-
Standing Room Only for IWF’s Judicial Campaign Reform Workshop - September 2009
-
Greater Eau Claire Reaches Out to Community - August 2009
-
Gar Alperovitz inspires Milwaukee progressives - April 2009
Standing Room Only for IWF’s Judicial Campaign Reform Workshop
 |
| Attorney Adam Skaggs of the New York University Brennan Center of Law addresses the workshop. |
Over 50 people, primarily lawyers, attended a workshop on Sept. 16, 2009 organized by IWF and the University of Wisconsin Law School. The seminar offered opposing views on whether a judge should recuse him or herself in cases where there were significant campaign contributions made to that judge by the parties involved in the case.
Citizen Alliance for Strong Communities –
Greater Eau Claire Reaches Out to Community
The Citizen Alliance for Strong Communities (CASC) held an important community meeting on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 to let people in the area know about the serious budget cuts coming this year due to substantial cuts in state aid. Speaking as a group -- they outlined how state cuts in local aid will impact everything from class size to snow plowing. CASC was started in 2008 as a collaboration among local government entities (including the cities of Eau Claire and Altoona, the Altoona and Eau Claire school districts, Eau Claire County and Chippewa Valley Technical College), labor unions, the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce and the Realtors Association of Northwestern Wisconsin. There was a packed house as over 70 people jammed a room at the technical college. After the CASC speakers outlined the coming cuts, people met in small groups to discuss their reactions, their concerns and how to get this information out to the broader community.
Click here to see a PowerPoint presentation on State Budget Ripple Effects - Difficult times for Greater Eau Claire.
To download the PDF version of the slide show click here.
Chippewa Valley leaders sound budget warning
Chippewa Valley leaders are sounding an alarm about the deepening impact of state budget cuts on local services and trying to begin a dialogue about preserving the community's quality of life.
Read more about the budget alert..
Gar Alperovitz inspires Milwaukee progressives
 |
| Gar Alperovitz (right) explains the need to gradually reconstruct the current economic system while WEAC's Ted Kraig and Attorney Sandy Edhlund look on. |
Professor Gar Alperovitz, a notable writer and national leader in the progressive movement, visited Milwaukee April 3, 2009 to meet and talk to community activists and thinkers. Thanks to support from Professor Marc Levine and the UWM Center for Economic Development, Alperovitz spent the day in Wisconsin. He presented to over 35 people at a breakfast in the Milwaukee Public Market. He was also interviewed by Cassandra Wilson and Joel McNally on WMCS radio and by Mitch Teich for the Lake Effect program on WUWM Public Radio.
Alperovitz is the author of Unjust Deserts and America Beyond Capitalism. He believes that the current economic system is severely dysfunctional with almost half of all the financial wealth in the United States held by 1% of the population and an economic downturn that hasn’t yet hit bottom. “We currently have a haphazard, corporate-run system, but it could be a democratic, community-run system without limiting innovation or profits. There are thousands of employee-owned firms, neighborhood corporations, municipal enterprises, state investment strategies exploding at the grass roots level all over the nation,” according to Alperovitz who posits that these new forms of community-based development set the stage for a more democratic and prosperous future. Alperovitz has established a website — http://www.community-wealth.org/ —that serves as a clearinghouse for projects emerging across the country pointing. For more information, see http://www.garalperovitz.com/.