This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/milwaukees-strange-hero-in-a-politically-violent-time/

‘Freedom fighter’ took a pistol to a legislative debate

Lest anyone doubt his intentions, the man charged as a would-be assassin of a U.S. presidential candidate left a letter, made public this week by the Department of Justice. “This was an assassination attempt,” the suspect wrote several months beforehand, “but I failed you. … It is up to you now to finish the job.”

He offered a $150,000 reward to do just that, and surely every American of goodwill hopes no one tries. We all reject politics by violence.

But if we all reject violence in politics, why does a mural on a government building on a prominent Milwaukee corner honor a woman who shot up the U.S. Capitol?

The mural’s been there for decades, but the matter is newly urgent: The latest almost-assassination follows by only two months the same candidate being grazed by a bullet fired at his head, and that candidate had to cancel a Wisconsin appearance due to the inability of the Secret Service of provide enough protection, a U.S. senator alleged this week.

You may guess the candidate’s name, but I’m deliberately skipping it because the name shouldn’t matter: No candidate should get shot, ever. We shouldn’t do politics by bullet. We all agree on that.

Yet Politico was reporting this week that a bipartisan swath of Congress now fears political violence enough to demand clearer succession plans. The paper quoted a source saying, “The number of rounds in one pistol clip can change the balance of power of the House or the Senate.”

Not an unreasonable fear, only six years after a man angry over election results tried blowing away one party’s congressional leadership as it practiced for a charity baseball game. It soon emerged that the perp had volunteered for a losing presidential campaign, the candidate of which, then in the U.S. Senate, said, “I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be, violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society.”

We all, surely, can agree with that candidate and senator, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, on that point.

Yet there’s that in Wisconsin’s largest city, filling the side of the Milwaukee County Transit System’s bus barn at Mitchell Street and Kinnickinnic Avenue since the 1980s. It’s titled “Peacemakers.”

It features an intersectional array of proffered heroes. James Groppi, the then-priest who led anti-segregation marches in Milwaukee in the 1960s, is honored. So is Aurora Weier, a Milwaukee Hispanic activist, and Vang Pao, a Hmong general who was revered by many in Wisconsin. Rosa Parks, Chief Joseph, Nelson Mandela — so far, so good. All admirable.

But there’s Lolita Lebron, right in the middle, posed before a Puerto Rican flag and labeled “freedom fighter.” 

Seventy years ago last March, she led three other Puerto Rican nationalists into U.S. House of Representatives visitor gallery, where, upon her signal, all four started shooting indiscriminately at the 243 members who were debating farm policy. The terrorists managed to hit five members of the House before being overpowered.

What an odd way to be a “peacemaker.”   

They’d all bought one-way tickets to D.C., as they had expected to die in a nationalistic hail of bullets. Instead, they were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Lebron got a 50-year term, but she was given clemency after 25 by then-President Jimmy Carter, which she later chalked up to political expediency. She’d previously refused parole, as it would have meant apologizing.

So why is Lebron — who is so connected to this terrorist attack that it led her New York Times obit — held up for Milwaukeeans as a “peacemaker,” a hero?

I don’t know. She’s got no Wisconsin connection. Her cause remains disputed among Puerto Ricans. Maybe it was a progressive soft spot for revolutions.

It’s hard to find any lingering news coverage from when the mural went up. Maybe in the late 1980s, when the NAACP Youth Branch painted it, no one bothered looking up what kind of “freedom fighter” she was.

It wouldn’t be the first time that activists became confused: After a Madison statue of Wisconsin’s abolitionist Civil War hero Hans Christian Heg was torn down amid anti-Confederate iconoclasm in 2020, some tried defending the misfire, claiming it was a “strategic political move.”

I don’t know that it would be good to scratch Lebron off that wall. Rather like the University of Wisconsin-Madison building named after odious eugenicist Charles Van Hise, maybe we could treat it as a warning, put up a sign pointing out she tried slaughtering our country’s first branch of government, that she shows how not to make peace.

That would be a useful warning because all of us are against political violence of any kind, right?

Right?

Some things make you start doubting.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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