These records document the decision making process of the organization on both a state and a local level. The collection illustrates the ways in which various chapters, committees, and bureaus worked in coordination to create policy, produce a statewide newspaper, and organize various political and social justice projects. It documents the Alliance's positions and activities on various issues as well as its ideological evolution, its structural growth as a political organization, and its changing relationships with other radical groups.
The major portion of the collection consists of printed materials: internal policy documents and drafts, position papers, broadsides, leaflets, newspapers, and newsletters. This is well complemented by a substantial amount of correspondence, and various meeting notes.
The collection strongly documents the most active years of the organization, 1970-1975. There is some information concerning the beginning years of the organization, but this mostly includes newsletters and other formal policy statements. It is unclear when the organization formally disbanded, but there are documents included in the collection dating until the spring of 1977. The documentation for the last years of the organization is sketchy and inconsistent.
The majority of the records relate to the state organization and the Madison chapter, with a few materials documenting the specific activities of other chapters. There is limited membership information and there are no financial documents.
This collection was processed in two parts, and although the two parts include some overlapping material, there are distinct differences in content and organization. The first part of the collection comprises materials received in the Archives in 1972 and 1975 and has been designated the Original Collection. It consists mainly of printed materials and handwritten notes taken by Alliance member Kim Egli (who differed politically with the organization and left it in 1975) and others who are unidentified. Egli's notes cover events only for the eighteen-month period from July 1973 to December 1974. Part 1 has been organized in four subseries: Internal Affairs Papers, Public Activities Papers, Papers on Relationships with Other Political Organizations, and Other Papers.
INTERNAL AFFAIRS PAPERS, dealing with the Madison Alliance's business activities, consist in large part of Egli's often cryptic handwritten notes. These are arranged chronologically within each folder. Many of the notes were taken on sheets of paper that had previously been folded into halves and quarters. Since these sheets are now unfolded for preservation purposes, researchers may find that two or more pages of notes appearing on a single sheet are arranged in an unconventional sequence (e.g. page 1 may occupy the lower right quadrant of the sheet, page 2 the lower left, etc.). In addition, the notes in box 1, folders 5-10 are labeled with an acronym designating the title of the assembled body, the date of the meeting, and often a letter designating the day of the week. For example, a notation such as “WAGM-5/13-W” indicates that the notes are from the Wisconsin Alliance General Meeting of Wednesday, May 13. In addition to WAGM--sometimes GM, the following acronyms have been identified: SOB (State Organizational Bureau), MOB (Madison Organizational Bureau), WAYC-sometimes YC-(Wisconsin Alliance Youth Committee), and CC (Coordinating Council).
Most noteworthy among the PUBLIC ACTIVITIES PAPERS is an unedited draft copy of a history of the Wisconsin Alliance prepared shortly before the group's sixth anniversary. There are also materials outlining the Alliance's ideological stance on various issues and its strategies for presenting itself and its positions to the public.
PAPERS ON RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS are filed by subject. Perhaps most significant are the materials documenting the Alliance's interaction with the New American Movement (NAM), with which it chose not to affiliate and which survived it.
OTHER PAPERS are arranged by subject. The Information File provides some indication of the atmosphere of intellectual-emotional ferment within which the Alliance conducted its activities. The forty-four items documenting the Southern Conference Education Fund split have been filed numerically, as they were received from the donor. The Miscellaneous Papers file contains an alleged copy of Ho Chi Minh's will as well as a copy of the script for a play on the model of The Wizard of Oz entitled “The Welfare Wizard of Ours.”
The second part of the collection comprises additional records received in the Archives between 1979 and 1986. Part 2 has been organized in eight subseries. It most notably illustrates the Alliance's state and local organizational bodies and activities through correspondence, policy documents, state organization papers, local chapter records, public activity documents, and photographs and posters.
The CORRESPONDENCE subseries is arranged chronologically and represents one of the strengths of this collection. Although the correspondence only includes the years Ed Berg served as the Alliance's political secretary (1970-1974), this was a particularly active period in the organization's history, as the Alliance formed chapters outside of Madison and began circulating a statewide newspaper, The Wisconsin Patriot. Although some of the content is of a routine nature, the majority of the correspondence illustrates the contacts and relationships made by the Alliance on local, state, and national levels. The correspondence also documents the tightly woven nature of the personal and political activities of the members of this group. Also included are letters to the Alliance covering a variety of topics, from solicitation of funds to criticism of the organization's political stance. Correspondence relating to the Farm Brigades project and letters to the editor of the Alliance's newspaper (The Wisconsin Patriot) are not included in this series, but instead they are located with the papers regarding these activities.
The POLICY DOCUMENTS subseries includes both internal policy documents, produced to critique and develop the organization's activities and purpose, as well as position papers, created as public articulations of the Alliance's political stance. These documents span the entire life of the Alliance and illustrate how the organization's policies, political views, and internal structure changed over time. Although both state and local chapter policy developments are addressed in these papers, the distinction between the administration of the Madison chapter, and that of the state organization is not always clear. It is, therefore, often difficult to discern whether local or state policy issues are being discussed.
The STATE ORGANIZATION subseries is composed of four distinct parts that illustrate the Alliance's operation on a state level. First, the State Organizational Bureau (SOB) was composed of representatives from each of the local chapters. It determined statewide policies and tried to hold state conferences every six months. Included in this series are meeting notes taken by Ed Berg (a member of the SOB), the sporadic newsletters issued by the SOB to Alliance members, and the papers generated by the state conferences. Second, the Alliance established a statewide body, the Strategy Commission, to undertake the task of summarizing the intentions of the organization, as well as defining its political ideology. Both the papers generated by this body, and its final report, are included in this series. Third, this series includes the scant records documenting the organization's newspaper, The Wisconsin Patriot, which was printed and edited in Milwaukee for most of its existence; copies of The Wisconsin Patriot have been retained with the collection. Finally, the strength of this series lies in the nearly complete run of the monthly “Wisconsin Alliance State Newsletter.” This comprehensive newsletter, distributed to Alliance members, includes such items as position papers, meeting notes, letters to the editor, project updates, monthly columns, and activity calendars.
The LOCAL CHAPTERS subseries is organized by chapter beginning with the most active, the Madison chapter. This subseries begins with the meeting notes taken by Mary Radke, a member engaged in the Madison Chapter Council, a group composed of representatives from each of the various committees and created to provide leadership for the chapter. The chapter also held bi-weekly General Meetings where both members and non-members met to discuss the organization and its activities.
The Madison Chapter engaged in a large number of projects through the efforts of various committees, in particular, the farm committee and the labor committee. The farm committee organized the efforts of the Farm Brigades. The Farm Brigade organizers recruited students, teachers, and unemployed workers to assist small farmers in Wisconsin. The labor committee organized a number of strike support efforts. It was often through strike support projects that people became aware of the Alliance and later created new chapters. The chapters outside of Madison were less active, and are only sporadically documented in this collection.
The PUBLIC ACTIVITIES subseries illustrates the Alliance's publicity efforts and public relations. This subseries includes leaflets circulated by the group articulating their ideological stance and political activities. In addition, a number of broadsheets illustrating the wide range of Alliance projects are part of this series. The Alliance was very active in local electoral politics, and the portion of this series devoted to campaigns for public office highlights this activity.
The materials contained in the OTHER ORGANIZATIONS subseries illustrate the diversity of groups connected formally and informally with the Alliance. The most significant relationships documented here were with the Civil Action Research and Education Project (CAREP), Wisconsin Youth for Democratic Education (WYDE) and the Common Market Coop. CAREP was the Alliance's precursor organization and WYDE and the Common Market Coop were both outgrowths of Alliance activities. As a result of their overlapping membership, the Alliance maintained close relationships with both the Teachers for Peaceful Alternatives (TPA) and We the People (WTP). The materials from the other organizations included in this subseries aid in illustrating the political environment in which the Alliance operated.
The RESEARCH FILES subseries is arranged by subject and documents three areas in which the Alliance was particularly active: education, transportation, and the Vietnam War.
PHOTOGRAPHS AND POSTERS in the collection include numerous images of marching picketers with signs, some supporting strikers and some protesting the Vietnam War. One image shows “Andy Ewen-on a Wis. Alliance Farm Brigade in early 1970's” and two images are from a performance of The Mother at the Wil-Mar Community Center in Madison as a benefit for striking Gardner's Bakery workers. Other images are unidentified. One small poster recruits actors and technical staff for a people's history play of Wisconsin. Five oversize posters include “Throw Gulf Off Campus,” 1968?; “Rally in Support of Chilean Resistance,” 1968?; one recruiting summer farm workers, undated; one supporting Mary Kay Baum for the Assembly; and “Cleaver for President,” 1968.
