Wednesday 9/16/20 Round Up

News round up and commentary, Dane County be a good landlord, voting resources, Green Party side of the story and more.

LOCAL NEWS ROUND UP

City of Madison

Dane County

Madison Area Schools

K-12

Higher Ed

And more . . .

NEWS COMENTARY

  • Seriously, has the UW learned nothing about COVID-19?  Football?  Prepare for that to be the next spike on this graph

DNR HEARING ON REMEDIATION OF HAZARDOUS SUBSSTANCE DISCHARGES AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announces that it will hold a public hearing on October 16, 2020, to receive public comment and feedback on emergency rule RR-11-17(E) and proposed permanent rule RR-10-17. The DNR will hold one public hearing for both rules. The hearing will be held via Skype. Meeting registration and details are available in the public hearing notice.

Written comments on the rules may be submitted any time before or on October 23, 2020. Details on how to provide comments are included in the public hearing notice.

These rule changes affect the Wis. Admin. Code NR 700 rule series related to remediation of hazardous substance discharges and environmental pollution. The changes relate to implementation of 2015 Wisconsin Act 204 and 2017 Wisconsin Act 70, direction for cleanup of sites with contaminated sediments, and other changes needed to update, clarify, and promote consistency within Wis. Admin. Code chs. NR 700-799.

Further information on this rulemaking can be found on the NR 700-799 rule changes web page at: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Brownfields/RuleChanges.html.

You can subscribe to get your own updates here.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates
The City of Madison is committed to keeping you informed of updates, services, and resources available for residents during its response to COVID-19. Did you receive a text this week?
Get COVID-19 Text

Take Action as COVID-19 Case Counts Increase


From August 25 to September 7, the average number of COVID-19 cases per day more than doubled from 45 cases per day to 94 cases per day. One out of every three people diagnosed with COVID-19 in that time period didn’t know where they could have gotten it. With the increased case count in our community and since not everyone knows when or where they are exposed, it is always a good idea to act as if you could have COVID-19 — just in case you were exposed when leaving your home. This means wearing a mask or face-covering, staying 6 feet from others, using contactless pickup options when you can, and staying home if you feel at all sick or off. See Public Health Madison & Dane County for more tips on how to reduce transmission of COVID-19.

It’s easier than ever to get tested for COVID-19
With record-level number of cases in our community, it’s more important than ever to get tested if you’re sick or think you might have been exposed. Below are several options for testing. Click the links for more details about each option.

Make Your Safe Voting Plan Now

  1. Check your voter registration status at myvote.wi.gov.
  2. Review your voting options. You have the choice to vote absentee by mail, vote absentee in person, vote in person at the polls on Election Day, or vote curbside at your polling place on Election Day.
  3. Cast your ballot.
  4. Tell your family, friends, and neighbors to make their safe voting plan, too!

After the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday, September 14, the City of Madison Clerk’s Office began sending absentee ballots by mail to voters who had a request on file on Tuesday, September 15.

You can find more information about making your safe voting plan on the City Clerk’s website.

Take the Census Safely at the Dream Bus

Madison Public Library is partnering with the Census Bureau to encourage Madisonians to fill out the 2020 Census. The Census Bureau will have staff available as part of their Mobile Questionnaire Assistance outreach to work alongside librarians at Dream Bus stops from September 14-18, 2020 to help people fill out the Census. Spanish and Chinese speakers will be on hand at each location to assist with translation (no Spanish speakers on Friday).

Dream Bus stops are determined with community input for locations that may experience transportation and access barriers; many of these areas coincide with lower self-response rate areas for the Census. The Census Bureau’s Be Counted Week initiative is an effort to give people in these communities an easy way to fill out the Census through a familiar service. See Madison Public Library to view all stops.

Madison Writing Assistance Now Online!


The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members, traditionally at libraries and neighborhood centers throughout the city, and now offered online. Their friendly, experienced instructors are happy to help people with their writing across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, creative writing, and various forms of life writing.

MWA is returning in Fall 2020 (from September 14 to December 5). All sessions are online. Visit UW Writing Center’s Madison Writing Assistance page for more information or to sign up for a session.

Mayor’s Message 

Help the City Support Child Care for Essential Workers and Families

In recent weeks,  the city of Madison, the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) and the United Way of Dane County stepped up to create the Child Care Scholarship Fund to provide need-based scholarships for about 150 children who need to child care while schools are closed.  This effort is a great example of partnership and creativity, and as we deal with the COVID pandemic, that effort is very important.

While the contribution that MMSD has made to offset the cost for many low-income families is impressive, we know that it only gets us part of the way toward providing adequate slots for learning for our youngest elementary students. The goal is to raise $400,000. I know area businesses and others will step up to help. This will allow 150 children to attend full-time programming at no cost.

The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce is also taking a leadership role in raising funds for this effort. As President Zach Brandon wrote in an editorial for the Wisconsin State Journal, “We will never be able to stand our economy back up without greater access to child care.”

I also want to extend my thanks to our childcare partners that include Red Caboose, Wisconsin Youth Company, Goodman Community Center, Bayview, Boys and Girls Club, Bridge Lakepoint Waunona, East Madison Community Center, Kennedy Heights Community Center, Henry Vilas Zoo, Neighborhood House, Vera Court, Lussier Community Education Center, Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center and the YMCA.

I am heartened that business and community organizations are already donating and I want to extend my gratitude to American Family Insurance made the first large donation followed by M3 Insurance, MGE Foundation, Madison-Kipp Corp., and 6AM Marketing.

Contributions to the fund can be made by contacting the United Way of Dane County.

-Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway

 

VOTING RESOURCES FROM THE CLERK’S OFFICE

Resources to share with your networks.

Here is our Voter Registration landing page with lots of info for folks: https://www.cityofmadison.com/clerk/elections-voting/voter-registration.

Creating a Safe Voting Plan Checklist: https://www.cityofmadison.com/clerk/documents/election/My%20Safe%20Voting%20Plan.pdf

Democracy in the Park information: https://www.cityofmadison.com/clerk/news/democracy-in-the-park-event-planned-for-september-26-october-3

Dream Bus Schedule (voter registration available at all stops): https://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/locations/dream-bus#schedule

In-Person Absentee Voting begins on Tuesday, October 20th. Voters can update their registration and cast their absentee ballot in person. The full schedule is still being finalized, but the library times have been set. https://www.cityofmadison.com/clerk/elections-voting/voting/vote-absentee/in-person-absentee-voting-hours-and-locations

National Voter Registration Day is Tuesday, Sept. 22nd. Good Shepherd Lutheran will be a location, and the full list of sites will be found on the National Voter Registration Day website once we have it finalized (certain locations that said yes before are backing out because of the uptick in cases): https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/events/. Good Shepherd will also have voter registration available tomorrow and Friday in coordination with them being a testing site.

I’ve also attached a pocket guide (Voter Pocket Guide) for voting in the City of Madison. It has essential info about voting and can be printed off and folded to be handed out to folks.

Any further questions you all have about voting, please do not hesitate to ask!

Thanks,

Maggie McClain, City of Madison Clerk’s Office

COUNTY BOARD – BE A GOOD LANDLORD (by Safe Skies Clean Waters Coalition)

We need your help as we continue to pressure public officials to make the right decisions so that we can have quiet skies and clean water. Please update us with your address so we can organize ourselves by County district.  https://forms.gle/ezis6qGKZvrrf6Ef6

Dane County needs to be good landlord

One of those most responsible for the mess we are in is Dane County. The County owns the airport and the land where Truax Field sits. The County is the landlord, so it’s responsible for what happens on its property. The DNR has designated Dane County as a “responsible party” for the PFAS pollution. The County airport has a DNR stormwater permit and the Air National Guard (ANG) is a co-permittee. The airport is responsible for ANG compliance.

Guess where that polluted groundwater goes when it leaves the airport and Truax Field. Clue: have you eaten any local fish lately?

The County and the County Executive say they care about things like climate change, clean water and clean air. We need to hold them to that.

The Air Force wants to make more mess before cleaning up its old mess

The Air Force/Air National Guard plans to start a major demolition & construction project at Truax as early as this fall in order to accommodate the F-35s. We need to stop this project! It will stir up more PFAS and other nasty chemicals from the base. And it will be harder to stop once they’ve sunk millions of dollars into their construction project.

We need the County to take a stand

As the owner of the property, we need Dane County to take a stand. We want our County Supervisors to pass a resolution against the F-35s, then work with us to get County Executive Joe Parisi to take a stand. We need the County to say that this boondoggle project is not appropriate for our area, especially near high-density, low-income neighborhoods.

But we can’t do it without your help. Please use the form below to let us know your address so we can organize by County district. Then you can help us by contacting your County Board member to get them on board with our campaign. Thanks much!

Update us with your address now!

GREEN PARTY’S SIDE OF THE STORY ON PRESIDENTIAL BALLOT ACCESS

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ― Malcolm X
This July, a courageous band of Wisconsin Green Party supporters braved the risk of contracting COVID-19 to get our presidential ticket of Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker on the ballot. We turned in 3,966 signatures of Wisconsinites who supported putting a Green choice on the ballot, almost double the minimum requirement.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a concerted effort by Democratic Party operatives to overturn the will of those Wisconsin voters, and the hard work of those volunteers.

After trampling our rights, the Democrats are trying to cover the shame of this blatant voter suppression by vilifying the Green Party, aided and abetted by the corporate media.

We’re not lying down and we’re not giving up, but we need your help to fight back.

If you support our long, hard fight for real democracy in the United States, please contribute now to support grassroots Green organizing and campaigns in 2021 and 2022, and sign up to volunteer to build the party for people, planet, and peace over profit!

So here’s what happened:

We submitted 3,966 signatures of people who supported placing Howie Hawkins, a lifelong activist and union worker, and Angela Walker, a working-class Black woman from Milwaukee active in the Wisconsin Uprising, on the ballot for President and VP. The Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) staff validated 3,737 signatures.

The Democratic Party members of the WEC refused to accept the signatures of qualified, eligible voters we turned in. Why? Because of a minor technicality: Angela Walker moved in July and some of the petitions listed her previous address. The WEC upheld a challenge to those petitions from Democratic operatives, despite the fact that we communicated with them about Angela’s move and followed their complicated instructions.

Why should the fact that Angela moved from one apartment to another in the same town in South Carolina during the campaign disqualify not just her, but also Howie Hawkins, from running for national office? No one has been able to answer this basic, but crucial, question. The reality is that the Democratic Party kept the Green Party off the Wisconsin ballot using the type of maneuver the US media decries when deployed by authoritarian regimes in countries like Belarus.

The Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision was the last, successful barrier placed in front of the WIGP and Hawkins/Walker campaign, but the WEC made it harder than it should be, as the dissenters to this decision pointed out. The Supreme Court’s majority decision was not based on the merits of the case, but on their opinion that it was too late because county clerks had already started printing ballots in spite of the fact that the Hawkins/Walker campaign had a pending ballot access lawsuit.

Thus, the short period of confusion and delay in printing 2020 ballots was caused not by the Greens, but by the bureaucratic failures of the state and counties in the face of pending ballot access lawsuits.

Meanwhile, the same pundits who railed against the WIGP for supposedly delaying ballots have studiously avoided mentioning that the Democratic Party has delayed certification of the ballot in Pennsylvania with a lawsuit to – you guessed it – throw the Green Party off the ballot. Actually, they’re not all ignoring it – one Philadelphia media outlet is telling readers to blame the Green Party for the delay.

Finally, not content with throwing their political opposition off the ballot like the authoritarian rulers they decry in other countries, the Democrats are trying to invent a scandal out of the fact that a lawyer for the Hawkins/Walker suit has ties to Republicans. First of all, the Wisconsin Green Party was peripheral to the campaign’s lawsuit; WIGP members had nothing to do with hiring lawyers and had no communication with any Republicans regarding ballot access.

Secondly, the Hawkins/Walker campaign worked hard to find a liberal or Democratic lawyer who would take their case against the Democrats’ voter suppression, but not a single one would. That echoes the WIGP’s fruitless attempts to find a liberal lawyer to sue the state for relief during the spring petitioning period, when the state was under a total lockdown and gathering signatures was a harrowing ordeal, particularly for grassroots candidates.

Since not a single Democrat-aligned lawyer in Wisconsin was willing to challenge voter suppression coming from their own party, the Democrats have no high ground to criticize the Hawkins/Walker campaign for accepting the legal counsel they could find. In fact, the campaign wasted precious time trying to find a liberal lawyer, a delay that ultimately helped the Democrats argue that it was too late for the Supreme Court to decide the case on its merits.

The irony is rich: after a Democratic National Convention loaded with Republicans from John Kasich to Michael Bloomberg, the Democrats are trying to concoct a scandal out of Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker turning to a Republican lawyer out of necessity.

The Republican and Democratic duopoly will always collaborate to keep political outsiders out. Despite their theatrical shows of opposition, the twin parties of war and Wall Street have long worked hand in glove to maintain a stranglehold on the political system for the corporate donor class that funds them both. This is one reason why almost half of eligible voters in the US don’t vote.

Polls show that the majority of people who vote Green wouldn’t vote if Greens weren’t on the ballot (see: “No, Jill Stein did not cost Hillary Clinton the White House.”). Greens aren’t the reason why Democrats lose. We give disenfranchised people a reason to vote. Democrats scapegoat and persecute us because they care more about power than democracy.

As Briahna Joy Gray, former press secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign put it: “If you hate spoilers, support ranked choice voting. But corporate Dems don’t, because blaming the Green Party for Republican wins is how they keep Dem voters from realizing that Greens represent so-called “Democratic values” better than the Democratic party.”

The Green Party has long fought for voters’ rights, including the 2016 recount effort that brought unprecedented transparency to our flawed voting system and resulted in unreliable voting machines being decertified, with a comprehensive investigation of voting machine source code still pending in the courts.

Wisconsin Greens will mount a vigorous write-in campaign for the Hawkins/Walker ticket over the next 49 days, with the goal to win at least one percent of the statewide presidential vote, the state’s threshold for ballot access. Reaching this goal will ensure that Wisconsin voters will have a pro-worker, pro-climate, pro-democracy alternative to the corrupt corporate duopoly.

We’ve faced a national smear campaign and an avalanche of hatred in the past few days, simply for standing up for the basic American right to vote for what we believe in.

Despite the haters, we’ll keep fighting for real democracy in the United States, for them too. We can’t wait to free them from the self-destructive cycle of fear-based voting, and with simple reforms used around the world like ranked-choice voting and proportional representation, empower us all to vote our hopes, not our fears.

We need you in this fight too. Please donate now to support grassroots Green organizing and campaigns in 2021 and 2022, and sign up to volunteer to build the party for real democracy.

Thank you for listening to our side of the story, and thank you to everyone who has shown solidarity, friendship, and kindness throughout this ordeal. People, planet, and peace will prevail.

Peace and solidarity,

The Wisconsin Green Party

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