- Hello, I'm Portia Young.

Next on 10 thirty six, a look at top national voting trends that could have a big impact on our local midterm elections.

Milwaukee historian, John Gerda, gives us a sneak peak of his upcoming documentary, People of the Port, plus, find out how these bikes are helping a young man build his American dream.

We begin with a celebration.

This month begins our seventh season of 10 thirty six, our monthly news magazine.

So congratulations to the entire crew, and we're so happy to also be a part of the 65th anniversary of this public television station.

We have a lot here to celebrate at Milwaukee PBS.

Tank you for watching and for supporting us through the years.

Election Day is November 8th.

There are key races on the ballot including Wisconsin governor and US Senate.

Producer Scotty Lee Meyers takes a look at three national voting trends that could have a big impact here in Milwaukee.

- It wasn't long ago when US Senator Ron Johnson and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes stood right here for a debate.

Each of them making a final push for support in one of the most closely watched elections in all of the country.

That race and other statewide races, including for the governor's chair, could hinge on three key national voting trends playing out right here in the Milwaukee metro area which is home to a little less than half of the state's voters.

We start on Milwaukee's North side.

DeAngelo Bester, the Executive Director for the Center for Racial and Gender Equity is one of the lead organizers behind this voter registration party at the Sherman Phoenix Marketplace.

Democrats hope events like this could lead to higher turnout among black voters, a key constituency for the party.

- But what we're trying to do is just, again, educate the voters here in Milwaukee and even across the state about making sure to register to vote, make sure they have all the information they need to register to vote.

- [Scottie] Milwaukee's black voter turnout was down in 2020.

Stricter voting laws and the pandemic are two big reasons experts often cite for the decline.

That's why Bester and his team are knocking on a lot of doors right now.

- We're hoping to knock on about 40,000 doors total in the state between, you know, when we started in around June through election day.

We want to have around 15,000 conversations with voters and we're hoping to get, you know, 70% turnout for the people that we actually have conversations with.

Everyone talks about low propensity voters and they put black voters in that category.

We don't call them low propensity voters, we call them high potential voters.

This, the key is just figuring out what it's going to take to motivate black voters to turnout.

We started knocking on doors in Milwaukee months ago, and one of the issues that kept coming up in our conversations was affordable housing, which, you know, you would never think that was a top issue for black voters or any voters, at least when you see what's happening in the media.

And so we started having a conversation with people about that because that's what we were hearing.

- [Scottie] For the first time since the early eighties, Philip Eiland will be voting in an election.

He was one of a handful of people who registered to vote at the Sherman Phoenix event.

- What it means to me to finally actually register to vote, it means change.

It means listening to people.

It means seeking the candidates who need to be in, who do not need to be in office.

It means, it's just overwhelming to be able to vote.

I got a voice now and that's very important to me.

I got a voice and it's a critical voice.

- [Scottie] Republicans are looking to increase their support among Hispanic voters with a new initiative called Operation Vamos, which launched in several key swing states, including Wisconsin.

Latino voters have typically favored Democrats, but not always by wide margins.

They're not leaving in droves, but there is a measurable shift.

- So what we did is we put together Operation Vamos, it's in nine states and we're basically, you know, it's just emphasizing with our candidates and helping them reach out to the Hispanic community.

Ron Johnson already was good at that and so we've just been sort of amplifying what he's doing.

- [Scottie] US Senator Rick Scott of Florida is helping to lead these outreach efforts, which have sent campaign workers to knock on doors in neighborhoods in Milwaukee and throughout the state trying to make inroads with Wisconsin's largest minority group.

- I know that Hispanic voters have been basically taken for granted by Democrats.

You know, my experience in my two governors races and my senate race is you've gotta be in the Hispanic communities and they're very receptive, but you've gotta show up.

But I know that Hispanic voters are way more inclined to vote Republican as long as Republicans reach out to and talk to 'em.

Hispanic voters are fed up with the public school system around the country right now.

They want it a better economic market.

They don't wanna see an inflation.

They wanna live in safe communities and that's what, if we talk about those issues, then we're gonna win elections.

- You wanted a Mandela?

- [Voter] Yes, please.

- [Scottie] During our interview with Deb Dassow, the chair of the Democratic Party of Ozaukee County, people kept coming in to request yard signs.

You're probably seeing more in the area than ever before, though still red, Ozaukee County recently saw the biggest increase in democratic voters in the state.

Waukesha County is second on that same list.

It's part of the purpling of the suburbs.

- I do get a sense that it's changing.

I'm not gonna say it's like a ginormous swing, but it is, you know, as I said, you know, we're just picking up a couple percentage points every single year.

I mean, we were 41% as a county for Biden.

Cedarburg where I live, President Biden won by 19 votes and that to, you know, a Milwaukee County or whatever, that would be like a no big deal but to us it is a very big deal 'cause that hasn't happened in my history of living in that community since 1984.

You know, it is a giant uphill battle here.

60/40 would be, you know, kind of generous.

I mean, our goal in 2020 was to pop above what we did for Hillary and we did.

And so we're not seeing our votes go backwards.

We're not seeing that, you know, anywhere so that's heartening.

We would hope by 2024, we would be able to maybe flip this whole county blue.

- [Scottie] the center of the suburban swing are women who Dassow says have energized the party after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

- There are a lot of very active women in this county.

And I had a woman stop in right after the Dobbs decision.

I was here, you know, getting, putting some things together in the office, and she came in with her two little children and she had, you know, my body, my choice t-shirt on.

And she said, I've never voted for a Democrat before.

I've always been a libertarian.

She was young, I'd say in her thirties.

And she said, I, she goes, sign me up.

What can I do?

My point is that they're paying a, I think they're paying more attention because all of a sudden it's like, oh, something was taken away from me and my daughters and my granddaughters and my sisters and my neighbors.

- [Scottie] Wisconsin's last two presidential elections were each decided by less than one percentage point.

If current polling is to be trusted, these midterms will be just as close and these three voting blocks could be the pathway to victory.

- Remember, election day is November 8th.

If you have any questions, please go to myvote.wi.gov.

We have a major update on one of the farm families featured in "America's Dairy Land at the Crossroads," our award-winning documentary produced in partnership with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Producer Scottie Lee Meyers tells us about the big changes at Roehl Acres in order to stay afloat in the dairy business.

- [Scottie] We were with the Roehl family on a summer day in 2020 when they invited global futurist Jack Uldrich to their farm to talk about how installing a robotic milking system may be the key to their survival.

- I think probably one of the things that we're looking at very hard is the robotic milking.

That would be, I think our biggest challenge on the farm other than financial is hired help.

It's getting people here.

It's really tough.

It's tough and I mean we've, we've priced it out and we've looked at it and we'd like to do it.

I don't know if the banker would like to do it, but we would like to do it.

You know, our return on investment would be right around five years.

- The look at robotic technology, I think is absolutely spot on.

I think the difficult thing is to know when to pull the trigger.

I mean, robotic technology is going to get better and it's also going to get more affordable over time.

- I don't know if we thought that all the technology would change as fast as it has.

I think everybody always thought, well, yeah, that's coming.

It's coming.

- [Scottie] In March, that change finally came.

- We're in our robot rooms, the brand new robot rooms at Roehl Acres.

Come on, that's enough of this.

Let's go get in there.

It's still new.

The room we're in right now has two robots in it.

We have another room exactly like it on the other side of the barn that has two robots in it.

So we have four robots, the DeLaval robots, well, this one, here's what cleans the tit.

So that'll go in there and it'll spray a cleaning solution on with a disinfectant.

It'll actually scrubs the tit.

It is very exciting when you watch these robots work, it is just absolutely amazing what the technology can do now.

- [Farmer] Yeah, it's come a long way from milking in a bucket to this.

This is just a, it's amazing what those robots can do and how much information you can actually get out of there.

- Farmer] So right now it's grabbing each individual tit cup and it'll put it on there.

- [Scottie] So now we're starting the milking?

- We're starting the milk yes.

All of her information is right here.

It has, when she was inseminated last, her preg checks, everything on here, or last heat when that was, you know, her last milking time was six and eight, 6.55 minutes.

It's a whole new level of information that we can get.

[Scottie] Does this make you a better dairy farmer?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

'Cause you can take all this extra information and you can use it to close up loopholes that you couldn't close up before you know, so in the end, it's more profitable.

- [Scottie] The robots aren't cheap.

Dennis says each one cost around $150,000, not to mention the cost to modify the barn, but the return on investment comes in other areas.

- Hired help has been harder and harder to get and that's probably the driving force behind it.

The only thing is, is it'll change our force, how much we work in the barn significantly also.

Our time won't be so concentrated in the mornings and the evenings.

Our day will be spread out through the day where you can kind of pick your, pick and choose your times that you're gonna leave.

- One of the motivations I think is just a little bit more family time.

It'll allow us to get to more school functions for the kids but also I think it might entice the kids into coming or staying on the farm and helping out.

They're more tech savvy than we are.

- [Scottie] Uldrich agrees that the switch to an automated milking system could entice young farmers to stay in the family business, especially during a time in which we're seeing an unprecedented number of dairy farms call it quits.

- The reason I'm so optimistic about the technology is it is actually going to make farming more attractive for the next generation.

I mean, I think that many kids look at you and your parents and they saw that you were working 24/7, 365 and said, that's a hard life.

But suddenly with robotic technology, if you can get to your kids' football game, your daughter's softball game, you could take, you know, some time off.

Suddenly it becomes a more attractive lifestyle.

- For starters, on the monitor board, we're looking at which cows have been milked, which cows are eligible to be milked, which cows are late for milking so that they know which cows they maybe need to go out in the barn and fetch.

And Dennis also has this on his phone.

- [Scottie] John Gerbitz helps dairy farmers across the Midwest with their robot installs.

He's been spending time with the Roehls to help them learn their new system.

He says the technology is growing rapidly.

- I've been with DeLaval for four years and I've just seen it just explode.

And when I started, it was really the early adopters, the guys with a sense of adventure and good enough management that the bank was gonna allow them to go on the adventure they wanted to go on.

And now, it's gotten much more common.

- [Farmer] Now watch, watch the arm goes up, washes itself off, and not just wash itself off, scrub itself off.

- So this spring, I believe I started eight barns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa compared to other years, more like two.

And I think a big part of it is the availability of labor.

Where 20 years ago there were always people wanting to come and milk cows.

Now they struggle to find out who's gonna milk cows.

It's all about making the business available to the next generation and this technology is so much more interesting to the younger generation than being in that barn chasing cows around and putting milkers on by hand.

And so it makes it more interesting and more accessible to the next generation to have this technology available.

- The robots, expensive as they are, could be what lures one of the Roehl kids to one day take over the family farm.

- I'm hoping that the kids get excited about it and that they want to come back.

I don't want 'em just to come back because it's comfortable.

I actually want 'em to come here and want to do this and succeed at it and that's why we made the investment and I think that they're, that we'll have a couple of 'em come back and say, yep, this is what we wanna do.

And then Suzie and I are gonna go on vacation.

- Yeah.

- [Scottie] And although he's not pushing them one way or the other, he does get excited about the prospect of another generation of Roehls milking cows here in America's dairyland.

- A familiar face on Milwaukee PBS over the years has been Milwaukee historian John Gurda.

We kick off our 65th anniversary celebration with his new documentary airing in November.

It's called "People of the Port."

Here's a sneak peek.

- [Narrator] When you think of Milwaukee's Jones Island, what probably comes to mind is a sewage plant, salt piles, boat docks, or maybe the Dan Home bridge.

Well think again, the island has all those things, but it also has one of the richest stories in Wisconsin.

Today's gritty landscape once supported a major Indian village, an important fur trading post, Milwaukee's largest shipyard and most colorful of all, a close knit village of fisher folk.

For nearly 50 years, immigrants from the Kaszuby region on Poland's Baltic Sea coast made their homes here.

The Kaszubs and their neighbors netted 2 million pounds of fish in a good year, and they formed a village known for its abundant saloons, it's epic wedding celebrations and its Friday night fish fries.

It lasted into the 1920s when the island was cleared for civic improvements.

Today there is just one reminder of that vibrant period in our history.

Kaszube's Park, the smallest park in Milwaukee, but the story endures.

It's one of Wisconsin's richest and we tell it all in "People of the Port, the story of Milwaukee's Jones Island."

- Producer Maryann Lazarski caught up with John at Kaszube Park to talk more about his interest in Jones Island and what he hopes viewers will take away from this new documentary.

- The takeaways I'd like to see, the takeaways I would hope people would come away with, you know, after watching the documentary, are kind of the human warmth of this settlement.

And also an appreciation for how far we've come and how much we've changed, you know, as a society.

We're all kind of immersed in the present and for most of us is kind of, it's all we know.

So maybe family stories, maybe old buildings, you know, have some connection with the old days, but to have the story told graphically, and we've got some wonderful visuals, got some great photographs, especially of the fishing period, that really brings home, you know, the reality that our reality is built on a whole lot of other ones.

As someone of Polish ancestry, the Kaszubes have always been kind of of interest to me.

My grandma was a Kaszube but she was from the mainland, so her family were farmers, peasants in the old country.

But there was kind of a link that we haven't quite established that there may have been fisher folk in the family as well.

So this was, it's kind of personal and as a native south sider, this was always a place that was kind of, it was of interest, you know.

You had the big ships coming in and these big piles of salt.

It was kind of, sort of visually appealing as I got older.

So this has been a part of my life for a very long time.

My favorite part is sort of closing a loop.

I did my master's thesis in geography on Jones Island back in 1978 so this is a long, long circle back and kind of a bucket list project.

And I've gotten to work with my son, Anders, as a videographer on this project and he's done a great job.

So that's been a lot of fun.

- What about challenges?

Any challenges as you guys were doing the production of this documentary?

- And I guess the, some of the surprises, you're down here shooting right here in Kaszubes Park and people would come by on their lunch hour or something.

So there's kind of a little subculture of sort of people who are island aficionados.

And one of the things I think of sort of Milwaukee cred, sometimes they'll be at a talk and I'll ask people if they've been to Kaszube's Park, if they raise their hands, you know, I mean, it's a pretty good chance they know the city pretty well and it's a minority, you know, who know what's going on down here and much less know the backstory.

It's the size of a basketball court, so the smallest park in Milwaukee, you know, Giannis could clear it in what, you know, 12 strides, something like that.

So it really stands out as kind of a, little kind of this little jewel, little green jewel in the heart of a very, very different landscape.

- "People of the Port" airs November 17th at 7:00 PM right before 10 thirty six.

We all have our own stories to tell when it comes to the American dream, including those people of the port.

American Dreams is an ongoing project here at Milwaukee PBS.

As producer, Maryann Lazarski found out repairing bikes and teaching bike safety might sound like ordinary tasks, but to a young Milwaukee man, they're part of something much bigger, his American dream.

(dramatic music) - My name is Jean, I'm 22 years of age.

I was born in Mexico down in the northern part of state of Chihuahua, the city called Cial Juarez.

The first time I rode a bike was between kindergarten, the first or second grade, and it was out at a boys and girls club and now I'm working on a bike.

- [Maryann] When you think about a bike, if you ever thought about that, the bike would bring you your American dream?

- Yeah, I would not thought of that when I was in the middle school or elementary school.

The first time I've heard about the American dream was around fifth grade when I was about to graduate.

My teacher had showed us a video and from there I just heard someone say about the American dream, and I don't remember much after that, but.

- [Maryann] What did you remember at all about what they said about the American dream?

What was the American dream?

- They said about like the freedom, the sense of accomplishment and to be able to live in a country that's gives you the freedom to do what you wanted to do and help out others as well.

I became a DACA recipient in the year of my junior sophomore year.

My high school was Escuela Verde down in the Menomonee valley and I just renewed it this year.

Me and my mom specifically were talking about citizenship and at the moment it's complicated.

And my, it was my freshman year when I first started going to Escuela and I think I remember telling my advisor I wanted to do something during the summer.

She introduced me to the bike program.

(melodic music) I've been working with the bikes, fixing them for about like six or seven years.

And just last year they moved me or they wanted someone for the bike and walk, safety instructor, check your brakes, does your brake works?

So I say, sure, a hundred percent in.

Then from then on I've been working with kids along MPS sites and other location as well.

Today we're at the COA Youth Center and we here teaching them how to ride safe, giving them routes to as to where they want to go and to be ride safely around the streets.

There are 15 kids with three or one staff at times, and the kids, the kids' energy are rowdy, but they're awesome.

Their expression are like, kike, cool, I got a nice bike.

And they just go brag about it with their friends and say, hey, I got a bike and it's nice than yours.

How about a race?

And they just then come back towards me and say, hey, thank you for the bike.

And you mean it, it's a feel accomplishment that you fixed the bike and you gave the bike to who needs it, who wants to ride a bike.

And it gives me joy and an accomplishment at the same time, hey, I did something for someone for community and that's all I can ask for.

Okay, we're rolling.

They always go riding back home happy and feeling with the joy in their hearts and their parents, they're like, they're grateful that like, that there's, there's programs like this for the community.

This fits in my American dream that it's one of the part of giving back to the community as part of my American dream.

Like I keep pushing, even if I do fail, I'll probably just be sad for a moment or two, and then I just like, know what, what can I learn from this?

And I just move on.

My American dream in a nutshell is to have a fulfilling life, to be happy and to keep doing for what I'm doing as a career wise and help help others on the way.

Okay, we're rolling.

- If you would like to share your American dream, go to Milwaukeepbs.org/dreams.

That'll do it for this edition of 10 thirty six.

We'll see you next time.

(melodic music)