Citizen Action Weekly; Friday, February 18th
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Friday, February 18th
RSVP for Citizen Action’s Lobby Week
Join Citizen Action of Wisconsin for our 2022 Lobby Week to speak to Democratic state legislators about a more fair and accessible healthcare system and for a bold reconstruction of our economy into a green economy that creates good paying jobs and combats climate change.
Commitment:
- Attend the Pre-Lobby Training on Wednesday, February 23rd at 5:30pm-7pm or watch the recording.
- 1 or more lobby meetings, 30 min each
- Complete a short debrief survey after your lobby meeting(s).
Citizen Action Staff will schedule the virtual lobby meetings and send you information on how to join the meetings once they are scheduled. All meetings will take place between February 24 – March 4.
ATTEND In The Wash: A Virtual Workshop About Wisconsin Water Quality
Thursday, February 24, 2022 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Whether we drink it from a bubbler or a water fountain all Wisconsinites need, and deserve, clean, fresh, water. From Lake Superior to the Kickapoo river water fuels our bodies, grow our crops, builds our economy, and allows us to enjoy the great Wisconsin outdoors. Unfortunately Wisconsin water is under attack from professional polluters and the politicians they finance. If we all work together, through actions and elections, we can make sure that the water in our cups and in our trout fishing streams is clean and healthy.
Please join us on Feb 24th at 6:00 PM for an interactive, virtual workshop about protect Wisconsin water! Learn how you can help protect Wisconsin water right away and throughout 2022.
We will be hearing from local officials from across Wisconsin about the bad actors putting our water in jeopardy, and what we can do to protect it. We will be hearing about water quality issues facing Wisconsin right now. Issues such as chemical runoff, factory farming, the Line 5 project, lead pipes, and more.
RSVP now so you can receive the link to join. Speakers to include (but not limited to):
- Rita Simons – Water Defender
- Mitch Reynolds – Mayor La Crosse Wisconsin
- Johnson Bridgwater – Wisconsin River Alliance
- Wisconsinites like you who are facing water quality issues
- Elected leaders from all corners of Wisconsin
You will walk away from this event with actions you can take RIGHT AWAY to help protect Wisconsin waters!
Join the Southeast Wisconsin Co-Op in a fun, educational game of Redistricting Loteria!
Have you ever played BINGO? How about Loteria?
Loteria is a traditional, Mexican BINGO game and local, Milwaukee artists, have re-created the images to bring you a night of education around Redistricting.
This VIRTUAL event will take place on February 25th at 6pm.
Event is sponsored by: Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Citizen Action of WI Southeastern Co-Op. Questions can be directed to Barbara Cerda, SEWI Co-Op Organizer, [email protected]
Citizen Action members lobby members of Congress in support of our agenda
Citizen Action members met with U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and staff from U.S. Rep. Ron Kind‘s office this week to continue pushing for the agenda in Build Back Better.
Citizen Action members are meeting with Wisconsin’s congressional members this month to keep the pressure on Congress to pass legislation addressing the agenda.
Contact your members of Congress and tell them to stay focused on passing our agenda this year.
Read more about why we need to continue the fight for our shared agenda with President Biden
Citizen Action’s Executive Director Robert Kraig wrote a column in the CapTimes earlier this month pushing back hard on the “friendly fire” from establishment Democrats at President Biden’s bold domestic agenda and his alliance with the progressive wing of the party.
As much as some centrists want to go back to the far less ambitious politics of the 1990s, the reality is that this would demoralize the Democratic base, making it harder to win in 2022. In our polarized country, elections are increasingly decided by the turnout of each party’s base, and less by the shrinking pool of swing voters. While the Trumpian GOP and progressives have adapted strikingly divergent approaches to this new reality, old-school centrists have their heads in the sand, wishing for a bygone (and largely mythical) era of limited policy aspirations and safe bipartisan compromises.
Second, President Biden’s embrace of a bold progressive policy agenda is also motivated by his realistic assessment of the actual needs of the country.
Take the hard and inescapable reality of the looming climate crisis. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that we only have until 2030 to cut greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half or risk the lives of billions and the stability of human civilization itself. Because the centrists who dominated the last two Democratic administrations found it politically expedient to repeatedly kick the problem down the road, the $500 billion climate conversion plan still on the table may be our last hope to start early enough to succeed.
The other major elements of the Build Back Better agenda still in play are a series of long overdue reforms, already enjoyed by other developed countries, which will dramatically expand economic opportunity for everyone while cutting gender, racial and regional wealth gaps.
These include affordable child care, paid family leave, universal pre-K, lowering out-of-pocket health care and prescription drug costs, and making professions like home health care, populated largely by women and people of color, provide for good jobs with benefits. Not prioritizing these badly needed advances again demoralizes our own base.
Third, the establishment critique that Build Back Better is a bridge too far for the Senate is easy to make in hindsight. Every armchair quarterback knows how their team could have won a game they lost. But anyone with lobbying experience knows that you really can’t determine in advance how far you can get until you fight for it. It is now clear that Build Back Better will need to be paired down further. But the claim that it is dead flies in the face of the clear evidence that critical policies such as massive climate investments, universal pre-K, health care and prescription drug reform, and even the child tax credit, still have paths to victory.
Citizen Action in the News
Citizen Action’s Robert Kraig was on the Jeff Santos Show to discuss how to prevent war in Ukraine and Biden’s stalled domestic agenda. Listen here.
Citizen Action’s opposition to a GOP bill that would undermine the conversation to electric vehicles was noted in an excelled Badger Herald article. As we move towards the critically needed green transition, the GOP can be expected to do everything they can to prioritize big corporations like for-profit utilities over the need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Read the article here.
GOP Medicaid Bills Are An Attack on Hardworking Wisconsinites
By: Robert Kraig, Executive Director
This week the State Assembly voted on two bills that would move Wisconsin backwards at the expense of hardworking Wisconsinites. AB 934 and AB 936 will dramatically increase the administrative burden on both the State and already hard pressed BadgerCare enrollees, force people off their health coverage during an ongoing global pandemic, and put people dealing with long-term disabilities at particular risk.
AB 934 adds administrative burdens we would never accept in our daily lives. For no good reason, it would require people enrolled in BadgerCare to reapply every six months as if for the first time – forcing them to submit information the State already has, doubling the paperwork and multiplying the risk of error. This could result in coverage being taken away for six months. People living with physical and mental disabilities are particularly vulnerable to administrative errors in the application process and face potentially dire health consequences if left without health coverage.
AB 936 would punish BadgerCare enrollees who perform important, low-wage jobs, including many front line workers during the pandemic, by forcing them into the BadgerCare coverage gap where they are required to make the impossible choice between being uninsured, or buying health insurance that cost more than the slight increase in wages they have earned. This bill will not result in an influx of worker hours in the economy. Rather, it will harm good, hardworking people in our communities and tear at a foundational function in our society – caregiving. Professional care workers who support the elderly and people with disabilities earn poverty wages. Many paid caregivers are only able to stay in the field because of BadgerCare eligibility. Forcing these workers into the BadgerCare gap could result in a mass exodus of care workers, exasperating the already serious caregiver shortage. Likewise, family caregivers are often forced to work part time jobs to accommodate their care responsibilities at home. Forcing these caregivers to work additional hours could have serious detrimental effects on the well-being of their loved ones.
Listen to “Texas sized Wisconsin emergency” Battleground Wisconsin Podcast
We welcome Courtney Hayward and Tanya Atkinson from Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin to the show to talk about the impending threat to reproductive healthcare in Wisconsin. In addition to the looming threat to Roe v. Wade by a lawless right-wing Supreme Court, the State Legislature introduced a Texas style ban, which could end reproductive freedom even if Roe is not overturned. Next, Ben Wilson, Citizen Action Driftless Coop Organizer, joins us to urge you to attend the virtual, In The Wash: A Virtual Workshop About Wisconsin Water Quality, where you can learn how to help protect Wisconsin water. We discuss Republican state legislative attacks on BadgerCare and public education, Robert raises concerns about an anti-Asian hate bill in the legislature targeting the UW System, and we shout out state Sen. Jeff Smith for speaking truth telecom corporate conspiracy against universal broadband in Wisconsin.
Social media post of the week
