MacIver News Service
By M.D. Kittle
MADISON, Wis. – A coalition of left-wing organizations prepared to stop Foxconn Technology Group in Wisconsin “any way we can” has gotten the band together – literally – for a day of protests during the tech giant’s groundbreaking ceremony this week.
Operation: Shake the Ground!, a coalition press release states, is expected to bring together 40 liberal organizations, including Sousaphones Against Hate, a big brass-playing ensemble of lefties marching against oppression with the motto “Resist and Protest.”
The coalition features a “diverse group” of liberals, “with a core team made up of landowners and residents of Mount Pleasant, Racine and Kenosha; students and youth leaders; environmentalists; civil rights advocates; interfaith communities; transportation advocates; public school teachers; UW professors; union workers; farmers; and indigenous leaders,” according to the press release.
The coalition’s so-called stand against oppression and “corruption” is slated to begin at noon Thursday in the pavilion at Smolenski Park in Mount Pleasant.
Of course nothing says oppression quite like an advanced technology manufacturer investing billions of dollars into southeast Wisconsin and creating tens of thousands of family-supporting jobs. Ironically, Foxconn makes the components for the many of the smartphones and personal tablet devices these radicals have used to organize their anti-business rallies.
But these ground shakers see the Foxconn development deal – the largest of its kind in U.S. history – as a “boondoggle … passed by an unrepresentative state legislature, politically motivated to boost the governor’s reelection bid.”
Gov. Scott Walker and President Donald Trump will be joined by Foxconn CEO and founder Terry Gou and a number of local, state and national dignitaries at Thursday’s groundbreaking in Mount Pleasant. The growing Racine County community is the site of the planned manufacturing campus (the size of 11 Lambeau Fields) expected to employ 13,000 people at maximum capacity. Contractors charged with building the massive facility are expected to employ some 10,000 construction workers over the next five years to get the job done.
Critics, led by the Democratic Party and their allies on the left, have decried the hefty state incentives tied to the project. The “pay as you go” development deal will provide state tax credits if Foxconn fulfills its job-creation promises and hits its combined investment pledge of $10 billion.
Extreme environmentalists in particular hate the development plan, predicting that the production facility will destroy southeast Wisconsin’s air and waterways. While they have blasted Walker’s administration for softening permitting standards, Foxconn has and will face rigorous state and federal requirements that demand substantial mitigation and other environmental safeguards.
This month the company said it would install a $30 million recycling system at the plant to sharply reduce its water consumption from Lake Michigan.
None of the safeguards proposed by the state and Foxconn have appeased the leftists.
As MacIver News Service first reported earlier this month, the coalition of the willing liberal groups has a longer-term strategy than just groundbreaking protests.
“We want this to not only be against Foxconn … but also be against those things that are happening due to the corruption of Walker being in office. But it will mainly focus on Foxconn,” one of the leaders of the campaign said during a June conference call that MacIver News attended.
The protest, organizers say, is largely about the “landowners and residents impacted directly or indirectly by the misuses of eminent domain and blighted zone rulings…” But it all reeks of progressive politics.
The latest press release, sent out last week, notes the coalition will be conducting voter registration during the rallies.
A rally at the Mount Pleasant Village Hall will feature “voices from all over the state concerned with the economic, political, social and environmental repercussions from the Foxconn deal and the corrupt legislative body that approved it,” the press release states.
The lineup of guests and speakers includes “Assembly, Senate and Gubernatorial candidates from throughout the state.”
Coalition members insist, “Luring Foxconn to Wisconsin is the biggest mistake of Scott Walker’s tenure as Governor.”
Perhaps they haven’t checked the latest Marquette University Law School poll, which shows 56 percent of registered voters statewide believe the Foxconn plant will substantially improve the economy of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The poll also found that 52 percent of respondents believe the state is heading in the right direction. In a politically divided Wisconsin, Walker’s approval rating, at 49 percent, is higher than his disapproval rating for the first time in nearly four years.
See: LIBERAL ACTIVISTS PREPARE TO STOP FOXCONN “ANY WAY WE CAN” June 5, 2018[avatar user=”M. D. Kittle” align=”left”][/avatar]M.D. Kittle is an Investigative Reporter with the MacIver Institute. This article appears courtesy of the MacIver Institute.
