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Once every two years, the state of Wisconsin passes a budget, which has enormous implications for all of us. That budget will determine what resources our schools will have, what kind of health care will be available to many people, whether there are alternatives to incarceration, and who gets to attend our colleges and universities. This is our chance to make major progress toward Treatment Instead of Prison (TIP), and we won’t have another chance like it until 2009.

At the same time, the United States Congress seems poised to take up the issue of Immigration at long last. If something is going to happen, it will be now. The consensus opinion is that significant immigration reform will either happen in the next six months or it won’t happen until at least 2009!

I want to spend most of this report catching you up on TIP and the state budget, as well as the state of the Immigration campaign. Then, I’ll use a little space to catch you up on a few the other fun goings-on, including dinners and breakfast and breakfast-for-dinners… But first, a reminder:

It has been a while since we met in person, and we have a lot to catch up on. Please try to be there, or at least to send someone in your place. And, please let me know if there are things you want to be sure are included on the agenda.

As was mentioned in the overview, this is a key time for TIP. A quick update on the issue:

The Governor did some good things in his budget proposal – most notably, putting about $2 million into alternatives to revocation. This is mostly money for Day Reporting and other alternatives for parolees who fail a drug test (rather than returning them to prison for 18 months).

The bad thing is that the TAD (Treatment Alternatives and Diversions) money – which is the fund counties can apply to for up-front diversions – is only up from $755,000 in last year’s budget to about $1.25 million in this year’s budget (with about $500,000 of that earmarked for Milwaukee). Even though this is a bigger budget, it would actually be less total money (because last year, before the election, they found an extra $1 million to put into TAD grants).

In the meantime, the Governor’s budget calls for a HUGE increase (about $288 million PER YEAR) in the Corrections budget. (Ironically, much of that increase is because of needing to meet the needs of so many non-violent offenders with AODA issues, mental health issues, and other health-related problems, who are in the prisons…) So… We are on a big push right now to get the word out and educate decision-makers and ordinary citizens about the potential benefits of more money in the TAD pot. Our goal is to get $22 million per year of that Corrections increase re-directed to TAD. ($22 million is the figure that the Justice Strategies report of 2006 estimated would be sufficient to provide the needed alternatives.)

Right now, the “Joint Committee on Finance” is working on the budget. So far, WISDOM has had a pretty notable presence in Milwaukee, Madison and Chippewa Falls, and Prairie du Chein. Next week, we have a couple of local allies prepared to testify on behalf of TIP in Rhinelander, and on Thursday we hope ESTHER and JOSHUA can help us end with a bang in Green Bay. We have had local people speaking to in each place. We’ve had some drug court participants, some local officials, some religious leaders, some law enforcement folks…

Very soon, we will come to the next phase of our efforts. Please stay tuned. First, we will see if Joint Finance adds any money to TAD. Then, the budget will be considered separately by the State Senate and the State Assembly. We will be asking for everyone to reach out to their Senators and Assembly representatives as those decisions draw near. Finally, the Governor will need to sign (and not use his line item veto power) whatever budget comes from the legislature.

We will do our best to keep everyone informed. We have made tremendous progress on this issue in the past couple of years. Now, everyone agrees that TIP is a good idea; the goal in 2007 is to get some very significant resources behind that good idea.

Just to let you know, the TIP struggle has been joined on several more local fronts as well:

· MICAH is working with Congresspeople and others to try to get renewal of the “Wiser Choice” federal funding for alternatives in Milwaukee. This is something we had worked on getting about 4 years ago, and for which we’ve had a couple of people on the advisory board in recent years.

· The most encouraging new development is that the new Milwaukee County District Attorney is very, very well-disposed to TIP. As a matter of fact, he has told MICAH leaders that his goal is to divert about 30% of people who would have gone to jail or prison under former policies. (That, all by itself, would have a monumental impact on the incarcerated population in Wisconsin.) He even went so far as to send one of his deputies to speak specifically to Joint Finance about TIP/TAD funding, along with our delegation.

Meanwhile, a few more counties have established “Criminal Justice Collaborating Councils.” And, we are actively battling against jail expansion in two counties at the moment.

I think we can all be proud of a lot of people who are working extremely hard for TIP in WISDOM’s name. Many, many people’s lives are being affected for the better. We’re not quite there, yet. The next few months will require a big push!

Immigration reform is another issue we have worked on for a long time in WISDOM. Just this past month, 10 people from Beloit, Appleton, Milwaukee and Racine went to Washington DC for a conference and an action day. On March 24, ESTHER held a huge event. JOSUE has been having meetings of a consistent group of about 25 people in Milwaukee. MICAH en Espanol got information and assistance to hundreds of people so they could get their Drivers’ Licenses and/or ID cards before the new rules took effect on April 1. Though we have not coordinated our efforts very well recently, we have done a lot of good work in a lot of places.

Right now, we are being asked by our partners in the Gamaliel Foundation and in the Fair Immigration Reform Movement to help move the Immigration Reform process forward. In a nutshell, here is where the issue stands:

Last year, the US House of Representatives passed the infamous Sensenbrenner Bill, which was very, very harsh, and which sparked millions of people around the country to take to the streets in protest. In the meantime, the US Senate passed a modified version of the McCain/Kennedy bill, which had some pretty impractical provisions, but which had the overriding virtue of at least providing a path to legalization and eventual citizenship for some of the 12 million undocumented people currently living, working, paying taxes, going to church and school in the United States. In the end, because there was no common ground, neither the House nor the Senate bill became law.

This year, the new Congress seems poised to try again. In the House of Representatives, Congressmen Guttierrez (D - Illinois) and Flake (R – Arizona) have proposed what is being called the STRIVE Act. It is not perfect. (It is also 700 pages long! These things are really complex.) But, it has some good provisions. Chief among them are that:

The Senate seems to be stuck on this issue right now. Because of the nature of the Senate, they really need 60 votes to get something difficult passed. They are working on a variety of “compromises” – some of which seem very, very impractical. Part of the problem seems to be that the President (who last year was a big supporter of Kennedy/McCain) is now very indecisive about the issue, and is floating some pretty bad ideas. Still, people think something could happen, especially if there is enough desire to finally get this fixed.

Everyone agrees that the best chance for comprehensive reform (reform that includes potential “legalization”) is coming up in the next six months. If it does not happen by then, we will be getting too swept up into partisan, election-year politics and we will lose our chance. That would, in effect, mean at least two more years of the unworkable status quo, of raids that are terrorizing communities, of workers being exploited, of separated families, etc.

So… Here’s what we want to ask of you. Please make a couple of phone calls – you could do it right now, as you are reading this On or about April 10, people around the country are working to call attention to the STRIVE Act and to the need for Congress to act soon! It will only take a minute to call and register your concern.

Our delegation is very important for this issue. Some (e.g. Ryan, Baldwin, Moore, Feingold, Kohl, Kagen) seem to be pretty certainly on the side of Comprehensive reform. Some (e.g. Kind, Obey, Petri) are seen as potential votes either way. Some are Congressman Sensenbrenner. No matter where they stand, though, it is important for them to hear from us. We need to convey that, among many important things, this is something we want them to take on with a little more urgency – and that they need to help keep the process moving.

At the end of this report is a list of Wisconsin Representatives and Senators, with their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. You don’t need to be an expert to call. You just need to ask them to work on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. If they are in the House of Representatives, tell them you hope the STRIVE Act will be dealt with and voted on soon. If it is a Senator, tell them you want the Senate to start work on something like the STRIVE Act.

Please. Make a call. Maybe you could ask a friend or two to make calls. It is very, very important for our Representatives and Senators to hear from us. (Senator Kohl’s office told us recently that they almost never get calls or letters from pro-immigrant groups; they only hear from anti-immigrant people who want only to punish.) There are plenty of experts in Washington who are prepared to worry about the fine points of the legislation. We just need our representatives to hear from constituents that we want them to get to work on it!

If you want to know more about the issue, you can look at the Gamaliel Foundation website (www.gamaliel.org) or the site by the Catholic Bishops (www.justiceforimmigrants.org). Again, the most important thing is to remind our representatives that we want them to act this year – not to stretch this out and make another campaign issue out of it.

There are a lot of other things happening in our organizations, including some real progress toward building an organization in LaCrosse. We’ll touch on some other things next month. For now, I just want to let everyone know about a few interesting things coming up soon.

JOSHUA Festival of Unity – April 22, 2:00-4:30 pm – Notre Dame Academy, Green Bay

This FREE event should be very interesting. The main presenter will be Ruth Broyde-Sharone. A few words about her:
Filmmaker, journalist, and peacebuilder Ruth Broyde-Sharone is recognized internationally for her interfaith work. She was awarded a gold medal by the Fete D'Excellence in Geneva for her work in multicultural education, and was invited to address roundtables at the UN three years in a row. Broyde-Sharone was the first woman and Jew to be asked to address the largest Muslim peace rally in Los Angeles (where she lives). In 2004 she was invited to present her award winning film, GOD AND ALLAH NEED TO TALK, at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Barcelona, Spain, and since then Broyde-Sharone has screened the film across the country on college campuses, in churches, synagogues, and mosques and last November at the Bangladeshi Embassy in Washington DC, at the invitation of the Ambassador.
Her motto for successful interfaith engagement:
"We have to be willing to welcome the stranger, and we have to be willing to be the stranger."

After the event, there will be food, representing a variety of ethnic groups in Green Bay. Co-sponsors and co-hosts for the event range from the Oneida Tribe of Indians to the Fox Valley Islamic Society to the Cnesses Israel congregation and the Greater Green Bay Community Fund.

JOSHUA’s fundraising event, and the time when they distribute their Yearbook, will be at their June 13 (6:00 pm) “Breakfast for Dinner Banquet” – which is another interesting concept!

This event, which will include a Silent Auction, will have as its keynote speaker our very own president, Rev. Joseph Jackson. At the breakfast, we will first unveil the first edition of the SOPHIA Yearbook. Casa de Esperanza, a very large and highly respected organization serving Spanish-speaking people and others in Waukesha County, is SOPHIA’s newest member. Tickets are $25. (You can call the WISDOM office if you want some.)

The annual CUSH dinner will also be the time to see the new CUSH Yearbook. We are also very excited to have Fr. Bryan Massingale of Marquette University as our speaker. If you have never heard Fr. Bryan, you should! He has a great heart for justice, has a brilliant and fresh way of seeing things, and he is a very, very engaging speaker. (Again, please call me or the WISDOM office if you’d like to order some tickets.)

We hare in the final stages of hiring two women who will, if all goes well, be working as organizers in RIC and CUSH. Their names are Raquel Freeman and Joyce Wilde. They will each start as half-time employees, and they will work together for both organizations. You will hear, I hope, more about them and from them in the coming months.

It seems to me that in congregation-based organizing, we need to do three things:

Wisconsin Congressional Delegation

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin
WASHINGTON OFFICE
2446 Rayburn Building
Washington DC 20515
(202) 225-2906
Web Form: http://www.house.gov/formbaldwin/IMA/get_address.htm

Congressman Ron Kind
WASHINGTON OFFICE
1406 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
PH: (202) 225-5506

Web Form: http://www.house.gov/kind/contact.shtml

Congresswoman Gwen Moore

WASHINGTON OFFICE

Phone: 202-225-4572

Web Form: http://www.house.gov/gwenmoore/contact.shtml

Representative Paul Ryan

WASHINGTON OFFICE
1113 Longworth HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3031

Web Form: http://www.house.gov/ryan/email.html

Representative Tom Petri

WASHINGTON OFFICE
2462 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2476

Senator Russ Feingold

WASHINGTON OFFICE
506 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4904
Phone: (202) 224-5323

Web Form: feingold.senate.gov/contact_opinion.html

Senator Herb Kohl
WASHINGTON OFFICE
(2nd and C St., NE)
330 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-5653
Web Form: kohl.senate.gov/gen_contact.html

Overview
There has, as usual, been a lot going on in the past month. We have had Prayer Breakfasts and Leadership Development trainings. We are in the process of searching for new organizers. We had a very, very good WISDOM Leadership Retreat, where we did some thinking about our common desire to be a prophetic presence, and where we spoke about future goals.

But… I won’t focus on any of the above in this report. I would like to use the following pages to talk about the 2007-09 Wisconsin State Budget. I will particularly focus on the funding for Treatment Instead of Prison (TIP). The very abbreviated version: We have a lot of work to do! The Governor very apparently did not see TIP as a priority. There is very, very little money for it in his proposed budget, even as he proposes a $288 million annual increase in the Corrections budget. As you will see in a bit, though, we are only at the beginning of the process, and there is still every reason to be optimistic.

February 13 Madison Action Day
We had a very good day in Madison on the 13^th. About 125 people participated, which was a few less than we anticipated, but more than we feared we would have when we awoke to dire weather forecasts that day. A few of the highlights of the day include:

If you look on the WISDOM website (www.wisdomwi.org), you can see the position papers we studied and distributed on the 13^th – as well as the newest version of our WISDOM brochure. Feel free to print those up and distribute them!

The State Budget and Treatment Instead of Prison (TIP)
There were a lot of things in the Governor’s proposed budget that corresponded to at least some of the concerns we spoke about on the 13^th. There is a provision that would allow the children of undocumented workers to attend Wisconsin colleges at the same tuition rate as their classmates. The proposed budget would increase the funding for the SAGE program to reduce class sizes for kindergarten through 3^rd grade, and it would increase support for 4 year-old kindergarten. It would provide some money for school nurses in the poorest schools in Milwaukee. Though it would not include the sweeping changes many of us believe necessary, it would expand access to health care.

BUT… it does not move the TIP agenda forward. As a matter of fact, it takes something of a step backward. Specifically:

· Last year (’06-’07), the budget called for only $755,000 of Treatment Alternatives and Diversions (TAD) grants. These are grants that counties can apply for in order to fund programs that will keep people out of jail or prison. Last year, 24 counties applied for TAD grants, requesting over $4 million.

· Last summer, the Governor re-directed some other funds which made it possible to award well over $1 million in TAD grants. (And, there were some other funds directed toward specific Drug Treatment Court programs, Day Reporting Centers, etc., which brought the total to around $2 million.)

· The proposed budget for 2007-09 calls for the same $755,000 for each of the two years (‘07-‘08 and ‘08-’09 – the budget year is July 1 to June 30.). Plus, in includes $250,000 in the first year for a pre-screening program in Milwaukee (which would increase to $500,000 in the second year). There would be another $250,000, it seems, for drug treatment in Milwaukee (which would also increase to $500,000 in the second year).

· So, the actual amount of TAD money available will go down from about $2 million in the current year to $1.25 million this coming year.

In the meantime, the overall budget for the Department of Corrections is proposed to increase by $288 million per year. (It was already over $1 billion per year before the increase.) I should make clear that much of that increase is coming for good reasons. The Department of Corrections is putting a lot of new money into health care in our prisons, which had been a big problem in some of the institutions. They are also providing a lot more Drug and Alcohol Treatment in the prisons – in part so that more prisoners can take advantage of the “earned release” that is possible under Truth in Sentencing. They are actually proposing to convert whole facilities to make treatment more available.

The problem is, however, that there is no new investment in the programs that can keep non-violent people out of jail and prison in the first place! It is good that we are finally getting serious about providing treatment and health care to people already in the prisons. We could, however, be much more effective if we invested even 10% of the amount of that increase in Treatment Alternatives and Diversions.

NOW WHAT? The State Budget Process
Wisconsin passes a biennial budget, as you might suspect, once every two years. It is supposed to be done by July 1. In a nutshell, the process is this:

Though TIP was slighted in the first step of this process, TIP funding can be increased by the Joint Finance Committee, or by the State Senate or by the Assembly.

Our focus for the next couple of months will be the Joint Finance Committee. They are:
SENATORS
Russ Decker (D) – Wausau (co-chair)
Dave Hansen (D) – Green Bay
Lena Taylor (D) – Milwaukee
Robert Jauch (D) – Superior
Mark Miller (D) – near Madison
John Lehman (D) – Racine
Alberta Darling (R) – North Suburban Milwaukee
Luther Olson (R) – Berlin (west of Oshkosh)

ASSEMBLY REPRESENTATIVES
Kitty Rhoades (R) – Hudson (near Minneapolis) co-chair
Dan Meyer (R) – Eagle River
Jeff Stone (R) – West Suburban Milwaukee
Steve Kestell (R) – Elkhardt Lake (near Shoboygan)
Scott Suder (R) – Abbotsford (west of Wausau)
Robin Vos (R) – Suburban Racine
Mark Pocan (D) – Madison
Pedro Colon -- Milwaukee

JOINT FINANCE COMMITTEE HEARINGS
A huge part of the Joint Finance Committee process is the hearings that are held around the state. This is the time when citizens, like you and me, can get three minutes to tell the Joint Finance Committee what they think. We need to have a very strong presence at these hearings. We need legislators to know that there are a lot of people in every part of our state who believe they need to increase the funding for TIP (as well as some other things). This will be our next organizing challenge. The hearings are scheduled for:

March 20 (Milwaukee)
        10:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

        March 21 (DeForest) – north of Madison, near Sun Prairie
        10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

        March 27 (Chippewa Falls)
        12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

        April 4 (Prairie du Chien)
        12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

        April 11 (Rhinelander)
        12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

        April 12 (Green Bay)
        10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

We need every TIP advocate in the state to make it to the hearing closest to them – even to register and mention their support on the registration card. Where we will have large groups, we will ask for 4 or 5 of our people to be given the opportunity to speak consecutively – as the remainder of us simply stand behind them to show that we stand behind them! (The Committee will prefer that to the alternative of having 75 of us each speak for 3 minutes!)

We also need to work hard to get people out in places like Rhinelander and Prairie du Chien where we do not have organizations. If you know people in those parts of the state who might be willing to help, please let me or Rev. Ellwanger know as soon as possible.

There… Thank you for your patience during the civics lesson. I just want to be very certain that we all understand the decision-making process for this critical matter. This is a very important moment for our state. We will either be serious about trying to reduce our incarceration rate, or we will just be paying lip service to that goal. As Bishop Lee (and Jim Wallis) have pointed out to us, budgets are moral documents. They reflect our priorities and our values as a society. We need to let people know which are the values we need to have reflected in our state budget.

WISDOM Leadership Retreat – Plans for 2007 and 2008
As mentioned above, we had our Leadership Retreat at the Siena Center on February 2-3. We spent a lot of time reflecting. We went through a more in-depth process of “The Conversation” which many of us participated in at the National Leadership Assembly (and which many of you have experienced in other settings since then)..

Essentially, the Conversation is not a very complicated thing. It is a chance to talk in a group about what we experience as we try to live as faithful people in a difficult world. We talk about those things that push us apart (like issues of race, class, etc…) and we talk about our faith call to be concerned for the common good. It is the tension between the worldview that says, “you’re on your own” and the faith view that says, “we’re all in this together.” After we talk about how we experience that tension in our own lives, we talk about how that push to isolate and separate people hurts us all as a society – and we talk about how we can be part of a powerful force that can re-build community and solidarity, etc… (That was a 1-paragraph attempt to explain it – it is better in person, when people are actually talking about their own, real lives!)

The group decided at the Retreat that we would like to encourage every congregation in WISDOM to hold a “Conversation” in 2007. We believe this can help us to talk about WHY we organize and what our larger vision is all about. We are asking each local organization to take a look at its calendar to see when might be a good time to encourage every Core Team to organize a Conversation. It can, I believe, be a source of new energy for us.

I was just in Eau Claire on Saturday. Congregations there are looking to use the Conversation as a way to talk with groups in prospective member congregations about whether they want to be founding members of JONAH. I think it is good that before we engage new members in a conversation of what we do, we get them to join us in seeking to better express who we hope to be and why it is important to organize.

We’ll have time to see how those two events could look. But, it does seem like it could be exciting!

Last week I felt like I was on an emotional roller coaster. On Tuesday, I felt so proud to be associated with WISDOM. It was one of those moments when I realize that we really do have a LOT of very good people who are working very hard for justice – and that we are making a difference.

Later in the week, when I started to understand what was in the state budget regarding TIP, my good feelings started to fade and I began to feel very angry and frustrated.

By the end of the week, I just felt determined. I remembered that, two years ago, in the Governor’s proposed budget, there was no provision for TIP or TAD at all. It was first introduced in the Joint Finance Committee. So, we are better off than we were last time.

I was, and am, very disappointed by the budget as regards TIP. I know, though, that we have a very good organization with very good people, and I know that things will look very different at the end of this budget process than they do now. This is a time that will test whether or not we really can make a difference and whether or not we really can influence the priorities of our state.