Wisconsin
Milwaukee's oldest gay bar donates thousands of photos to Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project
Thousands of photos taken over the last 50 years at Milwaukee’s oldest gay bar are now in the hands of the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. And while 50 years may not seem like that long ago, photos of people inside gay bars at that time were incredibly rare.
That’s according to Michail Takach, chair of the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project.
“For most of the 20th Century, gay bars were technically illegal. They operated kind of underground,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily rare for there to be photos inside gay bars before the 90s because people were so uncomfortable with being seen in a gay space.”
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Takach said people feared blackmail or weren’t out in their everyday lives, so to have a collection from that time period is “almost unheard of.”
But the History Project is now processing thousands of photos taken at This Is It! bar, a staple in Milwaukee’s LGBTQ+ community since it was opened in 1968 by June Brehm.
“She was a married woman and a business owner in the Milwaukee suburbs who’d worked in the restaurant industry and had a lot of gay friends,” Takach recalled. “She couldn’t believe what they put up with just to be in a place where they could be themselves.”
When Brehm opened This Is It! she started taking photos of the people at her bar. The images depict everyday life. People posing, laughing and enjoying beers. They span decades — showing changing fashion as regulars age through the years.
Toward the end of June Brehm’s life, her son Joe Brehm took over management of the bar and continued the tradition. Slideshows of the photos from the 90s onward can be seen on monitors in the bar to this day.
This Is It! has since passed out of family ownership and is now owned and operated by George Schneider and Trixie Mattel. Schneider said when he came on board, he found shoe boxes full of old Polaroids and prints from the bar’s earliest days.
While he worked to digitize some of them, he decided the project needed help from the professionals.
“When I took the business over completely, I felt like I was the custodian of the history,” Schneider said. “It’s very important for me to educate — especially the younger generations that we have coming in — educate them on some of the history of the space itself, the queer community overall.”
So Takach stepped in. He proposed the History Project scan and archive all of the photos, put them on social media for people to see, while preserving them indefinitely. That work is ongoing.
“When you have a place that’s meant so much, and has been a spiritual center for the community as long as This Is It! has been … that’s really quite a powerful narrative to carry forward and quite a powerful legacy to have in our hands,” he said.
Some batches of photos have already been posted to the History Project’s Facebook page, and more will be added in the coming weeks and months.
For now, Schneider is enjoying all of the activity online, as members of the community identify people in the photos and share memories from the bar.
“Watching the feedback and the response on social media … the nostalgia, the memories that it evokes, and IDing people that maybe they haven’t thought of or seen in years, I think that’s the most rewarding next step,” he said.
Takach is just glad to see more people wanting to preserve this kind of history.
“So much of LGBT history was destroyed by people who were just ashamed of it and didn’t know what to do with it and didn’t want anyone to know about it,” he said. “And now we’re kind of seeing the reversal of that. And we’re seeing an evolution of this understanding that this content has value.”
Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project on the road this summer
People across the state can explore those photos and troves of other historical exhibits this summer as the History Project takes to the road.
The organization will hit 20 communities in their Summer to be Seen tour, showcasing people, organizations and places key to Wisconsin LGBTQ+ history. They’ll also give people the chance to share their own stories — building the project’s archive.
“We’re going to them because the new generations are telling us that they don’t want to have to travel to someone else’s town to have pride festivals,” Takach said. “So this year, we’re going places like Rhinelander and Ashland and Ripon and Platteville and Door County, Wausau — places that are not traditionally seen as gay epicenters — to really extend the value, the reach and the impact of our work.”
Those events run through early October, more details can be found on their website.
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MPS staff protest budget cuts, layoffs and for cost-of-living raises
Milwaukee Public School staff protest budget cuts, layoffs and for cost-of-living raises
Wisconsin teacher unions have seen the nation’s largest drop in strength since 2012, according to a new study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
The Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education think tank, ranked Wisconsin 36th among 50 states and the District of Columbia for teacher union strength, falling 18 spots from its previous 2012 study. The rankings factored in union resources and membership, involvement in politics, the state’s labor and bargaining policies, policy wins and losses, and the perceived influence of teacher unions in the state.
The report said teacher unions across the nation are weaker than they were over a decade ago, with the percentage of teachers who are union members declining in all but four states.
In Wisconsin, membership declined from 98% in 2012 to 45% in 2025, a nearly 54 percentage point decrease and the largest drop in membership nationwide. The state ranked 43rd overall for union resources and membership compared to 13th in 2012.
The report attributed the decline in membership to Act 10, the state’s 2011 law signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker that essentially ended collective bargaining rights for public employee unions in Wisconsin.
In an email, Fordham Institute researcher Meredith Coffey said most of the data in the 2012 study predated the law, and it’s unlikely the initial report fully captured the effects of Act 10. She said the change in Wisconsin’s overall rank understates the impact of the law.
“In other words, the estimated change in rank between 2012 and today is arguably conservative,” Coffey said.
The study also found Wisconsin teacher unions’ financial resources are limited compared with unions in other states. After adjusting for cost-of-living differences, Wisconsin unions have the seventh-lowest annual revenues per teacher.
Wisconsin also ranked 44th for its labor and bargaining policies. Public-sector unions are limited to negotiating for raises capped at the rate of inflation under Act 10.
The report said just five states – Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma and Virginia – have enhanced collective bargaining rights since 2012.
Wisconsin teacher unions ranked 25th for their political involvement, specifically in elections and campaigns. In 2020 and 2022, the Fordham Institute found, the state’s teacher unions sponsored the second-highest number of state and local political ads in the nation.
About 70% of Wisconsin candidates endorsed by state-level teachers unions won their elections in 2024, according to the data.
The state’s teacher unions additionally ranked 26th in policy wins and losses, which the Fordham Institute measured by analyzing the extent to which Wisconsin policies align with union priorities.
In perceived influence, the organization ranked Wisconsin’s teacher unions 24th. Researchers said they measured this through a survey of people with knowledge of education policymaking in each state, including lawmakers, journalists, state education administrators and members of teacher unions, among others.
Overall, the study found the strongest unions are concentrated in Democrat-led, more affluent states, while the weakest are concentrated in Republican-led, poorer states.
The report said the strongest teacher unions are in Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Hawaii. The weakest teacher unions are in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina and Mississippi.
Kayla Huynh covers K-12 education, teachers and solutions for the Journal Sentinel. Contact: khuynh@gannett.com. Follow her on X: @_kaylahuynh.
Kayla Huynh‘s reporting is supported by Herb Kohl Philanthropies and reader contributions to the Journal Sentinel Community-Funded Journalism Project. Journal Sentinel editors maintain full editorial control over all content. To support this work, visit jsonline.com/support. Checks can be addressed to Local Media Foundation (memo: “JS Community Journalism”) and mailed to P.O. Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689.
The JS Community-Funded Journalism Project is administered by Local Media Foundation, tax ID #36-4427750, a Section 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association.
MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly announced Tuesday the launch of a new statewide project focusing on shaping the future of education and student success.
Portrait of a Graduate was created by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to help prepare high school students for life after high school, including college, careers and community leadership.
With students having to navigate new challenges involving technology, the cost of living and evolving career paths, the project was created to give students the knowledge, skills and experiences they need, no matter what post-graduate path they take.
“We want to broaden Wisconsin’s vision for student success,” Dr. Underly said. “The world our students are preparing to enter is changing quickly, and it is critical that we hear directly from the people who know our communities best. Academic rigor is always a top priority and will not change, but we also need to ensure students leave our schools prepared to think critically, adapt, communicate, solve problems, and thrive.”
A committee of educators, students, higher education partners, statewide education organizers, employers and representatives from industries across Wisconsin is helping guide the project.
The Department of Public Instruction will be holding virtual listening sessions scheduled for May 27 from noon to 1 p.m. and June 3 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Registration for the session or more information can be found on the Department of Public Instruction’s website.
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Copyright 2026 WMTV. All rights reserved.
Yes
A deal between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders to give Wisconsin income tax filers a rebate would have excluded about 30% of filers.
That’s because the deal provided rebates up to $300 for individuals and $600 for married joint filers only to residents who paid state income taxes for 2024.
The deal, which failed to pass in the state Senate, also reduced property taxes, increased funding for schools and ended taxes on tips and some overtime pay.
According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, about 2.1 million residents would have received the rebates. Based on that and the U.S. Census estimates, 55% of adults would not be eligible for tax rebates based on not having owed taxes or because they did not file a return. Of those who filed, about 26% were not eligible for a rebate, LFB estimated.
This fact brief responds to conversations like this one.
Sources
Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Estimated Distribution of Individual Income Tax Rebate under May 2026 Special Session LRB-6707 and LRB-6710 (“the bill”),
U.S. Census, Age and Sex
Wisconsin Department of Revenue, Individual Income Tax – Filing Requirements
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel collaborated with Wisconsin Watch to develop this fact brief. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Gigafact program, newsrooms across the U.S. that deliver bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read more about our methodology at jsonline.com/FactBriefMethods.
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