Observations as We Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today, as we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I wanted to post some thoughts about civil rights as I see it in Wisconsin and in our legislature.

We still are fighting for civil rights for all people in the year 2006. While great strides have been made over our history, much more needs to happen to make this a discrimination-free society.

Wisconsin has one of the largest populations of African Americans incarcerated per capita in the nation. We continue to hear of racial profiling occurring, denying even the most basic of freedoms to many law-abiding citizens. Poverty, while affecting everyone, disproportionately affects people of color making the American Dream less available to all. Our cities are too segregated. And full equality is still far off for many Wisconsin residents.

The Latino community still fights for equality. This session we have seen legislation advanced that would make it harder for undocumented citizens to get driver’s licenses at the same time making anyone with a Latino surname suspect as an illegal alien. Good students can’t get financial aid to Wisconsin’s university system despite having lived here their entire lives, yet the GOP includes them when they’re needed to advance privatized voucher school experiments.

Another group of people still discriminated against are our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender friends and neighbors. Some legislators, most noticeably the GOP ones, want to put discrimination in our state constitution by making gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships illegal. In case you didn’t know, they are not legal in Wisconsin under current law anyway. Tired of hate being a regular part of the legislative discourse? Check out Action Wisconsin’s website. They can give you ways to fight the legislation to ban civil unions, domestic partnerships and marriage.

Please use today to renew your commitment to civil rights and justice for all. We have a long way still to go, but with each of us doing our part we will be victorious.