| WHITEWATER - Brienne Brown, a Democrat from Whitewater, has declared her candidacy for the Wisconsin State Assembly, District 31.
My name is Brienne Brown, and I'm running for Wisconsin State Assembly, District 31, which includes the Walworth County portion of Whitewater, Whitewater Lake, Elkhorn, Darien, Richmond, Clinton, and eastern Beloit. I am running for office because I want to put my experience in politics, business, and community voluntarism to work. I want to represent all the citizens of the 31st, both rural and urban, as I work to regain local control of government and schools, strengthen Wisconsin's stewardship of the environment. and support women and their families.
I have more experience in local politics than anyone else in this race. I am completing my second term on the Whitewater Common Council, where I serve as Council representative for the Library Board, Plan Commission, and Equal Opportunities Commissions. When I worked as the Program Director for the Whitewater Community Foundation, I helped them expand from their operations to include Community Action Grants. I also served on the board for Downtown Whitewater, a nonprofit dedicated toward revitalizing the historic downtown. During this time, we worked with local farmers to create the Whitewater City Market, a successful downtown farmers' market.
Like most of us, I've changed careers more than once in my life. My husband and I moved to Whitewater a decade ago, and we both teach at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater. I've worked as a managing editor for an open-source intelligence company (stratfor.com), as an epidemiologist for the Texas Department of Health, and in a fish cannery in Alaska. I am also a certified grant writer and own a small business.
After the last grocery store in town closed its doors in 2015, I joined other community members in founding the Whitewater Grocery Cooperative, an initiative to build a community-owned grocery store in Whitewater. The GroCo has grown to 820 members and we are on track to open our doors in 2024. As the chair of the GroCo Grants committee, I successfully applied for a $46,300 WEDC feasibility grant to secure a location and design the store.
I want to put local communities back in charge of their spending and funding. All politics are local. In fact, many of the bills that come to the legislature are researched and written by regular people like you and me. The problem is that the Republican-led legislature has consistently refused to do its job and gaveled out of session without looking at the over 250 bills that hardworking Wisconsinites have put together to improve their communities. This means that our current representatives are sitting on our hard-earned tax dollars - dollars that belong to our schools and city governments. Our schools and infrastructure remain underfunded and it's our children and local communities that are paying the price.
Education is a top priority for me. Tony Evers has managed to undo some of the damage done by Scott Walker and a decade of gerrymandered Republican dominance, but we still have a ways to go. At both the K-12 level and UW-Whitewater, we need to make sure that our educational system is adequately funded so that all our children have the opportunity to succeed. This applies to all students in Wisconsin, regardless of their income or resident status. Wisconsin has always been lucky to have immigrants bolster our workforce and populate our schools. These hard-working community members should be able to drive legally on the way to work and school. Their children should pay the same in-state tuition rates as other Wisconsinites. Instead, we are leaving these children behind. We are failing to live up to the standards of the Wisconsin Idea, which is to solve problems and improve health, quality of life, the environment, and agriculture for all citizens of the state.
As a gun owner, I support common sense gun laws and universal background checks.
No less important is my support for state parks, clean air, and water standards. Wisconsin is a state of hunting, farming, fishing, hiking, and tourism. We live in some of the most beautiful and water-rich country of the United States, and we should act as good stewards. I will work to strengthen laws that protect the lands we live on and give back control to local governments so the citizens, not the corporations, can decide what happens in their backyards.
I want to get women the resources they need to work and take care of their families. Fifty-eight percent of the workforce is female. We should have universal 4k and paid maternity/paternity leave, so that a woman's paycheck doesn't simply turn into a childcare payment. We need a strong Medicaid program that lifts Wisconsin families out of poverty. We need better access to healthy food. Women should have the power to decide how and when to start their families. Women's rights are human rights.
We need to work smarter, we need to work harder, and we need to work together.
For more information about Brienne Brown, visit BrienneForWisconsin.com or find me on Facebook @BrienneDieboltBrown or Instagram @brienneforwisconsin |