.

And I can talk more about that in a minute, but in terms of the resolution itself,

The idea behind that was just looking at the strategy of the current federal administration has been just to target a few universities at a time so that the rest will silence themselves.

So we've watched as universities have been targeted one after another and the rest have largely kept their heads down, hoping that they wouldn't be noticed.

And some were caving, like Columbia.

Exactly, exactly.

So, you know, it's becoming increasingly clear that that isn't working.

You know, you mentioned Columbia University and they were under immense financial pressure and they actually exceeded to the administration's demands and then the administration made even more demands and froze even more funding.

So...

that clearly isn't working as a strategy.

But we have seen the executive branch back down and even reverse course when there's enough resistance.

We saw it with tariffs and then closer to home for us academics, we saw that happen with student visas.

And so universities are starting to stand up to these illegal attacks.

We don't, as UW Madison doesn't have the deep pockets that Harvard is using for its litigation, but as members of the Big Ten,

We have each other, and we can stand together.

It was important, the stance that Harvard made, though, even though they had that endowment with, you know, $40 billion or something ridiculous there in their pocket.

Absolutely.

But the amazing thing was the extent to which the Trump administration wanted to dictate what could be taught at Harvard.

Yeah, for sure.

No, that's...

That's truly a terrifying situation to be in when you're being told what you can and cannot say in the classroom, right?

That's obviously completely flies in the face of everything that we stand for as a nation in terms of free speech.

So, you know, that was, it was really great to see Harvard stand up.

And has that emboldened other university administrators to stiffen their spine?

Well, we're hoping so, right?

I mean, that was the idea behind this resolution, and particularly for this Big Ten academic.

Alliance, you know Rutgers took the lead on this and a couple of their faculty members wrote a resolution and their faculty Senate passed it So the full name of this resolution is or the compact that it's calling for is a mutual defense compact for the University is at the Big Ten Academic Alliance in defense of academic freedom institutional integrity and the research enterprise so big long name there and we were the 11th

of the 18 Big Ten to sign on.

And meanwhile, you got the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the State University of New York, and at least three City University of New York schools that have all passed an essentially identical resolution.

What was the vote like at the UW faculty?

Was it overwhelming?

Was it close?

It was absolutely overwhelmingly in support.

Yeah, I wish I could say it was unanimous.

I think there was one descent, but I believe that was on procedural issues rather than substantive.

But one out of how many?

Oh, well into the two hundreds.

So it was.

truly overwhelming.

Absolutely and the senators had time to take that back to their departments and share that text of the resolution with their with their the faculty that they represent and I just got a lot of emails very much in support of this of this effort.

Very encouraging but but it's still for the university to come on board with it it has to the Chancellor's got to support it and the Regents have to support it right?

For sure for sure so you know that's that's our hope is that that's

the next step.

We've done what we could do as faculty members.

But we're all on the same page, I think, in terms of really wanting the university to succeed and go forth and be able to go ahead and keep doing the kind of research and teaching that we believe makes Wisconsin and the world a better place.

So the chancellor ultimately represents us as

faculty and so we're hopeful that you know she and the other big ten or maybe all public university chancellors and presidents will go ahead and spans together and to stand up together with the unified voice.

Professor Horowitz what has Chancellor Mnuchin's response been so far?

We heard anything substantive on this from

her?

We haven't heard anything back.

She did you know the rumor has it that she is in support of this.

compact.

So we're hoping to hear a response soon.

That's a hopeful rumor.

Absolutely.

And what would that mean if the if the chancellor came on board?

That would be a big signal to the to the Regents themselves.

And now Governor Evers has a majority of the Board of Regents, doesn't he?

Am I right about that?

Is there a majority of Board of Regents now have been appointed by Evers?

Oh, that's a good

question.

I am not quite sure.

Angela may know, do you know that Angela?

I

think so, I think at this point, yeah.

I know he just, he just appointed a couple more, so.

Yeah, yeah.

And then for the whole system, assuming that your rumor is correct, that the chancellor supports this, and assuming that the regents go along with it, what kind of state would that make if the UW system stood up to Donald Trump?

Yeah, for sure.

So, I mean, I think it's part of...

all of the Big Ten coming together and just showing a united front, right?

And just saying that, you know, we're going to support each other.

So what the resolution actually does is it's very simple, but it does two things.

One is to commit to a shared or distributed defense fund.

So if any one of us is attacked, then everyone steps up

to share resources.

So it would be a legal defense fund.

Well, to a certain extent.

I mean, we would also, the second part of that is we would share relevant expertise in legal services.

Yeah.

So, you know, some monetary support and then some knowledge and resources, intellectual resource type of support.

For sure.

And you expect...

I mean, Trump, the whole way Trump operates is to continue to bully, though.

So chances are, you know, that's what he's done with Harvard.

He wants to take the tax exempt status away now.

So the repercussions could be serious.

I'm sure you and the other faculty members understand that, and I'm sure the chancellor understands that, and the regents do too, but regardless, it's important to stand up.

Otherwise, you know, the fascist feeds on fear.

and weakness and he will continue to roll over one university after another if people like you don't stand up and I commend you for your activism here.

It's great activism at the local level and it's the kind of activism we need across civil society.

So there'll be blowback though for sure and how do you think the university will respond to that or should respond to

that?

Well look like I was saying before he does back down under when he realizes that

There's a lot of pressure.

You mentioned the student visas.

Talk about how we retreated on that.

Well, he changed that decision, right?

So that all of the visas that had been lost in this civis system have now been reinstated.

This was international students coming to UW.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So, you know, I think he does.

I'm not a psychologist.

I don't know exactly how his mind operates.

He does seem to back down whether when there's enough pressure and public pressure would be really helpful in that regard.

So part of this effort I think is to send a message to the public as well to say, hey, you know, we're your state universities.

We're here for you.

And so please pay attention.