"Friends, now is not the time to experiment with socialism."
So said Sarah Palin during her stump speech in Roswell, NM, this past weekend.
But what Palin obviously doesn't know is that America has already experimented with socialism - and, by many objective measures, that experiment was a rousing success.
Friends, follow me below the fold for the story of America's great socialist city.
First, a disclaimer. I'm not a socialist, at least not in the truest sense of the word. I don't believe, for example, that Wal-Mart should be nationalized.
Nor do I believe Barack Obama is a socialist. A true socialist, after all, would be advocating single-payer health insurance. I have to believe any true socialists in the room would agree with me.
That said, I don't equate socialism with an evil, corrupt, authoritarian form of government, as Palin, John McCain, Florida Sen. Mel Martinez and "Joe (Sam) the (Unlicensed) Plumber" want me to. When I hear "socialism," I don't think about Stalinist Russia, Maoist China or Castro's Cuba.
I think of the city where my parents grew up, a city I've enjoyed visiting several times - Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Most people, when they hear Milwaukee, think of beer, bratwurst and the Brewers. Few besides long-time residents know that for most of the 20th Century, Milwaukee was governed by real, live socialists.
Milwaukee socialism was rooted in the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the labor movement. The spark came in May, 1886, when workers shut down the city's industry with a general strike in their efforts to win an 8-hour work day (their slogan: "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will"). On May 5, 1,500 workers marched on the only holdout plant, a steel mill in the suburb of Bay View. A unit of the Wisconsin State Militia fired into the crowd, killing 7.
Following the Bay View Tragedy, as it has come to be known, Milwaukee's workers decided they needed to organize themselves politically. Several worker's parties came into being, but the most successful was the Social-Democratic Party, founded in 1897. They came to be known as the "Sewer Socialists" for their emphasis on improving city services.
They won their first big electoral victory in 1910. The party's founder, Victor Berger, was elected to the U.S. Congress, the first Socialist Party Congressman elected in American history. Another party member, Emil Seidel, was elected mayor, and the Social-Democrats won a majority on the Milwaukee Common Council (as the city council is still known today).
The New York Times took note of the event in an article published April 10, 1810, under the headline "Milwaukee's Socialist Mayor to Have Free Hand," and the subhead, "Whole City Government to Back Him in Carrying Out Plans of Radicals and the Results Will be Watched by the Entire Country." (Apparently, the Times was the Fox News of its day back then.)
Parts of the article are worth noting:
Milwaukee, the first great city in America to elect a Socialist Mayor, has made a clean job of it. She has not only put a Socialist in her City Hall, but she has turned over her whole government to the new party. Mayor Seidel will be backed by the city administration and by the Board of Aldermen. He will have a free hand.
The Social-Democrats did not get elected without a fight, or without the same kind of mudslinging that may sound familiar to Obama supporters today. The Times quotes party Secretary E.H. Thomas:
"Never have Socialists in this country gone through a campaign in which they were so furiously attacked as during the Milwaukee campaign this Spring. The abuse of the capitalist press and of the old party politicians was mainly directed against the red flag, against the international socialist movement, and especially against Victor L. Berger, whom they denounced as a bloody revolutionist. He took the brunt of the fight, the attacks on him being particularly fierce, malignant and slanderous...
"...The Republicans and Democrats asserted that if the Social-Democrats should carry the city they would would pull down the Stars and Stripes and run up the red flag on City Hall. The old party leaders urged the people to vote down the so-called red flag candidates."
Following his election, Seidel sought to calm those overwrought fears:
"The first step of the Socialist-Democratic Party will be to reassure the people and relieve their minds of an apparent fear that our victory means an entire overturning of business in this city.
"There will be no Utopia, no millenium, none of the wild antics that our opponents have charged to us..."
Seidel's victory was short-lived. He was voted out of office in 1912. But the Socialist-Democrats weren't washed up. Another of their mayoral candidates, Daniel Hoan, won office in 1916, and led the city until 1940. And while they no longer controlled the Common Council, socialists did maintain influence in the politics and policies of the city.
Hoan was defeated in 1940 by yet another socialist, Carl Zeidler. He served for two years before leaving for the military. He was killed in a German U-boat attack in 1942.
His brother, Frank, was elected mayor in 1948, and held the mayor's seat for the socialists until 1960. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for president on the Socialist Party ticket in 1976, and died in July, 2006.
So what was the result of 40 years of socialist politics in the city of Milwaukee? Fearful Republicans will be relieved to know the Stars and Stripes still flies over city hall. Harley-Davidson and Miller Brewing Co. are in private hands, not those of the government (and are doing pretty well). And schoolchildren in the city still pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag, and are not forced to sing the praises of Stalin, Mao or Castro.
The socialists' legacy lies in the acknowledgement that during their administrations, the city was considered among the best-run in the country. Milwaukee's socialist mayors built up a first-rate public works department, pioneered top-notch public school systems, and created numerous public parks which are the envy of other U.S. cities to this day. Frank Zeidler oversaw the construction of 3,200 units of low-income and veterans housing in the city. When Zeidler left office in 1960, Milwaukee was the 12th-largest city in the country, with a booming industrial economy and low rates of crime and poverty.
Zeidler remained politically involved until his death in 2006. Writing for The Nation, John Nichols penned a obituary, which he opened with this Zeidler quote:
"There is always a charge that socialism does not fit human nature. We've encountered that for a long time. Maybe that's true. But can't people be educated? Can't people learn to cooperate with each other? Surely that must be our goal, because the alternative is redolent with war and poverty and all the ills of the world."
So what is the object of this history lesson? I believe it is this:
In their efforts to divide us, modern-day Republicans have thrown up boogeymen to scare us. The latest of these is socialism. But like all the other Republican boogeymen, when we see them in the light of America's rich and diverse cultural and political history, they really just aren't that scary.
Milwaukee was ruled by socialists for 40 years. And not only is it still standing - it's one of America's greatest cities.
Want to read more about Milwaukee's socialist history? Here are links to the sources for this diary:
Wisconsin Labor History Society
Wisconsin Historical Society - Milwaukee Sewer Socialism
New York Times article, April 10, 1910
The Nation - Last of the Sewer Socialists
You can also read, listen to or watch an interview Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! did with Frank Zeidler just before the 2004 presidential election here.