“History is best qualified to reward our research.” — Malcom X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz)
By Dorothy Brown
Beginning in January 2027, Democrats will control both the Assembly and Senate and the Governor’s office in Wisconsin. After an unrelenting anti-worker and racist scorched earth austerity offensive by the Republican Party since 2011 in Wisconsin, workers and community members statewide are demanding immediate changes.
For the Democrats to get elected in Wisconsin, tens of thousands of workers knocked on doors statewide, traveled widely, phone banked, donated their hard earned wages, texted and engaged in many other self sacrificing activities for months. Many of these workers are people of color, women and LGBTQIA union and community members. Many unions and community organizations spent millions.
There will continue to be a variety of discussions, organizing meetings and other actions regarding potential next steps for unions, community organizations and faith based organizations in the weeks leading up to the January 4, 2027 inauguration at the State Capitol and beyond.
Within these discussions, here’s some initial thoughts regarding the political, leadership and organizational next steps.
The Necessity of People’s Unity: The Basics
A real people’s united front needs to be rooted in unity, maturity and discipline and knows who its real enemies are: capitalists and their servants. Furthermore, to be serious, a people’s united front movement should be guided by unity guidelines such as the St. Paul principles:
1.) Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.
2.) The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
3.) Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
4.) We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.
In addition to these, baseline musts are:
We honor union picket lines;
We don’t scab on our fellow workers and community members;
We collectively oppose Nazi’s and other fascists and any other racist union busting entities such as ICE agents and cops.
How did we get here?
To make effective organizing plans to overturn any racist, anti-worker laws, workers and community members will need to begin by analyzing HOW we got into the place we did in Wisconsin. If this is not done before new organizing plans are in place, we’ll end up in the same place or worse. These lessons, in particular ideological ones, are life and death. Literally.
Research is essential.
Firstly, in depth research about the Milwaukee-based right-wing Bradley Foundation is an absolute necessity: https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/05/05/documents-detail-bradley-foundation-efforts-build-right-wing-infrastructure-nationwide/
Education is essential.
The eugenics based Bradley Foundation is still alive and well and has $1 billion plus to still wage war on workers and communities and they now have a legal pit bull arm the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty with serious resources and developed cadre that this round might’ve lost elections but they still control the means of production etc. (https://wibailoutpeople.org/2024/07/29/project-2025-wisconsin-is-the-austerity-model-built-by-the-right-wing-bradley-foundation/)
It’s understood that we need to move decisively to demanding of these newly elected politicians taking office in January 2027 that they meet the people’s demands. In this spirit, the politicians should be contacted by every means available. But if we have not learned the lessons of how we lost in 2011 when Act 10 was implemented, in 2015 when Right-To-Work (for less) was implemented and when other austerity such as the evisceration of women and LGBTQIA rights and tenants rights laws were eviscerated, we won’t be effective.
How and why did we lose so much in the past 16 years with the working class organization that exists in Wisconsin, the socialist history in the state and after the largest working class uprising in the U.S. since the 1930’s in February and March of 2011? Was it all the banks and corporations fault that led us to our current situation or were there errors made ideologically and organizationally by union and community leadership? What were and are the results of some unions and community organizations giving up their independence to capitalist parties and the capitalist non profit industrial complex?
We must have a correct program for the present period, leadership and effective organization that is combat ready at all times. This approach as we’ve seen historically, can advance, recover from defeats and ultimately win a world free of poverty, racism and endless war.
A Real People’s Program
What kind of program do our working class and community organizations have and are we completely independent including financially?
Does our program include the demands of workers AND community members?
Who’s writing the program? Has a democratic process been used to hear from the depth of our working class and communities?
Is our program widely understood by workers and community members, does it reflect their needs and wants and are they ready to fight for their demands?
The Necessity of Fighting Independent Leadership
For the sake of humanity and the planet, some hard truths and questions need to be asked and answered now.
What kind of leadership?
First, it will take a serious people’s united front with leaders practicing humility and grace and putting their working class labor and community organizations at the disposal of the people at all times and all year round. Union halls belong to all working class people and need to be used for workers and community organizing and cultural activities and real leaders make this possible.
Opportunism must be smashed and confronted at every turn. This isn’t a time for self promotion or other deadly actions. Fighting leaders build, develop, give hope and breath oxygen into the people and Mother Earth. White working class leaders sacrifice in real ways in solidarity with more oppressed workers to ensure more resources and opportunities are available including leadership positions. Real leaders uplift and support youth and students, women and the LGBTQIA community.
Who are the leaders and are they accountable in every way to workers and the community?
Are we going to allow those who led us to the absolute destruction we’ve faced over the past 16 years in Wisconsin spaces in the people’s movement to divert, confuse and neutralize any serious internationalist class struggle orientation?
Who’s actually won some things such as concrete wins for workers and community? Who’s just talked about organizing or fronted themselves as fighters?
Who’s really sacrificed and put their organizations at the service of the people?
Who’s been opportunist?
Who’s practiced real unity and solidarity in action and when it was hard and there weren’t any bright lights? Who’s supported Palestine and opposed U.S. wars on nations such as Iran? Who’s opposed the U.S. blockade on Cuba and demanded the U.S. stop interfering in the independence of nations? Who supports and uplifts the Indigenous? Who works with and supports our Elders including union retirees?
Who’s proven their mettle in the people’s struggle through building the people’s united front and has been tested in battle (street actions, strikes, union steward etc.?)
Effective Organization
Moving from program and leadership then, what kind of organization do we need for now and the coming period?
What organizational methods absolutely do not work in a Wisconsin type situation at the present time and why? Which ones do and why? What has worked in Wisconsin historically to win concessions for workers and the community and how can these methods be updated for today’s needs?
What kind of concrete resources do we have such as supplies and working class organizational spaces such as Labor Temples, UW and Tech colleges etc.? Are workers and community members homes outfitted for class combat with signs, banners and other supplies at the ready for protests, occupations and strikes?
Do we have our safety and security precautions in place and updated frequently?
How do we incorporate culture into our working class organizations and ensure that cultural workers are paid at union scale and/or a living wage?
How do we amplify union organizing with other forms of organizing by women, LGBTQIA communities and the Indigenous?
How do we keep on the agenda of tactics such as strikes and occupations in all forms including at the points of production and service distribution if our demands such as “Overturn Act 10 and Right-To-Work (for less)” are not met?
How do we create democratic spaces for discussions about tactics and strategy?
How do we unite working class people and communities statewide with a people’s (issue based) platform?
How do we facilitate assistance from those that have more resources to those that have less?
How can those in bigger cities support and learn from workers in rural and semi rural areas? How can unions unite deeper with family farmers?
How can various creative workplace organizing be done through a union or in other ways? Examples of effective workplace organizing are the UE Local 150 in North Carolina and Black Workers For Justice there. Both of these are members of the Southern Workers Assembly which has an expansive program: https://southernworker.org/program/ [More resources: https://southernworker.org/resources/].
For example, in Wisconsin there could potentially be classified workers assemblies for the UW System workers that have had seven of their two year campuses shut down and faced other horrific austerity. Assemblies could be organized for municipal and state workers. A variety of creative organizing like this could be done in Wisconsin and this would assist in changing the way unions are run and led when we eventually overturn Act 10 and Right-to-Work (for less). Creative forms of worker, student and community organizing could demand the return of correct shared revenue, the fully funding of the UW System and occupations of any public UW or Tech campus slated for a shut down (These campuses belong to the people! type demands) etc.
Moving Forward With Unity and Love
Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley stated in an interview in The Progressive magazine: “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. To love truly, to love a people, to love a movement, to love freedom, is to love without the expectation that there’s reciprocity.”
Dr. Kelley added: “We are living in a political age where everything is based on exchange—solidarity is somehow supposed to be like a market economy. What it means to be a revolutionary is to fight for those who may not fight for you. It’s about learning to fight for others. And I know that’s a hard thing to do in this age of pessimism, but we have a long history, and, hopefully, the book [Freedom Dreams] demonstrates this, that we have a long history of fighting for others—even people we’ve never seen before. If we could learn to do that, then we could actually learn to love. Politics should be based on that, not on reciprocity.” [https://progressive.org/magazine/interview-robin-d-g-kelley-stockwell/]
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