The Political Environment: Democrats' 2020 convention will make Milwaukee glow

Monday, March 11, 2019

Democrats' 2020 convention will make Milwaukee glow

Winning the 2020 Democratic National Convention is a coup for Milwaukee, Mayor Tom Barrett and a host of allies.

And for a downtown river revival rooted in former Mayor John Norquist's New Urbanism which correctly predicted that people wanted to live and work near water and to get where they needed to go on a bike, by rail, or on their own two feet.

The Riverwalk system Norquist championed now extends north of the city and all the way south through the downtown to the river's outlet in Lake Michigan.

(Full disclosure: I worked for Mayor Norquist for about six years.)

And this is why the city rail isn't as extensive as it could have been,

One of Milwaukee's new streetcars was on a demonstration run last summer through the downtown's Cathedral Square where the annual Bastille Days music and cultural festival is held every year. The convention cite at Fiserv Forum is just a few blocks to the west, while the lakefront is a few blocks to the east.

but that's what happens when suburban interests are hostile to the very cities which boost and define their regions and the entire state's culture and economy.

I assume that Republicans, from Donald Trump and all the way down to Wisconsin's defeated Gov. Scott Walker, will by the summer of 2020 still be rabidly red-baiting on right-wing talk radio and social media about the evils of socialism, as they choose to define, distort and demonize it.

Convention visitors, however, if they do a little Googling, can learn that Milwaukee had socialist mayors until the 1960's who left behind publicly-spirited legacies - - from clean government, to beautiful parks