Enabling Fascism In our Party
The Democratic Parties of Wisconsin (DPW) and of Milwaukee County (DPMC) recently went to extraordinary and procedurally questionable lengths to prevent membership from hearing and considering resolutions condemning Israel’s genocidal actions. Here at Milwaukee Beagle, we have long argued that no political party can build a tent big enough for war criminals and the families and supporters of their victims. Zionists are fascists and they should be no more welcome in the Democratic Party than segregationists or homophobic bigots.
Of course, the Democratic Party has historically welcomed segregationists and homophobes. There were massive and long fights within our party to push those bigots to the margins and restore fundamental liberal values to Democratic identity. I believe we are in the midst of a similar fight against Zionists today. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent article that compares Uncommitted and Fanny Lou Hamer describes this struggle.
Here in Wisconsin, recent DPW conventions have been a space where Zionists lose. At the 2024 convention, a ceasefire resolution backed by the Uninstructed campaign, which named the genocide, won against leadership’s recommendation by a vote of 135 to 91. At the 2025 convention, a floor resolution supporting Block the Bombs and further naming the genocide passed over objections of the fascist Zionists by a vote of 236 to 30.
In contrast, at the 2026 convention, antifascists lost. We lost narrowly, and not because party membership turned their back on Palestine. We lost first because nervous, conflict-averse party leadership prevented the topic from reaching the membership and second, because we were not well enough organized and prepared. There are lessons to be learned from both these reasons.
System of Suppression
The suppression of progressive ideas and democratic openness in the DPW started decades ago and is hardwired into many party structures. First, resolutions must go through messy and often undemocratic processes at the hollowed out county and congressional district levels weeks and even months before the state convention. Second, resolutions are discussed and approved during a one hour time slot Sunday morning. This is an extremely small amount of time during a two day long affair. It’s also a time when many people who stayed up late Saturday night mingling and partying at hospitality suites are unlikely to be on the convention floor.
In-person attendance at the State and CD Conventions disincludes many people with ability restrictions, health issues, children, or who simply can’t afford to take a travel weekend and stay in a hotel for a night or two. The disability caucus and others are working to address this issue, but have not yet been successful.
These rules make resolutions hard to get in front of membership even if they are popular and likely to pass. When the party is as hollowed out, disorganized, and dysfunctional as it currently is, passing resolutions challenging the status quo become nearly impossible. This year, party officers at the state and county levels chose to further obstruct that already challenging process to prevent critical discussion of the genocide endorsed by Zionist bigots within our party.
Leadership Protecting Genocide Freaks
First, in March, at the county level, Palestine solidarity activist and candidate for congress, Amy Donahue introduced a resolution denouncing genocide denial, which they authored alongside other antifascists. The DPMC executive board initially included the resolution for consideration, but then the night before the meeting, they withdrew the resolution with a flimsy and false pretext about it creating new membership requirements.
If the DPMC board believed in democracy and truly thought the resolution was flawed, they would have allowed it to be introduced, expressed their concerns, and then let membership amend it to address those concerns. Instead, they withheld the resolution from any discussion at all. We spoke with Donahue about this, and they recounted that DPMC Chair Brett Timmerman admitted that he chose to block the resolution after receiving calls from Zionists because he “thinks it does more harm than good” not because he believes the pretext they offered.
The antifascists even sent them a rewording of the resolution, which explicitly addressed the membership requirement pretext. The board also disallowed that version of the resolution without further reasoning.
Later that month, pro-genocide Zionists successfully pressured some Democrats to help pass, and Governor Evers to sign the IHRA bill. This incredibly unpopular law restricts and criminalizes speech criticizing the fascist regime in Israel. Two days later, ICE agents arrested Palestinian activist Salah Sarsour. Here we can see how party leadership deferring to Zionist fascists creates a permission structure for MAGA fascist violence in Wisconsin.
In response, the antifascists drafted two new resolutions. One resolution denouncing IHRA and Sarsour’s arrest. The other, a further modified and updated version of the genocide denial resolution, with new language avoiding the executive board’s “membership requirement” pretext entirely, and referencing recent events like disclosure of Milwaukee Jewish Federation funding ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, attacks on Iran and the Gazafication of Southern Lebanon.
Both of these resolutions spoke to events that occurred after the DPMC process for bringing resolutions though the CD conventions, but Chris Schmidt, chair of the Platform and Resolutions (PRC) committee expressed concern about them meeting the PRC’s timeliness requirement over email. At the committee meeting Saturday afternoon, the resolution authors addressed and resolved his concerns in regards to the IHRA and Sarsour resolution.
They were prepared to do the same for the other resolution, but then the meeting was obstructed and ended. First, PRC member Marcy Hotz called for a quorum count. Hotz is a pro-genocide Zionist who opposed last year’s block the bombs resolution. She was sitting between Dustin Klein and Ann Jacobs, probably the most vocal genocide freaks in Wisconsin’s Democratic Party. The PRC requires 50% of its 24 voting members to be present to hold meetings. Chair Schmidt struggled to accurately count voting members due to them being scattered among non-voting members, and non-member delegates in the room. There were definitely 11 voting members, and one committee member whose status was unclear. She was either an alternate (and would therefore count as the 12th, meeting quorum) or a future member. Before this member could share the email from her CD chair appointing her as an alternate, Marcy Hotz stood up, said she had to leave, and walked out. Hotz’ action made quorum impossible, obstructing the work of the committee.
According to the convention rules (handed out to all attendees, but apparently not available online anywhere) Chair Schmidt could have removed Hotz from the convention for her action. If he had asked others at or around their table if they witnessed Jacobs or Klein encouraging Hotz to depart, he could have found grounds for their removal from the convention as well. Instead, Schmidt, exasperated, just said: “really?!” and watched Hotz walk out.
This committee is clearly dysfunctional. I don’t know how many of its positions are vacant, or why half of them (including all members of CD4, the largest in the party) didn’t show up to convention, but it also lacked a quorum last year. More importantly, there are not consistent rules on what to do if the committee fails to meet. Last year, Schmidt decided that since they didn’t have a quorum, the committee could not make a recommendation, but the resolution would go to the floor. This year, he decided the opposite, that not having quorum meant the resolution would not go to the floor.
The DPW bylaws state that the roles of the PRC regarding floor resolutions are only to reject any that don’t meet a list of criteria, and to make recommendations on the others. Both of these resolutions did meet all the criteria, but more importantly, the language of the bylaws suggests that PRC failing to meet it failed to reject the resolutions. Ben Turk, one of the co-authors of the resolution made this argument on the convention floor, but it was dismissed without explanation by the parliamentarian (who was not initially present, delaying the already too-brief one hour of time for discussion platform and resolutions).
Obstruction by Zionists exploited this dysfunctional committee, disorganized party officers, and conflict averse rules interpreters to make it functionally impossible for anyone to introduce floor resolutions at the convention. This is one of far too many examples of the Democratic Party failing to function democratically. Another is that complaints and failed resolutions are supposed to go to the Administrative Council. The Administrative Council does not reply to emails, and their membership listing on the DPW site is not maintained or updated.
Antifascits were not prepared
When these obstructions to their resolutions arose, the antifascist authors of the resolutions pivoted to introducing an amendment to the platform. Platform amendments can be made from the floor of the convention, without the committee hurdles that resolutions require. Instead, they require a 60% majority, and the platform has a 2500 word limit. Anyway, the copy of the PRC approved platform distributed at the convention was 2485 words long, so there’s room for 15 more words without needing to cut from anywhere else.
The foreign affairs section of the platform starts with:
Ukraine must be free and returned to its pre-2014 borders.
[next page]
We oppose genocide.
This is where Turk proposed adding: “Palestine must be free. US arms sales to Israel must cease.”
As he did last year, Dustin Klein wasted time calling for a quorum count to try and prevent this from going forward. Then, Ann Jacobs argued that the platform language must “communicate a positive expression”. PRC Chair Schmidt ruled that “ending arms sales” is not a positive expression. Turk challenged that ruling, and this is where the real frustration set in.
There are “negative” statements throughout the platform about guns, education, campaign finance, the environment, and many other issues. The line before this proposed amendment is “We oppose genocide.” Strictly enforcing a clearly lax “positive statement” rule when it comes to arming a genocidal regime is grotesque, and itself not aligned with liberal principles. But, antifascists didn’t have enough votes to over-rule Chair Schmidt. Then, thanks to Klein’s time wasting, no one was able to submit an amendment that simply said: “Palestine must be free” without extending time. After audible groans from bored and disengaged attendees, antifascists also lost the vote to extend time.
In 2024 and 2025, Palestinian American, Muslim, and anti-zionist Jewish activists participated in DPW conventions. They encouraged Democratic voters to join the official party and have a say in its platform. That work paid off in delivering the above-mentioned bruising victories over the party’s fascist element. Unfortunately, in the intervening months, fascist organizing within the party, enabled by cowardly party leadership, discouraged many of those activists from attending the convention, let alone organizing around it. Many have given up on the DPW entirely. Others prioritized other actions, specifically traveling to Indiana to protest outside Salah Sarsour’s detention center. The smaller group who did bring this fight to the convention were led by Amy Donahue whose current primary focus is their run for Congress.
I do not blame organizers for turning their attention away from the DPW convention, platform, and resolutions. Palestinian organizers’ frustration and dismissal of the Democratic Party is plenty justified at this point. Those of us who do remain engaged with Democratic Party politics must win these fights as a demonstration that the party is hostile to bigots and genocide freaks, not Palestinians and Muslims. This year, we failed to demonstrate that.
I also do not believe that the majority of DPW members, or even of delegates at the convention side with pro-genocide Zionists. I believe that if everyone who was at the convention center at 9:30 am Sunday had simply come down to the convention floor for those votes, the antifascists could have, at minimum, overruled the chair and gotten that platform amendment passed.
For example, Francesca Hong’s supporters were at the convention in force. They packed her hospitality suite and gave a very strong showing in the delegate straw poll. Hong is the sole governor candidate who names the genocide, participated in the uninstructed campaign, wants to repeal IHRA and anti-BDS laws. Unfortunately, few of her people cared enough about the DPW’s statement of values to attend one of the few hours of actual business at the convention and participate in this fight.
Hong is an outsider candidate, and many of her supporters have a lot of animosity toward Democratic establishment, as do many of our readers. Unfortunately, we do not know our own power. We had the numbers in the building to put freeing Palestine into the platform, to rebuke the zio-fascists, and lay the groundwork to revoke memberships of far right genocide freaks in the future. We could have set DPW on a new course, if more of us had simply looked at the schedule and gone downstairs Sunday morning. Most importantly, if we had organized, prepared, and done the work to score a victory with these resolutions, that victory may have been a first step to earning back some trust from disillusioned Palestinian organizers and their allies.
Given the dismal prospects for third parties under the US’s out-dated electoral structures, the only viable way to participate in our representative democracy is fighting for power within the Democratic Party. Our failure to beat back zio-fascists within DPW validates the perception that the Democratic Party cannot be salvaged, and that electoralism is futile.
When failure, stagnation, undemocratic obstruction, and appeasement of zio-fascism within the Democratic Party validates the disillusionment of potential voters, Republican victory becomes more likely. I don’t think the Zionists mind that. Given Donald Trump’s bold embrace of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and expanded regional war, zio-fascist Democrats would probably prefer more Republican victories over fully welcoming Palestinian Americans and their allies into the Democratic Party.
