While Milwaukee is hosting about 50,000 Republicans and former President Donald Trump for the Republican National Convention this week, the solidly Democratic city once was known for a different shade of political red: socialism.
Across the street from the Fiserv Forum hosting the RNC is Turner Hall, home of the Milwaukee Turners, a German-American athletic group affiliated with socialist values, movements and politicians since 1853. It’s now a civil rights and social justice-oriented advocacy organization.
Milwaukee elected socialist politicians including Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, a Wisconsin senator and 1924 presidential candidate who was backed by the Socialist Party, and three socialist mayors between 1910 and 1960. The county, state and national socialist headquarters all were based in the city at one time. And the Democratic Socialists of America have a lively chapter there, started in 2016.
The party appealed to voters largely through “Sewer Socialism,” an early 20th-century movement that focused on cleaning up the city by fixing sanitary infrastructure as well as offering public benefits, Milwaukee native and historian John Gurda said.
Sewer Socialism emphasized practicality, government transparency and public enterprise over ideals and philosophies, Gurda said.
“Sewer Socialists were practical folks, who were more into infrastructure than revolution,” said Marquette University associate professor of history Alison Clark Efford, although she said the movement contributed to Milwaukee becoming a highly segregated city.
In 1910, Emil Seidel was elected Milwaukee’s first socialist mayor, with socialists also winning seats on the city council and county board, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Two more socialist mayors followed: Daniel Hoan, elected in 1916, and Frank Zeidler, who was first elected in 1948 and served three terms.
Some of today’s biggest names in the Democratic Party are self-described socialists: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Pamela Westphal, co-chair of the Milwaukee chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, said that inflation and lagging wages are creating an atmosphere similar to that which caused people to embrace socialism in decades past.
“The working class are becoming restless and want to see our lawmakers make changes like raising the minimum wage and canceling student debt at the federal level,” Westphal said. “A lot of folks are turning to socialism due to the reactionary politics of the Republican Party and the inaction from the Democratic Party.”
Trump and the Republican Party are hoping to tap into that unrest.
Teamsters labor union general president Sean O’Brien gave a rousing speech at the RNC on Monday, while the Democratic National Committee has not yet responded to the labor leader’s request to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
Milwaukee Area Labor Council President Pam Fendt said many workers took a shine to Trump in 2016, particularly after he met with the national leaders of the AFL-CIO to discuss his policies. But Trump failed to deliver on his promises to empower workers, Fendt said, citing his tax cut that mostly benefited the rich while limiting government revenue and letting infrastructure funding lag.
“We don’t judge people by an R or a D beside their name, but whether they have concrete plans to empower workers,” Fendt said. “In our recent history, there have been fewer and fewer Republicans who’ve exhibited that.”
At the heart of the fight over the labor vote, Gurda said, are the socialist ideals that defined Milwaukee a century ago: “a sense of mutualism, a sense that we’re all in this together — it’s all of us, and government works for all of us.”
“In this age of polarization, shrinking budgets, and antagonistic state legislature, that’s certainly in danger,” he said.
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