The Bradley Foundation, Project 2025 and the “Wisconsin Austerity Model”

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By A Union Worker

We honor the Indigenous whose stolen land we are on today.

And we raise up the latest call from September 2024 by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions:

“We write to you once again from Gaza as we approach the one-year mark since the start of this genocidal war – a year of torture, pain, and suffering; a year in which our people have faced forced displacement, a war of starvation, death bombs that rain on the heads of civilians, and the almost complete destruction of life from the bombardment of homes and their inhabitants, schools, hospitals, mosques, and churches; a year in which we have witnessed the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, the systematic destruction of civil society, and the near complete destruction of the offices and headquarters of most unions… We, with our souls and bodies, continue to resist the death that is imposed on us, and we trust that you will continue to raise the banner of solidarity and struggle to stop the aggression and to live a dignified life for a freedom that is not negotiable and for a justice that does not bow to anyone.” [https://laborforpalestine.net/]

The Palestinian workers are asking workers internationally – whether in unions or not – to oppose U.S.-Israel genocidal apartheid in whatever ways we can, including union solidarity resolutions, demanding an arms embargo and engaging in creative direct actions everywhere. And to oppose the trillion-dollar Pentagon machine worldwide.

The Historical Fires of Class Struggle and the legacy of unions and community advances in Wisconsin are very deep.

The mighty people’s occupation of the state Capitol in February and March of 2011 sparked by the Teaching Assistants Association-AFT at UW Madison and then joined by unions and community organizations across the state, nation and world was one of the strongest labor uprisings since the 1930’s.

Historically, many firsts for workers nationwide were won in Wisconsin.

These include:

• The first collective bargaining laws for public sector workers.
• The first teaching assistants’ union that won collective bargaining (after striking) at UW Madison.
• The first protections for lesbian and gay people enacted into state law in 1983;
• Many union locals desegregated due to numerous militant union campaigns by a great number of UAW, UE and other union members and socialists.
• Numerous advances for  women’s rights and  reproductive justice.

There are many more. [https://www.wisconsinlaborhistory.org/]

There have also been many challenges. As Dr. Joe Trotter explains in “Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45:” Milwaukee has for decades  been one of the most segregated cities in the United States, and across Wisconsin the effects of racism continue to be deadly.

Project 2025 and The Bradley Foundation

el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, otherwise known as Malcolm X  once said:

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is the culmination of decades of austerity in the United States.

According to the 1997 investigative report entitled “The Feeding Trough …”  by the former people’s organization A Job Is A Right Campaign, and reports from Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement and the Center for Media and Democracy:

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin based Bradley Foundation is the premier right-wing grant making foundation in the country, and  has played a leading role in the development of both a philosophical approach and an activist agenda for the national right-wing movement. Bradley is a leading force in a constellation of conservative foundations, institutions, media networks and legal action projects and has used that leadership position to advance a racist, right-wing political agenda characterized by  a capitalism with the gloves off approach with no unions, safety, or anti-discrimination protections etc. [https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/05/05/documents-detail-bradley-foundation-efforts-build-right-wing-infrastructure-nationwide/]

The Bradley Foundation has funded the Heritage Foundation for decades.

On the heels of the Reagan offensive, in the late 1980’s, in Wisconsin:

• The implementation of charter schools took place first in Milwaukee;
• The beginning of “truth-in-sentencing” aimed primarily at Black and Brown workers was implemented in the early 1990’s;
• The implementation of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1994;
• And in the 1990’s, the bi-partisan evisceration of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the implementation of TANF;

During this period, the rich and their servants led by the likes of the right-wing Bradley Foundation and politicians such as former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and Bill Clinton, have led a scorched earth model of how to implement rapacious capitalist austerity that has now gone to a great extent nationwide and even global.

In 2011 the capitalists went even further by fomenting a political and economic coup in Wisconsin with the state statute Act 10 which – despite the greatest people’s state capitol occupation in Madison and resistance since the 1930’s – was implemented with absolutely devastating even deadly results that are ongoing.

Act 10 eliminated almost all collective bargaining for public sector workers. This set the tone for the implementation of the Jim Crow based Right-to-Work (for less) law in 2015.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called RTW one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on workers in the United States. And following the RTW implementation, the elimination of prevailing wage laws by the right-wing controlled state legislature took place.

In addition to this anti-union offensive, unfortunately, many of the dreams of the capitalist class have – temporarily- become realized in Wisconsin.

A short list since 2011 when the Governor’s office and the Wisconsin legislature was completely controlled by right-wing servants of the capitalists:

• The most de-funding of K-12 and higher education in particular the UW System in state history;

• In the UW System, hundreds of faculty and staff have been laid off, some services privatized such as bookstores and janitorial services and six two year campuses have or are in the process of closing.

• Under the former Governor Scott Walker tenure from 2011-2018, administrative offices that service primarily poor and working people were gutted or eliminated; right-wing legislators refused (still do) to accept federal funding to expand medicare in Wisconsin and more horrendous austerity has been implemented. This continues the absolutely unnecessary mass misery, suffering and death of many in Wisconsin.

• Economically, the plundering of poor and working people – the violent transfer of wealth from poor and working people to the rich – since 2011 in Wisconsin has been in the tens of BILLIONS of dollars. The rich use mechanisms such as increasing  “interest payments” or “debt service” to banks from state, county and municipalities and “increased contributions” (wage cuts) from public sector workers for health care and pensions.

• Most progressive tenant rights laws were eliminated from state statute in 2012 increasing gentrification and landlords getting richer by violently increasing rents across the state. Many right wing legislators such as Robin Vos own millions of dollars of rental properties fleecing working class renters as a matter of course and this includes many students in places such as near UW Whitewater where Vos owns many rental properties.
• A variety of environmental attacks ensued since 2011 such as the gutting or elimination of hard won policies and state statutes over decades.

• The allowance of more corporate farming took place, police have been given more ability to repress and harm the people, prisoner rights have been reduced or eliminated, various attacks on Indigenous Nations and an anti Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) state statute was passed and implemented directly targeting pro Palestine activists but containing provisions that are also anti union.

• And many other attacks such as more right-wing support for even more U.S. war funding at the expense of poor and working people.

• Union member loss through Act 10, RTW and other anti labor attacks has resulted in what some sources claim is a 150,000 dues paying member loss since 2011. Some sources claim that the NEA affiliated state educators union has lost at least 60,000 members.

How did the capitalists do this in a state with such a deep tradition of union and community progressive and revolutionary history?

“The Earth is not dying-it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” – Utah Phillips

• The surgical role of the Bradley Foundation since the mid 1980’s has been central in particular with specific emphasis on its funding focuses, grooming and development of capitalist servants such as Scott Walker, Robin Vos, Bryan Steil, Glenn Grothman, Ron Johnson, Paul Tittl, Scott Fitzgerald and Paul Ryan. These political servants have engaged in endless ongoing crimes against the people.

• The capitalists have created a statewide network of vultures with organizing bases such as offices with major administrative support and connections. Some names to be aware of: Michael Grebe (a Nixon and Reagan acolyte), Art Pope, Rick Esenberg, Sheldon Lubar, Dick and Elizabeth Uhelin, Diane Hendricks and Steve Bannon.

• Right-wing groups such as the Moms for Liberty that frequently attack school boards statewide over LGBTQIA protections for students, COVID safety, educator’s union rights and anti-discrimination policies are able to build local chapters much quicker with Bradley and other right-wing foundation funds.

• The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and other right-wing anti-worker law firms such as Foley and Lardner and Michael Best and Friedrich, assist groups such as Moms for Liberty with a variety of resources.

• Right-wing operatives such as Karl Rove and Steve Bannon have been instrumental in advising many capitalists in Wisconsin with his state-by-state austerity model with the goal of bringing it federal as outlined in Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation.

• Art Pope from North Carolina has been a leader in the government of that southern state and of the Civitas Institute and the Bradley Foundation for years and one of his major roles is to train many capitalists and their political servants on how to implement and continue “southern methods” in Wisconsin. These include guiding members of the right-wing legislature about how to purposefully starve “urban” cities such as Madison and Milwaukee of direly needed shared revenue, regressive tax codes, eliminating residency requirements for public sector workers, how to attack the UW System and other public education by de-funding and other reactionary mechanisms.

• To realize their goals of ongoing racist austerity, the capitalists and their political servants had to eliminate working class organization in a variety of sectors statewide. Many public sector unions no longer have chapters in the UW System or in cities where they had built working class power for decades and many union offices have been closed or are struggling to stay afloat. With Right-To-Work as state law, workers in union shops don’t have to pay dues or even fair share legally but they still have to be represented by the union at their work site if there is one there. So, since Act 10 has been implemented in June 2011, billions of dues funds from private and public sector unions that could be going to building union/working class organizing and thus power in Wisconsin and nationwide have been lost and these major losses continue.

This “Wisconsin Model” is what the capitalists want for every state. They want to use Wisconsin as a platform and declare before the country and the world that if this type of racist, union busting austerity as described above can be done in Wisconsin it can be done anywhere.

Again, their goal: To destroy working class organization and leadership – especially class conscious anti-racist leadership – that’s rooted in understanding people’s history and understands how to fight effectively.

This is the core message and priorities of Project 2025.

What Is To Be Done Now?

Fighting back against the rapacious greed, racism, bigotry, union busting and environmental destruction are essential and absolutely necessary and many valiant and wonderful people’s battles are taking place across Wisconsin that need support.

How do we go from being perpetually on the defensive – or burnt out – right where the capitalists and their servants want us?

How do we the people go on the offensive to build our power to advance and win what we need and want?

How do we as workers take control at the points of production and distribution particularly in critical sectors such as transportation?

In the spirit of this democracy event, here’s some potential ideas for ongoing discussion and organizing:

• First:

• • The necessity of Independent Leadership;
  • A class struggle Program; and
  • Effective Organization.

We must first know who the capitalists and their servants are, where they are, their tactics and strategies and the language they use to lie about their real motives of reaping profits by any and all means at the expense of humanity and Mother Earth.

An example: We must learn to translate the eugenics based Bradley Foundation’s language such as: “Flexibility,” “Economic Freedom,” “Common Sense Reforms,” “Liberty,” “Rule of Law,” “Restore, Strengthen and Protect,” “Freedom,” “Education Reform,” “Preserving Democracy.”

Other considerations:

• What are our working class organizations being used for? Voting is a human right and must absolutely be defended and opportunities expanded. But what else can our union halls be used for to assist in our goals etc.?

• How can we use our union halls to build anti-fascist formations, develop people’s culture, to have diverse class struggle educational events, for drag shows and more?

• The necessity of working class financial independence for our organizations to be effective; that are not beholden to Wall Street foundations and the non profit industrial complex.

• What type of people’s leadership do we need in this period of history?

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership… Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.”

For resources on Project 2025, the Bradley Foundation and other right-wing forces, see the Center for Media and Democracy https://www.exposedbycmd.org/ and the Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement: https://wibailoutpeople.org/.