About Us

Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative is a group of citizen journalists who began covering the Wisconsin Uprising in February, 2011. We came from different walks of life, different professional backgrounds and different parts of the state to document the dismantling of democratic process and tradition taking place in our state under the rightwing onslaught of the Scott Walker regime.

WCMC members question Capitol Police Chief Tubbs and Department of Administration Deputy Chris Schoenherr about new rules restricting freedom of assembly and freedom of expression in the Capitol.

During the course of 2011, we discovered that our individual photographs, videos, and blogs were becoming trusted sources of information for events taking place in and around the Capitol. In the fall of 2011, we began meeting informally to discuss collaborating on stories. Walker’s Department of Administration’s new rules restricting freedom of expression and freedom of assembly in the Capitol were unveiled in December 2011 and formed the stimulus we needed to launch a formal media organization.

In January 2012 we incorporated as a non-profit worker cooperative in the state of Wisconsin. Currently, we are all unpaid volunteers engaged in this work out of our fierce determination to inform the public about the dismantling of the decades-long tradition of open government and participatory democratic structures in Wisconsin.

We hope to build the coop into a radically democratic media organization that reflects the needs of our community for information and that can serve as a model of grassroots news gathering for people in other parts of the country. In order to do this sustainably for the long-term, we need material, moral and community support.

Contact: wcmcooperative@gmail.com

Here are some suggestions for how you can help:

1) Donate money through our PayPal account

2) Bookmark and share our website

3) Utilize social media like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook to share our stories

4) Donate audio, video and computer equipment

20 Comments on “About Us”

  1. samantha September 24, 2012 at 5:15 pm #

    It is not easy to send you money. What happened to the DONATE link? The only reason I was able to donate is because I had done so before and still had the information in my Paypal account. Please make the DONATE link more prominent or at least easier to find.

    Reply
    • ladyforward October 2, 2012 at 5:03 pm #

      Thank you for your comment, Samantha… and for your continued financial support! We now have the ‘DONATE’ button up and running! Sorry for the delay.

      Reply
    • Rebecca Kemble October 2, 2012 at 8:36 pm #

      Donate button reinstalled today!

      Reply
  2. Ted Voth Jr October 22, 2012 at 3:32 pm #

    Who took down the story for September 14? You? Repub hackers? I wanted to forward it, but it’s not on the website

    Reply
    • Jim April 29, 2013 at 1:22 pm #

      yeah. repub hackers.

      Reply
  3. Thomas Ray Worley January 6, 2013 at 12:21 am #

    It would help if you had a mailing address to send a check.

    Reply
  4. wiNNie47 March 7, 2013 at 3:26 pm #

    How can one become a member of/participant in the coop?

    Reply
  5. Bill Sumner September 12, 2013 at 2:56 pm #

    I have 12 cartoons (“Protestoons”) which were created between March and June 2011. If they could be incorporated into anything you’re doing I’d be happy to provide them. The originals are 8.5×11, in color, and have also been reduced to half-size so that they can be folded into ‘greeting cards’ (my favorite is the Governor Walker pinata card). Anyway, let me know if you’d like. In any case, best wishes for your endeavor.

    Reply
    • wcmcoop September 15, 2013 at 11:23 pm #

      Thank you for your kind offer! Do you have digital copies of these images?

      Reply
  6. Fred Milton Olsen January 30, 2014 at 3:04 am #

    Do you have any connections to the government? Are you connected to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism or Public Radio or Television?

    Those groups are completely compromised and NOT working in the public interest. You must also watch out for people who might try to control you through funding– people in propaganda and disinformation units– and even people from foreign governments like Israel, who indeed operate right here in Wisconsin– primarily Madison and Milwaukee.

    Reply
  7. Fred Milton Olsen February 21, 2014 at 7:40 pm #

    You are such a breath of fresh air in a media polluted world. I have been posting some of your stories at Madison TV station Facebook pages. Wisconsin Public Television takes the stories down right away and puts them in a different section of the page where you can’t see the pictures or entire headlines. I’m unconstitutionally banned from WPR’s facebook pages and so cannot leave anything there for you.

    Reply
  8. Fred Milton Olsen March 5, 2014 at 9:32 am #

    News Department might want to check out increasing surveillance technology being used in low-income housing run by the city.

    Reply
  9. David Woo March 13, 2014 at 5:04 am #

    Look into a dot coop top domain at http://www.domains.coop or http://www.identity.coop . It’s a program of the International Cooperative Alliance http://www.ica.coop to distinguish Principled Co-ops from entities that just call themselves “Co-ops” for marketing purposes (state laws vary and Wisconsin’s is pretty strong when it comes to Cooperative identity).

    Economic and political power emanates from ownership of revenue generating properties and the one percent figured that out long ago. Income inequality is just a symptom, ownership inequality is a cause of our societal ills and unbalanced economy. Look deeper into the concept of Cooperative Enterprise, because we get to keep our Co-ops if we can pay its bills on time.

    The ICA Definition, values and principles of Cooperation are a place to start.

    Reply
  10. Kris February 15, 2015 at 11:29 am #

    Why is the Walker article not there any more? The one about 4 reasons he should not be president?

    Reply
    • Barbara With February 15, 2015 at 12:42 pm #

      Sorry we found some inaccuracies we had to correct. Done and up now.

      Reply
  11. wolfonakayak February 15, 2015 at 8:40 pm #

    Thanks for this article, and for fixing things that needed fixing. You’re awesome!

    Anyone who thinks it was all about unions in 2010-2011, please realize; you didn’t have access to the truth. The national news media only sold the story of Big Bad Unions versus Walker, but there were 3000 pages in that budget that proposed to break the public unions; and it took days to go through and find all of the cronyism, theft, and destruction of democracy that was buried in that enormous document. That’s why the only way Walker could get his agenda through was to switch it over to “Act 10,” an isolated bill–that’s why Democrats left the state to prevent that 3000 page nightmare from passing the legislature.

    He is a horror to anyone with access to the truth about him. He thinks of himself as a religious crusader, he follows the party line of the Koch Brothers, and he has NOT been “good for business.” None of his ideas are based on the supposed platform of the Republican Party (remember the OLD GOP? the one I disagreed with but which had actual ideals?)–instead, they are all whatever serves his corporate masters best.

    One of the items in that 3000 page budget was putting Wisconsin’s coal fired plants up for sale on a no-bid basis. Sure–we’ll sell off our publicly owned power plants to the Koch Brothers, with no negotiation on the price! Good for Wisconsin? No. Good for business? Only if you’re David or Charles Koch.

    The rail line connecting Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to Minnesota? That would have brought a LOT of jobs at no initial cost to the State, and by the time any cost was handed over to Wisconsin, we’d already be well into the black for the project. It was obvious to anyone with access to the cost-benefit studies that it would have been good for business … unless you were being paid off by road-construction contractors to put a halt on the idea.

    Good for small business? Then why did Walker shepherd through rules that made it harder for craft beer companies to break into the market? Craft beer is one of the largest categories of small employers in the State; but to serve the interest of the big beer companies, they made it nearly impossible for the average microbrewery to break into the larger markets.

    Medicaid expansion? The one paid for out of the Federal taxes all Wisconsinites pay whether we benefit from it or not? That’s been a great benefit to states that employed that method to get their residents insured. Instead of actually looking after the best interests of the people of Wisconsin, Walker rejected the money for no other reason than to make a “statement.” Two years later, he’s beginning to concede the point everyone else had seen from moment one–it cost citizens much LESS to expand Medicaid than to just send our Federal tax dollars off to be used for the benefit of people in states that did use the Medicaid expansion money.

    Has this man done anything that benefits Wisconsin as a whole, benefits her people, and not just a wealthy few who were already in wonderful shape before he came along?

    Reply
  12. Ron Rose February 17, 2015 at 5:04 pm #

    Thanks for your narrative of Scott Walker. I have always thought there was something wrong with him . First off, he just looks goofey and few can identify the problem . Look at the photo you have of him getting his picture with the typical arrest scenario that shows his height …. It show that his left eye is over a quarter inch higher than his right. Additionally, his left ear is higher than his right . The left side of his head is larger than his right. I do believe he fell off the table at birth and the Doctor stepped on his head . Can you imagine what his brain must look like ?

    Reply
  13. Kendall Gillbert March 29, 2015 at 4:21 pm #

    You’re just another sore loser advocacy group. Public unions are not much more than the fox guarding the hen house, and now that you’ve been called on it (both my the People and Scott Walker), all you can do is whine and cry.

    Public unions have no place in government, they’re just there to steal from the hardworking taxpayers

    Reply

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  1. Desperate Dems: Vote against Scott Walker because according to an unconfirmed rumor published on some left-wing website, he fathered a love child 24 years ago | Twitchy - June 3, 2012

    […] website, Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op, describes itself as “a group of citizen journalists who began covering the Wisconsin Uprising in February, […]

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