Podcasts

Announcer:
The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production. You’re watching “Here & Now” 2024 election coverage.

Zac Schultz:
Students and faculty at UW-Madison are arrested while protesting the Israel-Gaza war. Meanwhile, Donald Trump compares the nationwide campus protests to the attacks on January 6th. And President Biden makes his first remarks in the matter since the protests began.

Joe Biden:
There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.

Zac Schultz:
Saying the pro-Palestine student demonstrations will not sway his foreign policy.
Good evening, I’m Zac Schultz. Tonight on “Here & Now,” what happened at UW-Madison and Milwaukee protests this week and how campuses on the other side of the state feel about the demonstrations. Then, election observers are expected to balloon this year. We look at a new rule that determines how close to voters they can be. And finally, the emerging spread of bird flu in dairy cows. We speak with the lead investigator on the potential threat. It’s “Here & Now” for May 3rd.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Zac Schultz:
Student protests on campuses around the nation have led to violent police crackdowns, so when pro-Palestine encampments sprung up on the UW-Madison and Milwaukee campuses, organizers and officials weren’t sure what to expect. “Here & Now” reporter Marisa Wojcik talked with students and community members on both sides of the issue and has this report.

Dahlia Saba:
We have seen that the university has refused to take us seriously after months of protests, and so we are here to stay.

Marisa Wojcik:
This week, protesters like Palestinian-Americans Dalia Saba at UW-Madison and Amin Atta at UW-Milwaukee joined the broader campus movement to support Palestinians under siege in Gaza.

Ameen Atta:
My people are suffering from a brutal bombardment that has lasted over 200 days and they have full support from the American government. So here at UW-M, what can we do? Our job is to focus on every space that we enter and pressure to divest from Israel and cut all ties to Israel.

Amadi Ozier:
Students at our university are extremely exhausted by the war and they do not want to participate in the war, and they also want the administration to openly acknowledge their relationship to that war, and I think that’s completely reasonable.

Marisa Wojcik:
Of the demands, students want the university to divest from companies that profit from selling weapons and equipment to Israel.

Abbie Klein:
We’re asking to know where our money is going, the money that we give this school, that the school makes off of us.

Marisa Wojcik:
On Monday, the students put up tents in concurrence with campuses in other states and other countries.

Sara:
The tents are a symbol. There are people in Gaza who have lost their entire belongings, their homes, their livelihoods. They’re living in tents and now they are being bombed in tents.

Marisa Wojcik:
The tents also represent a breaking point for students.

Sara:
It’s interesting that we’ve only had the ear of the chancellor since the tents have been put up.

Marisa Wojcik:
The encampment violates university policy, a sticking point for UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who initially refused to meet with students until the tents were taken down.

Abigail Smith:
It’s important to us that the focus is not on our right to protest or our right to be here. The focus should be on our message and our message is to disclose the university’s funds, to divest from companies that are funding the genocide and for the chancellor to fully meet what our demands are, and we will not leave until we do that.

Marisa Wojcik:
On Wednesday morning, the chancellor authorized three law enforcement agencies to dismantle the encampment at UW-Madison and protesters resisted. More than two dozen students and faculty were arrested, popping Madison into national headlines. So far, UW-Milwaukee has not met the same fate.

Zachary Ogulnick:
With the rising tensions in combination with finals season and all of that, it’s really, you know, had our minds completely scrambled.

Marisa Wojcik:
Students at the UW Hillel Foundation, a Jewish group on campus, take issue with the protesters’ methods and their message.

Ben Newman:
These are people who have taken the administration hostage to a set of demands that are unreasonable and unmeetable by any stretch of the imagination. And so I understand why the chancellor might not want to meet them.

Erika Klein:
They have been screaming her name, saying Chancellor Mnookin, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide. From her perspective, I would see that as a threat. She’s a Jewish woman. All of these chants, antisemitic chants, they’re also threats.

Jordyn Geller:
Hearing the word genocide, knowing how it correlates back to the holocaust as Jewish students, is very upsetting.

Marisa Wojcik:
There are a number of Jewish students, faculty and community members who stand with the protesters.

Esty Dinur:
I am an Israeli-American and I am very, very disturbed by the fact that both of my governments supporting what is unquestionably a genocide currently against the Palestinian people.

Marisa Wojcik:
For Esty Dinur, tens of thousands of Gazans killed in the war is history repeating.

Esty Dinur:
I’m the daughter of a holocaust survivor who was also a holocaust historian, and as I was growing up, among people with numbers tattooed on their arms, the big question was how could that happen with the whole world watching?

Marisa Wojcik:
A core issue for many, no matter their background, is the question of whether antizionism equates antisemitism.

Tsela Barr:
That conflation of antizionism or criticism of Israel with antisemitism is extremely dangerous.

Abbie Klein:
I’m Jewish. I grew up in a Zionist family, and I took time unlearning a lot of what I learned growing up and reconciling what I had been told and I truly believe that what is happening here, what’s happening across the nation, across the world in terms of standing in solidarity with Palestinians is not antisemitic. In fact, it is holding so firm to our Jewish faith to leave the world a better place, to care for others.

Jordyn Geller:
It feels like in order to be what they consider a good Jew, you have to give up your beliefs of Israel and Zionism and support their cause fully and it’s hard to do that when we’re hearing them chant these words that, again, may not meant to be harmful but are.

Esty Dinur:
I mean, I don’t necessarily agree with every slogan that is being chanted here, but when you make coalitions with other organizations, you have to accept that you will not agree with everyone.

Marisa Wojcik:
Hours after police cleared the Madison encampment, new tents went up. By Thursday, a group of protesters met with UW-Madison officials. As more talks linger on the horizon, no one can yet say what will come out of the conversations.

Ben Newman:
I feel that the group of people who are out there in the encampment are — represent a small section of the population of 44,000 undergrad here. I believe that most people actually don’t care that much.

Sara:
If the university is dissatisfied with those demands, they can take it up with the values that they instilled in us.

Marisa Wojcik:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Marisa Wojcik in Madison.

Zac Schultz:
For some students, both the Israel-Palestine war and the campus protests seem a world away. Joining us now is Peter Hart-Brinson, a UW-Eau Claire professor in the sociology and communication departments. Thanks for your time today.

Peter Hart-Brinson:
Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
So give us the perspective from your campus a couple hours away. What’s the reaction to the protests there?

Peter Hart-Brinson:
Up until very recently, I think very few students have been following the events that have been happening at campuses across the country. I think primarily because we have relatively few students who are Jewish or Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent, and students are really busy focusing on their studies and their work. And given that this is such a complicated geopolitical conflict, students have been hesitant to engage, I think. So things have been relatively quiet amongst our students on campus here at UW-Eau Claire.

Zac Schultz:
So you’ve been addressing this in one of your classes. Can you describe the discussion? What questions are students asking and what does that conversation look like for students that may not be fully aware or have a family or a friend connection or a history connection to that area?

Peter Hart-Brinson:
Sure. The class I’ve been talking to my students about, about this with is a social movements class. And in order to just have the conversation at all, the first students — first thing students wanted to know is what is this all about. The Israel-Palestine conflict, of course, goes back decades, and it’s such a complicated issue that students really don’t understand for the most part the basics of the conflict. So we spend a lot of time just trying to get up to speed about who the players are, who is Hamas and how are they different from Palestinians, for example. Since the police have been used to break up protests at Columbia and UCLA and elsewhere, we’ve been talking a lot about when police action is effective and when it’s not. Sometimes police action to break up a protest can actually make things worse, and I think that we’ve seen that happen at Columbia and elsewhere.

Zac Schultz:
So from the perspective of the students in Madison or at UW-Milwaukee, what needs to happen in order for someone in Eau Claire to realize, hey, this is a bigger thing. I should pay attention to this. Maybe I should take a stance.

Peter Hart-Brinson:
I think students are sharing a lot of information on social media and they’re getting a lot of their information on social media, which makes it easy for people who are protesting in one place to get their message out to students in another place. And so the more students who have been taking up the call to protest at campuses around the United States, I think it became harder and harder for students on our campus to ignore and to ask themselves, maybe we should get involved in this too.

Zac Schultz:
And have you heard anything about students there trying to get involved, start a protest or do anything on your campus?

Peter Hart-Brinson:
Earlier this week, I was informed that a protest is being planned for today, actually about 30 minutes before — until now, while we’re taping this interview. So there looks to be a protest of some kind scheduled for UW-Eau Claire. I’m unaware of similar protests happening at other UW branch campuses, although they could be.

Zac Schultz:
So broaden this out beyond the campus environment. The UW encampment wasn’t even a few hours old, we had politicians weighing in on social media, break them up or support the First Amendment rights. How does that — the politicians trying to leverage this movement impact how people in areas farther away from the actual protest perceive it?

Peter Hart-Brinson:
Both students and faculty are scared, and this is not just an issue that pertains to this particular conflict, but about any topic that pertains to race or gender or sexuality or religion. Higher education has become so politicized in the last couple of years that students are scared to speak in the classroom and many faculty are scared to talk about it. Nationally, about two-thirds of all faculty are adjuncts, and they can be fired at will. They don’t have the protections of tenure. And so when students and faculty see the kinds of allegations that are being leveled against the protesters, that they’re antisemitic simply because they’re criticizing the government of Israel, or that opposing the killing of innocent life makes you pro-Hamas, that kind of political framing makes people scared to even have a conversation about this issue.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Well, thank you for joining us today. Peter Hart-Brinson from UW-Eau Claire.

Peter Hart-Brinson:
Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
Earlier this week, Donald Trump spent his day off from his criminal trial in New York to visit Wisconsin for a rally in Waukesha. During the speech, Trump repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Donald Trump:
The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020 and we’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024. We won’t have a country left.

Zac Schultz:
Again, the 2020 election was not stolen, but we show you that clip because the “big lie” relates to a rule change currently being proposed by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The rule would determine how close election observers can get to voters when they cast a ballot at the polls and Republicans recently announced they plan to recruit 100,000 election observers nationwide in an effort to “make sure that victory can’t be rigged.” Joining us now is Eileen Newcomer, voter education manager at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. Thanks for your time today.

Eileen Newcomer:
Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
First, let’s start with what an election observer is and why would the Republicans want to recruit another 100,000 of them for 2024?

Eileen Newcomer:
Sure, yeah and one thing I think that is important to know, here in Wisconsin, election observers have more access than they have in other states, but with that access comes additional regulations and responsibilities of election observers. So an election observer is anyone who is interested in seeing how elections are run. They can go into the polling place and observe what’s happening. They can observe during early voting. They can observe the pre-election equipment testing, audits, recounts, a whole bunch of different things. I think it’s a really great opportunity for anyone who wants to learn more about how our election system works to go and be an observer so that they can see for themselves how it works.

Zac Schultz:
So I’ve obviously covered the polls at prior elections. Election observers are not new as you’ve said. Most of the time, they just kind of sit in a chair in the corner and don’t do very much. Many of the ones I’ve spoken to on prior Election Days say they’re quite bored. What kind of fraud or riggings are they supposed to be looking for?

Eileen Newcomer:
I know we train our election observers to understand what the normal process looks like so that they can identify if there’s a deviation of the normal process, and if it — it can be something as simple as the registrar not fully understanding all of the proof of residence options and wrongfully sending some away because they thought that something that was an acceptable proof of residence option isn’t. So in that situation, we would talk to the chief inspector and often it’s just solved right there. So it really is kind of the minutia and mechanics of elections that observers are there to witness and to see. And to the comment about they’re not really doing that much, they really are there to observe, to witness, to document, to report things that they see, if they want to escalate it, if they’re not certain about something, and that really has been something that’s been happening in our state for many, many years and that the league has been running our election observer program for over 10 years now.

Zac Schultz:
So let’s talk about the rule change, because part of this has to do with how far away an election observer needs to be from the voter or from certain areas and it’s this range of three to eight feet. Why is that important and what difference can that make?

Eileen Newcomer:
Sure, and I do want to clarify something. The three- to eight-foot rule for election observers is actually in statute. So that’s not something that is really going to change with this proposed rule because that’s in the law and the elections commission can’t supersede something that is in state law. I think the three- to eight-foot range does give — is there to give poll workers some flexibility of where to station election observers, where they can see what’s happening, but not interfere with the voting process, not interfere with poll workers who are trying to conduct the elections, not interfere with voters who are there to cast their ballot and exercise their right to vote. And I do think that three to eight feet is enough space for you to see what’s happening and what’s going on. I do know that some people want to be closer, but three feet is really a short distance even of itself and you can see what’s happening with the current guideline that’s in place.

Zac Schultz:
Now, these rules apply to all scenarios, not just the voting booth on Election Day, as you mentioned. And there’s central counts where there’s been a lot of controversy, specifically in the city of Milwaukee. If there’s a recount, election observers can be in those places as well. What kind of roles do they play there as far as witness signatures and absentee ballots and what kind of — I don’t want to say chaos, but what could happen if someone who is untrained or new people coming in trying to create this image of fraud that may not be real, what could happen if they’re there.

Eileen Newcomer:
So if somebody is at central count, I know the things we train our observers to look out for is just making sure that they are properly processing the ballots. Not counting them before 8:00 p.m. because those are the rules and so we want to make sure that that is being conducted fairly. And they’re also keeping an eye out for if ballots are being rejected, why are they being rejected. That could be because there’s a missing witness address on the absentee ballot certificate. Maybe the voter didn’t sign. Things like that are the kinds of things we’re looking for there. And the way that it does run and really should run is that observers, if they have an issue, they have a point of contact of who they talk to to figure out more information about that issue, whether maybe it’s their misunderstanding of how things should be operating or if it is a legitimate concern, then they can be addressed in real time. With that point of contact, it also means the observers should not be talking to every individual poll worker who is at the location and disrupting their work as well. And then also the chief inspector, or in the case of Central Count, usually the clerk is the one running them, they maintain control of the location. So if they ask somebody to leave because they’re being disruptive, that person is required to leave. So there are a lot of safeguards to make sure that people can witness what’s going on and to see how transparent our process is, but if they’re unruly or disruptive, to have those people leave so that the elections can still go on.

Zac Schultz:
Is there a rule for observers to observe other observers in this sense? Maybe people who are new to this process and don’t know what they can object to or how they can interfere and insert themselves into the middle of the voting process?

Eileen Newcomer:
Certainly. I know our observers, they monitor everything that’s going on including if there are other observers there and if they’re being disruptive, and if they’re being disruptive and nobody is doing anything about it, they will escalate that to the chief inspector and say, “Hey, you’re responsible for maintaining this polling place. This person is being incredibly disruptive. Maybe they’re intimidating a voter. Maybe they’re preventing a poll worker from doing their job and that that person should leave.” If at that point the chief inspector doesn’t do anything, we do have routes to escalate that further and make sure that the calmness of the polling place is maintained.

Zac Schultz:
We’ve got just a few seconds left. Talk to me about this rule and whether you believe it will actually be in place by this fall because the Legislature can wipe out rules at a moment’s notice. There’s all sorts of lawsuit threats out there.

Eileen Newcomer:
We really support the rule as drafted. We know there’s been a lot of work that’s gone into it. A lot of voices have been listened to in drafting the rule itself. I am always hopeful that it will be in place by the fall elections, but realistically, it probably won’t be in place until next year just because the Legislature has ended their session. So I think that’s where it’s at right now.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Well, thank you very much for your time today.

Eileen Newcomer:
Thank you for having me.

Zac Schultz:
Switching to agriculture news, a strain of avian bird flu has been found in dairy cows and confirmed in herds in nine states. It has not been found in Wisconsin, but it is in Michigan. And researchers from UW-Madison are helping to monitor the spread. Joining us now is Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Thanks for your time today.

Keith Poulsen:
Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
So this particular strain of avian bird flu is called H5N1 and you’ve been tracking it since 2022. Is it spreading faster now?

Keith Poulsen:
Well, this particular strain since 2022, it’s spread in the migrating wild bird population, has actually been the worst foreign animal outbreak in U.S. history. It’s killed over a hundred million birds and really back in 2022 when we were just coming off COVID, it was affecting raptor species like bald eagles and snowy owls. Then we noticed it was in our mesocarnivores, like fox kits or other scavengers, and we’ve seen that even now with the seals that are eating dead birds off the coast of Washington state. But what really changed in the last five or six months was that we’ve noticed that it has now come into our dairy cattle population, which is a very novel event.

Zac Schultz:
So testing right now is limited to cows that are transported over state lines, but your report says that’s 50,000 cows a week. So how soon before that just overwhelms and people maybe stop testing?

Keith Poulsen:
Yeah. Great question. I do think that testing will ramp up even further before we get out of this outbreak, but that’s the best way that we control animal diseases, is movement across state lines with the state animal health officials, but I do think that Wisconsin is a little bit different than this one particular business model that moves a lot of lactating cows, because that’s our biggest risk right now from what we know. We’re only a couple months into this, so our biggest risk is really lactating cows. Wisconsin doesn’t move a lot of lactating cows into the state. We tend to move pregnant two-year-olds as they’re being raised in the hot, dry climates and then we bring them back. It’s really a higher risk of really moving young lactating dairy cows.

Zac Schultz:
Since going from birds to mammals, H5N1 has also, as you mentioned, foxes, seals. I saw a report about farm cats, possibly. One person in Texas who was exposed got conjunctivitis. Is the big fear that this turns into a COVID-19 transmission where it jumps into a human population?

Keith Poulsen:
Yeah. On the public health side, we’ve known about 40 different mammalian species that have been from eating or drinking raw milk on the farms. They present very differently than our dairy cows. They present with neurologic disease. Our dairy cows present being off feed and then they drop in milk production, but really when you look at it from a 30,000-foot view is on the public health side, we know that influenza viruses change. They reassort. That’s why we have a different flu vaccine every season. We have to remember that the barriers to moving into people where it becomes like a pandemic, potential pathogen, they’re very high. There’s a lot of areas that would prevent that, but it’s not a zero risk, and the longer we don’t have good risk mitigation and there’s more virus in the environment or circulating in the cows, the higher that risk becomes that the virus will continue to reassort.

Zac Schultz:
So you’ve also found genetic material in milk, but you say that right now there’s no evidence that a pasteurized milk presents any problems to someone consuming it, but raw milk is actually quite popular and growing in popularity. Is there a risk there?

Keith Poulsen:
Absolutely. As a public health expert and all of public health, whether they’re veterinarians or MDs or just our rural health practitioners, is that raw milk products. I grew up drinking raw milk on the dairy, right? And when we were talking about growing up between Waunakee and DeForest but my kids don’t. And so the biggest population of raw milk drinkers tend to be highly educated and upper middle class, but because they’re living in urban environments, it’s not a great idea to be consuming raw dairy products at this time. The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance from 1926 has really decreased food-borne disease from raw dairy products and we need to maintain that now.

Zac Schultz:
So what should farmers be looking for?

Keith Poulsen:
So definitely need to have regular conversations with your herd veterinarian. So we’re looking for cows that are usually second lactation or greater, so they’re 3 to 4 years old, and then they tend to be mid- to late lactation, so 150 days in milk or since they’ve calved and they tend to drop in their feed consumption. A lot of cows wear rumination monitors to see how their GI motility or they wear pedometers just like I’m wearing a smart watch to know how many steps I’ve taken, and when I don’t feel well, I don’t take enough steps. Typically the computers will pull them out. Then the parlor software will monitor a drop in milk and it will automatically sort them. Those cows tend to have a fever then when they’re looked at but then they recover in about 10 to 12 days. So, really, we look at peak incidents on farm, which goes up to 10% at four to six days. Incidents drops about ten to 14 days and then the herds are recovered usually between 20 and 45 days after infection.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Dr. Keith Poulsen, thanks for your time.

Keith Poulsen:
Thank you for the opportunity.

Zac Schultz:
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. That is our program for tonight. Frederica Freyberg will be back next Friday. I’m Zac Schultz. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.