With a history of socialist governments, the city registers a protest against candidate Trump

▲ Above these lines, the demonstration against the tycoon, in Milwaukee.Afp Photo

▲ The image of the recent attack on Trump on a T-shirt of a Republican convention attendee.Photo Ap

David Brooks and Jim Cason

Correspondents

The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, July 16, 2024, p. 22

Milwaukee, the center of Milwaukee, an industrial and brewing port, has become a stronghold for Donald Trump and the thousands of activists who came to the Republican Convention to crown their candidate, but they are surrounded by socialist ghosts and their new contemporary expressions in Wisconsin, a state that will be key in determining the political future of the United States.

Between 1910 and 1960, the city of Milwaukee elected three socialist and socialist mayors to other municipal offices. One served from 1916 to 1940; another from 1948 to 1960. In 1910, Milwaukee elected Victor Berger, an Austrian immigrant and co-founder with Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party of America, as the first federal legislator of that political party in Washington – he was re-elected four times. Among his initiatives, Berger promoted resolutions to withdraw troops from the border with Mexico.

This city suffered from the savage deindustrialization that accelerated in the 1970s throughout this region, losing inhabitants and with an increase in poverty (27 percent of its population in 2020), and is now also one of the most racially segregated cities.

With the emergence on the public scene of democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders and his movement, a resurgence of some progressive currents of the past is reported in this era.

Yesterday, a protest march was held by hundreds of activists in rejection of what Trump and his Make America Great Again movement represent; a coalition of groups in favor of migrant rights, women’s rights, and peace took part.

Omar Flores, one of the coordinators of the coalition of progressive organizations that carried out the mobilization, declared before about a thousand people, a few blocks from the arena where the Republican Convention is taking place, that the protest is to express that the ultra-conservatives They are not welcome in our city, or anywhere, and wherever they show up we will be there to show opposition to their ideas..

It is the only formal protest event scheduled this week, although there is no shortage of expressions of opposition to Trump on billboards, or graffiti against the Republican wave, as well as to demonstrate the endorsement of the Black Lives Matter movement for respect for the rights of African Americans, on cars and some walls.

A huge mural in the center declares: Exercising the vote is a human rightan explicit expression against decades of practices of suppressing minority suffrage in this country.

For 160 years, Milwaukee has been a city of migrants: first Germans and then Europeans who brought their cuisine, for which beer and sausages are the most famous things here – even its baseball team is called the Brewers (and it must be admitted that this drink is appreciated so that some reporters can endure this week’s ominous spectacle).

Poles, French, Irish, Scandinavians and Italians also arrived in the city, and later, Latin Americans and Caribbeans, including a growing Mexican community, which has had to tolerate anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric from those who occupy their city.

At the same time, as part of the contradictions, the young chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party is Hilario Deleon, 23, who is half Mexican, adopted, with a white mother and an African-American sister, who now lives with his mother. He has worked in the service sector, such as in restaurants, and is a fan of the history of the American Civil War and now a fierce Trump promoter. According to a profile of Deleon in Politico, he considers the 2020 election to be Stolenwhose idol is politically persecuted, and who is dedicating himself to increasing Latino and African-American participation in favor of the Republican standard-bearer, in this county where the majority opposes the magnate, because he believes that Trump will save the country.

On the other hand, there are unexpected facets to this city: just before the convention began, the annual Bastille Day celebrations, a key date in the French Revolution, took place downtown, with music, cancan dancing and baguettes, a historical contrast to the arrival of a semi-king, but the activities were deliberately devoid of any political context.

Ban weapons

Meanwhile, there is a security perimeter of dozens of blocks around the city center, the arena and the convention center where the mega-production of the quadrennial Republican National Convention is taking place. Local and state police units and specialized equipment imported from various cities around the country – from Austin to Miami – are added to the federal surveillance offered by the Secret Service. All entry is controlled and there are both armed boats on the rivers and constant aerial surveillance.

In this area, despite the semi-religious defense of the Republicans and their candidate right to use firearms throughout the country and in the state of Wisconsin it is legal to carry them, yesterday all firearms were strictly prohibited within the perimeter of this fortress. Apparently, they do not want to harvest everything they grow.