Our Values, Our Policies

• We need federal Medicare for All. Until we win that, we need better care at a lower cost.

• The stopgap is a public option for BadgerCare, where Wisconsinites can ditch for-profit insurance for better, more affordable care that eventually puts private health insurance out of business.

• We also need to expand BadgerCare to cover more people & end income caps for disability that make us choose between working & having medical care.

• Dramatically reduce for-profit healthcare costs by aligning private insurance costs with Medicare rates. Invest in rural and small hospitals & clinics to ensure access to care.

• Investigate coverage & claim denials by for-profit insurance companies to hold them accountable for the benefits they owe. 

• Abortion care, gender-affirming care, & mental health care are essential healthcare.

• Make menstrual products available for BadgerCare purchases.

• Pay parents who care for their disabled kids.

• And reduce administrative sign-up burdens for BadgerCare so people can actually get the benefits they're owed. Inform people better, streamline sign-up, & add staff to help people navigate the steps that remain.

• Make multi-billion dollar hospital systems pay their fair share in taxes, not $0. Any tax breaks they can access should go to community benefits & subsidized care.

Fully fund PreK-12 and higher education! That can drastically reduce burdensome local property taxes & exorbitant tuiton rates.

PreK-12 Education

• A high-quality education for kids from all backgrounds.

• Free school meals for all kids. No kid show be hungry at school, and no kid should be shamed when parents can't afford food. 

• Increase state funds for public special education to 90%, up from levels in the 40s. That will reduce expenses on local governments, espeically in places with higher special needs populations.

• Pay teachers what they deserve. Teaching is one of the most important public service professions. Teachers share parents' deep commitment to the education & whole-life wellbeing of the kids they teach. The state should set minimum starting teacher salaries at the local median wage, and empowered teachers unions may bargain for better.

• Add teachers to school boards. Teachers know best. Teachers should be empowered to help lead local school districts.

• End voucher programs that send public dollars to inadequate & discriminatory private schools.

• Sen. Hesselbein led a funding deal with Republicans that left schools woefully underfunded.

Higher Education

• Young people from all backgrounds deserve equal access to higher education for life enrichment, for civic development, & for better job prospects. That starts in PreK-12 education but Wisconsin's higher ed institutions must do more to admit a broader range of students & then support them well once they're there.

• Fund higher ed! State funding at UW-Madison covered 43% of the operating costs in 1974. Today, it's just 13% for UW-Madison, 18% for the whole UW System, & 38% for community colleges. Every dollar invested in higher education returns multiple times that in downstream revenues. The state should pay 40% of operating costs for all Wisconsin state universities & 60% for state community colleges & technical colleges. 

• Naturally, tuition was much lower when the state actually paid for public education. In-state students paid between $4k & $6k per year in todays dollars (adjusted for inflation). After we restore college funding at 43%, we should cap in-state tuition at $5k per year. And we should explore ways to make tuition completely free for everyone. 

• Make shared governance real. Faculty, staff, & students have more knowledge & deeper commitments to Wisconsin's higher ed institutions than careerist administrators climbing the corporate higher ed ladder. They should have more say in how our higher ed institutions run. For starters, require top higher ed executive roles be approved by faculty, staff, & student governing bodies.

• Elect the Board of Regents for the UW System.

Universal childcare: high-quality childcare with either no out-of-pocket costs, subsidies, or strictly capped prices.

Our immigrant neighbors are an integral part of our communities, no matter their documentation status. 

• The state must ban 287g agreements that practically turn local police into ICE deportation agents. Instead, state & local police shouldb alert the community if they spot ICE vehicles invading our neighborhoods, and they must intervene to stop violent ICE agents from using excessive force.

• The state must document ICE crimes against our communities so that ICE agents and their superiors may be held accountable to the full extent of the law.

• All immigrants deserve access to drivers licenses & state IDs for the freedom to drive without fear. Bigots stole their access. Their access should be restored.   

• All immigrants deserve access to the same programs and services as other community members. They have access to schools and hospitals now. That should be extended to all government services and programs. For starters, we need in-state tuition for DACA kids at Wisconsin's public universities & colleges.

• When my ancestors came to Wisconsin, they had voting rights before they had citizenship. Bigoted leaders stole their vote in 1908. Immigrants deserve voting rights in state & local elections regardless of citizenship, & they should be eligible for election to office & campaign contributions too (until we ban them).

Labor: The just world we want is not possible without robust worker power, which improves the well-being of union workers and non-union workers alike.

• Repeal Act 10 & "right to work." And end the separate ban on higher ed faculty & staff.

• Restore prevailing wage. Ban captive audience meetings & non-competes. Make union dues tax deductible.

• Push the NLRB to adopt card check unionization.

• Medicare for All at the federal level would free unions from having to fight for basic healthcare rights in their contracts.

• Boosting workers must include gig workers, fast food workers, temp labor, & agricultural labor, defending their legal rights & helping them organize for their rights, their pay, their benefits, & their working condidtions.

Living Wages:

• Raise state minimum wage to $20/hour, and adjust it by cost of living going forward.

• Take steps toward enacting universal basic income to ensure everyone has a floor to care for their basic needs, provided to everyone to remove the stigma and the political precarity of need-based programs.

Fighting Monopolies: It's not a game. Progressives came to power 125 years ago to bust up corporate monopolies that raise prices on regular folks by cornering markets.

• The state Attorney General must do more to keep markets fair & competitive through tough regulation of monopolies & monopolistic practices.

• Stand up to private equity, which values profits for the rich over the wellbeing of workers & customers.

Corporate taxes: Wisconsin progressives invented the corporate income tax to ease property tax rates!

• Increase corporate taxes. Increase the rate from 7.9% now to Minnesota's 9.8% rate.

• Make multi-billion dollar hospital systems pay their fair share in taxes, not $0. Any tax breaks they can access should go to community benefits & subsidized care.

• Any tax breaks for big manufactures & agriculture must be contingent on proving those benefits go directly into workers' wages.

The Rich:

• Decrease local property taxes 40% by providing full state funding for PreK-12 schools.

• Increase income tax rates for the highest incomes. Increase the top income bracket rate from 7.7% to 11.4%, where it was decades ago, with similar adjustments for other upper income brackets.

• Close the estate tax loophole on $5M to $15M estates, which pay no tax now.

Working People:

• Lower state sales tax from 5% to 4%. Sales taxes are regressive -- they hit low-income people most. State tax revenues should come most from the people who can afford to pay most. The move to 4% sales tax is a first step toward phasing out sales taxes entirely, at 0%.

• We need public funding for elections.

• At the federal level, we need to overturn Citizens United.

• In the meantime, we should use regulations to prevent corporations from spending on campaigns & candidates, following models in Montana & Hawaii.

• We need a moratorium on all data center construction.

• At minimum, no data centers should be built without community approval in a referendum.

• Sen. Hesselbein wants to build data centers & then regulate them.

• Reduce homeownership costs by reducing property taxes with full state funding for education.

• Create a state bank to help finance affordable home construction for regular folks, not the rich.

• Encourage local zoning for multifamily housing & smaller lots to increase affordability, improve integration, & reduce sprawl.

• Crack down on bad landlords who fleece renters with impunity.

• Give the unhoused housing. The solution to the biggest problem facing the unhoused is to give them housing. Simple and effective. 

• Fully legalize abortion care & defend contraception access.

• Abortion care should be accessible to everyone. The state should provide funds to make abortion care available in La Crosse, Wausau, Eau Claire, Green Bay, & Ashland to serve more of the state. Wisconsinites are currently be limited to Madison, Milwaukee, Sheboygan, & Minneapolis. 

• Gender-affirming care is a right for our transgender neighbors.

• Marriage equality is a right that must be defended.

• Legalize recreational marijuana, not just medicinal. It's common sense policy, and it'll do wonders to reduce the incarceration crisis imposed on our communities by the War on Drugs. Sen. Hesselbeing only supported medical marijuana until six months ago. 

• Decriminalize sex work. Establish regulatory standards that protect the health and safety of sex workers. Nevada already does this.

• Wisconsin should enact anti-discriminatiuon protections for our transgender neighbors, joining similar laws banning discrimination by sexual orientation, sex, race, nationality, and other categories.

• We are settlers on Native lands, & our wealth today is built from that historic theft. Today, we owe Native Wisconsinites greater care, even though we cannot fully repair those harms. Wisconsin must honor all treaty obligations with Native communities.

• Expand the Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise Program, which helps enrolled members of Native nations attend UW schools with tuition grants and scholarships. 

• Native Wisconsinites should have a permanent seat on the WI Department of Natural Resources..

• Wisconsin must do more to address the crisis of violence against indigenous women and their relatives by providing more investigative resources & support services.

• Add more polling locations in counties with larger Native populations to increase access to the polls, which are often a long drive away. Add no-excuse mail-in voting to help participation too.

• Wisconsin should identify where we can return more state land to Native Wisconsinites, following models in other states.

• Require all full-time jobs to provide workers at least 2 weeks of paid vacation, along with paid sick leave & paid personal days.

• Make state park access free to reduce access barriers for lower income people.

• Increase state grants for local park development & upkeep.

We need more state funding for rural transit, rural transit agencies, and inter-city bus routes to help Wisconsinites get around the state.

The state should provide greater support for transit within cities too, including moves to prioritize buses, trains, bikes, and pedestrians over cars in future development.

And bus costs should be paid by state & local governments using tax dollars from people who can afford it, not often low-income people who lose too much of their money just trying to get around to work, childcare, and recreation.

Public transit, biking, and walking should be at the center of city planning to support denser & more affordable housing, in place of car-centered city sprawl.

Protest is the lifeblood of movement efforts to make America a democracy, from abolition to woman suffrage, from Selma to Stonewall, from the Capitol Crawl to Occupy Wall Street, from Black Lives Matter to ICE OUT.

Sen. Hesselbein helped Republicans pass laws that treat civilly disobedient protests against Israel's atrociticies & American complicity into hate crimes, with harsher punishments. Sen. Hesselbein chose to make Israel a protected class by wrongfully conflating the state and Jewish people. Other antisemitism definitions do not make that mistake. She knows this (because I emailed her about it) but chose the definition that protects Israel, not Jewish Wisconsinites. Sen. Hesselbein's attack on free speech and good conscience must be repealed.

The prior law already punished crimes targeting people by race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. If we must add elaborate guidance for individual groups (I don't think we need to), we should do so for every group, because the expression of bigotry and discrimination is unique to each one. 

Similarly, we must repeal another Republican law preventing Wisconsin state contracts from being awarded to businesses that are boycotting Israel. Boycotts are a key mechanism for forcing authoritarian regimes to turn toward democracy. It was an important tool for democratizing South Africa, and it is an important tool for democratizing Israel.

Our communities want safety for ourselves & our families. We deserve protection from violence & theft in an era of declining crime. We also need protection from violence by police & ICE.

We know investments in community programs & services are the most effective ways to reduce crime. These investments include afterschool programs, neighborhood organizations, reentry programs for people who have finished their sentences, and public recreation to help keep people out of jail, along with "focused deterrence" measures that provide help for our neighbors who are most likely to be involved in crime.

People shouldn't have guns. Fewer guns mean dramatically less homicide & suicide.

Public safety includes investing in efforts to reduce sexual assault, which is most commonly committed by acquaintances, not strangers. That includes dismantling rape culture. We also need to fully fund resources that support survivors.

Armed police should be a last resort, not a first resort, virtually never visible in public. Most of the tasks police do now can be offloaded to public safety agents who don't carry guns. Police defund programs to help people -- and add far more because of compensation for rampant police misconduct. Madison's 2026 budget gave $103M to police -- 23% of the total city budget. What do we get for that cost? Nationally, police "solve" less than half of violent crimes and only about 1 in 7 property crimes. And those stats are padded by the arrests of innocent people.

Limit how much shared revenue local governments can use on policing.

End qualified immunity for police. That will be a big step toward bringing accountability, which will reduce reckless police use of force. 

Revenue-sharing for local governments: 

• End unfair distributions that advantage Republican places so that all communities get the resources they deserve to support their hometowns. 

• Lift restrictions on local government levies for essential services & indext them to local costs.

• Give local governments access to financing options besides property taxes.

• Improve collaboration between state & local governments through better communication & input mechanisms.

• Limit how much shared revenue can go to police budgets.

Increase voting access: 

• Make Election Day a state holiday to free more people from work to participate

• No-excuse mail-in voting

• Consolidate spring elections to increase turnout & representation for local votes

Representative elections at every level: fair maps at state & federal levels

• Wisconsinites should be able to introduce ballot initiatives where we vote on laws and constitutional amendments, not just what the state legislature lets us vote on. Make both binding.

• Presidents elected by the people: WI must sign the Electoral College Compact between states pledging to allocate votes based on whomever wins the national popular vote. It goes into effect when states comprising a majority of votes sign on. 

• Elect the UW Board of Regents. They shouldn't be appointed for being the governor's buddies. Confirmation hearings until then.

• Adopt proportional representation in legislative elections to encourage more than two parties, so that our values & priorities are better represented in elections. Short of that, we should legalize fusion voting, which WI previously had, where more than one party can nominate the same candidate, so that votes for a candidate on the Progressive Party line would be tallied separately from Democrats, showing the voting power of that power and increasing their bargaining leverage.

• At the federal level, we need to rebalance the Supreme Court & strip governing power from the grossly undemocratic Senate. 

Expand voting rights to non-citizen residents & people serving felony sentences:  "The people" means all of us. It can mean nothing less. Wisconsin used to have non-citizen voting, and other states allow people to vote while incarcerated, especially because Wisconsin's carceral system targets & punishes our Black & brown neighbors more than white Wisconsinites who engage in the same behaviors.