This letter is in response to Jason Smathers’ recent opinion piece “Progressive Dane must tone down fighting words.” (BH 10/16) As a member of Progressive Dane, I’d like to address his inaccurate characterization of both the issues we work on and the group itself.
First of all, Smathers attacks PD for opposing Sheriff Dave Mahoney’s policy of reporting the names of detained undocumented persons to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He claims that PD wants the Sheriff to do some “legislation from the badge” and break the law by not reporting these names. As someone who heard Mahoney defend his actions at last week’s Dane County Equal Opportunities Commission meeting, I can definitively say that it is Mahoney who is legislating from the badge by continuing with his current policy. Mahoney admitted that what he does is not required by ICE, and that in fact he often refuses actual ICE cooperation requests. He then justified his reporting practices by saying that he needs to positively ID everyone in his jail and must notify foreign consulates when one of their citizens is arrested. However, upon asking follow up questions, it became clear to an increasingly frustrated EOC that reporting names to ICE is rarely, if ever, needed to accomplish those two goals.
The question — why then, Sheriff Mahoney, do you continue this practice? — was never answered. What was made clear was the extremely detrimental effect this practice has had on Dane County’s immigrant community. This community, made up of both documented and undocumented individuals, is now so distrustful of law enforcement that it, as county residents and social service workers attested to at the hearing, increasingly fails to report actual crimes. In this light, for Smathers to say that raising awareness of the Sheriff’s policy “inflames passions with absolutely no results” ironically only serves to suggest that more groups like PD are needed to pressure the Sheriff.
More pertinently though, I take serious issue with Smathers’ assertion there is a problem with the tone of PD’s debate. Specifically, Smathers claims to love the idea of a third party shaking up Madison’s local political scene, but says he is dismayed by the “antagonistic rhetoric” PD brings to the table. He cites a recent PD column where the author criticized a non-PD alder for voting a certain way on a piece of homeless legislation. According to Smathers, this was a cheap shot because it didn’t take into account other aspects of the alder’s record.
Whether intentional or not, Smathers has employed a classic argument often used to unfairly discredit third parties. This argument, because it highlights a supposed problem with political style, serves to distract from the main issue at hand, namely the legitimate differences between Progressive Dane and mainstream Democratic policies. Unfortunately, such a tactic often works well because it provides a cursory acknowledgment of these differences, but then immediately moves away from them, focusing instead on undermining the third party for its lack of civility or fairness. In this case, our PD homeless article was never about examining the legacy of a particular alder’s voting record. It was about raising public awareness of a recent piece of legislation, and in turn, letting the readership of this paper know how their representative voted. The objections Smathers have to it then seem irrelevant at best, therefore begging the question: If the same article had been written by a Democrat and had chastised a Republican, would he have been able to write the same response? I think not.
All political parties constantly seek to highlight where they and their opposition disagree, and PD is no exception. As such we will continue to provide a much-needed check on the often unquestioned liberal supremacy over city and county debates. In turn, I challenge those who disagree with PD to engage with us on the issues, instead of distracting from them with irrelevant attacks on PD’s rhetoric.
Adam Porton
Student Progressive Dane
