Many activists in Milwaukee know Alex Brower. He has been key to several recent organizing projects in the city, helping to start a credit union to increase access to financial services in Milwaukee’s poorest areas, organizing Milwaukee substitute teachers into a formidable union, and a visible supporter for many working-class causes and labor drives throughout the city. In 2017, as president of the Milwaukee Substitute Teachers’ Association, Brower engaged in a three-week hunger strike to obtain health care benefits for substitute teachers, an act which garnered access to benefits for most of the city’s substitutes.

Now Brower wants to democratize finance, and he’s running for city comptroller to do so. Marquette University sociology professor and Jacobin contributor Mike McCarthy sat down with Brower to discuss why this is the right fight for the Left to take on.