How Tony Evers Helped Protect the Vulnerable from Violence

     Governor Evers has always sought to protect the vulnerable from violence, particularly women and children. While his efforts for children in the education and criminal justice system are noteworthy, they are expounded upon elsewhere, and this seeks to highlight a few examples of Governor Evers working in other ways to stop blatant discrimination and abuse.

     In 2019, Evers removed Wisconsin National Guard troops from the U.S.-Mexico border and joined a lawsuit challenging the state of emergency President Trump declared. This approach, done previously in several other states and later repeated in several more, succeeded in stopping President Trump's border wall and in removing Wisconsin's support for the cruel isolation and abuse of children fleeing violence in Latin America. 

     With regard to the Wisconsin National Guard, Tony Evers partnered with Senator Tammy Baldwin, Attorney General Josh Kaul, and state legislators to secure a comprehensive overhaul of how the state's military handles sexual assault cases that same year.

     In 2020, Evers and Kaul created the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Task Force to study and recommend better policies to handle the crisis that Native American women and children face: rates of homicide, domestic violence, kidnapping, and sexual assault several times higher than the average for women and children of all other races. He also declared Indigenous Peoples Day for the first time in Wisconsin in 2019 and apologized for Wisconsin's role in Native American genocide in 2021.

     That year, Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly approved Marsy's Law, a constitutional amendment that granted equal rights to crime victims and their families. In yet another victory, Evers signed Senate Bill 163, which made it a felony punishable by up to six years in prison to assault a healthcare worker.

     Tony Evers has made real, lasting progress for Wisconsin, and these five examples are but a few in one category out of dozens in which Evers has some important achievements. If we want this to keep going, we need to reelect Tony Evers!!!