We have reached the bottom of the year. The shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, is Saturday, December 21, with the exact point of transition occurring at 3:21am Central Time. Technically speaking, the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice occurs when the North Pole "reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun" (Wikipedia). Now nights begin to shorten and days become longer. Although politically we may face many dark days ahead, we will not crouch in defeat. The sun will come out again. We have plans!

The first plan is to give North Shore Fair Maps a new name under which to pursue its priorities. Beginning January 1, it will be known as Worth Fighting For Wisconsin. Also known as Wffwi, pronounced "wiffy." Here's Debbie Patel's rationale for the change: "Since we began in January 2021, our membership has grown well beyond the North Shore Milwaukee borders (no matter how one defines them), and our pro-democracy work extends well beyond fair maps. Hence the name change" (Mailchimp). You can join the group's monthly meetings, always with stimulating topics and speakers. And action items.

As we prepare to celebrate the holidays, we need to take time to celebrate what we accomplished, both as Grassroots North Shore and as activists and progressives. First among those accomplishments is the TEMPORARY implementation of fair voting maps. I'll explain the temporary part below. What we need to remember is how we won such a welcome sea change for Wisconsin voters.

First, the Fair Maps Coalition, including Grassroots North Shore, worked for a decade or more to get the result we were seeking. Member groups held information sessions, met with county boards and city councils all over the state, distributed yard signs, mailed thousands of postcards, and supported non-binding resolutions, most of which passed with sizable majorities where they were allowed to occur. Some of this history is recounted on the Democracy Campaign's website. These efforts were so successful that the GOP-gerrymandered legislature passed a law prohibiting counties and municipalities from offering their voters non-binding resolutions and referenda. But by the time the legislature took away voters' right to express their views, 57 (79%) of Wisconsin's 72 counties had backed fair maps.

While we were participating in direct actions, we also elected three progressive justices to the Wisconsin Supreme Court: Justice Rebecca Dallet in 2017, Justice Jill Karofsky in 2020, and Justice Janet Protasiewicz in 2023. Those three justices, together with Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, comprise the progressive court we have today. We owe the unrigged voting maps we were able to use in November 2024 to those four jurists. Now Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who was first elected to the court in 1995, has decided not to run for a fourth 10-year term. Judge Susan Crawford is running in 2025 for her seat. Her competition is Brad Schimel, Attorney General in the Walker administration and currently Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge. To protect the progress we have made on fair maps and a host of other issues, we will need to make sure Judge Crawford prevails. (Again, more on that subject below.)

Although nationally the November 2024 elections resulted in widespread despair about our rights, our democracy, and our freedoms, we triumphed in Wisconsin state elections. We re-elected Senator Tammy Baldwin and flipped four state senate seats and 10 assembly seats, making it possible for Democrats to win the majority in one or both houses in the 2026 elections. One of the newly elected senators is Jodi Habush Sinykin! She now represents most of Milwaukee County's North Shore communities as well as a large swath of Ozaukee County and some bits of Washington and Waukesha counties. Democrats made inroads in all three WOW counties, the only places in the battleground states with a blue shift rather than a red one.

And in a sign of our electoral muscle, we can see the effects of the work Grassroots North Shore volunteers made on the Constitutional Amendments we faced this year. In the spring 2024 election, there were two proposed amendments. Both passed even though a number of grassroots groups and nonprofits did make some effort to defeat them. The effort failed largely because the groups were late to the effort and they were only loosely affiliated with each other. In the August 2024 primary, two more ballot questions appeared and both were defeated, no doubt as a result of the much more concerted hard work of a wide coalition of groups.

In the November election, the ballot had one referendum: asking whether state and local governments should be prohibited from allowing noncitizens to vote. The question in one way made no sense: noncitizens are currently prohibited from voting and they very rarely try to! But what's telling about the statewide approval of the ballot question is that nearly everywhere Grassroots North Shore launched a strenuous campaign to defeat it, the ballot question lost.

Yes, it's true that the it won statewide. But the disparity between the outcome of the vote in the North Shore communities plus the four wards where large numbers of UWM students vote — the areas where GRNS was most active — and the statewide outcome is striking. The referendum passed with 70% of the statewide vote. In our areas though — where we did the most work educating voters about what the question really meant and what it portends — it went down to defeat, in some cases by large percentages. The difference in how the amendment fared elsewhere and how it fared in the North Shore tells us that the canvassing we did had a measurable and substantial effect. Download an Excel spreadsheet with the election data so you can see for yourself.

What I have learned from the last election cycle is that putting our collective shoulders to the wheel, as vigorously as we can, yields dividends. And that's especially going to be true in the low turnout election we're expecting to have on April 1, 2025. Nomination papers are circulating now and can be accessed from our bare bones Election 2025 pages. You'll find the nomination papers for Susan Crawford, Jill Underly (Superintendent of Public Instruction), and Jeff Wright (candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction) plus nomination papers for Judge Danielle Shelton (Judge for Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Branch 40). Please act expeditiously: candidates will want you to return completed nomination papers next week! Once candidates have been certified for the ballot — after January 7, 2025 — we will fill out our Elections 2025 pages so that you have a one-stop spot to learn about the candidates and issues.

Now about the work to cement fair maps for the future. The voting maps now in place were the product of extensive litigation and are current law only by virtue of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent ruling that the previous maps violated the Wisconsin Constitution. A change in the composition of the court, with Brad Schimel rather than Susan Crawford occupying the "swing seat," could mean a quick reversal of the decision that brought us unrigged maps for November 2024. But even if no case is brought before a newly conservative court next year, gerrymandered maps could make a comeback after the next census in 2030. That's because new maps must be drawn every 10 years to reflect population changes revealed in a new census. Without a constitutional amendment, or at least a state statute, prohibiting gerrymandering, the party in power can begin the cycle all over again! Electing Judge Susan Crawford, then, is vital to maintaining fair voting maps.

As crucial as it is to elect a progressive justice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 1, 2025, that success would go only so far to cementing what we have already achieved. Iuscely Flores, Organizing Director of the Fair Maps Coalition, has outlined a three-pronged approach to achieving a constitutional amendment requiring that our voting maps be constructed by an independent redistricting commission.

1. Public Education and Input: Education is the cornerstone of the reform movement.
2. Legislative Advocacy Efforts: Legislative advocacy is essential to driving change.
3. Constitutional Amendment Proposal: Changing the Wisconsin Constitution is crucial for lasting reform.

Common Cause has produced a report, Unlocking Fair Maps: The Keys to Independent Redistricting, analyzing the issues and structures for independent redistricting. The new maps we had this November show what unrigging the maps actually means. The new legislature that will be sworn in in January 2025 actually represents the voters in this closely divided state. And that means we can expect legislators to listen to and to act on the issues their constituents care about.

I apologize for this rather long newsletter, the final one in 2024. I am taking the next two weeks off to rest, refresh, and reconnect with family and friends in Baltimore. I hope all of you will find the year-end festivities restorative. We are going to need you engaged in the fight for our freedoms and our future come the new year. So I will leave you with this uplifting video of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking to students at the Maryland Corps service year program on Tuesday, December 17: “As we then approach the end of this year, many people have come up to me telling me they feel tired, maybe even resigned. But let me be very clear. No one can walk away. We must stay in the fight. Every one of us."

Happy Holidays everyone.

EVENTS

Wednesday, December 18

Thursday, December 19

Saturday, December 21

Saturday, December 28

Tuesday, January 7

SAVE THE DATE

Tuesday, January 24

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