The right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) was formed in 2013 by the racist, anti-worker Bradley Foundation in 2013. Since its inception, WILL has worked to ensure the Jim Crow laws such as Act 10 and Right-to-Work for less and other anti-worker austerity stays intact in Wisconsin. WILL in particular frequently attacks educators and their unions and organized labor generally. WILL is now getting funding from Bradley and other right-wing entities to attack school districts regarding the issues of the teaching of historical truth within public education and science based COVID-19 protocols.

WILL speakers are now holding events across Wisconsin this fall in concert with other right-wing entities with the goal of taking over school boards. WILL’s goals like their Bradley overlords includes having their bought and paid for school board members increase profits for the rich through increased debt service to the banks, privatization, attacks on Wisconsin’s pension system and other horrific attacks on poor and working people and their communities.

One speaker, Dan Lennington, Deputy Counsel for WILL, is scheduled to speak (or attempt to recruit right-wing people) Thursday, October 14, 2021 in Two Rivers, WI at the Lighthouse Inn, 1515 Memorial Drive. (This event is being sponsored by the Republican Party of Manitowoc County and Educate Not Indoctrinate an extreme right-wing organization funded by foundations such as the Bradley Foundation).

[For more information on the state and national right wing network: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch]

_____

“WILL is a gem … It’s a vitally important park of the conservative network in Wisconsin and is increasingly doing work that is national in scope. It’s just a wonderful organization.” — Michael Grebe, former President and CEO of the Bradley Foundation and Board Member, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty

In a 2011 interview, Grebe emphasized the Bradley Foundation’s continued funding right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups.^[4]“In many respects, being stewards has caused us to continue funding what some of us refer to as the conservative intellectual infrastructure in this country through think tanks, academics, publications,” Grebe said. “We continue to do that. I don’t think as a matter of philosophical orientation, (the foundation) has changed much in that area. We still look for conservatives who are developing ideas in public policy.”^[4]

Who is Michael W. Grebe?: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_W._Grebe

WILL’s PUBLIC 990 FORMS

2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
330 E. Kilbourn Ave
Suite 725
Milwaukee, WI 53202

(414) 727-9455 (WILL)

info@will-law.org

____________________

Who and what is the Bradley Foundation (with detail on the organizations funded): https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lynde_and_Harry_Bradley_Foundation

https://www.bradleyfdn.org/

Bradley Foundation: 1400 N. Water Street, Suite 300, Milwaukee, WI 53202

Bradley Foundation Board of Directors: https://www.bradleyfdn.org/people

Some other Bradley funded right-wing organizations:

https://www.facebook.com/mediatrackersWI

____________________

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty Board of Directors here:

Other Staff: https://www.will-law.org/who-we-are/staff-2/

MLK Day Manitowoc

In-Person meeting at the Manitowoc Public Library, 707 Quay Street, 6-8 P.M.

The MLK Freedom School is in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King and their civil and human rights legacy. The Freedom School, taking place in Fall 2021, in Manitowoc, will feature events that detail the central focuses of the King’s lives and how their contributions inspire poor and working people today to build a better world. There’ll be featured speakers from Wisconsin and across North America and opportunities to become engaged in today’s civil and human rights activities. All events will have cultural components.

Note: The meeting will be in-person and Zoom. See the event page on Facebook for more information: https://fb.me/e/2vDS4SWln

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
ALL LABOR HAS DIGNITY!
SI SE PUEDE! UNION, YES!
NO BORDERS IN THE WORKERS’ STRUGGLE!
This event will uplift the King’s deep history of supporting workers throughout their lives. Dr. King was murdered in Memphis while supporting Black sanitation workers that were fighting for union recognition with AFSCME. Both Kings spoke at numerous union halls, picket lines and other venues supporting a rainbow of workers in the U.S. South and throughout North America. This event will detail this internationalist history and raise up the worker’s struggles of today including immigrant workers, workers organizing their unions, women and LGBTQ worker’s concerns.

MLK Day Manitowoc

Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/2vDS4SWln

707 Quay Street, Manitowoc Public Library – 6-8 P.M.

The MLK Freedom School will consist of four speaker panel events (Zoom and In-Person) in the Fall of 2021.The MLK Freedom School is in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King and their civil and human rights legacy. The Freedom School, taking place in Fall 2021, in Manitowoc, will feature events that detail the central focuses of the King’s lives and how their contributions inspire poor and working people today to build a better world. There’ll be featured speakers from Wisconsin and across North America and opportunities to become engaged in today’s civil and human rights activities. All events will have cultural components.

Note: The meeting will be in-person and Zoom. See the event page on Facebook for more information: https://fb.me/e/2vDS4SWln

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
ALL LABOR HAS DIGNITY!
SI SE PUEDE! UNION, YES!
NO BORDERS IN THE WORKERS’ STRUGGLE!

This event will uplift the King’s deep history of supporting workers throughout their lives. Dr. King was murdered in Memphis while supporting Black sanitation workers that were fighting for union recognition with AFSCME. Both Kings spoke at numerous union halls, picket lines and other venues supporting a rainbow of workers in the U.S. South and throughout North America. This event will detail this internationalist history and raise up the worker’s struggles of today including immigrant workers, workers organizing their unions, women and LGBTQ worker’s concerns.

OCTOBER 14, 2021
STRIKE A WOMAN? STRIKE A ROCK!
THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS

Women have always been central to any activity focused on civil and human rights. The title of this event is inspired by a South African women’s slogan that was especially taken up during the fight against apartheid which was defeated by a united worldwide people’s movement largely led by women and girls. Mrs. Coretta Scott King and a diverse array of other women’s contributions will be highlighted. Women on the front lines of the civil and human rights movements of today will be leading this event.

NOVEMBER 18, 2021
PEOPLE’S NEEDS NOT PRISONS AND WARS

Combined, the amount of tax dollars spent on prisons, bank bailouts and wars by the U.S., state and local governmental entities is hundreds of billions of dollars. Dr. King in his April 4, 1967 “Beyond Vietnam ….” speech, said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death.” This event will highlight the King’s steadfast opposition to wars that only benefit the rich. Peace and anti-war activists from Wisconsin and beyond will raise up their activities focused on ending poverty, racism and war.

DECEMBER 9, 2021
VOTING IS A HUMAN RIGHT! STOP RACIST ATTACKS!

The basic democratic right to vote is under increasing Jim Crow style attacks in Wisconsin and across the United States. These attacks include ever more restrictive voting laws and gerrymandering. The King’s work to ensure voting rights included numerous protests, marches and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that is always under threat of being overturned. Voting rights activists will highlight the King’s work and engage participants in defending our democratic right to vote today.

All Events will be in the Balkansky Community Room, 2nd Floor. ADA Accessible.

All events will be held at the Manitowoc Public Library from 6-7:45 P.M. Free and Open to the Public. Family Friendly. Safety measures will be practiced.

More information about content and speakers will be forthcoming.

More information: mlkdaymanitowoc@gmail.com
414-704-4571

Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/113as25gK

Event by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, Stand Up In Style and Indivisible Madison

Join the Madison Women’s March in the nationwide mobilization to defend and protect a woman’s right to choose on October 2nd!We will assemble at the UW Library Mall (State St, opposite end from the Capitol) at 1:00. We’ll march to the Capitol. At 2:00, join us for a rally with guest speakers on the Capitol’s State St. steps. Or you will be able to view the event on Facebook Live.

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/3k71vMY

Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/1RUKaLHQj

September 16, 2021 in Green Bay, Wisconsin

All Photos: Wisconsin Bail Out The People Movement

Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/11fka9Iqv

Lakeshore’s United Visionaries – LUV

PFLAG Manitowoc County

Join Lakeshore’s United Visionaries, PFLAG Manitowoc County, local businesses, and other organizations as we walk together in unity!

Start: 1PM Briess Parking lot

Walk Route: Up 8th Street, turn right onto Washington, arrive in Washington Park

Speakers: 2:30 PM Washington Park

Food trucks, kids activities, and more at Washington Park!

Kids Activities:
Face Painting by Sam Gretz:
2-3:30 pm, 4-6 pm

Art with Diana Bolander of the Rahr West Art Museum:
2:30-6 pm

Lakeshore First Robotics with Shannon: 2-6 pm

Music for Children and Families with Judy Stock:
4-6 pm
Feel free to join us at any point of the event between 1PM-6PM.

All are welcome to come celebrate and support unity in our community!

Masks are strongly encouraged! 

Event by Wisconsin Bail Out The People Movement

Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/2GptnigUZ

The right-wing organization No Better Friend Corp. is planning to sponsor a Thursday, September 16, 2021 hate rally at 1951 Bond Street in Green Bay (The Rock Garden / Comfort Suites – 920-499-7449) beginning at 6 P.M. Anyone can register here: https://nobetterfriendcorp.com/…/no-better-friend…/

We are asking all progressive organizations including unions, community, faith-based and student organizations to join us in protesting the No Better Friend Corp.’s hate rally! We will gather at N Taylor and Bond streets at 5 P.M. with a speak-out at 6 P.M.

NO BETTER FRIEND CORP. –
PART OF NATIONAL RIGHT WING NETWORK

The name No Better Friend Corp. (funded in part by the Bradley Foundation) is meant to sound folksy but the organization’s members and backers are some of the most extreme right-wing forces internationally attacking poor and working people relentlessly. The billed speakers for the September 16 event are supported by an array of alleged war criminals, union busters, bigots and racists. [https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch]

No Better Friend Corp. (which is generally opposed to anything or anyone good for humanity and the Earth) want to consolidate the right-wing activities in Wisconsin during 2020 and in particular the spring and summer of 2021 that have taken place in Burlington, Cedarburg, the Fox Valley, Mequon, New Berlin, northeastern Wisconsin, Wausau and other locations.

The right-wing actions include: Attacking school board meetings, threatening public officials and community members, and attacking public libraries and other public institutions. They are using the issues of teaching historical truth in public education and science based responses regarding COVID 19. But they are also anti-union, oppose public education and are pro privatization. They use an array of lies and deceitful techniques (language such as reform, flexibility etc.) to cover up their real agenda of their dream society of capitalism with the gloves off (de-regulation, no unions, the shredding of safety nets, perpetual wars for the rich etc.).Similar to the Tea Party, No Better Friend Corp. (and their funders and allied organizations) are a part of a national right-wing network that want to recruit an even bigger base of anti-worker, racist forces to further their goals.

In Wisconsin, a major focus for the right-wing is the suburbs and semi-rural and rural areas. Historically in these locations there’s been large numbers of union workers but they’ve been violently reduced by plant closings and Jim Crow laws such as Act 10 and Right-to-Work (for less) laws implemented since 2011.

FIGHT HATE!
BUILD PEOPLE’S UNITY!

As we’ve been doing in Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Whitefish Bay and other locations in past weeks, we the people (educators, students, union members, the Indigenous, communities of color, workers, women and LGBTQ people) will not let the right wing run wild across the state attacking us at will!

Join us Thursday, September 16 in Green Bay to say NO to hate and YES to hope and People’s Unity.

*****For media interviews or more information: 414-395-0665 or message us. Also contact us if your organization wants to endorse the protest.

https://bit.ly/3k0sTw6

Statement from Women In Struggle / Mujeres En Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party 

Texas Senate Bill 8, which took effect Sept. 1, bans abortion after six weeks, before many women are even aware that they are pregnant.  

Anyone who sues an abortion provider under this law will be awarded a $10,000 bounty.  Texas Right to Life has already set up a “whistleblower” website where people can give anonymous tips about who might be violating the law.

In upholding SB8, the U.S. Supreme Court basically approved the notion that vigilantes can track down women and their “abettors.”

There are no exceptions for rape, incest or diagnoses of fetal anomaly. 

Who will be most impacted?  

It is Black, Brown and Indigenous women, the poor and youth, those who rely on reproductive rights centers for health care, including contraception, general checkups and cancer screenings. SB8 will effectively shut down care for transgender people, who will no longer be able to access needed hormone replacement therapy.  

Many women will be forced to flee to other states just to obtain the basic right to control one’s own body.  But even this will not be possible for many poor, working-class and very young women who will be forced to risk their lives or health in back-alley abortions.

The same reactionary forces behind SB8, and those who did nothing to prevent it, care little about children and less about all women, regardless of who they love or their gender identity, including transgender women.  

A box full of diapers and a car seat is of little help when families are facing joblessness and homelessness.  Where is the fight to stop unemployment benefits from being cut?  Where is the moratorium and cancellation of rents, foreclosures and utility shut-offs?  

Where is the fight to stop forced sterilizations of poor and oppressed women from Puerto Rico to Mississippi, or the fight to make sure that all children — and every person — have free healthcare, or paid maternity leave for working families?  

What about the lack of affordable, safe daycare that has forced women and parents of all genders out of the workplace? 

The importance of Texas

Many reproductive-rights advocates have already pointed out that SB8 and the Supreme Court’s ruling will give impetus to similar measures in other states. This is certainly true.

But Texas itself is important.  

It is the third-most populous state, after California and Florida. Twenty-nine million people are impacted. And SB8 is not the only right-wing bill that has swept the state.  

Exactly 666 new reactionary laws went into effect Sept. 1.  It is now basically illegal to be homeless, as a statewide ban on homeless encampments precludes any locality from opting out and fines the homeless $500 (for being homeless).  

Teachers are now forbidden to tell the truth about slavery. A new law provides funding for the so-called “1836 Project” that is set against the 1619 Project and projects a “patriotic education” about Texas’s racist “war of independence” from Mexico.   

Cities with over 250,000 people will be punished for defunding police budgets, effectively giving the green light to police murders of Black, Brown and poor people. 

And what about the basic right to vote that is still being denied to Black and Brown people?

Don’t mourn — organize and hit the streets!

Women in Argentina and all over Latin America, in Ireland, Poland and so many other countries, have shown the way by taking to the streets in the millions, forcing change.  

We need a “green bandana” movement in the U.S. like the one in Latin America. We must organize to stop every reactionary, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-working class attack.  

From capitalist climate change to racist police terror, from imperialist war to attacks on workers’ rights — we cannot wait for or depend on the Democratic Party.  What is needed is in-your-face, independent action to push the clock forward.  

We need car caravans, people’s blockades and resistance to defend clinics. It’s time to march on Texas and the Supreme Court!

We will not go back!  

Healthcare and childcare, maternity leave, food, work and shelter, along with the basic ability to control one’s body — all of these are basic human rights.  

Black and Brown women must be guaranteed the right to walk out of their houses without fear that police will shoot them down, or murder their children or loved ones in the street. Trans and queer women must have the right to exist without fear of violence and bigotry.  

Im/migrant women, children and families need to be released from cages. So must the many women rotting behind bars in the colossal U.S. prison system. 

Indigenous women and communites must be guaranteed the right to their land and an end to violence and murder. 

Our children have the right to live on a planet that is not destroyed by capitalist climate change, imperialist war, occupation and sanctions.  

We pledge ourselves to this fight so that all women and all workers, at home and abroad, can finally be free from capitalist and imperialist misery.

Women and oppressed genders unite and fight back! We have nothing to lose but our chains!