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Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we travel throughout the state to bring
you stories about the people, places, and issues that
make up life in Wisconsin.
This week meet some unlikely farmers and see what they've
embraced the rural life.
Visit the rare nesting sites of an
uncommon bird and find out why political candidates are vying
for the votes of our state's fastest growing population.
Stay with us for all this and more in Wisconsin.
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saving ideas on the web.
We begin this week in Madison where producer Liz
Kurner introduces us to two passionate champions of
democracy and civil rights.
Patty, Sia, Gonzales, and Roberto Rodriguez co-author
a nationally published column and attempt to remind
their readers that even in a time of war civil
liberties must be guarded.
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To any of me live in the studio, I'm very pleased to have
my good friends and regular contributors to the A.
P. Robert Rodriguez and Patrysia Gonzales.
Patrysia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez share their
opinions as guests on WORT, a public radio
station in Madison.
There is no such thing as a native community.
There isn't one native community and nobody
speaks for all native people.
They said let the woman in the red speak.
A couple also share their opinions in writing.
They're promoting their most recent work at Rainbow
bookstore.
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The couple also co-author the weekly column of the Americas.
It's published in 30 newspapers across the country.
The column gives voice to the growing Latino population
in the United States.
From a national perspective, there are not a lot of Latino
voices writing national columns.
And they were among the earliest to get out there
and be a Latino voice in editorial pages
across the country.
Column of the Americas covers issues and ideas north and
south of the Mexican border.
I've got this piece on coming from a worker family.
Topics of interest not only to Latinos but to all readers
who care about civil rights, democracy, and the
need for social change.
I show the potential for change.
And I often say that I'm like one of those long time ago
that sent an Indian runner into the villages to spread a message
or to announce something.
And so often that's my role.
Rodriguez grew up in Los Angeles, Gonzales, in Texas.
They both have Indian ancestors.
The values that we have and that we've been taught absolutely
are indigenous values, ideas, beliefs.
But they aren't for like our little
reservation or our little value or our own minds.
You know, that's for all of humanity.
The claim I have to make is we are human.
And we are living in the midst of a very dehumanized world.
I mean, where war is now peace.
One of the columns that I'm writing, I'm saying,
you know, we don't need a truth commission.
We need a commission to study whether we are all
using the same dictionary.
You know, it's like somebody says, you know, they is
a wager war, but they say we're doing it for peace.
The couple have written a number of columns in
support of peace, starting before the war in Iraq.
It's been incredibly difficult because we were
one of the few voices daring to write those words,
daring to say things that I think people felt, they
were telling us that it was our responsibility at this
particular historical moment to do something that other
people didn't have the opportunity to do, which was
to give a voice and a clear message about what it means
to have a sense of morality and to have a sense that
the greatest democratic act that we can do is to
question and to challenge.
They cite the tragedy of 9/11 as a turning point in our
country's attitude, not only about war overseas, but also a
different type of war at home.
As a result of 9/11, people really, really got scared.
You know, a hysteria was whipped where people almost
begged the government to say, "Please, you know, snoop,
please take our rights away."
And I was like, "Where are they getting those ideas, you know?
If we're here defending our rights and our freedoms, then
why would you take them away?"
Rodriguez has strong opinions about freedom and civil
rights. His opinions are based on personal experience.
I was almost killed by police in 1979.
It was pretty vicious, pretty brutal.
Rodriguez was beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff's, while
working as a photojournalist.
The sheriffs were beating a man on the street, and
when Rodriguez began to take pictures, the police
turned their batons on him.
The beating left Rodriguez with a cracked skull and
permanent brain damage.
He sued the department for police brutality
and false arrest.
It took seven years, but in the end, he won his lawsuit.
We know the consequence of silence.
You know, we know the consequence of brutality.
And it's like, if others perhaps don't know it, and it was like,
"Well, we know it, and we know, you can't give up your rights.
You can't not step forward."
Gonzalez has also had a painful event in her past.
I'm a rape survivor, and I've written about being a rape
survivor, and I remember when I wrote one of those columns,
I've written several times about violence against women.
From a personal perspective, men and women, like probably
100 letters that I got from people who were survivors
of rape, incest, molestation.
It gives people permission to testify.
If you're living in Puerto Rico, you might use a coconut.
Gonzalez used traditional medicine to help heal
her emotional wounds.
She shares her knowledge of healing, which has been
passed from generation to generation in her family.
I tried it, we traditional medicine, into a
political context, and a social political context.
So, after 9-1-1, I wrote about a "T" for the world,
because when you're nervous, it affects your stomach.
One of the things that I said is that you have to have a
good purge, or a good purge.
In other words, that no world leader should be making
decisions and who's constipated.
So, I gave a "T" for constipation.
Some columns handle hot-button topics with humor.
Others hit them head on.
The issue of immigration is one of the hottest.
We have received threats for our work.
Which we would consider veiled death threats, or
it wasn't like anyone actually came to our home.
But for instance, we have received mail from
the KKK to our house.
I remember when we were living in an empty house, it was
like that was his content.
Not even that our ideas were wrong, but rather
how dare you even speak.
It's like who has given you the right to speak in our country?
The couple have taken issue with the concept of our country.
One reason for this is a series of early maps
that show present-day Utah as the ancient
homeland of the Aztecs.
The Aztecs folks almost certainly did come from
the Southwesters, but in some period of time there.
And so, go back where you came from.
It's only an argument that makes sense in the
context of the 20th century.
In the spring of 2004, the University of
California, Los Angeles, put the collection of maps on
exhibit, and exhibit organized by Rodriguez and Gonz?lez.
The exhibit is one more outlet for Roberto Rodriguez
and Patricia Gonz?lez to give voice to their opinions.
A voice firmly grounded in their beliefs.
I really look at our work as a very spiritual.
It's political, but it's deeply spiritual.
And we're really guided by elders, by prayers, by
what we hold in our hearts.
We really, I think, have lived by this sense of duty to
our community, but also just really following what we felt
deep within our being about what we believe to be right.
Latinos are the country's fastest growing population
here in Wisconsin.
Between 1990 and 2000, the number of Latinos
more than doubled.
In political battlegrounds, states like Wisconsin,
presidential and other candidates are taking care to
court this growing constituency.
Reporter Federica Freiberg explores the potential
effect of the Hispanic vote on this year's elections.
The fast-growing Hispanic population in Wisconsin is
growing fastest in the Green Bay area, up some 500% in the last
decade to number nearly 10,000.
It's no accident presidential candidates have put Green
Bay on their campaign maps.
The Latino vote could spell the outcome in
this battleground state.
I think even the Hispanic community is not aware of how
important they're right now.
They could be at 2% that helped you know, George
Bush win the last election.
At Kerry headquarters in Green Bay, the push is on to capture
the Latino vote, and the Bush campaign is pushing too.
The Republican Party sees getting inroads into
the Latino vote as a part of their big future.
Growing up, I was told that if you're a minority,
you vote Democratic.
But Rosamount now works for the Bush campaign in Brown County.
She believes the president can best help Latinos
attain the American dream through education and the
No Child Left Behind Act.
A recent poll shows registered Latino voters do rate
education as the most important issue in the presidential
race, with the economy and health care a tie for second.
The same poll shows Latinos are divided on abortion, debunking
the notion they are consistently social conservatives.
I want Latinos to have a voice.
But to have a voice, they have to vote.
That's where Get Out the Vote drives come in.
I always ask if they're a citizen, because
they're resident, they know it's sufficient.
Taku Ronsman goes door to door in this mostly Hispanic
neighborhood in Green Bay for a non-partisan group.
The Citizen Action Fund has targeted 105 low voter turnout
awards across Wisconsin.
Low income high minority awards.
The goal is to register 25,000 new voters.
I'm registering people in the neighborhood to vote.
Mary McMillan signs on and says she's grateful.
With all the things that have gone have been going on, it just
seems that I think everybody should get out there and vote.
This isn't a time where people should sit back and let
everybody else decide for me.
No. Is your dad a citizen
of the United States?
Because then I can register him, it is a citizen.
Not yet.
Ronsman hits a lot of doors in this neighborhood.
Are you in a persona que es Ciudadana?
Una persona que que es Ciudadana?
Es que cuando est? a mas que atrochala.
But very, very few residents in this targeted ward are U.S.
citizens and therefore they cannot be registered to vote.
Still, they are not ignored, they can learn
about the process.
And increasingly, their American-born children
will come up voting age.
And so it's a demographic politicians have
set their sights on.
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We move now from the world of people and politics
to the wilds of Wisconsin.
Wilds that used to provide plenty of nesting areas
for the common turn.
Now that bird is anything but common in Wisconsin.
Producer Joanne Garrett discovered the bird has only
two nesting sites in all of the Lake Superior region.
And they're both found along our state's northern shoreline.
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What I like about the bird, the color, the gracefulness,
the agility, the tenacity.
When they have eggs and they have young, they are extremely
tenacious and protective when we're out there monitoring them.
26 is two.
We wear hard hats because they pick you on the head and if
you don't have a hard hat they pick you hard enough to bleed.
Number 22 is three.
The bird is the common turn.
Number 10 has one egg.
The focus of wildlife manager Fred Strand and avian
ecologist Sumner Madison, both of the Wisconsin DNR.
In Wisconsin we classify them as an endangered species
and in the Lake Superior Basel, the entire basin
including all of Canada.
There are only two nesting colonies of common turns.
In the largest lake in the world, common turns
are anything but common.
They like coastal areas, beaches or peninsula and we humans
also like that for industry, for recreation and for housing.
We've pushed them out of their natural home but in an
interesting turn of events, we've also provided the
two nesting sites that they now have unlike Superior.
This is called Interstate Island up here.
In the middle of the harbor of the city of Superior,
surrounded by enormous freighters, gigantic grain
elevators and looming or dogs, is Interstate Island.
This is the largest common turn colony along the Wisconsin
shore of Lake Superior.
An island by default, it's a dredge spoil created when they
carved out unnavacable channel.
There are common turns here, about 200 nesting pairs.
You can't see them because they are
obscured by about 10,000 nesting pairs of ring-billed gals.
Common turns rule the roofs however, they are the
only bird at the second site in Schwammig & Bay.
The nesting site here in Ashland is at the end of an old ordock.
The turns were fond of the old ordock, but it was rotting away.
So wildlife officials built them a new nesting
site in the old place.
We've got a grant from EPA to rebuild this island and this
is what you see here as a new, the old piling from the former
site and then the new island itself right up ahead here.
A new island, a nesting site safe from people and predators.
As of this year's count, there are about 600 common
turns, unlike Superior.
This is it.
Literally we have all our eggs and two baskets.
This basket of Ascenturne Island and the other basket
is an interstate island.
All our eggs.
The common turn, so uncommon in Wisconsin, survives
in only two sites total in all of Lake Superior.
Two sites, man made, provide the toe hole for the common turn.
This uncommonly glorious bird.
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For 25 years, reporter Art Hackett has been fascinated
by a big white barn along U.S.
Highway 151 between Madison and Fondelock.
Its style appears to date back 50 years, but its size
would make it unusually large for a time when the
average Wisconsin dairy herd had fewer than 20 cows.
Recently, Art paid a visit to the big white barn
and learned its story.
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The barn is a beauty, as barns go.
It always sports a fresh coat of white paint.
The signs and the farm buildings
are so neatly lettered you'd think this was a setup to
draw tourists and give them a taste of life on the farm.
The barn once held a whole herd of whole steens.
Today it's empty except for some calves.
The cows, 350 of them, are now housed in a
modern freestyle barn.
The term "freestyle barn" doesn't quite fit in this case.
This is a prison farm.
Wisconsin has had prison farms nearly
as long as it's had prisons.
Even women prisoners once worked in the fields next to
the walls in downtown Wapon.
The current farm at Wapon's eastern edge dates to 1885.
The philosophy when the prison system started in Wisconsin
as elsewhere was basically is part of your sentence for an
offense and inmates should work.
It was a very important part of the correctional system.
I think anger culture in our prison system was so big
because of the Wisconsin was an agricultural state.
It was a very state and many of the people in the left prison
went back to work on the farms.
An inmate driving a tractor in the field operates on
his own.
There are no guards on horseback with shotguns.
Well, they're all here for various different things.
They're all nearing the end of their sentence and they've
been classified minimum security and they've all
pretty much volunteered to come and work on the farm.
On this prison farm, there are no bloodhounds waiting to chase
someone making a break for it.
The farm's dog, judging by his reactions or lack
thereof, appears to be partly blind and mostly deaf.
I had planned it according to past, baby.
15, 20 years ago, but all this is pretty much
state of the art equipment now.
Charles Benoit is from Brown County.
He's been in the correction
system for seven years.
Mechanical background, I've done some farming.
Out in the real world, not a
whole lot.
I've had bad cows and did some field work.
I had some skills to offer the farm as far as mechanical
skills and so it's fairly easy to get out here.
Benoit is one of the few inmates working on the farm who
actually has a farm background.
By and large, very few do.
Very few do.
About one or two every now and then it'll
come through to have a farm background, but most of them
come from different backgrounds.
I never done it.
I'm from the big city.
I ain't never farm.
Most of the inmates are like Kirby Dameron from Chicago.
He's been in the system since 2001.
Watch, because she likes to kick towards the end.
He sought out work at the farm
after holding a number of other jobs in the prisons.
Magnus, janitor, cook, but at all of them, I like
this one better.
Challenge. I can see me getting out in
the farm.
It's too much work.
Dameron is working in a milking parlor that was
the envy of area farmers when it was built in 1992.
The time back in 1992, this was probably one of the first
ones to go up in this area.
It was one of the bigger ones in this area, but now by today's
standards, we're one of the smaller ones in this area now.
The Wapuan farm was expanded to accommodate the herd from
another corrections farm in Ashkash, which was being closed.
One time Wisconsin had 11 farms and today we have three farms.
The two other farms in Onida and Oregon produce beef cattle.
Wapuan is the only dairy.
The operation also includes a small plant-ranemates
package the milk into cartons for use in prisons and
other state institutions.
They also make ice cream.
The legislative fiscal bureau reports the corrections farms
earn a modest profit, but the operation labors to pay off
a debt of nearly $4 million.
Crimesor says that's the result of an effort to close all
the prison farms and most of the prisons during Governor
Patrick Lucy's administration.
Unfortunately, what they did is they closed the profitable
farms and left the farms that were losing money and
eventually that debt grew.
Very few prisoners in maximum or medium had the
opportunity to work.
There were very few positions, very
few slots for them.
Most of the inmates spent most of
their time sitting around.
In the early 70s, Severa Austin was the chief of staff for the
Wisconsin Council on Criminal Justice.
That group authored a report arguing the farms
were of little value to the prisoners or to the state.
What we could not find was the capacity to transfer
the training that they got to a skill that they could
use to get them employment.
Employment had to be the goal.
These people were coming out of prison at some point.
Everybody gets out for the most part and
they got out and hit the streets again without much in the way
of being able to get a job.
The philosophy then, first of all, was there was a
lot of anti-prison attitude that we shouldn't be
sending people to prison.
And certainly we should not be sending young blacks from
the inner city out to farms.
They didn't see the value in the farms.
And they were mistaken in my opinion.
There was great value in these farms.
Cronser says the value will increase as Wisconsin farms
grow in size and run short of labor.
He thinks they'll be more likely to hire an inmate
with milking parlor experience.
The question is, will someone who grew up in
Milwaukee like Floyd Taylor want to work on the farm?
I don't mind trying it.
Since I know how to do it, plus I got two more years,
I have some experience.
Some of the inmates like Donald B.C.
came from a farm background and are happy to be back.
When I got to Fox Lake minimum, I put in for a job on interview
with Kleston Knife.
I mentioned that I had some prior milking
experience in my outgulation.
That only big farm.
I'll go down to Rockford a couple days
later I end up working on it.
I started out as a milker and then came to the calf farm.
First it's pretty exciting.
Even now, I've been through enough
of them.
Still kind of an amazing, you know, since we've
born. And kind of like puppies.
I believe it's desirable for many people.
You know, you've got working out in a fresh air,
working with animals, being productive.
You can see the results of your work every day.
And I think it becomes very satisfying for a lot of inmates
who have never stepped foot on a farm.
And they end up enjoying their work and being
real good work and stuff.
Charles Benoit was only months away from being released when
we visited him upon.
He hoped to either do field work or
agricultural maintenance work once he was on the outside.
Others like Donald B.C.
can only dream.
"I'm a lifer under your law."
Which means he has at least a chance for parole.
In the meantime, he hopes he can
finish his sentence on the farm.
A footnote to art story.
As of the end of August, one
of the farm workers shown in the segment, Charles Benoit
was released on parole.
Mr. Benoit chose to pursue a job in mechanics rather
than farming.
On another note, last week, we brought
you the story about the Intercultural Leadership
Initiative in Managua.
A correction to that piece.
There were actually 100 high school students involved in the
program last semester.
Also, the social worker helping lead
the program is Kim Wasserberger.
We regret the error.
That's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
Good night.
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