Progress Toward Bringing the Guard Home

Madison: Veterans & Military Affairs Committee holds Hearing on "Safeguard the Guard Act"

Tuesday March 9, 2010, 1pm

State Capitol Room 412E Madison, WI

The "Safeguard the Guard Act", Assembly Bill 203, would establish the governor's authority to, "examine every federal order that places the Wisconsin national guard on federal active duty to determine if that order is lawful and valid," and furthermore, "to take appropriate action . . . to prevent the Wisconsin national guard from being placed
on federal active duty," should the federalization order be deemed unlawful or invalid.

Representative Spencer Black (Madison) authored and introduced AB 203 in this 2009-2010 legislative session. Black asserts that, “this legislation sets up an orderly procedure to review future federalization orders for the Wisconsin National Guard.”

Black will be joined at the hearing by State Rep. Michael Fisher of Vermont, the lead sponsor of Safeguard the Guard legislation in that state, and the first to offer such legislation nationally.

Wisconsin Guard veteran Steve Books says, “Assembly Bill 203 would help insure that our national treasure, or what our own Governor Doyle called ‘The Greatest Citizen Militia in the World’ during his January 26 ‘State of the State Address,’ is used with clear thinking and by legal means, especially when called out of Wisconsin for service abroad.”

”This is a premiere opportunity for Wisconsin citizens to publically comment on this bill and on the question of who decides about war,” says Jim Draeger, co-chair of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

AB 203 stands before the Veterans & Military Affairs Committee, which includes State Representatives Steve Hilgenberg (chair, district 51), Christine Sinicki (district 20), Nick Milroy (district 73), Kevin Peterson (district 40), Jerry Petrowski (district 86), Marlin Schneider (district 72), Robert Turner (district 61), Dan Meyer (district 34), Peter Townsend (district 52), and Mary Hubler (district 75).

Go to www.bringtheguardhome.org or www.wnpj.org for more information or contact statewide campaign co-coordinators Steve Burns and Jim Draeger at outre...@wnpj.org and j...@wnpj.org, respectively.

A press conference by attending and testifying in favor of the legislation will be held at 12:30 in the Capitol Rotunda the day of the hearing.