(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about the people,
places and issues in our state.
This week, here from Wisconsin members
of the National Guard who are on their way to Iraq.
Meet a couple who work tirelessly
to bring an awareness of basic civil rights
to people nationwide.
- Sarah, what are you?
- And an update on what's being done
to keep a watery menace, the giant Asian carp,
from reaching Wisconsin waterways and the great lakes.
- See you at the top, Trent.
Stay with us for all this and more in Wisconsin.
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
a lion's energy, offering energy saving
ideas on the web.
- Hundreds of families across Wisconsin
are preparing to spend the holidays
with an empty chair at the table.
Those missing will be soldiers now serving in Iraq
and soldiers soon to deploy.
A week ago, there was a giant deployment ceremony
in Mississippi for hundreds of Wisconsin
National Guard soldiers along with thousands of
troops from five other states.
They make up two battalions of the 128th infantry
who will soon be shipping out.
This is the first deployment of a Wisconsin Guard combat
unit since World War II.
- Frederica Freiberg and our camera crew
were invited to travel with the military
to Camp Shelby, Mississippi for this Wisconsin witness report.
- Yeah, come on, let's see, you're the,
let's see, you're the, these 680 Wisconsin National
Guard combat soldiers will be in Kuwait just
after Thanksgiving inside Iraq around Christmas.
On Veterans Day, the Wisconsin unit
was part of a massive send-off from Camp Shelby in Mississippi.
In all, 4,000 members of the 278th combat team
from six states have trained here since June.
- You are better led, better trained, better equipped
than any American soldier that ever went to war
in the history of this nation.
We will not let you fail.
(audience applauding)
- Training at Camp Shelby included something
called theater immersion.
The military constructed two Mach Iraqi villages
named after real villages from shipping containers.
The villages include buildings covered
in anti-American graffiti, coalition enemy reward
posters, even masks.
Stop! - What's more, the military
hired 300 civilians, many of them native Iraqis
to pose as insurgents or hostile villagers.
(chanting)
- Scenarios like street protests with the hired actors
speaking only in Arabic allowed the National
Guard soldiers to get a realistic feel
for the work ahead.
(chanting)
- When a soldier is confronted with somebody
who is actually yelling at them in Arabic,
a female that's yelling at them in Arabic
who are in Arabic clothing, Arabic garb,
utilizing the total theater immersion concept again.
It provides a dimension that they wouldn't normally get
with you or I playing a foreign national out there.
(chanting)
(gun firing)
- Camp Shelby is regarded as setting the standard
for theater immersion training.
Training the first regular troops into Iraq didn't have.
- We're gonna be involved in base defense.
We're gonna be involved in combat patrols.
Securing cities and villages for the Iraqi people.
- As Wisconsin families send their loved ones
onto the front lines, they pray the special training
will bring the soldiers through their combat mission.
- We're very proud of him.
And we pray for his safety turn and pray for a safe mission
and that they accomplish what we need to do over there.
- Wisconsin Army National Guard.
- I am very proud of my son.
He believes in what he's doing.
He started out in Cub Scouts and he's always
believed in his country.
- What does this do like for you?
- It's very bittersweet.
And the tears are inside.
But he believes in what he's doing.
- We're the wealth of faded jeans.
- There are as many stories as there are soldiers
at Camp Shelby, but one in particular stands out.
UW River Falls student, John Bepte's Uamanah,
is a Rwandan refugee.
As he awaits American citizenship,
he heads off to fight under this country's flag
and thanks for being given a home here.
- So I felt like I have some, you know,
if there's anything I can do to repay,
I would join the service and that's how I join.
- Most families could not travel to be at the
send-off ceremonies, but some soldiers had
a message for families back home in Wisconsin.
- I want to say I love you.
I love you all.
Peace. - The realities of the mission,
along with saying goodbye, leaves this mother
back home in Wisconsin, remembering her last embrace
with her youngest son.
- I remember he left, I grabbed him and I,
I gave him this big hug and I said,
"Just stay safe, keep your head down,
and your eyes open."
- From Mississippi, specialist Dustin Zabinski wants
his mom to know he's ready.
- Don't worry, I feel, I'm feeling trained.
I'm with a lot of high speed trained people
and my command knows that they're doing it.
? We are high-dreams ?
- Your soldiers look sharp.
? Very men are way ?
- What better day than Veterans Day to come down here
and show our gratitude to the 128th,
who's part of the 278th now out of Tennessee,
and to wish them God speed.
You know, it's a very difficult and dangerous time right now
in Iraq and probably will be for some time,
but just being around them and talking to them,
they're so impressive.
They're so well motivated, well trained.
? We are way, you're way, you're way, you're way, you're
way, you're way, you're way, you're way, you're way, you're
way, you're way, you're way.
?
- National Guard soldiers will soon find out
just how well their special training in Southern Mississippi
serves them on the front lines in Iraq.
- When you call out the National Guard,
you call out America.
God bless America and the 278th Regimental Combat Team.
(applause)
- As of the time we're putting together this program,
27 soldiers from Wisconsin have died in Iraq.
Our hearts go out to their families
and our best wishes and prayers to all who
are currently serving.
If you'd like more information on Wisconsin troops
or would like to see other reports or to contact us,
log on to our website at www.wpt.org/inwisconsin.
? ?
- While Wisconsin soldiers work for freedom and
democracy around the world, others are working for those
same goals within the U.S.
A Madison-based couple, Patricia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez,
are the co-authors of a nationally syndicated
newspaper column.
Through their writings, Gonzales and Rodriguez
attempt to remind readers that even in a time of war,
civil liberties must be guarded.
Liz Kurner brings us this report.
? ?
- To any of me live in the studio, I'm very pleased
to have my good friends and regular contributors
to the 85th House, Roberto Rodriguez and Patricia Gonzales.
- Patricia 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 brain speak.
- The couples share their opinions in writing.
They're promoting their most recent work at
Rainbow Bookstore.
- So I want to start this passage with a little song.
? ?
- A spirit saying these stories is great.
? ?
- The couple also co-authored the weekly
column of the Americas.
It's published in some 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 try to show the potential for change.
And I often say that I'm like one of those long time ago that
I'd send 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, and 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 our little reservation or our
little body or our own minds.
That's for all of humanity.
The claim I have to make is we are human and we are
living in the midst of the very dishumanized 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,
but we need a commission to study whether we are all
using the same dictionary.
You know, it's like somebody says, you know, they are
a wager war, but they say we are doing it for peace.
- The couple has 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.
I think they were tied to that we felt 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.
You know, and it's like, if others perhaps don't know it,
and it was like, "Well, we know it, and we know it."
You know, you can't give up your rights.
You can't not step forward.
- Gonzales 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,
insist, molestation.
It gives people permission to testify.
- If you're living in Puerto Rico, you might use a coconut.
- Gonzales 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've 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 apostle, it's
like that was his contempt.
Like, not even that our ideas were wrong, but rather
how dare you even speak.
You know, it's like who has given you the right
to speak in our country?
- The couple has 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 Aztec folks almost certainly did come from
the southwestern, some period of time there.
And so, go back where you came from is 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,
an exhibit organized by Rodriguez and Gonzales.
The exhibit is one more outlet for Roberto Rodriguez
and Patricia Gonzales to give voice to their opinions.
The 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.
You know, 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.
- Gonzales and Rodriguez hope to bring that series of maps
showing Utah as the original homeland of the Aztecs to
Wisconsin in the near future.
They're working to arrange for the exhibit to be displayed
at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison next spring.
We'll let you know if and when that happens.
[music]
We shift gears now to bring you a report on an
environmental threat, a threat to Wisconsin waterways,
and one that has the potential to breach the Great Lakes.
The Illinois River is teaming with a non-native
species, an invasive species called Asian carp.
Biologists are concerned that Asian carp are making
their way north and could soon reach Lake Michigan.
Why is this a problem?
Well, once you see the fish, you'll understand.
Reporter Andy Soth shows us just where and why battle
lines are being drawn.
How will it play in Peoria?
That old question made the Central Illinois City a
symbol of Middle America, but recently Peoria has become
host to an exotic foreign visitor, the Asian carp.
This large fish, native to China, is thriving
in the Illinois River.
That's where Peoria resident Marcy Poplett
met up with one while jet skiing on a clear fall day.
And I turned my head because the trees were just breathtaking.
And all of a sudden I see the fish jump by side.
And the next thing I know, black, it was just like
hitting a brick wall.
Poplett was knocked unconscious by a silver Asian
carp, one of two species, populating the Illinois River.
That thing wrapped around my head.
And you know, I know it was almost as much this
way, so it was just so big.
I don't even know how I got up that.
The silver carp weighs up to 100 pounds and is
capable of leaping several feet out of the water,
which it does when startled by motor noise.
If you think about Asian carp, you may picture these ornamental
carp from Japan called Koi, like they have here at the
Obra Garden in Madison.
But Asian carp are in fact distantly related, and there's
nothing Koi about them.
While the Asian carp is made water recreation on the
Illinois, a little intimidating, the real danger these
fish pose is ecological.
What we've seen already really is the moving out of a lot of
the nady fish that were here.
The commercial fishermen are not catching the amounts
of buffalo that they were in the past, for example.
These fish are actually are so numerous in reproducing
and such large quantities that are taking
over those habitats.
The fish are prolific breeders when spawning females
can lay a million eggs.
They also have erasous appetites eating the food
supply other fish need.
These are plankton eaters.
They're grazing off the bottom of the food chain.
Almost every fish, virtually every fish in this river,
depends on that at some point in their life cycle.
And the carp grow quickly.
The predators here are not big enough to eat these guys
after about three or four months after they hatch.
The lack of predators and prolific breeding adds up
to a population explosion for the Asian carp.
But this was never supposed to happen.
Asian carp were first imported from China in the 70s by
Arkansas catfish farmers.
The carp helped keep catfish ponds free of algae.
But flooding, like the Great Flood of 93, swept carp into
the Mississippi River system.
They have worked their way steadily up the Mississippi,
Missouri and Illinois rivers.
It may be only a matter of time before the Asian carp
find their way to Wisconsin.
It might happen in five years and it might happen in ten
years and it might never happen.
So there's a lot of unknowns at this point.
And the unfortunate fact is there may not be a whole
lot we can do about it.
An even greater concern is that the Asian carp could
get into the Great Lakes.
In the end we might have the Great Lakes
ultimately be a carp pond.
Dennis Schornack is with the International Joint Commission.
The US Canadian Treaty Organization charged with
protecting the Great Lakes.
The commercial fishery that's worth $5 billion in the Great
Lakes is at serious risk.
And frankly, I want people to get mad as hell and get
to Washington and tug on their congressmen's sleeves
and say we want that bill passed the National Aquatic
Invasive Species Act because that's where the money,
that's where the authority resides to solve this problem.
The Invasive Species Act would provide funding for a permanent
fish barrier to replace an experimental one on the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal.
The Canal was built a hundred years ago to transport
sewage away from Chicago to the Illinois River.
It remains the only water link between the Mississippi River
System and the Great Lakes.
It would be the easiest route for the Asian carp
to get to Lake Michigan.
So battle lines are being drawn here.
In the form of 13 submerged electrified cables, they
admit a non-leafle charge but one that's strong enough
to make this section of the canal impassable for fish.
We have seen basically schools of fish grouping at the
right at the edge of the barrier and not going through.
While Asian carp haven't yet reached the canal, electronic
tracking of the canal's common carp indicates that the
experimental barrier works.
A similar barrier could be built on the Mississippi to
try to keep the Asian carp from entering Wisconsin's rivers.
Big hurdle of course is the cost and we know that such
a system depending on where they locate it and a number
of other variables could cost up to 20 million and
that's just the construction.
But at best, the barriers can only contain the Asian
carp, not reduce their numbers.
Some say if you can't beat them, eat them.
The presence of the Asian carp on the Illinois
River has inspired the entrepreneurial spirit.
This is a piece of deep fried Asian carp.
Could it be the future of Wisconsin's fish fry?
I say in China they fished them out.
Why can't you name a state fish amount?
We're doing a lot of marketing right now and I see in the
future we'll be able to sell this fish.
I believe if we had enough of a guy's fishing for
them fish in 3 to 5 years, we'd have them in their control.
The problem with that is the course.
Once you develop a market, you build a factory to
process the fish, create jobs.
Sooner or later people are willing to want that to be
sustainable and they want to transfer that market elsewhere.
We don't want this fish in the Great Lakes and we don't want to
create a market to sustain it elsewhere so that somebody gets
the idea that's just transfer this to the Great Lakes.
I'd rather eat the diversity of fish that the Great Lakes offer
while I and Lake Trout, Perch, Pectoral, whatever rather than
be stuck with carp all the time.
Whether or not Wisconsin will be stuck with Asian carp in
the future is unknown.
But if breeding populations do get
into the state's rivers or Lake Michigan, we will have
to learn to live with them.
Like Marcy Poplett, despite her accident, she plans to be back
on her jet ski in the spring.
I'm going to have to and my one daughter is a real
squeamish, girly, girly girl and she's kind of afraid of
what's in the water anyway.
She thinks there's like beer, crudas and sharks and you
know we're always telling her that's not the case.
But now there's this giant fish that just killed her mother.
So yeah, I'm going to have to get back on that thing.
I said I'll be the first one on it.
Since we first brought you that report, there's been additional
action on funding a permanent electric barrier across the
Chicago sanitary and ship canal.
As a result of cooperative efforts among the Army Corps
of Engineers, members of the U.S.
House and Senate, including Wisconsin's delegation, and
eight states that border the great lakes, full funding
for a permanent electric barrier has been secured.
Wisconsin is contributing about $68,000 to the 9.1
million dollar price tag.
Now that funding is in place,
the new electric fence could be ready by April 2005.
That's our program for this week.
We leave you on an uplifting note.
Literally. The next time you step outside,
look up.
Wisconsin is home to so many different types of birds.
If you look up at just about any time of the year,
you'll see beauty and flight.
Tonight, no need to go outside.
Just stay here.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next week.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliance Energy, who bring safe, reliable, and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web.
[Music]