In 1997, A Job is a Right Campaign released a 140-page report entitled The Feeding Trough: The Bradley Foundation, ‘The Bell Curve’ and the Real Story Behind W-2, Wisconsin’s National Model for Welfare Reform.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee is the country’s leading right-wing grantmaker. With a half billion dollars in assets, it funds a wide range of activities, all opposed to the interests of poor and working people. Many of its programs are directed specifically against communities of color. For example, Bradley funded the notoriously racist book The Bell Curve. Bradley money helped overturn the affirmative action programs in the state university systems of California and Texas. And Bradley helped fund the development of W-2, Tommy Thompson’s draconian welfare reform program now being used as a model for much of the rest of the country.
The Feeding Trough got a lot of attention. There were articles and reviews in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and The Capitol Times. Members of AJRC were interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio and Television, National Public Radio and the national McNeil-Lehrer Report.
In response, Bradley was forced to do some serious public relations damage control. For the first time in its 55-year history, Bradley appointed an African American to its board of directors. Bradley president Michael Joyce did an interview with the Journal Sentinel in which he tried to distance the foundation from The Bell Curve. And Bradley intensified its efforts to develop a community infrastructure to support its programs.
With The Feeding Trough, we were able to get out some valuable information, but we know that’s not enough. The Bradley Machine has a lot of money, power and influence and has been able to continue unfolding its program. And the goal of that program is to roll back the gains of 60 years of social struggle.
For example:
W-2: Far from helping people lift themselves out of poverty, W-2 institutionalizes that poverty. It permanently traps a whole layer of people into a kind of modern-day slavery, allowing corporations to reap super-profits from captive, low-wage labor.
School Choice: This movement, a major Bradley funding priority, has recruited a lot of well-meaning people fed up with the inequities and racism of the public school system. But Bradley’s goal in funding that movement is to weaken and ultimately destroy that system, which it views as just another form of welfare.
Affirmative Action: Less than 2% of the many thousands of cases now pending before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) involve so-called "reverse discrimination". In fact, recent polls show that most people support affirmative action and would oppose its elimination. But the right wing commentators, periodicals, and magazines -- many of them funded by Bradley and its allies -- have deliberately created the opposite impression. Their goal? To make sure that the next generation of lawyers, professors, authors, journalists, elected officials, firefighters, police officers and judges are overwhelmingly white and male, that they come from the section of the population that already receives the most privileges and so is less likely to oppose the Super-Privileges of the Super-Wealthy.
Other issues are also coming to the fore in Wisconsin. While they may not all be specifically Bradley initiatives, they all complement the general program. Among these are:
Neighborhood Schools: In Wisconsin, there is a well-organized effort to end school busing and return to the days of "separate but equal" public schools. Combined with the expansion of school choice, this just speeds up the demise of the public school system.
Foster Care: Milwaukee County has one of the worst foster care systems in the country. Each caseworker is responsible for an average of 100 children, as opposed to the national average of 40. But the solutions -- the impending state takeover and resulting privatization of services -- are worse than the problem. They raise the specter of thousands of children, primarily Black, being removed from their community to be raised by people outside their culture. This is exactly what was forced on Indian communities earlier in this century and was designed to destroy the Indian nations.
Police Control of the Community: In 1997 we saw the end of affirmative action in the Milwaukee Police Department, the redeployment of nearly 400 cops to the Black and Latino communities, the stationing of police officers in some 20 MacDonalds restaurants in the inner city, and a record number of people killed by the police. Any attempt to greatly increase the economic exploitation of poor and working people will inevitably have a military side. The MPD of the 90’s is just Brierism with computers -- not only racist but much more deadly.
Why is all this happening? Or more to the point, why is it being allowed to happen? When the working class movements in this country were strong, great gains were made. The labor struggles of the Thirties expanded the power of unions, won social security, workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, and many other programs we now take for granted.
During the social struggles of the Sixties and Seventies, real victories were won in the area of civil rights. The worst aspects of U.S. apartheid were broken. Opportunities were opened up in employment, education, housing, and elective offices.
These victories inspired other sectors as well. Women won the right to reproductive choice. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people made gains. And the massive anti-war movement made it more difficult for the U.S. government to conduct wars overseas that only benefit Big Business.
But as these great social movements began to ebb in the late Seventies, the corporations saw an opportunity for a counter-attack. They created a vast network of right-wing foundations, think tanks, periodicals, writers and authors to promote their goal of eliminating any possible restriction on their right to make the biggest possible profit. The foundations and the intellectual mercenaries they hire have been assigned the task of discrediting any form of governmental regulation, corporate taxation, and environmental restrictions, as well as any social programs that strengthen the working class economically or politically. Bradley plays the key leading role in this constellation of right-wing foundations.
When there is an attempt at revival of people’s struggles, such as is now taking place in the labor movement, the opposition is ruthless. For example, in 1997 the Teamsters union won a tremendous victory in the strike against UPS, a strike fought mainly in the interests of part-time workers, many of them women and people of color. No sooner was the strike over than the government targeted Teamster President Ron Carey, charging him with "corruption", nullified his election, and forbade him from running again. He was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced, all without ever having a day in court! Can there be any doubt that the government’s real target is the revitalized labor movement as a whole?
So what’s the solution? We have to revive the great social movements of the past, update them for the 90’s and beyond, and prepare for one hell of a fight. We have to strengthen the union movement. We have to build and rebuild grassroots organizations capable of taking on real struggles. We need to educate ourselves and others as to the real nature of the System we are fighting. We need organization, leadership, patience, and determination.
We in A Job is a Right Campaign are determined to make 1998 a year of renewed commitment to the struggle for justice. We invite you to join us. Together, we can win!