Bending the Arc

On Tuesday, January 14, 2025 Gov. Evers signed Executive Order #254, creating a statewide Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention, and announced that he is directing $10 million for the Office to begin its work and administer grants supporting violence and gun violence prevention efforts statewide.

Gov. Evers also announced his 2025-27 Executive Budget will provide his most robust and comprehensive gun safety reform efforts to date in addition to providing sustainable, ongoing state funding to make the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention a permanent office in state government.

“Just weeks ago, we had a heartbreaking, deadly school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School here in Madison. As a father, a grandfather, and as governor, it is unthinkable that a kid and an educator woke up and went to school that morning and never came home. That should never happen. Not to any kid, not to any educator, not to any person or family—not in this state or anywhere else in this country,” said Gov. Evers today at a press conference in Madison.

“I have said from the beginning that I would never accept gun violence as a foregone reality or stop working to change it. Violence, including gun violence, is a statewide problem, with statewide consequences for people and families across our state,” Gov. Evers continued. “This issue has long deserved a comprehensive, statewide response, and that’s what we’ll be taking on with our new Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention.

“But our Office of Violence Prevention is just one part of the work ahead. While we’ve recently seen other violent crime rates decline, rates of gun deaths in Wisconsin have increased significantly over the last decade. Comprehensive, commonsense gun safety reform is a critical part of reducing crime, including gun violence, statewide, and this issue must be a shared priority that transcends politics and partisanship. We must work together to address the cycle of violence, prevent crime, and keep our kids, our families, our schools, and our communities safe,” concluded Gov. Evers.

Among other critical responsibilities, Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention as created by Gov. Evers will work to:

• Connect the dots between state and local government agencies, including law enforcement agencies, to ensure a whole-of-government approach to prevent violence, including gun violence statewide; 
• Support and provide technical assistance to local violence prevention and intervention efforts;  
• Administer and award grants to school districts, firearm dealers, law enforcement agencies, non-profits, and government agencies to support violence reduction and prevention initiatives;  
• Develop public education campaigns to promote safer communities; and  
• Identify opportunities to improve statewide policies or laws. 

Additionally, Gov. Evers is directing $10 million in federal funding to ensure the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention can begin its important work without waiting for the conclusion of the biennial budget process while also supporting grants aimed at reducing crime, preventing violence, including gun violence, and efforts to improve community safety across Wisconsin:

• Through Gov. Evers’ directed investment in the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention, the office will administer grants to eligible entities including school districts, law enforcement agencies, nonprofits, firearm dealers, and government agencies to support violence and gun violence reduction initiatives. 
• Applicable entities will be able to apply to receive funding for eligible expenses and initiatives aimed at interrupting, reducing, and preventing violence and promoting community safety. 
• Examples of eligible expenses for relevant entities will include but are not limited to: 
  • Supporting multi-agency law enforcement investigations; 
  • Using crime gun intelligence tools; 
  • Implementing suicide prevention education to identify individuals in crisis, including at the point of sale for firearms; 
  • Implementing or improving threat assessment training;  
  • Promoting and administering safe storage and gun buyback programs;  
  • Providing technical assistance and support to help design, implement, and/or staff evidence-based community policing, crime reduction initiatives, and gun violence crisis response teams;  
  • Implementing or enhancing domestic violence prevention programs; 
  • Implementing school-based programming, including suicide prevention and firearm safety training; and 
  • Supporting mentoring and after-school programs and other efforts aimed at keeping kids out of trouble and out of harms way. 

More details and information about eligible entities, expenses, and application processes for the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention’s statewide violence prevention grants will be forthcoming.

STATISTICS ON VIOLENCE AND GUN VIOLENCE IN WISCONSIN

Over the last six years, Gov. Evers has worked with dedicated advocates and organizations across the state to address the root causes of violence. According to data from the Wisconsin Department of Justice, violent crimes like homicide, robbery, and assault are down from just a few years ago across the state. Additionally, according to the Milwaukee Police Department, homicide rates in the city fell for the second year in a row.

However, over the last decade, the rate of gun deaths in Wisconsin has gotten worse. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the rate of gun deaths has increased 54 percent from 2014 to 2023 in Wisconsin, compared to a 34 percent increase nationwide over that same time period. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that, as of 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death for kids in America—surpassing car accidents and cancer—with gun death rates in this age group increasing by 106 percent over the last 11 years. In every year since 2019, there have been more mass shootings than days in the year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Additionally, End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin also showed that in 2023 Wisconsin saw the second highest rates of domestic violence deaths in the state since they began tracking this data more than 20 years ago, 78 percent of which involved firearms.

Further, in 2022, there were more than 48,000 firearm-related deaths in America, the second-highest year on record, with more than half of those deaths being suicide. That’s true here in Wisconsin, too, where nearly 60 percent of all suicide deaths are firearm-related.

Gun violence does not just affect only the largest cities and urban areas in Wisconsin. A recent analysis on Gun Death in Wisconsin, firearm suicide rates have remained higher in rural Wisconsin compared to urban areas, and the majority of firearm deaths in rural areas of Wisconsin are suicide deaths.

As gun violence in particular continues to persist in communities across the state, especially in Wisconsin’s rural areas and communities, a commitment to comprehensive community violence prevention as well as robust investments in mental and behavioral health services, crime victim services, coupled with commonsense gun safety reform has never been more important.

BACKGROUND ON GOV. EVERS' EFFORTS TO REDUCE CRIME AND KEEP KIDS, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES SAFE

Over his tenure as governor, Gov. Evers and his administration have worked to address the gun violence epidemic and have sought to enact commonsense gun safety reform to address these harrowing statistics. In October 2019, the governor called a special session of the Wisconsin State Legislature to address gun violence in the state of Wisconsin and proposed two critical proposals relating to universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders. Despite the fact that a majority of Wisconsinites, including gun owners, support the implementation of commonsense measures like universal background checks (79 percent) and extreme risk protection orders (81 percent), Republicans ignored the will of the people and refused to take up the governor’s special session bills.

Gov. Evers has also proposed commonsense community safety and gun safety measures in all three of the biennial budgets he has introduced to date. In his 2023-25 Executive Budget, the governor proposed:

• Making gun safes, barrel locks, and trigger locks sales tax exempt to encourage safe, secure, and responsible storage of firearms when they are not in use;
• Requiring, with certain exceptions, that any firearm transfers be done through federally licensed firearm dealers, including background checks conducted on recipients; and
• Creating an extreme risk protection injunction process similar to the existing domestic violence injunction for law enforcement and concerned loved ones to use where a court, after a hearing, may order an individual to refrain from possessing a firearm for up to one year if it finds by clear and convincing evidence that he or she is substantially likely to injure himself or herself or another by possessing a firearm. 

Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature removed these proposals in the biennial budget process and have largely declined to take action on commonsense gun safety measures or pass other meaningful investments to make Wisconsin’s communities safer. Nevertheless, since 2019, Gov. Evers and his administration have been working to keep Wisconsinites and local communities healthy and safe, including taking action to prevent gun violence through commonsense gun safety reforms and working to invest directly in violence prevention and intervention.

In recent years, Gov. Evers has directed more than $100 million of the state’s allocation of ARPA funds toward community safety and violence prevention efforts. In 2021, the governor announced an initial $45 million investment to address the root causes of violence by investing in programs and interventions being spearheaded by organizations already working in local communities, including investing $25 million into violence prevention efforts and $20 million to support victim services in Wisconsin, such as: 

• $6.6 million to the Medical College of Wisconsin’s (MCW) Violence Prevention Project, which is housed in their Comprehensive Injury Center. These funds are being used to support research, data collection, education, and community engagement efforts around violence prevention as a public health issue; 
• $10.4 million also to MCW’s Violence Prevention Project to administer a competitive grant process to support violence project efforts statewide. Ten communities and organizations were selected to receive these funds in June 2023.   
• $8 million to the City of Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention to respond to the pandemic-related uptick in violence and trauma with projects that take a public health approach to violence prevention; and 
• $20 million to support Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grant recipients, as the state has seen critical cuts to federal VOCA funding over the last several years and an increased need for services.  
  • Gov. Evers later signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 241, which directed $10 million to support violence prevention and crime victim and survivor services, including providing funding for sexual assault victim services, domestic abuse grants, and child advocacy grants.  

To continue to build on these efforts to support safer communities, in March 2022, Gov. Evers announced an additional more than $50 million investment of ARPA funds in community safety and crime prevention initiatives, including:

• More than $19 million for a statewide law enforcement grant program that provided an allocation to every local and Tribal law enforcement agency in Wisconsin, enabling agencies to address the unique needs facing their communities, including training, recruitment bonuses, community policing needs, and technology investments;  
• $1 million for the Wisconsin Technical College System to support part-time police academy programs in Wisconsin;  
• Nearly $20 million to Milwaukee County and the city of Milwaukee for criminal justice system initiatives and community safety projects; and 
• More than $16 million toward reducing the pandemic-related backlog of criminal cases statewide. 

Gov. Evers has also signed multiple bills that improve on his administration’s ongoing efforts to prevent reckless driving and improve road safety in Wisconsin, including signing 2023 Wisconsin Act 1, which was the first bill enacted in the governor’s second term and aims to curb reckless driving by allowing counties and municipalities to enact ordinances authorizing law enforcement to impound a vehicle if its owner is cited for reckless driving and has a prior conviction for reckless driving and has not paid the imposed forfeiture for that offense. In May 2023, Gov. Evers also signed two bills to help address reckless driving and carjacking in the state by increasing penalties for both and creating a new “carjacking” section of the criminal code. Additionally, in December 2023, Gov. Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 86, a bipartisan bill aimed at reducing reckless driving and improving road safety by expanding access to driver education. Finally, in March 2024, Gov. Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 226, which increases the penalty for fleeing or attempting to elude an officer and creates a mandatory minimum sentence if it results in death or great bodily harm.

In addition to direct investments in community safety and violence prevention, Gov. Evers has also made addressing mental health a cornerstone issue of his administration. Having declared 2023 as the “Year of Mental Health” as part of his 2023-2025 biennial budget, Gov. Evers proposed approximately $500 million to expand access to mental and behavioral health services across Wisconsin. While a majority of Gov. Evers’ innovative proposals to address mental health were rejected by Republicans in the Legislature, the final budget signed into law by Gov. Evers included $30 million to continue funding for school-based mental health modeled on the governor’s “Get Kids Ahead” initiative, helping schools provide needed mental health services to their pupils through community partnerships, as well as directed $10 million to establish two crisis urgent care and observation centers for individuals in crisis and $200,000 to support farmer mental health assistance programming at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Gov. Evers has also previously directed more than $10 million to support veteran services in Wisconsin, including $4.5 million to support veteran mental health initiatives, such as access to community-based programs, emergency services, and peer support programs. The governor, most recently, awarded nine nonprofit organizations across the state $600,000 in funding through the Veteran Mental Health Community-Based Organization Grant program.

January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

 As part of the Franciscan Peace Center's commitment to education and advocacy, they will be hosting a virtual screening and talkback session for the film “Food Chains.”

“Food Chains” reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food and supermarkets. Supermarkets earn $4 trillion globally. They have tremendous power over the agricultural system. Over the past 3 decades, they have drained revenue from their supply chain leaving farmworkers in poverty and forced to work under subhuman conditions.  In this exposé, an intrepid group of Florida farmworkers battle to defeat the global supermarket industry through their ingenious Fair Food program, which partners with growers and retailers to improve working conditions for farm laborers in the United States.  Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farm workers and a more humane, transparent food chain.

The link to view this film will be distributed immediately upon registration, and participants are invited to join the talkback session from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm CST on January 23, 2025. During the talkback session, the Franciscan Peace Center will be joined by members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers as we discuss issues related to labor trafficking including forced migration, unsafe working conditions, and unfair wages.

You are invited to join. Please click HERE to register for the talk back session. 

A preview of the film is available HERE. 

If you have questions, please contact Marsha Thrall at mthrall@clintonfranciscans.com.
 

The problem of human trafficking has become so prevalent that in 2011, President Barack Obama designated January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. National Human Trafficking Awareness Day is observed annually on Jan. 11. And in 2015, the Vatican named Feb. 8 the International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking.

Below are some valuable resources:

In this Global Catholic Sisters Report article of January 6, 2025, sisters reflect on their ministry to survivors of sex trafficking in the Midwest.

In a recent meeting with members of Sisters Program of the Benedict Center in Milwaukee, WI, LCWR-9 Justice Promoters and Communicators joined staff and board members to discuss how they could work together to maximize the advocacy efforts around human trafficking issues. (See group photo)

Read the January newsletter from Alliance to End Human Trafficking
 

Taking a Faithful Stand for Equity, a program of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, started as a one-time teaching webinar whose work expanded into a statewide campaign working on equity with a particular focus on what is happening in our schools. Currently, this group gathers for monthly webinars featuring speakers on a variety of topics related to equity and a time for local organizing around the state. 

The next meeting of Taking a Faithful Stand for Equity will be on Tuesday, January 14, at 6:30 PM on Zoom.

Attendees will consider What Is The Beloved Community's "Project 2025?" What do we, who are trying to build the Beloved Community, need to work on in 2025? What tools do we have for doing that work?

Join the conversation and exercise your holy imagination! 

Register here
 

You are invited to a 3-session online conversation on the book, “Come Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and Earth” by Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ.

Gatherings are Mondays, 5:30 – 6:45 pm CST with the following schedule:
1. January 27, 2025 Before meeting read sections: Intro; Creation: A Relationship; and The Vivifying Presence of God, up to page 91.
2. February 10, 2025 Before meeting, read sections: Jesus and the Earth; and, Humankind and Otherkind, up to page179.
3. February 24, 2025 Before meeting, read section: God’s Beloved Creation and Afterward.

Register with this link by January 15, 2025: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0uc-6grz8rHtYvgKmcZ0mdFDj8rwxv-9VH 

For more information contact planners, Sr. Catherine Darcy, RSM at cdarcy@sistersofmercy.org; Sr. Carol De Angelo, SC at cdeangelo@scny.org, Sr. Alice Marie Giordano, OSU at giordanomdg@aol.com 

Conversation format: opening prayer, highlights of section, small group discussion followed by large group discussion.

Sponsored by Metro New York Catholic Climate Movement, ROAR (Religious Organizations Along the River), Dominican Sisters of Hope, Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, Sisters of Charity of New York, Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Sisters of Mercy Justice Team - NY, Ursulines of the Roman Union, Eastern Province.
 

More than 60 Catholic groups and individuals — including the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes — signed a letter urging President Joseph Biden to support an initiative promoting debt relief for low- and middle-income countries.

Specifically, the letter asks Biden to support a new issuance of Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, which are a reserve asset created by the International Monetary Fund. With the stroke of a pen, the SDRs through executive authority would provide people around the world with direly needed relief from their suffering in the face of poverty, hunger, and natural disaster and doing so would cap Biden’s legacy of global leadership.

The letter was covered in this Global Sisters Report article on January 6, 2025. 

The Giffords Center just released its Annual Gun Law Scorecard, which analyzes and grades all 50 states on the strength of their gun laws and compares that to their gun death rate. The data is undeniable: Fewer people die from gun violence in states that care enough to pass gun safety laws. It’s that simple. The gun violence crisis isn’t a mystery. It’s a choice America has made.

Read the Scorecard

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law, making the state the second to hold fossil fuel companies financially accountable for environmental damages. Modeled after the 1980 Superfund law, the legislation mandates major fossil fuel firms, responsible for most carbon emissions since 2000, to pay $3 billion annually for 25 years. Climate advocates called it a "massive win" for workers, youth, and the environment, as the law seeks to address the long-term impact of corporate pollution and fund necessary environmental cleanup efforts. 

Read more

The outcome of the November election may not have been what some of us were hoping or expecting, but we are invited to consider how we will respond.

The CSA community is invited to join Racine Dominicans and their Justice Promoter, Tim Hall, for a 2-part conversation about the results and implications of the November Presidential election.

Part 1: What Happened? January 9 at 6:30 pm
Part 2: The Way Forward January 16 at 6:30 pm

No registration required. The Zoom link is the same for both sessions: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89134343300 

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced to congress in 1971, proposing that it should be clearly written into the constitution that people should be protected equally under the law in the United States no matter their gender. The House of Representatives passed the legislation with overwhelming margins in both parties. One year later it passed the Senate with an eighty-four to eight majority. The next step would be for 3/4 of the states to adopt and then it would be added as a constitutional amendment. In five years they were only three states short of the number needed. Unfortunately, this is when a vocal high profile anti-feminist conservative activist, Phyllis Schlafly, led a resistance to the ERA effort using scare tactics and misinformation. It worked and the legislation was stalled for years.

Then in 2020 three more states, Nevada, Illinois and Virginia adopted the ERA through the work of women activists in response to the loss of women’s rights - hitting the magic number for ratification. At that point the ERA cleared all the bars for becoming a constitutional amendment. All that was left was for the President to contact the national archivist and tell them to publish the ERA into law.

But, when those last three states ratified, the Trump White House sent a memo saying that the national archivist could not publish the ERA because the original piece of legislation had a deadline of 1982.

Because of that deadline you would think the amendment was over. But there is clear legal argument for the continuation of the ERA. Including the fact that constitutional amendments don’t normally have time limits. The 27th Amendment was ratified in 1992, a full 223 years after it was introduced. Also there is nothing in the constitution that says an amendment has to be passed within a particular time limit. In August of 2024, the American Bar Association made a public statement that a deadline for ratification of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not consistent with Article V of the Constitution.

The point is that there is a real legal challenge to Trump’s White House memo to the archivist. All President Joe Biden has to do is pick up the phone and tell the national archivist to publish the ERA (which has jumped every constitutional hoop - passing overwhelmingly in the House and Senate, and 3/4 of the states adopting the legislation).

Yes, there will be undoubtedly a legal challenge. Currently over 45 Senators and over 100 House members have written and encouraged Biden to call the national archivist and put the publishing of the ERA into motion — then let it work through the courts as it should.

The publishing of the ERA would be a significant firewall for legislation that would discriminate against women and persons in the LGBTQ+ community. 
Contact President Biden and Vice President Harris today, requesting they make publishing the ERA before the end of their term a priority.

Read more about the full 100-year history of the ERA
 

Clean Wisconsin and other environmental and health advocacy groups in the state have written an open letter to call on Microsoft to power its data center with local clean energy. Right now, We Energies is planning to meet the data center demand by spending billions on new gas power plants and pipelines, a move that will push Wisconsin’s climate goals out of reach, locking the state into 30 more years of fossil fuels at a time when we must rapidly transition to clean energy. More than 1,000 Wisconsinites have also signed their name to this letter. You read the letter and sign on too at cleanwisconsin.org/Microsoft