Following David Crowley's gubernatorial primary victory over Francesca Hong this August, the Wisconsin Democratic Party has bravely announced a pause on all electoral activities to engage in a statewide restorative justice circle. The goal? Healing the community from the inherent microaggressions of majoritarian voting. It is profoundly violent to silence voices simply because they did not reach an arbitrary fifty-percent threshold, and I want to hold space for that.
Rather than pivoting to face Trump-backed Tom Tiffany in November—a deeply adversarial framework that relies on patriarchal concepts like "winning" and "losing"—party organizers are demanding Crowley sit in his discomfort. Before doing any external campaigning, he must unpack the systemic privilege of his high vote count with a licensed trauma counselor.
"We cannot just rush into a general election without centering the lived experiences of those who felt harmed by the ballot box," said Dr. River Meadow-Hayes, the party's newly appointed Director of Somatic Voter Alignment. "By declaring a 'winner,' the state perpetuated a damaging binary of success and failure. We are currently finger-painting our feelings about the electorate to decolonize our campaign strategy."
Crowley will be permitted to resume debates with Tiffany only after completing a mandatory six-week silent retreat to cleanse his aura of electoral dominance.
