My dad lived with a deep humanity. He spent his life loving people and their fullness, as a journalist, a writer telling the stories of striking copper workers, a labor attorney, and a singer-activist leading the longest continuously running singing protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol. He believed that every moment could be holy and every human was made in the image of one another. Therefore, an injury to one is an injury to all.

On our road trip to drop me off at college, he took us 300 miles out of the way to the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky where Thomas Merton left his career, took a vow of silence, became a Trappist monk, and poured his meditations into his books. This week, I’ve repeatedly read a passage from Merton that distilled my father’s life philosophy:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers… It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes… There are no strangers!… The gate of heaven is everywhere.

—Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (p. 153-154)

In the wake of his loss, I am also reminded of moments from the years after my mom died. She passed away when I was 14, on Christmas Eve in 2011. After her death, people started telling me “she’s with you.” I hated hearing that. She was only there in hazy dream-states in the early hours of the morning, or in the waves of memories that wracked my young mind each time I’d be reminded of her. I quickly realized I did not believe in an afterlife, at least in the traditional sense.

While grappling with the finality of her death, I began to imagine my own. Gripped with terror, I imagined everything I knew disappearing in an instant. I started waking up in those same early morning hours with my stomach in a knot, my mind on the edge of the void, realizing that I too would be gone someday. I didn’t want to die; I loved my life. I loved the people in it. I especially loved that there would be more of it, a future to be imagined, shaped, and pursued.

Grappling with the loss of both my parents revealed three personal truths: Every person is holy, death is final, and life is to be lived. Downstream of these truths come others: It is a sin amongst sins for a person to be forced to struggle their entire life. Any unnecessary death is a moral tragedy. Any society that fails to care for its people is guilty of a crime against humanity. These truths illuminate a moral system.

Two months after my mom’s death in 2011, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Martin was two years older than me, killed for walking to the convenience store because he was black. We marched from my high school to the Capitol, and I felt that surely there would be justice. I was shocked when the world tried to villainize this boy, and ultimately acquitted Zimmerman. This was a lesson. Months later, 20 children and six adults were murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting, and still we couldn’t ban bump stocks. In 2014, Mike Brown, two years older than me, was murdered in Ferguson. In 2015, Tony Robinson, another unarmed black teenager two years older than me, was shot and killed, this time by a Madison police officer just miles away from my home. These young men were holy, and their lives were sacred, and I watched as elected leaders tried to justify their deaths.

Inaction by those in power in the face of such blatant injustice, despite widespread outrage, highlighted a rot—not at the margins, but at the center of our world.

As I grew older, I saw this same story in a different tune. When I was 16, I worked at Noodles and Company where I made $8 an hour. I watched our deaf line cook work three jobs just to survive. At Harvard, I marched with dining hall workers on strike because the richest university in the world wouldn’t pay them enough to live. I worked two jobs on the side because the Madison Mallards, a summer college baseball team in my hometown selling 6,000 tickets a night, wouldn’t pay its players, and refused to give us gas money so we could get to the field. In 2018, I was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in the MLB Draft. Weeks later, I received my first paycheck: $550 for two weeks of work. I watched teammates skip meals daily just to send money home to their families. It took a 4-year battle and a 6,000 player organizing effort during which I lost my own baseball career to win even $20,000 minimum annual salaries.

Our world does not value life. That is the core truth I confronted. Our modern lives are built on death. Every piece of clothing, every button on my keyboard, every stitch on the baseballs I threw, were made by other humans whose lives were just as complex as mine caught up in a machine that ate their lives, spit out products, and made rich a tiny cabal of people for whom death is just fuel for more profit. Our economy rests on the blistered hands and bent backs of factory workers in India, the Philippines, and Bangladesh whose lives we value at $1.80 an hour. Our lifestyle rests on mine shafts and white hot smelters in Indonesia and Zambia where bodies crushed in rubble mark the passing of months, or sometimes weeks. Blood dripping down the cogs of the machines is just a sign of a productive week and a tiny bump in share prices.

And so, I fight for the world my mother and father didn’t live to see: A world where every life is holy, we understand the finality of death, and we build a society that allows life to be lived.

Whether sharing the struggle of striking mine workers in my father’s book Copper Crucible, gathering singers in the Capitol rotunda, sharing stories of forgotten communities as a journalist, or building his own patchwork community here in Madison, my father’s indomitable spirit directly opposed a world built on death. And so his death is even more unfair. He died before we birth a world where human life comes first, not the wealth or power of an elite few.

Jewish tradition says “may his memory be a blessing.” Yes, his memory will be a blessing in that it helps us see God everywhere, especially in the worn and aching hands of the garment worker, the wind-worn cheeks of the delivery driver, and the tired feet of the nurse. The gate of heaven is everywhere. כן יהי רצו ken yehi ratzon, may it be so.

.The margins of victory show just how weak the Wisconsin GOP has become in recent years. The writing is on the wall for the party, and space for Democrats to seize the moment. Are they competent enough to?

Robin Vos, WI's hard-right Assembly Speaker since the Scott Walker era, announced he won't run for re-election in November. Devin LeMahieu, the GOP Senate majority leader, announced his retirement 3 weeks ago. In total 7 senior Republicans are quitting.

After the 2010 census, Scott Walker and the Republican majority in the State Legislature created a massively gerrymandered map that secured them 60 seats (out of 99) in the assembly with only 48.6% of the vote in 2012. They also fought to weaken Democratic-aligned institutions.

Act 10, which banned public sector collective bargaining, and right-to-work laws caused Wisconsin's unions to lose well over 100,000 members, causing one of the biggest drops in union membership in the US

Republicans rigged the maps and blew up the unions to consolidate their power in the state legislature. Unsurprisingly, life got worse for working class Wisconsinites.

• Our health care costs exploded to the 4th highest in the nation.

• Per-student funding for public schools fell from 11th in the nation to 26th while spending almost $1 billion per year on private schools through vouchers.

• Median home prices rose from $131,000 in 2011 to $265,000 in 2022 (102%) while median household income grew just 39%.

• We lost nearly $3 billion per year in federal funding from 2010 - 2016 and spent $60-80 million in taxpayer dollars for high-speed rail that was never built.

Republican control wasn’t going to last forever. In 2018, Tony Evers took Democratic control of the governorship, and in 2022, liberal-aligned justices won a majority in the State Supreme Court.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that the gerrymandered state legislative maps were unconstitutional and Governor Evers’ map commission drew one of the fairest maps imaginable, at least according to at Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project.

Trump still won the state in 2024, as Wisconsinites feeling economic anxiety turned to an anti-system candidate (see my article from this week on Trump and the Democrats). Wisconsin is certainly a swing state, still, but trending away from the Republican party at the state level.

2026 is the first year all state legislative seats will be voted on under these Fair Maps. Democrats need to win two seats in the Senate and five in the Assembly to flip the legislature for the first time since 2010. The writing is on the wall as Democrats have won 18 of the last 23 statewide races in Wisconsin.

If you extrapolate Susan Crawford's 2025 rout in the State Supreme Court election to the Assembly, Democrats would win 54 seats. Taylor's margin was even bigger. 2026 is shaping up to be a blowout, to say nothing of Republican fundraising collapsing.

In February, @WisDems raised $1.6 million. @WisGOP raised $167,000. The Wisconsin GOP is just two billionaires in a trench coat at this point. $4 million of the GOP’s $4.5 million raised in 2025 came from two people: Elizabeth Uihlein and Diane Hendricks.

So what happens in November? , a democratic socialist, leads the governor’s race on a platform of big ideas like universal childcare, ending voucher schools, guaranteed paid leave, BadgerCare for All, and public financing for housing development. She’s taking on the core challenges Republican control left in Wisconsin.

As State Assembly and Senate races are starting to heat up, so too is the potential legislative agenda for the Legislature:

• All 45 @WIAssemblyDems and all 15 @SenateDemsWI co-sponsored a bill to repeal Act 10 and Right to Work.

• 36 Assembly Dems co-sponsored legislation demanding a $20 minimum wage in Wisconsin.

• 42 Assembly Dems co-sponsored a bill for a health care public option in the state.

It’s incumbent on Wisconsin Democrats to hit the campaign trail with a plan to deliver the goods for working class Wisconsinites, not empty promises.

The next six months will be transformative in Wisconsin. should give other candidates a gut check. Voters want fighters. Whether you’re running as a socialist or a moderate, Republicans will call you a communist. Assembly and Senate candidates should take note, and run on what matters for working people, not on what the consultants say is most “electable.”

When I was a freshman in high school, our history teacher gave us an assignment: Make one prediction about America in the next 50 years.

The year was 2012. Barack Obama was elected a few years earlier on a historic wave of political enthusiasm. The financial crisis was over and ObamaCare was law, but Wisconsin was reeling from the shock of Act 10-- Scott Walker’s ban on public sector collective bargaining--and was staring down cuts across the board to the state budget and a rapid expansion of voucher school funding, pulling even more resources from our public schools. My father was searching for work after his job at the Wisconsin Education Association Trust was eliminated during this union busting crusade. We’d studied the Pew Research polling in class: Just 17% of Americans trusted the political system. Amongst my peers, it felt like that number was even lower. I was pessimistic.

My prediction? American democracy would collapse in the next 50 years. I didn’t think 50 years would come so fast.

Why Trust Matters

17% of people trust the federal government right now, according to Pew Research. The same figure as in 2011.

Trust is the glue that holds our democracy together. Why pay taxes when you don’t trust the government to use them effectively? Why follow the law if you think it doesn’t apply to everyone equally? Why accept election results when you feel the system is rigged? Why invest in public institutions when you think they’ll just be corrupted? Why believe in the constitution if you don’t trust those in power to follow it?

Lack of trust breeds democratic breakdowns for the simple reason that democracy is, first and foremost, a set of norms that people voluntarily participate in. When trust in the system breaks down, a demagogue saying they’ll solve all the problems sounds a lot more appealing than a well-intentioned reformer.

When I made the prediction in 2012, I didn’t know about social capital or democratic backsliding, but I did see a generation of cynics growing around me, skeptical that our political system could ever truly deliver real change if even Obama couldn’t bring it about.

Why Trust Collapsed

Flashback to 1999 and Bill Clinton is on your TV screen announcing the “end of big government.” Clinton’s endorsement of the Reagan-era free trade consensus solidified the power of neoliberalism as the dominant political philosophy in the United States. Whatever your political persuasion, America was a country of “free markets” and “deregulation.” Industrial jobs disappeared en masse, pulling the rug from hundreds of small and medium-sized towns across the country.

In 2008, after decades of market deregulation and consolidation, banks flew too close to the sun. Hyper-risky loans, designed to maximize profits through sky-high interest rates on America’s poorest people, started to default. The “financial products” developed to spread risk on these loans detonated like landmines inside nearly every investment firm in America. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon kept his cozy relationship to the Obama White House, making his sixth visit of the year.

Obama spent the latter half of his campaign and first year of his presidency pushing for more bailout money to America’s biggest banks, fighting for and extending $700 billion in funds for Wall Street and giant American corporations. Under Obama’s leadership, workers saw the lowest share of corporate sector income in modern American history. While the “economy” (stock prices) recovered, the experience of working families in America felt more like the 2008 crisis hadn’t ended. As wage stagnation for the bottom 90% of Americans continued into 2011, the top 0.1% saw their share of wealth grow and grow and grow. Wars in the Middle East continued, with billions of dollars flowing into the pockets of defense contractors, and kept their stock price rising. Public trust kept collapsing.

The Obama Era didn’t just maintain Clinton’s neoliberal legacy, it expanded it. Instead of simple deregulation, government actively spent taxpayer money on big banks who paid CEOs record salaries and kept Wall Street afloat while stomping on the throats of everyday Americans. Almost two decades later, the problem has just gotten worse.

Wall Street and its aggressive, hyper-risky cousin, private equity, are speedrunning monopolies in nearly every industry in America. Tech, restaurants, food supply chains, news media, entertainment, energy, retail, logistics, and every sector in between have seen mega mergers, unchallenged by regulators, which are passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices and lower wages. Today, big corporations are no longer chiefly service providers, but rather financialized products chiefly concerned with shareholder value rather than customer care. The American economy is increasingly just three asset management firms in a trenchcoat, as the “big three”, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard are the largest shareholders in 88% of S&P 500 companies. Unprecedented corporate control of the economy has also meant unchecked spending in elections, a generational nadir in worker bargaining power and union rights, and exploding inequality.

Neoliberalism swallowed itself whole.

What was intended as market deregulation to promote competition killed that competition. Government put taxpayer dollars directly in the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. Oligarchy followed, creating plenty for few and scarcity for most. The Republican Party, when in power, took a sledgehammer to public institutions rendering government far too weak to effectively deliver on promises. When in the minority, they ground government to a halt, ensuring Congress couldn’t pass any effective legislation. Democrats refused to fight, instead kissing the ring of big business, crushing Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, and abandoning a populist movement in favor of the same corporate democrats. When government delivers for the rich and not the working class, trust in the system disappears. In stepped Donald Trump, capitalizing on distrust to systematically undermine our democratic institutions.

Trump is not an outlier or a surprise, he’s the logical result of a bipartisan consensus on the side of big business.

Rebuilding Trust: Deliver on Promises

American democracy teeters on the brink. The bipartisan consensus that brought us here will not get us out. Simply put, we can’t afford more moderates.

Trust in government sits at 17%, the same as in 2011. The future of American democracy relies on rebuilding that trust. To do that, government must meet the needs of its people. The neoliberal consensus has utterly failed to accomplish that, and so its well past time to smash that consensus and replace it with something new.

Joe Biden ran on making life better for working people in America and won, and then failed to deliver. The Inflation Reduction Act was the landmark piece of legislation designed to deliver on this promise. And it failed. Moderates in Congress watered down the original $3.5 trillion Build Back Better proposal into the $870 billion IRA. They cut out public provisions in favor of using the neoliberal structures to deliver. In the end, the act poured $450 billion in public investment into private companies, provided massive windfall tax credits for corporations building green infrastructure, and over $100 billion in grants, most of which have not led to development at scale. A $7.5 billion program to build electric vehicle charging infrastructure across America built less than 400 chargers. Infrastructure that was built was rarely connected to the IRA publicly.

Zohran Mamdani offers a contrast to Biden. Mamdani ran on three core policies: Freeze the rent, free childcare, and fast and free buses, and has delivered in some way on each of them. His mayoral tenure has also been characterized by clear communication on his actions, taking credit for the victories he helped create. I’m willing to bet trust in Mamdani’s administration is a hell of a lot higher than 17%. To build trust, we have to deliver. Moderates have made careers out of not doing so.

Moderates sitting in Congress voted to block a resolution to stop weapons sales to Israel as they continue their genocide in Gaza, to put American lives at risk for Trump and Netanyahu’s war in Iran, to fund ICE as long as they wear body cameras, and to confirm Donald Trump’s ridiculous cabinet nominees. Here’s a scorecard from September 2025 showing who voted with Trump the most. And it’s not just the lack of resistance to Trump. These same political instincts created Donald Trump through decades of do-nothing politics.

Instead of more of the same, let’s smash the neoliberal consensus once and for all in the Democratic party. Let’s elect people who will build an American government designed to meet the needs of its people. How do we know who’s a moderate and who’s going to take on the status quo? A few questions help separate the fighters from the wolves in progressive clothing:

1. Do they support Medicare for All?

2. Do they support ending military aid to Israel and an immediate end to the war in Iran?

3. Do they support abolishing ICE?

4. Are they refusing money from corporate PACs and from AIPAC and Israel-affiliated groups?

5. Are they willing to prosecute Trump and his allies?

Donate, volunteer, organize, and vote. We need a political revolution, not more moderates.

Hundreds of thousands of winter boots marched through an already frozen downtown last Friday. Minneapolis shut down as residents launched the largest citywide strike in modern American history.

After weeks of occupation, ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good. The community escalated back. The call came from every corner of the city: Shut down the city January 23rd. ICE Out. Unions, community organizers, faith leaders, neighborhood associations, and regular folks spread the word like wildfire. Friday came and the whole city was closed. Marchers braved the freezing cold and blocked the downtown streets, workers walked off the job, businesses closed their doors, and faith leaders and unions marched on the airport and temporarily shut it down.

On Saturday morning, despite this mass resistance from the community, ICE agents continued their reign of terror. An agent shot nurse Alex Pretti, a Green Bay boy, at least five times in the chest, killing him.

It’s time to answer the call of our neighbors in Minneapolis. We must organize for a national general strike. May Day 2026 is our moment.

Our government isn’t listening.

Millions of people have taken to the streets this year in the largest protests in American history. It hasn’t stopped ICE from murdering people in the street.

Protests and marches are the beating heart of a visible resistance, but also play a vital role as a means to a greater end: A general strike.

Strikes are our most powerful tool. They allow our mass movement to use strength in numbers to inflict real economic damage and make those in power pay for their actions.

What is a general strike?

A general strike is when working people across industries all stop work in a coordinated economic shutdown. Strikes can last hours, days, weeks, or longer until demands are met.

A general strike halts the economy. Stocks plummet, supply chains freeze, corporations panic, transportation shuts down, and the financial system gridlocks. The community takes to the streets. This can happen in a neighborhood, a city, a state, or an entire country. General strikes happen when those in power refuse to listen to the people. If our demands are clear and we are organized enough to inflict real economic damage and hold out until we win, those in power have no choice but to meet those demands.

Let me be crystal clear: Strikes are risky and incredibly difficult, especially in America. Our laws intentionally make strikes hard. A national general strike would almost certainly cause mass firings, retaliation, and job loss. It is our most powerful, and our riskiest tactic. Ask any union member who’s been on strike, you do not want to go in unprepared.

Despite the risks and the challenges, general strikes are the pièce de résistance of movements to remove authoritarians from power for a reason: They work.

Successful examples of General Strikes

Serbia, 2000

On September 24th, 2000, President Slobodan Milošević lost a national election. The election was called after months of massive protests in the street against his administration. The Federal Election Commission refused to accept the results and called for a runoff election. In response, movement leaders of the Otpor (Resistance) movement called a general strike beginning on October 3rd. By October 5th, the streets of Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, were flooded with workers from across the country who had driven to the city to protest the regime. Milošević stepped down and by October 7th, the country had its first democratically elected president in years.

Egypt, 2011

A revolution began with protests on January 25th, 2011 against police brutality under President Hosni Mubarak. Students and community leaders began an occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo, a hub for the city. In early February, workers began to strike. Across the country, nearly 300,000 workers participated including 6,000 workers on the Suez Canal, Egypt’s most important economic chokepoint. The country saw $300 million per day in economic losses. By February 11th, 2011, Mubarak was ousted.

Other Examples

Across history, workers have led dozens of massive strikes in cities and across regions. From the Exodus story to the Starbucks workers who went on strike last week, workers in every corner of the world have been striking for dignity at work and in their lives. Here are a few worth reading about:

1. Philadelphia General Strike, 1835

2. St. Louis General Strike, 1877

3. Haymarket Affair, 1886

4. Seattle General Strike, 1919

5. Winnipeg General Strike, 1919

6. UK General Strike, 1926

7. Oakland General Strike, 1946

8. French General Strike, 1968

9. Poland’s Solidarity Movement, 1980-1989

10. Indian General Strike, 2020

We’re Building for May Day

If we’re serious about a general strike, the time to act is now. For years, our movement has been laying the groundwork for a general strike.

In 2023, the United Autoworkers (UAW) set their contract with the Big Three auto manufacturers to expire on May 1, 2028, International Workers Day. The union called on all unions in America to align their contract expirations on this date and to organize a general strike on that date. Since 2023, things have changed. Major national labor organizations like May Day Strong and the National Education Association (NEA), the largest union in America, have called for mass mobilizations on May Day 2026. This is our call.

Let’s be clear, strikes do not happen just or only because people are angry. Unions prepare for years, sometimes decades, before launching strikes.

Organizers and unions use escalating actions to prepare for strikes. These preparations are called “structure tests,” actions that test the movement’s capacity to carry out small but escalating protests over time. #HandsOff marches on April 5th were a structure test, with potentially over 1 million people participating. Those escalated to No Kings in June and then No Kings 2 in October, both of which set records as the largest days of action in US history with over 5 million Americans participating. Participating in the national shutdown this Friday is a structure test. Every bit of mass collective action we participate in builds us one step closer to a general strike, but only when those mass actions are followed by the boring stuff: community meetings, neighborhood groups, and workplace organizing.

We can start now through structure tests and mass actions. This Friday, groups have called for a national shutdown to build on the momentum of organizers in Minnesota. We can continue to build through protests and actions so that on May 1st, when unions like the NEA and immigrant rights organizations like Voces de la Frontera in Wisconsin lead mass mobilizations and strikes, our economy shuts down and tens of millions of shoes pound the pavement.

Minneapolis showed us on Friday that we’re closer than we think to a national general strike. Community members joined forces to shut down the 16th largest metro area in the US. In Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, we’ve seen mobilizations big enough to close off entire city centers. Our movement needs to coalesce around a date, a time, and a list of demands and begin building. Our timeline is May Day.

How do we organize one here?

General strikes only work when they involve mass participation from across the economy. Many groups look to unions to lead a general strike, since they already represent thousands of well-organized workers that can act together. But unions can’t do it alone.

The Minneapolis strike was led by unions, but relied on dozens of community defense networks around the city, local organizations, faith leaders, small business owners, and informal neighborhood groups to mobilize hundreds of thousands of community members. This ad-hoc coalition became a general strike committee for the city.

Here’s a few immediate next steps:

1. Identify your allies

Find like-minded people in your community who share your concern and want to help organize alongside you. They might be a friend, a member of an organization, a neighbor, a business owner, or a community leader. Reach out to union members, immigrant rights champions, and faith leaders.

2. Hold a strike school

If you have a strong network of activists in your community, hold a strike school. If you’re interested in learning more about strike schools, sign up with the folks at May Day Strong. They are holding strike schools in over 30 cities already, and you can bring one to your area.

3. Build a community strike committee

The strength of your community organizing will determine your ability to pull off a general strike. A strike committee that meets regularly and is filled with trusted leaders from every corner of your community will be powerful in ensuring a strike doesn’t fizzle out. It will serve as the communication hub to make sure every corner of your community can participate in a general strike. When organizing in a workplace, your committee is the measure of your strength. The same will be true in a general strike. These organizing committees are opportunities to build democracy in our communities. They should vote, debate, elect leadership, and create the structures needed for legitimacy as the peoples’ representatives.

4. Build your power to strike

Start creating neighborhood groups, join a local political organization who is likely already involved in protest planning, talk to some of your coworkers about issues in your workplace or about the political moment, and grow the conversation about general strikes in your area.

If you’re in a union, pass a resolution supporting the call for a general strike on May Day 2028, and begin organizing around a strike on May Day 2026.

If you’re not in a union, start this same process in your community. Organize a neighborhood council or join a political organization in your area and pass the same resolution.

What makes a general strike so hard?

The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 makes it illegal for workers to strike in solidarity with other striking workers. Enforcement of the act has effectively ended the general strike as a tool for American labor. Unions will refuse to cross picket lines of striking workers, but they won’t shut down their own workplaces in solidarity. Many unions also have “no strike” clauses in their contracts, meaning that their workers cannot strike for any reason while their contracts are in effect.

Organizing a general strike in America means reckoning with these two challenges, not ignoring them. Unions often cannot be the leading voices demanding a general strike, but they can be the movement’s most powerful allies. When community leaders called for a shutdown, unions echoed the call, announcing publicly that their members would be walking the streets in solidarity and honoring the “Day of Truth and Freedom.” This legitimized the call across the broad constituencies represented by those unions. Their call was later echoed by local labor federations and eventually the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the largest body of unions in the state.

Economic Shutdowns

Part of what made Minneapolis’ general strike possible is that it was called different things by different groups. Unions called it a “Day of Truth and Freedom,” encouraging people not to go to work or school or make purchases. Community groups called it a general strike. Both were true, and allowed unions legal space to participate en masse. For the first time since the Oakland general strike in 1947, the AFL-CIO endorsed a shutdown.

Resources

If you want to start organizing right away, here’s a few resources you can use:

1. May Day Strong: A group of experienced labor leaders have built a movement for a general strike in America. They will be holding strike schools across the country. Join their network and start organizing in your community.

2. “What’s it going to take to get to mass strikes” from Waging Nonviolence

3. General Strike US A group of community organizations gathering signatures on a strike card, seeking to get to 3.5% of the US population before launching a general strike. They currently have over 400,000 signatures on their strike cards.

4. National Shutdown: A group organizing to expand the Minneapolis general strike nationwide this Friday, January 30th.

I’ve also consolidated much of the information in this article into a pamphlet you can download and print below.

Nobody is coming to save us, so let’s get organized.

Trump’s presidency has been picked apart with a microscope, but this one-liner is the best take on the MAGA movement. It comes from the pen of David Brooks (collective groans).

The question that Trump answers? Why doesn’t American government work?

Democrats’ and centrists’ answer to this question has been that it does work, it just needs to be reformed. Trump’s answer is simpler: Our government doesn’t work and needs to be destroyed.

Trump has hijacked righteous anger. And while Democrats have stuck to their defense of the system by blindly attacking Trump, other answers have started breaking through.

Pew Research, 2025

One of those answers comes from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, built upon in many ways by Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign. Their commonality?: Their campaigns fight to revolutionize the system by reinventing it to work for the working class, not for the elite.

In many ways, Trump has unstuck the machine by asking the right question. Anger at the system has sparked revolutionary fervor in America. Our people demand change. What that revolution looks like will define our shared future. Will it be an even-more-radical right wing consolidation, or will it be a revolution that rebuilds a real democracy? To capture this energy, any opposition politics must be anti-system, not to destroy it but to revolutionize it.

Here in Wisconsin, we’re not waiting. A coalition of organizations developed the New Wisconsin Idea, a vision for a democratic revolution in Wisconsin rooted in the progressive tradition of our state. We hope to reclaim the legacy of Fighting Bob LaFollette, the legendary progressive governor of Wisconsin in 1901 and Presidential candidate in 1924 who ran on the most radical platform of any major candidate in our nation’s history. If you don’t know Fighting Bob, here’s a good book to start your New Year.

LaFollette’s political legacy has been all-but-destroyed in Wisconsin politics. These ten ideas represent a few ways Wisconsin can reshape our future by planting our roots firmly in our progressive past. So without further ado…

Ten Big Ideas for Wisconsin in 2026

1. A Public Bank

Our state faces an affordability crisis. From housing to utility costs, grocery prices to health care, Wisconsinites are paying too much and earning too little. Our current financial system offers corporations with huge amounts of capital miniscule interest rates while small businesses, family farms, and community institutions pay hand over fist. A public bank is a catch-all solution to kickstart an end to the affordability crisis.

Our neighbors in North Dakota have a public bank they use to finance small business loans and community projects like affordable housing at rates up to 5% lower than the standard market rate.

Right now, Wisconsin incentivizes development through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, a privatized agency that guides incentives for corporations to build here. With minimal government oversight of WEDC, we provided tax incentives to the tune of $473 million from 2021-2024. That excludes the nearly $5.5 billion in incentives provided to tech companies like FoxConn’s scam and data center developers. Rather than build a public bank, we’ve used a private sector workaround that’s led to bad investments and taxpayer dollars in the pockets of the rich who turn around and jack up prices for Wisconsin consumers.

A public bank allows the state to incentivize development that benefits the people, not just the financial services industry. We can build a small business, family farm, and cooperative financing program to expand local ownership, build clean energy infrastructure at scale to meet our growing energy needs, create grants to expand transit and broadband access, community infrastructure, public works projects, and affordable housing development. With a public bank, we can build faster, cheaper, and better for Wisconsin. It would even benefit bank customers as a public bank could partner with our robust credit union network to expand its reach and ensure every single Wisconsinite has access to a bank account with no fees and no gimmicks.

2. Build Public Power to Address the Housing Crisis

If affordability is a priority, addressing the housing crisis must be at the top of the list for every politician. The median home buyer nationally was 40 years old in 2025, up from 31 in 2014. Our state needs to build 250,000 housing units to meet demand.

Yes, building at scale will mean ending draconian permitting laws a la Ezra Klein’s Abundance, but it means something bigger: We need to build. Currently, the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) is a corporation, not a state agency. It operates as an extension of the Wisconsin banking system extending lower-interest loans and rental assistance to low and mid-income Wisconsinites. With a public bank in place, WHEDA can be transformed into a genuine public housing authority for Wisconsin with three goals:

1. Build as many high quality, desirable, affordable housing units as possible.

2. Reduce the cost of housing/rent across the board

We still build houses like it’s 1950. Modular homes, manufactured housing, 3-D printing, and new efficiencies in building material production offer a potential gateway to affordability. Wisconsin, the state, not private developers, should invest in homebuilding technology and introduce a fully state-financed and built affordable housing program that aims to house 250,000 Wisconsinites in their own homes by 2050. As renters, yes, but also as homeowners As private equity buys up neighborhoods, turning them into rent money bonanzas, banks prey on low-income communities to bolster their margins, real estate developers pocket 6% of every project, and realtors take their 6% too, Wisconsinites are suffering. The state can break this cycle.

3. Ending the Voucher School Scam

Rather than invest in our public education system, once the envy of America, we funnel over $700 million per year into private K-12 schools with no standards and no oversight. Wisconsin municipalities passed record numbers of property tax increases through local referendums to fund public schools. Wisconsin has fallen from 11th in the nation in per-student funding to 26th. Private vouchers reject and expel students at will, dodge audits, and reject accountability. We have a nonsensical two-tiered education system where the neediest students are in the worst-funded schools while those with the fewest needs attend the best-resourced schools.

Our state has failed our communities most in need of support, particularly communities of color who face some of the largest disparities in the country in Wisconsin. Building our state for the future means fully funding education from childhood to college, and patching up the $700 million hole that vouchers create is central to creating that future.

4. Enforce and Expand Antitrust Laws to Bust Monopolies

Crony capitalism is winning in Wisconsin. Big tech companies, private utilities, corporate big-box stores, massive landlords backed by private equity firms, dairy and beef processors, farm supply companies, and health care companies all operate as uncompetitive monopolies that drive up prices and drive down quality of service for Wisconsinites.

We have laws to take on these companies, we just don’t use them. Wisconsin’s Antitrust Act offers broad powers to the state to “safeguard the public against the creation or perpetuation of monopolies.” For example, our state has the right to revoke or deny corporate charters for monopolies. Our courts have artificially constrained these provisions. Our agencies and state departments including our Attorney General’s office, our Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP), and our Public Service Commission (PSC) have followed these constraints, backing down from challenging monopolies. For example, the PSC guarantees private utility companies a 9+% profit margin and allows them to pay out investor dividends every single year while working families struggling to afford their power bills. The CEO of WE Energies made nearly $11 million in total compensation in 2024 while running an energy racket for the entirety of Southeastern Wisconsin.

Our state is both unmotivated and under-resourced to regulate these monopolies. Public pressure hardly exists on antitrust, but that shouldn’t let elected officials like Attorney General Josh Kaul off the hook. Neither should it let the PSC or DATCP off for failing to prioritize consumer protection. Our legislature could act, setting antitrust as a priority for these agencies and funding an antitrust task force in the AG’s office, PSC, and DATCP. Similarly, we could expand enforcement power through a state “Abuse of Dominance” provision which recognizes consumer right to protection against corporate dominance even without a full monopoly on an industry, allowing more broad enforcement powers.

5. Rebuild the Manufacturer and Agricultural Tax Credit

Corporations pay almost no taxes in Wisconsin. Because of a Walker era tax credit, manufacturers and agricultural businesses or individuals can claim a 7.5% tax break lowering their effective tax rate from 7.9% to 0.4%. With every incentive our state gives out to private industry, it’s worth asking: Who benefits? With this tax credit, it’s disproportionately millionaires and multi-millionaires. We can reshape this tax credit so that businesses that deserve a leg up, such as your local hardware store or coffee shop, family farmers, and small manufacturers, can access much-needed tax relief while big corporations pay their fair share.

We can also expand these tax credits to incentivize worker-owned cooperatives and democratized workplaces, pushing companies to provide workers with shares in the profits and governance of their companies. Reshaping one tax credit won’t fix Wisconsin’s economy, and real reform will require going after massive corporate incentive programs but rather it will begin the process of asking who benefits when we provide economic incentives.

6. End Citizens United in Wisconsin

Our state saw more spending per capita in the 2024 presidential election than anywhere in the country. A theoretically non-partisan Supreme Court race saw record spending at over $100 million with most of that spending coming from PACs. Using a tool developed by Montanans who hate corporate election rigging as much as we do, our state can regulate corporate charters (see Idea #4) to cap or ban corporate contributions in elections. We can also simply pass a cap on super PAC donations like our friends in Maine and require full transparency for dark money donations. Maine’s law is facing federal litigation, but the Montana approach appears to have significant judicial precedent behind it, and we already have laws on our books in Wisconsin allowing corporate charters to be refused or revoked, we’d just need to expand them.

7. Build a Real Democracy: Multi-Member Districts and Fusion Voting

With all the money dumped in from outside sources, Wisconsinites have become increasingly distrustful of political parties, and rightly so. Wisconsin pioneered primary elections at the turn of the 20th century. Let’s restore our role as innovators by breaking up the two-party system through multi-member districts and fusion voting.

Multi-member districts would simply expand the size of our districts and allow for minor-party candidates to win seats. We currently have 33 Senate Districts and 99 Assembly districts, we could, for example, simplify the system and have 11 districts that each elect three Senators and nine Assembly members. Fusion voting creates political diversity by allowing multiple parties to nominate the same candidate, allowing people to vote on a ballot line of their choice. This change allows smaller parties to gain traction as political forces in their own right, not just as factions within a larger party.

8. Public Option for Health Care

We already provide public insurance in Wisconsin to nearly one million people under BadgerCare. Opening this program up to the public at a reduced rate through the ACA Marketplace would create an affordable, high-quality health care option for uninsured or underinsured Wisconsinites. A public option also effectively undercuts the private health care monopolies who have raised our health care prices to 5th in the country. Making BadgerCare available to all creates the runway for Medicare for All as public trust grows in the public system’s ability to provide high quality health care for reduced costs. Better health care at lower costs is a no brainer for Wisconsin.

9. A Living Wage for All

Our minimum wage sits at $7.25 per hour, literally below the poverty line for a single person. According to MIT economists, no county in Wisconsin has a living wage below $19 per hour for a single adult with no kids. Setting a minimum wage of $20 per hour, tied to inflation, and ensuring local communities can raise it above the state minimum would protect a wage floor for workers while bolstering our state’s economy. In 2012, the Fight for $15 launched and captured national attention. $15 in 2025 dollars would be $21.50.

But Simon, won’t a higher minimum wage kill jobs? NO. Economists from across the globe have studied higher minimum wages and found that they expand the economy and often create jobs by promoting more spending, as working class people tend to spend a high percentage of any extra dollar they earn while the rich hoard wealth in assets without recirculating it into the economy. $20 for Wisconsin in 2026, because every worker punching a clock in this state deserves to earn enough to survive.

10. Economic Democracy through Sectoral Bargaining and Workers Councils

As our state’s union density has collapsed from over 25% in the 1970s to under 6% today, workers have seen wages stagnate and working peoples’ voices have been mostly absent from the halls of government. Repealing Act 10, ending “right to work” laws that legalize freeloading on union contracts, and reinstating prevailing wage laws are a good place to start, but to truly democratize Wisconsin’s economy we need to fight for democracy in every single workplace. What could this look like? Sectoral bargaining and workers councils.

In 2007, Wisconsin created a Wisconsin Quality Home Care Authority (WQHCA), which effectively created a statewide bargaining unit for home care workers. In May 2010, 5,500 home care workers voted to unionize and negotiated a tentative agreement which never took effect due to Scott Walker and Act 10, which abolished the WQHCA. The home care example is a window into what’s possible down the road. We can establish statewide workers councils for every sector, offering workers and their unions the ability to set standards across industries and continue bargaining agreements in individual workplaces.

A Brighter Future for Wisconsin

We won’t rebuild America until we upend the system that has built the most unequal economy in the developed world. Fighting Bob was prescient, and it’s up to us to listen.

“Corporations exacting large sums from the people of this state in profits, upon business transacted within its limits, either wholly escape taxation, or pay insignificantly in comparison with the average citizen in Wisconsin. . .

God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors, -- to whom a little means so much, -- a double share to guard the treasure! . . .

So multifarious have become corporate affairs, so many concessions and privileges have been accorded them by legislation, -- so many more are sought by further legislation, -- that their specially retained representatives are either elected to office, directly in their interests, or maintained in a perpetual lobby to serve them.”

If we can’t break this malicious cycle, we’ll watch healthcare cuts decimate our communities and life expectancies continue dropping; we’ll see costs soar while wages stagnate, record corporate profits with record amounts of household debt and record lows in home ownership; Continued consolidation of power by corporate elites will lead to mass unemployment and fracturing of our economy.

We have no choice but to fight. Let’s build the revolution in Wisconsin in 2026.

Article was originally published on the Minocqua Brewing Company Substack

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Despite the century in between, in 2025, much like 1915, a cadre of billionaires are running our country and profiting off the backs of working people. Working families across Wisconsin struggle to affor

d necessities while the rich keep getting richer and Elon Musk and Donald Trump set themselves up to profit off the decimation of our federal government. It’s time for a New Wisconsin Idea centered around economic justice for all Wisconsinites.

Today the United States is wealthier than it has ever been. However, income and investments are skewed dramatically to the wealthiest. The rich are highly under-taxed. We need to undo this trend and fund our country’s future, not protect the billionaire class.

To reshape our future, we must reclaim our past. We, the undersigned organizations, are forming a coalition to fight for a New Wisconsin Idea to rebuild Wisconsin and fight back against the billionaire takeover of our government.

The New Wisconsin Idea

We believe that every Wisconsinite, regardless of income, race, religion, gender, country of origin, or sexual orientation, has the right to the basic necessities of life. Our state can lead the nation in fighting for economic justice through living wages, high-quality and affordable health care, world-class education, affordable housing for all, a clean environment, and a secure retirement. Wisconsinites deserve a state that works for them, not for the billionaire class.

We, the undersigned organizations representing tens of thousands of Wisconsinites, endorse the modern Economic Justice Bill of Rights as the vision for a progressive future for all Wisconsinites that promotes the public good and puts power back into the hands of working people. These rights are:

1. A job that provides dignity at work and pays a living wage;

2. Adequately funded public education and affordable, accessible childcare;

3. A union, public or private, and collective bargaining;

4. Affordable, accessible, and comprehensive high-quality healthcare;

5. A clean, sustainable environment and a healthy planet;

6. Decent, sustainable community infrastructures including safe, affordable housing, transportation, and broadband access;

7. Equitable access to capital, investments, financial institutions, and retirement;

8. A fair, restorative, and equitable justice system;

9. Recreation and participation in community and civic life;

10. Life, self-determination, and freedom from oppressions for all Wisconsinites regardless of documentation status.

Signees:

SEIU - Wisconsin

AFT-Wisconsin

Working Families Party of Wisconsin

Citizen Action of Wisconsin

South Central Federation of Labor

AFSCME Local 1

AFT Local 212

Black Leaders Organizing Communities

For Our Future - Wisconsin

Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization

Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America

Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America

Young Democrats of Wisconsin

Our Wisconsin Revolution

350 Wisconsin

Worth Fighting For WI

Minocqua Brewing Company PAC

Leaders of Kenosha

Raíces Acción

Oregon Area Progressives

Grassroots North Shore

Grassroots Germantown

League of Progressive Seniors

Gaia Coalition Network

Trans Intergeneration Mutual Aid Network of Madison

Wisconsin Legislative Socialists

Birds on a Wire