NWSCDC

My favorite line in one of my all-time favorite movies "The Magnificent Seven", the evil Mexican bandit, Calvera (Eli Wallach), who had been robbing peasants in the little village asks gun-for-hire Chris (Yul Bryner), "If God did not want them sheared, why did He make them sheep?" Maybe it has always been so.

In 2003, then Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist tried basically the same thing when he proposed closing the Villard Ave. Library in his 2004, and last budget. But stunningly, the community (aka: the sheep) fought back! In a first, people emphatically raised their hands when someone in a crowd of several hundred people inside the Library asked, 'who would vote to raise their own taxes in order to save the Library?'. It was perhaps the first shot fired in anger in Wisconsin against the anti-tax reactionaries that believe the only good government is no government.

The tiny Villard Ave. Library became the poster child for difficult choices that public officials have made on what closes and what stays open. Libraries vs. ladder companies; potholes vs. sanitation; police vs. everything else. These are undoubtedly hard choices, but choices made more difficult by the inability to raise taxes or risk political careers.

It wasn't always this way. The beginning of the tax revolt was no doubt California Proposition 13, passed in June 1978. From Ronald Reagan to Bush I's "read my lips...", Clinton's "the era of Big Government is over", to the cut taxes and spend era of Bush II, local politicians got the message. Increase taxes and end up dead meat. Tell the truth and your career is done. What has been refreshing, for the most part in Washington recently, has been an effort to treat the American people like adults.

In September 2003, the people assembled at the Villard Ave. Library began to push back against the no-new-taxes mantra. No one wants to be taxed to death, or support wasteful government. But we can't run a great city like Milwaukee unless we are willing to pay for what we want and need. I've said many times, you don't do more with less, you do less with less. And so it is with great cities.

In saving the Villard Ave. Library, community residents rallying, and kids performing street theatre every night, captured lightening in a bottle for one brief season. Better community organizing, I have never seen. Authentic, grassroots, not leader- driven, and totally effective. Three months of almost daily protest kept a funky little library open that still supports one of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods. But the more profound message for me was that citizens in Wisconsin could roll back three decades of unchallenged dogma. That the line on property taxes needs to be firmly held and services be damned.

At least tell us the truth! We're adults. We can take it!

Howard Snyder