MADISON – This morning, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression (MAARPR) hosted a press conference in the Capitol rotunda. Their coalition was calling on Governor Evers to veto the shared revenue compromise between his office and Republican leadership announced late last week. They were joined by the following Milwaukee based grassroots coalition partners:
- Voces De La Frontera and Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES)
- Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT)
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization – Wisconsin
- Coalition to March on the RNC
- Milwaukee Anti-War Committee
- Reproductive Justice Action – Milwaukee
- Students for a Democratic Society at UW-Milwaukee
- Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC)
Representatives Madison (D-10) and Clancy (D-19) issued the following statement:
“We uplift and uphold the work of grassroots groups like MAAPR, Lit, Voces and the other groups represented here. This shared revenue agreement is an existential threat to communities of color.
These attacks- on DEI, on policies hard fought – and won – by BIPOC-led grassroots organizations like MAARPR and Leaders Igniting Transformation, on the ability of local government to set their own priorities, and now on public education itself- should never have been on the table. Nobody who believes in those principles should have been at that table as long as they were. That should have been a hard line that we were unwilling to cross.
But now, many months later, here we are, with a ‘deal’ that has only gotten worse, and will set up Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, and local governments across the state for failure in exchange for too few crumbs from the table. We’ve made it clear from the moment we saw the first iteration of this bill; if the provisions that directly harmed the communities we represent weren’t removed, we would stand in opposition of this bill.
Though we hoped the continued negotiations would lead to better outcomes we see our colleagues across the aisle have gone further to add attacks on public education.
The solution to financial difficulties caused by a lack of shared revenue is not to continue to starve us of our own shared revenue. The solution to the burden of police pension debt is not more police. The solution to underfunded communities is not regressive taxation that throws the burden to meet our basic needs on the back of the working class.
We anticipate unfortunately that this most recent draft of the bill will be worse than the last one but we stand unapologetically with MAARPR’s demand to reject any proposal which contains policy provisions instead of returning a fair amount of shared revenue back to Milwaukee. This demand is just and Milwaukee deserves better.”
