Hey Folks,
Luckily we have an extra hour this week as we “fall back,” because there’s a lot going on. First and foremost, let’s catch up on our 2 federal school board lawsuits.
You all collectively donated close to $50K (average donation $40) to fund two class action lawsuits in Wisconsin to stop an unhinged vocal anti-intellectual minority of Tucker Carlson acolytes from imposing their anti-masking beliefs on school boards across the state.
To tell you the truth, had I known the wheels of justice would move as slowly as they do, I might have reconsidered these suits. Seemingly schools that aren't enforcing CDC recommended Covid mitigations for kids too young to get vaccinated, thus causing daily super spreader events in much of our state, would be considered an emergency to deal with immediately.
Apparently these federal judges don’t agree, as they haven’t done anything yet.
The only thing that has happened is that that the lawyers for the Waukesha School district have filed to dismiss the case on a technicality, arguing that the federal court doesn’t have jurisdiction.
What has also happened is that we've been deluged by other parents across the state asking us to help take their own school boards to court. If you have written to us and haven't gotten a reply, here it is: we are waiting for these cases to hopefully be granted “class action” states to scoop up your districts before we sue anyone else.
Meanwhile, two AWESOME things have happened:
1) The FDA approved vaccines for 5-11 year-olds, so kids of responsible parents can at least be protected, and 2) the only school board recall effort that made it onto a Wisconsin ballot for last week’s election was for the Mequon-Thiensville School District, and the anti-masking Trump cult that got national news coverage lost in a landslide.
Apparently when you punch bullies back with science and truth, they fall like a house of cards.
So regardless of how our lawsuit meanders through the judicial system, we hope the national attention we got standing up to these bullies helped provide some headwinds for the vote in Mequon and some extra support for reasonable adults throughout Wisconsin to stand their ground against right wing efforts to use school children as pawns to gain power.
Next up, I wanted to remind everyone that your donations to the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC also fund the Up North Podcast, which is aired live on 92.7 FM in Madison every week and then edited into a podcast where it is beamed to the Facebook feeds of everyone in Northern Wisconsin in an effort to provide localized progressive conversation to a media market overwhelmed by Fox News, conservative AM talk radio, and ridiculous alt-right local newspapers (like our own local fish wrapper, the Lakeland Times).
Here’s a link to this week’s episode where Pat, Sarah, and I talk to a McGill University Professor about the history of the labor movement in light of a Republican proposal to let 14-year-olds work until 11 pm. Also, former state Sen. Patty Schachtner from Northwest Wisconsin talks about how public health experts planned for a pandemic but couldn’t have planned for such political denial and obstruction.
Now for a quick update on the engine behind the Super PAC, selling #progressivebeer. 5% of all of our beer/merch profits are donated to the Super PAC in an effort to never have to rely on rich donors to fund our progressive projects. However, our ability to sell beer in our own state has hit a snag. We expect a story from a major Wisconsin news outlet will come out soon exposing how we’ve been boycotted by statewide beer distributors in an effort to slow our growth in Wisconsin.
Of course this isn’t fair or right, but who said life was fair, especially in business?
We never expected to get a fair shake by Wisconsin beer distributors, a group of families enriching themselves through their stranglehold on liquor distribution supported by the corrupt and alt-right Tavern League. Instead, we’re focusing our attention on the Chicago market, where we hope to announce a distribution deal soon. Let’s be honest, the liquor distribution industry in every state is a little shady, but at least they’re way more tolerant of progressives in Illinois.
We’ve been told that if we can get the largest liquor chain in Chicago, Binny’s, to carry our beer, then a large distributor will partner with us. If you’d like to be part of a large Chicago-based grass roots effort to get our beer into Binny’s, please email their corporate beer buyer’s here.
And last but not least, readers of this email will be the first to learn of our official partnership with Raygun, a super progressive and union T-shirt company out of Des Moines. We’re going to announce the partnership next week on Facebook, but here’s a link to our brand-new line of t-shirts made by them, just in time for holiday shopping. Remember, 5% of the profits from the sale of these t-shirts will go to our Super PAC.
Thanks for reading our newsletter, and thanks for sticking with us.
We're a company that wants to sell a product and we believe in honest capitalism, but we also have a passion to make Wisconsin a state we can be proud of again. Wisconsin used to have the cleanest politics in America and we’ve fallen far from that ideal, but the people here haven’t changed.
We've just been subjected to massive manipulation and psychological warfare since the free-flow of money and disinformation changed our political discourse.
We’re doing what we can to change this, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC