Saturday, June 23, 2018

Weekend reading - Walker has never cared about how "others" are treated

Great stuff from One Wisconsin Now's Savion Castro in Madison 365 today. In an article titled "Scott Walker's Cowardice on Trump Border Policy 25 Years in the Making," Castro discusses on Scott Walker's history of indifference to the suffering of anyone that's not part of "his people," including Walker's refusal this week to say or do anything about the separation of families seeking asylum in the United States, and these individuals being put into concentration camps and relocated around the country.
Scott Walker offered something worse than deafening silence on Donald Trump’s unconscionable policy of tearing infants, toddlers, and children from their parents and placing them in 21st-century internment camps when he said he wouldn’t comment on a “federal” issue.

Forty-eight hours later, when Gov. Walker traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with Trump, he still felt no obligation to speak out against the human rights violation occurring on our border against children. Instead, he has been fundraising, through Facebook ads, on the need to build the border wall and sending Wisconsin National Guard troops to the border.
Dem gubernatorial candidate Kelda Roys rightfully called Walker out for this two-step, a form of dog-whistling that Scotty has pulled for his entire career.


Castro notes that Walker also looked the other way and ducked the issue when young Wisconsinites were being mistreated at the state's juvenile correctional facilities, allowing things to get worse for both staff and inmates.
Before Walker stood with Trump on indefinitely detaining immigrant children and their families fleeing violence, we must not forget that he codified the separation of young men and women from their families, and failed to speak against the cruel and immensely unjust of separation of children from their families, among the nearly decade-long saga of cruelty at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. In his tenure as Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker has unequivocally failed to be a steward to the children less privileged than his.

Six years ago, Scott Walker received a letter from a Racine County judge detailing the horrific conditions at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. Governor Walker did not act. As details continued to pour out, and the traumatic experiences in the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake facilities continued to pile up, Governor Walker did nothing until the crisis came to a head during an election year.

When a news broke that a 16-year-old inmate had his arm broken by a guard, and was left naked in his cell for hours, and then waited a week for proper medical treatment, Scott Walker was silent. When three institutional psychologists left the institution for malpractice, Scott Walker was silent. And, when inmates at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake told former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Wall that “They’re hurting us. They’re harming us,” Scott Walker was silent. Eventually, Walker’s hand was forced by a federal investigation from DOJ and a lawsuit from the ACLU.
That history of neglect is what makes Tony Evers' latest ad ring true. In that ad, former Walker Corrections Secretary Ed Wall claims that he was ordered by Walker's Chief of Staff to cover up atrocities at Lincoln and Copper Hills because it was hurting Walker's fundraising prospects, and that Walker's Administration had few other considerations other than crass, political calculation.


Our media almost never directly calls out Walker and his administration's malicious negligence of our most vulnerable people (with a few notable exceptions, particularly Katelyn Ferral on the mistreatment of residents at the King Veterans Home). So it takes Dems and everyday citizens to say it directly and KEEP SAYING IT, so the media won't let these awful developments fade away.

With that in mind, I'm heading downtown to watch soccer 1st, and then be one of numerous others to express our disgust with what's being done in our name at the border. The silent majority who are disgusted by these amoral GOP slugs need to stop being silent, and allowing these atrocities to slip by and continue.

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