Restorative Justice Conference to Focus on Restoring Faith in Government Through Civil Discourse

Recently Sheldon Lubar, a highly respected and successful Milwaukee businessman, called upon our political leaders to return to civility. Finding that political labels are not particularly helpful, he describes his personal politics as follows:

My politics are for what is right, what makes common sense, what is decent, what will create prosperity and a good life — I am for civility. So what is civility? Webster defines civil, civility, civilization as follows:

A community of citizens. A rational and fair government.

Being polite and courteous is civil. . . . Civility is the positive and sincere consideration of others.

I believe that the founders of our great country sought to create a nation of “civility.” They sought to create a nation that elected leaders who could recognize both sides of all issues and through honest and informed debate could and would resolve differences fairly and then move ahead.

In this heavily financed election season, many are concerned with the lack of civil discourse and respectful debate in our political discussions. People disagree as to the causes of the problem and as to what is needed as solutions. On June 8th, the Marquette Law School Restorative Justice Initiative’s annual conference will present speakers who will focus on our theme for this year, “Restoring Faith in Government: Encouraging Civil Public Discourse.”

Every year we select a relevant issue to examine through a restorative justice lens by asking three critical questions: 1.) Who and what is being harmed by certain conduct? 2.) What is the nature (and the breadth and depth) of the harm? 3.) What needs to be done to work at repairing the harm? This year we chose to focus on civility in political life.

Our conference will examine whether Americans are losing faith in our ability to discuss, much less solve, our political problems. Two state senators and two former lieutenant governors will look at whether people are too discouraged to run for office or even to participate in the political process. Three nationally recognized public policy mediators will present ways to facilitate difficult but respectful discussions with people of diverse views. Speakers will talk about negative advertising and the negative blogging occurring in our print media that often looks like “recreational hostility.” Our keynote speaker, John Avlon, a senior columnist for Newsweek, will share his views on ways to heal polarization in America. We will end the conference with optimism by having a panel of enthusiastic Marquette students who have great hope for our governmental processes in the future. I believe it will be a very good day. I hope you will join us.

 

Continue ReadingRestorative Justice Conference to Focus on Restoring Faith in Government Through Civil Discourse

Milwaukee-Area Annexation Battles

This post is a response to several recent comments on the Faculty Blog concerning the importance of Milwaukee-area annexation battles in Wisconsin politics. These battles included a pronounced anti-urban bias, and that bias remains evident in present-day attacks on the City of Milwaukee and its residents in the context of gubernatorial recall election. However, the annexation battles themselves do not explain or clarify the attacks.

Historian John Gurda discusses the annexation battles on pages 336-45 in The Making of Milwaukee (1999). The battles were most pronounced from roughly 1948-62. While City of Milwaukee officials vigorously attempted to include newly developing, outlying areas in the City, leaders of these areas were often fiercely opposed. They sought to convert their rural towns into municipalities, to fight Milwaukee’s annexation efforts, and to annex unincorporated areas to their own suburbs. The suburbanites, according to Gurda, were anxious to disassociate themselves from Milwaukee’s poverty. Many of the new suburbanites “found it surprisingly easy to trade their ancestral loyalties for an attitude of outright hostility to the City.”

Today, these new suburbs are thriving.  

Continue ReadingMilwaukee-Area Annexation Battles

Anti-Urban Politics

During the first decades of the twentieth century, Americans looked proudly upon their great cities, but then, in the post-World War II decades, Americans started to see their cities as a problem. Small-town Americans and especially suburbanites increasingly took cities to have a different culture, one with troubling “urban” attitudes, styles, and ways of life.

In conjunction with seeing themselves as normal, decent, and law-abiding, self-styled “mainstream” Americans used the city as a negative reference point. The scholar Gerald Frug argues that mainstream Americans built and fortified their own collective identities by deploring the city. “In the resulting, socially polarized metropolitan setting representations of cities as ‘landscapes of fear’ and their residents as inherently threatening flourished.”

In Wisconsin’s current recall election, some of the political advertisements incorporate these anti-urban sentiments, especially with regard to Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city and most “urban” place. Milwaukee’s factory closings, unemployment figures, and high school graduation rates are underscored. And, as if he was responsible for deindustrialization and creation of a semi-permanent underclass, the Mayor is held responsible. Heaven forbid that the kind of people who live in and manage the city could take the reins of the state.

Continue ReadingAnti-Urban Politics
Newer Posts
Older Posts