01-11-2005, 05:59 AM
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#13 (permalink)
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Squid
Location: USS George Washington
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Here's how Wisconsin handled the issue...
LINK
Quote:
Reprinted from the Duluth News Tribune, August 9, 2001
Bill would rename highway for activist Bresette
BY TODD MILBOURN
Hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan could soon be seen cleaning up the side of a Wisconsin memorial highway honoring the late American Indian social justice activist Walter Bresette.
A bill drafted this month by state Rep. Gary Sherman, D-Port Wing, would designate state Wisconsin 122 in Iron County the Walter Bresette Memorial Highway. The bill comes in response to the Ku Klux Klan's commitment to clean up roadside garbage on the same stretch of highway under the Adopt-A-Highway program. The Department of Transportation approved the group's request in June.
After learning of the DOT's approval of the Klan's request, Sherman said he was "disturbed" but maintained the supremacist group has every constitutional right to join the program.
In March, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal by the state of Missouri to bar the KKK there from membership in that state's Adopt-a-Highway program.
Sherman said his bill, which should be finished within a couple of days, was influenced by what Missouri lawmakers did next. They passed legislation renaming the KKK-adopted highway after Rosa Parks, the idea being that the supremacist group would be forced to clean up trash along a highway named in honor of a black civil rights leader.
When the Missouri KKK never did clean the roadside, the state took away their stretch of highway.
So, when an Ashland Daily Press editorial suggested renaming the road after Walter Bresette, Sherman said he jumped on the idea.
"I thought, "Walter, well that's a great idea.' He was a great leader and kind of a friend of mine," Sherman said.
Bresette was a well-known Anishinabe environmental and social justice activist. He died of an apparent heart attack in 1999. A member of the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa, he helped found the Red Cliff Cultural Institute, the Lake Superior Greens and the Midwest Treaty Network, an alliance of area groups supporting treaty rights.
"He was sort of the Martin Luther King of northern Wisconsin," said Sandy Lyon, a longtime friend of Bresette. "That's why people are feeling this way with evil popping its head up."
But the KKK appears undeterred in its plan to clean up Wisconsin 122.
Michael McQueeney of Mercer, a grand dragon for the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said about 10 to 20 uniformed Klan members will begin cleaning up the trash once a month when workers erect the Adopt-A-Highway signs. The signs should be up in a couple of weeks, he said.
"It's good for the community and it gives us some good publicity," he said.
McQueeney added that he would not be opposed to renaming the road after a man who denounced racism.
"I don't care if it was Martin Luther King highway, if that's what they want to do," he said. "That's what diversity and America is all about."
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-Mikey |
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