Please join us for the Legislative Breakfast

The climate crisis worsens.  At the federal level we see relentless attacks on agencies that protect our health and the environment. In addition we see cuts to funding for more quickly built and less costly renewable energy infrastructure coupled with increased support for the fossil fuel - gas and coal industries - the main drivers of climate change.  It would be easy to become deflated but the good news is that at the local level we have real opportunities to take action.  Each week we will continue to inform you of ways you can not only educate yourself but also take action with your local officials.   The following are two ways you can get involved.

 October 21st, 6-8pm, Milwaukee County Budget Listening Session

 The Milwaukee LWV is joining together with Citizen Action to sponsor a listening session, focused on the 2026 County Budget. Join climate activists as we advocate for funding for climate projects in the next County Budget. Support the Office of Sustainability and its promotion of environmental stewardship and emissions reduction in county government operations, infrastructure and services to enhance community equity, health and resilience  and its most recent work focused on implementation of Milwaukee County's Climate Action 2050 (CA50) Plan and strategies.

SAVE THE DATE: Saturday, November 22, 10-noon, Local Actions to Address Climate Change, Featuring Erick Shambarger, City of Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office and Grant Helle, Milwaukee County Sustainability Director. Learn about our local governments’ efforts to address climate change.  Room 2135, (1st Floor meeting room), Summit Place, 6737 W Washington St., West Allis, WI  53214.

Planned Parenthood WI Pauses Abortion Care

By Charlie Gaebler-Uhing, M.D., Reproductive Rights Committee Co-Chair

Last week Planned Parenthood of WI announced it was pausing abortion care starting October 1, 2025. After PP WI fought hard to restore abortion care in Wisconsin, you wonder why the retreat?  

PP WI currently serves 50,000 Wisconsinites, typically 90% of those served receive contraception as part of their care and 60% are insured via Medicaid.  If PP WI continued abortion care in the new fiscal year, they could no longer be reimbursed via Medicaid because a provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” bans abortion care providers from receiving Medicaid funds, which makes delivery of all reproductive health services by PP WI unsustainable.  Call me cynical, but this bill’s goal is not only to limit abortion care, but to limit access to contraception, a goal of Project 2025, according to Guttmacher Institute. 

LGBTQ+  Fact of the Week from Past to Present

In Nazi Germany, prisoners were marked with colored triangles: red for political prisoners, green for criminals, yellow for Jews, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, black for those labeled “asocial”—and pink for men accused under the law against homosexuality. Lesbians were not given their own symbol; those targeted were often forced to wear the black triangle as “asocials.” The pink triangle was chosen deliberately, playing on stereotypes of effeminacy to humiliate gay men. 

Once a mark of shame, it has been reclaimed as a symbol of LGBTQ+ pride and resistance. Its history and our own time reminds us that persecution continues.

Did you know that the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) plans to acquire licenses for Facial Recognition Technology (FRT)? Facial recognition uses AI technology and biometric data to identify human faces against a database of faces. The MPD plans to trade 2.5 million mugshots for “free” licenses from the software company Biometrica. FRT threatens everyone’s personal privacy and civil liberties. It is a racially biased technology that has a high percentage of misidentifying Black, AAPI, and nonbinary people. 

If you reside in the City of Milwaukee, we encourage you to contact your alderperson and Mayor Johnson and urge them to ban the Milwaukee Police Department’s current and future use of Facial Recognition Technology. With the permission of the Milwaukee Turners, we are sharing sample call and email scripts that can be used to contact your alderperson and the Mayor. 

 To learn more about the Mass Incarceration Committee, contact Emily Sterk at e.sterk@lwvmilwaukee.org

Waukesha County Volunteer Coordinator for VOTE411 Needed

VOTE411 is a nonpartisan online voter guide provided by the League of Women Voters Education Fund. In order to produce this guide for all voters, LWV needs lots of help! Community volunteers contact municipal or school board clerks to get candidate information.

Community Volunteer Coordinators for Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties work with volunteers and with clerks to collect this information and to relay it to tech team volunteers who post candidates and their contact information to the system. The League invites the candidates to participate in the online voter guide and answer questions important to their constituents. The candidates respond to our questions on the VOTE411 site.

We need a Waukesha County Volunteer Coordinator for VOTE411!  Experience with VOTE411 is helpful, whether as a community volunteer or otherwise, but not essential. If you are interested or want more information, please contact Beth Lueck at b.lueck@lwvmilwaukee.org

Money, Politics and the First Amendment

Friday, October 3, 2025, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

UW-Madison Law School

975 Bascom Mall, Room 2260 Madison, WI 53706

In-Person and Virtual Register here.

The State Democracy Research Initiative invites you to attend “Money, Politics, and the First Amendment” with a reception to follow. This event will take place in-person in room 2260 in the UW Law School, with the option to attend virtually. The panel will focus on the impacts of increasingly expensive elections, and the tension between campaign finance regulation and free speech. There will be an in-person reception to follow. Our panelists will include Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg (Hoover Institution), Attorney Saurav Ghosh (Campaign Legal Center), Professor Raymond La Raja (UMass Amherst, Political Science), and Professor Abby Wood (USC Gould School of Law), with Professor Barry Burden (UW-Madison, Political Science) moderating.

The Milwaukee Turners are excited to announce that Alec Karakatsanis, author of Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, will be joining us for a Vel Phillips Forum on Wednesday, October 8. Moderated by Jordan Lee, Executive Director of Radio Milwaukee. Register here.

October 22, 2025 | Reception 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Program 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, WI

In-Person and Livestream

Register here.

What role, if any, should faith play in shaping our political values and goals? How do we authentically live out our religious beliefs in the public sphere without imposing those beliefs on others? Does respecting the separation of church and state require us to set aside our faith when engaging politically? Can—and should—our personal religious convictions truly be divorced from our public policy positions? Join us for a thoughtful and nuanced conversation featuring:Ross Douthat (New York Times); Shadi Hamid (Washington Post); Daniel Mark (Villanova University); Kaitlyn Schiess (Duke Divinity School)