Power hungry “socialist” embraces power (literally)
Do words mean anything to Alex Brower or are they just things that come out of his mouth to trick people into liking him?
We ask because during the primary we caught him using some muddy have-it-both-ways language around policing and abolition. Then earlier this month, his muddled position became clearer, in the worst way. This self-described abolitionist was chumming it up, literally arm-in-arm-in-arm with a cop and Cavalier Johnson, our Republican-lite Mayor. You can see him here, grinning like a fox who has just duped a whole flock of sheep.
What event brought this self-described abolitionist into such happy accord with the mayor and police? Was this perhaps a rare occasion when the police had done something “heroic”, or a ceremony all the alders were obligated to attend? No. Maybe Brower accidentally stumbled into one of their ice cream social copaganda events and the mayor’s press people snapped a pic of him smiling and laughing at or with the children? Nope. What happened is Brower posed for this picture while celebrating Peace Week with the mayor and a bunch of top cops.
Peace Week may be a tradition started by Jimmy and Roslynn Carter to raise awareness about the tendency of states to get in wars and educate people about not doing that. Or it could be an unrelated thing with the same name. Either way, here in Milwaukee, Peace Week, like most everything else, has been corrupted by police. They treat it like a series of copaganda events legitimizing their violently-maintained authority.
Brower linked arms with the mayor specifically at the event that cynically exploited Peace Week to smooth over the recent imposition of police officers in Milwaukee Public Schools. Cops are violent and dangerous. Police in Milwaukee lie about safety in order to take half our scarce resources and use them to hurt people. Their presence in schools endangers children. Students, teachers, the school board, and many residents fought to remove them. The mayor partnered with fascists in the state government to return them to the school against the people’s wishes. Having a Peace Week event at MPS served to promote and normalize that imposition. Cops in schools is one of the front lines of police expansion, the last thing an authentic abolitionist would participate in. Brower was there, grinning.
We were warned.
There were many Brower skeptics on the left who warned that he was only interested in self-promotion. He had seized control of the Milwaukee’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, causing many members (including the abolition working group, cooperation Milwaukee, and even the electoral working group) to leave the organization over a couple months. Someone in Riverwest even put up posters and stickers of Brower wearing a crown saying “why vote for alder when you could vote for a king?”
Our first District 3 spotlight took this into account, expressing skepticism of Brower’s relevance. Could he really ride the organization he’d hobbled into victory? After campaign finance reports came out, we saw the depth of the remaining DSA members’ devotion and took him more seriously. By the end of the primary he had outspent Alexander Kostal (a former DSA member) 3 to 1, but only narrowly defeated him. In the general election, we argued that Brower was surely better than Daniel Bauman, the mayor’s pick. We encouraged readers to support him, despite our skepticism.
When he won, we celebrated it as a rebuke of the mayor, but it looks like he’s already turned from rebuke into cozy compliance. Another example of Brower’s weak commitment is the fight over facial recognition software. This is another front line power expansion that Milwaukee police are pursuing. Facial recognition software is the cutting edge of a dystopian police state, and the people of Milwaukee do not want it. If Brower meant anything he said about police accountability or restraint, he would have immediately spoken out and introduced a resolution banning the practice. Instead, he has only signed on to a letter, along with 10 other alders. Constituents and activist groups are pressuring him, and he’s ignoring us, just like Bauman would have.
Brower is not the only disappointment on the common council. Sharlen Moore was a youth advocate, fighting to close youth prisons without building new ones, until she ran for office and started advocating for prison construction. Brower’s predecessor Jonathan Brostoff also took a very hard right turn when he left the State Assembly to become an alderperson. It seems Milwaukee Common Council brings out the very worst in people. We have to pay attention and demand better from every one of them, but especially those who ran and won on radical platforms in Milwaukee’s most left-leaning districts. Unlike alders trying to balance a more politically moderate or reactionary constituency, Brower has no excuse for siding with the establishment over the people who so enthusiastically backed his run.
