Here & Now

Here & Now for March 26, 2021

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

More shots in the arm, especially here in Milwaukee, where a campaign to vaccinate residents in under-served neighborhoods gets underway. More vaccine supply and additional federal recovery dollars, money coming from Washington to Wisconsin, where this week Republicans voted for the Legislature to take control over the $3.2 billion coming to state coffers and away from Governor Tony Evers.

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” Racine’s new vaccination center opens the doors wide to communities of color. A state Taiwanese-American considers Asian hate crime. And the debate over investigating how Wisconsin elections are run. It’s “Here & Now” for March 26.

Announcer:

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

David Crowley:

They are 53204, 53205, 53206.

Frederica Freyberg:

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley lists the zip codes where residents are now eligible for the vaccine, neighborhoods that are defined as most vulnerable in the CDC health index. County Exec Crowley received his vaccine this week at the Kosciuszko Community Center and used the occasion to encourage others to do the same.

David Crowley:

We just want folks to know we want folks to get vaccinated. We wanted to do this on camera so folks know this is safe and the efficacy is high.

Frederica Freyberg:

From Milwaukee to Racine. That’s where community leaders gathered Monday to anticipate Tuesday’s opening of a new vaccination center in the Regency Mall complex. Specifically, officials called attention to the stubborn inequities related to who’s getting the vaccine and who isn’t. Just over 23% of Racine County white residents have been vaccinated compared to 9.5% of Hispanic residents. Our first guest is someone working to get those numbers up. Fabi Maldonado is a Racine County Supervisor and he joins us from Racine. Thanks for being here.

Fabi Maldonado:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the state’s third community clinic opened there in Racine this week. How well attended is it by folks coming to get their vaccine? How’s it going?

Fabi Maldonado:

Yeah. So as you mentioned earlier, one of the biggest challenges we had, that we have a huge population here, community of color and it disproportionately was affecting our community. We’ve been working together with coalitions, nonprofit organizations, such as Voces de la Frontera, Racine Interfaith Coalition, NAACP – couple other groups have been participating and pushing, you know, — helping the county and the city target areas that need — hard to reach areas. For multiple various reasons, you know, folks don’t get the same information as other people and what we’re trying to do is not only share information in these areas, but essentially bring folks into these facilities to get vaccinated and really get people to see that vaccinations are helping it work in the community.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah.

Fabi Maldonado:

So, yeah. Originally I think they said they were going to do 200 vaccinations starting on that Tuesday, maybe the first couple of days, maybe week. But then the goal was to get to 1,000 vaccinations.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, that’s great news. We know it can be hard to navigate this. We will put up the website and phone number for people to register for a vaccine in Racine in a minute. But how important is it for your county to have this clinic and afford that access?

Fabi Maldonado:

I think it’s critical. It’s critical that the state, the city and the county is on the same page, when we’re all working really hard to make sure that continues happening. And it’s critical that folks get vaccinated and try to get — so we can try to get back to normal as much as possible. And we have — there’s a lot of essential workers in the Latinx community. People — Black and brown community, poor community — there’s people who work in grocery stores, hospitals, driving buses. You have to get to work. They pick your produce. They help at the grocery store. They’re at the restaurants. And folks are working every single day and it’s very important that we spread the news and try to get as many people involved as possible to save lives.

Frederica Freyberg:

It sounds like you’re trying to eliminate as many barriers as possible for people to get vaccinated, like free bus rides, foreign language translation, accessibility for people with visual or hearing impairments. Do these things make a difference in terms of bringing people in? Have you heard that?

Fabi Maldonado:

Night and day. Night and day. In the Latinx community for example, right, one of the barriers is the language barrier. Folks reach out to me all the time when they have questions around government aid or they get letters in the mail from the city or whatnot. Same thing for when they go to the hospital. If there isn’t bilingual signage, if there isn’t bilingual aid, folks helping them step by step — I went to go get vaccinated about a week and a half ago and there were signs that really helped me out. But then there was a lot of questions that I had. And, you know, I’m one of the privileged people that can speak two languages so I was able to navigate that a little bit easier. But folks who can only speak Spanish, for example, have a hard time.

Frederica Freyberg:

You’ve also pointed out —

Fabi Maldonado:

It deters people.

Frederica Freyberg:

You’ve also pointed out there can be some hesitancy for Hispanic people who may mistrust government. What is that about and what are you doing about it?

Fabi Maldonado:

Yeah. I feel like government has, you know, not always given the Latinx population a fair shake. Folks don’t always feel welcome. They also have some other experiences with countries where some folks might come from where there’s just a mistrust of government in general, from multiple different — for multiple different reasons. One of the goals is to essentially bring folks into the fold and say this is what — safety is — this is how we get back to normal. This is safety. Folks don’t want to — folks want to — I think the vast majority of folks want to get in line and get this vaccination and I think a lot of it has to do with us getting information out there.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. And just lastly, I understand that you were also messaging that people who come to get vaccinations, they don’t have to show their license, they don’t have to show a social security card, that kind of thing.

Fabi Maldonado:

Correct.

Frederica Freyberg:

Just another way to reduce barriers because everybody wants shots in arms. We appreciate very much, Supervisor Maldonado. Thanks very much.

Fabi Maldonado:

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Frederica Freyberg:

As promised, the website for registering for a vaccine in Racine is vaccinate.wi.gov or you can call 844-684-1064 to register.

Now turning to this, following the mass shootings in Atlanta last week, Wisconsin Asian-Americans responded. Some through protest, others on social media. Marisa Wojcik spoke with Will Hsu, a Taiwanese-American in Wausau, who has been outspoken about discrimination.

Marisa Wojcik:

Last week’s shooting was horrific and yet some Asian-Americans aren’t surprised and have been trying to call attention about things that happened to them whether it’s full-on hate crimes or micro-aggressions. Have we been ignoring the warning signs?

Will Hsu:

You see what happened with the Black Lives Matter movement. You see the stop Asian hate movement. And I think these movements are happening now here because we haven’t had a real frank discussion and reconciliation of what it means to be a minority in the United States, what it means to be an immigrant and our definition of immigrants and culture has gradually changed over the years. And then in today’s politicized climate, where there’s right and left and right and wrong and cancel culture, people I think are really struggling with how do we have meaningful dialogue about the state of race relations. Then you have a violent act such as what happened in Atlanta. That really brings things to a head, no different than it did in Minneapolis, which is a community I worked in for ten years. You see what happened there and you get a better understanding of how something like that, just as horrific as a shooting as it was, how that can kind of really bring people to talk about it. But we’ve had these issues here in Wisconsin. You saw it with the shooting in Milwaukee at a Sikh temple. And we talked about it. And then we let it go. Because we felt like it was okay. We had resolved the issues. The issues aren’t resolved. They still simmer. And all it takes is someone to crank up the heat and they bubble over. And so what you’re seeing today I think is that long-simmering discussion about what does it mean to be Asian or Asian-American in the United States and is that different, is that a different understanding than maybe what the majority culture views our model minority to be.

Frederica Freyberg:

You can see that full-length interview online at PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab.

There has been a jump in the number of unaccompanied children seeking entry into the U.S. from its southern border with Mexico, with more than 16,000 minors reported in federal custody. President Biden this week tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with addressing the root causes that prompt migrating people to leave their home countries. The director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the UW-Madison Law School is an expert on the issue. Erin Barbato joins us now and thanks very much for being here again.

Erin Barbato:

Thank you so much for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is your reaction to the influx of people seeking entry at the southern border, especially this number of children?

Erin Barbato:

You know, my reaction is it’s heart-breaking and it’s heart-breaking to see how this has become such a politicized issue, especially when we’re speaking about children. These are children that we are permitting to enter our country to seek refuge here and people are — they’re being demonized even though they are children for their actions.

Frederica Freyberg:

From what you understand, what are the conditions for these children?

Erin Barbato:

The conditions in the United States for where they’re being processed, you know, they’re not a standard that you would want any child to be in. There’s a large number of children that are arriving and we don’t have the capacity to hold them or provide shelter for them before they’re being reunited with family or friends or in a foster care in the United States. And the pandemic has made it that much more difficult because of the conditions that we need to have social distancing in there as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. In fact, I’ve now read that hundreds of the children have tested positive for COVID-19. How critical is this situation and can it become?

Erin Barbato:

You know, it’s obviously very dangerous. The process — I mean these children are already fleeing something that have made them leave their families, their friends, their homes to come into a situation where they are again not necessarily safe. I think the administration is working really hard to correct the situation, but it’s incredibly difficult.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is the U.S. doing enough to house and care for them in an adequate manner?

Erin Barbato:

At this point, I don’t think so. But that being said, I think there’s an effort to provide safe housing and shelter to these children. But it’s going to take some time. And they’re not going to stop arriving at our border until things are better in their home countries.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, have there been policy shifts under the new administration that are either helping or hurting this situation?

Erin Barbato:

Well, I think that’s hard to say what is helping or hurting the situation. The situation hasn’t changed in their countries in particularly the northern triangle of Central American. It’s only gotten more difficult for people to survive there due to recent natural disasters as well as the political environment and the controlling gangs there. So whether — President Biden changed one policy, but it’s a law. The law that allows unaccompanied minors to enter the country to seek refuge. President Trump had barred children from doing that even prior to the pandemic. When we look at the numbers that are coming, the prior administration attempted to deter people from coming and really what they did is just delay it and that’s what we’re seeing now.

Frederica Freyberg:

Kamala Harris, as we said, will become the point person to address the root causes of why so many people and children are leaving their home countries. What in your mind, and this is a big global question, but what needs to be done?

Erin Barbato:

We need to start treating people seeking refuge with humanity and also following our laws. We have had such aggressive deterrence over the past four years that people have died, people have hurt, people — we’re not following our humanitarian policies in order to provide protection to people in the world, especially to children. It’s incredibly complicated. We can’t deny that. We are also an incredibly wealthy country that has the resources to treat children and people seeking refuge with much more humane policies.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is there something, briefly with about a half a minute left that needs to be done in their countries of origin that the U.S. can accomplish?

Erin Barbato:

Well, the Obama administration had started to provide systems and support to combat some of these push factors sending people to the United States, but those went away under the Trump administration. The Biden administration is attempting to create more policies that will make things better for people in those countries and then they won’t have to seek and flee for refuge in the United States.

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave is there. Erin Barbato, thank you very much.

Erin Barbato:

Thank you so much for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Even though courts found no legal basis last year for claims of Wisconsin election fraud, a state panel will investigate election procedures and will give lawmakers subpoena powers over records and individuals. This as a result of Republicans in the state Assembly passing a resolution to direct a committee to get the investigation underway. The resolution claims Wisconsin election officials failed to adhere to and encouraged noncompliance with elections laws. The committee is instructed to focus only on elections after January 1, 2019. Republican Representative Joe Sanfelippo is the vice-chair of the Committee on Campaigns and Elections. I spoke with him earlier. Representative Sanfelippo, thanks very much for joining us on this.

Joe Sanfelippo:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So my first question to you is do you yet acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election?

Joe Sanfelippo:

Oh, yeah. I don’t think that that’s, you know, in question. And everything we’re doing really has nothing to do with the presidential election per se. It has to do more with the look at how our elections are administered throughout the state.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you want to gather more evidence to see if election laws were broken, but wasn’t that kind of asked and answered several times in courts of law in Wisconsin and across the nation when both the Trump campaign and his allies sued over these issues and lost?

Joe Sanfelippo:

Well, I think there’s a couple different things. First of all, a lot of those court cases never even got to the point where evidence was presented and so they were just dismissed before they got to the evidentiary process. The other thing is that the Trump campaign was focusing solely on his campaign and his results. And I think that what we want to look at here, because we’ve seen evidence and we’ve heard stories from various areas around the state that just are pointing to the fact that our election laws that are already on the books may not be being followed. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not being followed for nefarious reasons. Could be there’s a lack of proper training or somebody just didn’t take the time to do something that they were supposed to do. And, you know, we have to provide equal protection under the law. And the way to do that for elections is to make sure that in all of our jurisdictions, which we have over 1800 of them in the state, we want to make sure that the election laws on the books are being evenly adhered to throughout the entire state and that’s what our focus is on.

Frederica Freyberg:

So tell me, what kinds of elections laws are you going to be focusing on?

Joe Sanfelippo:

Well, you know, last week or a couple weeks ago we had a hearing and we looked at things in particular in Green Bay that took place and through a series of looking at emails and things that were presented to the committee as evidence, I mean, it was clear that we had third parties from outside of the election process in charge running — you know, calling the shots, running at least one central count location. Those are things that are against the law that should not be being done. We know that in some areas around the state we had clerks that were curing ballots on their own, which is contrary to law. And so I think we have to take a look at why those practices need to be done and maybe we need to — if we have to update the laws to allow for some of these things, we should. But the fact of the matter is only the Legislature can make election law and we shouldn’t allow clerks on their own to be deciding what laws they’re going to follow, what laws they’re not going to follow, because that’s when you get into this uniformity issue.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, I know that in covering all of these matters that the State Elections Commission was giving guidance to clerks and that things like curing ballots was something that clerks do do and in Green Bay I know that officials are saying what you presented at that hearing, it just didn’t happen.

Joe Sanfelippo:

Well, I know that’s what the Green Bay talk has been, especially from the mayor. But the emails tell a completely different story. For example, there is one of these individuals who is not associated with the city from a third-party group out of state and there’s an email that says he and only he should have access, the keys and access to the central count location. Now, that is strictly against the law. When he was asked what his role was in the election, if he was an employee of the city of Green Bay or a contractor, he just said, no, he was an election observer. Well, election observers aren’t given keys to the central count locations with access to the tabulating machines. It’s things like that that we need to dig into further.

Frederica Freyberg:

Just really briefly, your elections committee was given the authority to subpoena people to come and testify before you. Who do you want to subpoena?

Joe Sanfelippo:

Well, you know, I’m actually hoping that we won’t even have to get that far with subpoenas, right? Because our elections — we have a history in Wisconsin of having very open and transparent elections and I can’t imagine why any election official would not want to come and speak openly about how elections are administered in their jurisdiction. Now, that being said, we may have to rely — because there are these third parties involved that are not state employees or city or local, county employees, we may have to subpoena documents, we may have to subpoena people to get them to come in and testify. And so we’re just kind of setting the platform in place in case we need to do that.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there, but we thank you very much for your time. We’ll be watching all of this.

Joe Sanfelippo:

You got it. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. If you have any other questions going forward, please just reach out.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Sanfelippo wants the Elections Committee to dig further into the role of outside election consultants like those who worked in Green Bay in November. He alleges one such consultant was running the central count location in Green Bay. The city’s mayor rejects the allegations and in a statement said this: “The city’s conduct of the election in 2020 has been heavily scrutinized, including being the subject of numerous records requests, news articles and lawsuits. In each case the city’s actions have been upheld. No ballots were ever in the care or custody of these consultants,” the statement said. Why is Green Bay a target of legislative Republicans intent on relitigating allegations of election fraud as they make their way toward changing election laws? We check in with Democratic Representative Kristina Shelton of Green Bay and thanks very much for being here.

Kristina Shelton:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a great day to talk about voting rights and election integrity.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is your response to Green Bay’s election count process being a target of a Republican investigation?

Kristina Shelton:

You know, no matter where we come from, our background, the color of our skin or our zip code, we all want fair, free, legitimate, transparent elections that follow election law and uphold our shared values. And what I’ve seen is my fellow Republican colleagues in the Wisconsin State Legislature sow division and divide based on no evidence at this time. What I would like for us to do is get back to work for working families and help people navigate out of the coronavirus. As to their intent, you know, I’m unable to answer their intent because that’s on them. But my job is to legislate based on evidence and I have seen no evidence that we should be taking this any further.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the Elections Committee conducting this probe will be armed with subpoena power to bring people in to testify. What do you make of that?

Kristina Shelton:

Well, I talked to our mayor here and he has assured me that he’s open to working with the campaign and Elections Committee to tell our story. You know, with that committee hearing a few weeks ago, it was very disappointing. No one from our city — I was not invited to participate at all. So it was a one-sided perspective of what happened here. It was very frustrating to the people of Green Bay and to the 90th because our story is very different. People feel very confident about our election and they know that it was legitimate and followed election law.

Frederica Freyberg:

Still, Green Bay did have its issues in the last election cycle. During the April primary, there were long lines as only two of 35 polling places were open. The city didn’t accept the help of the Wisconsin National Guard. Does Green Bay need changes in the administration of elections, in your mind?

Kristina Shelton:

Every community and municipality faced unprecedented challenges during the elections of 2020. And what we saw was difficulty in the April election and we saw our city officials pivot quite beautifully to be able to provide additional polling locations, additional staff and volunteers to be able to ensure that people could vote and still be healthy and safe. And with that additional need came additional costs. And so we saw our community reach out to and apply for grants among other communities here in the state. Hundreds of communities applied for and received funding. And what we would have liked to have seen is a Legislature last year that would have done their job to provide public funding and public monies to be able to do so. When they didn’t, communities had to look elsewhere.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the Legislature as you well know is looking to change election law in Wisconsin, the Republican majority, mostly around tightening up absentee voting. Representative Sanfelippo told me they are not going to do anything that stops people from voting. How do you regard the proposed bills?

Kristina Shelton:

We have a coordinated assault on voting rights here, not just in Green Bay and Wisconsin, but around the country. 43 states have put forward over 250 bills. People need to know this is based on a lack of any evidence. This is an assault on voting rights. We need to engage people in telling the truth and standing up for our democracy. Again, we have so much work on the table that we need to get to for working people. That’s where my priorities are and that’s what I’m going to continue to do in my leadership in the Assembly.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We appreciate your time today, Representative Kristina Shelton of Green Bay. Thanks.

Kristina Shelton:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

That’s it tonight. Next Friday night, the candidates running for the April 6th election for state school superintendent will be here. Deborah Kerr and Jill Underly will appear together. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

Announcer:

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