Making a Difference

ON SCREEN is Polly Williams, a silver-haired black grandmother, explaining why she fought (successfully) in the Wisconsin legislature for state-funded vouchers to enable children from low-income families to attend private schools. Pointing to a picture, one of many in her living room, of her baby grandson, Mrs. Williams says, “Mikey is the whole inspiration for, . . . the whole power behind his grandma when it comes to this [activism for] parental choice. Because all I had to do is think about him, knowing what kind of system we have available for some of our people, [and] I knew that I was going to make things better for him.”

Mrs. Williams is an unlikely political leader for a reform movement that originated in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. The one-time welfare mother is a lifelong liberal Democrat representing a black innercity state legislative district in Milwaukee. Moreover, she was Wisconsin chairman for Jesse Jackson’s last two presidential campaigns. Still, Mrs. Williams has induced her state to put into practice an idea conservative have been pushing for a quarter of a century: school vouchers. And in so doing, she, like others working to solve social problems at the local level, is at the same time blazing a new path for the conservative movement: grassroots activism.

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Susan Mandel

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ON SCREEN is Polly Williams, a silver-haired black grandmother, explaining why she fought (successfully) in the Wisconsin legislature for state-funded vouchers to enable children from low-income families to attend private schools. Pointing to a picture, one of many in her living room, of her baby grandson, Mrs. Williams says, “Mikey is the whole inspiration for, . . . the whole power behind his grandma when it comes to this [activism for] parental choice. Because all I had to do is think about him, knowing what kind of system we have available for some of our people, [and] I knew that I was going to make things better for him.”

Mrs. Williams is an unlikely political leader for a reform movement that originated in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. The one-time welfare mother is a lifelong liberal Democrat representing a black innercity state legislative district in Milwaukee. Moreover, she was Wisconsin chairman for Jesse Jackson’s last two presidential campaigns. Still, Mrs. Williams has induced her state to put into practice an idea conservative have been pushing for a quarter of a century: school vouchers. And in so doing, she, like others working to solve social problems at the local level, is at the same time blazing a new path for the conservative movement: grassroots activism.