David Crowley announced on social media that county golf courses, the marina, and beer gardens were not just amenities. They were a racial problem.
On Dec. 13, 2021, the Milwaukee County executive posted on X that parks funding created “a very real conflict between generating $$$ & racial equity.” Then he named the offenders. “Revenues often come from activities that those with discretionary funding can afford, like golf, the marina, and beer gardens,” Crowley wrote. “These activities are traditionally and predominately [sic] supported by white users. This racial inequity is born from a history of systemic racism & injustice.”
The comments were not a stray aside. They sat inside Crowley’s larger racial-equity project. Milwaukee County declared racism a “public health crisis.” Crowley’s budgets pushed a Racial Equity Budget Tool that told departments to weigh spending by race. He has kept that frame into 2026, tying volunteer events to the same declaration.
The irony is sitting in the parks’ balance sheet. Those “predominantly white” activities are what keep the system from collapsing.
County golf generated $11.5 million in 2025, about 20 percent of Parks revenue, after a record 388,000 rounds across 13 public courses. Beer gardens have topped $3 million in annual sales. The Sprecher-sponsored traveling beer garden alone has brought in more than $5 million since it started, money the county says goes back into parks. Crowley has cut ribbons at beer gardens, posed for the “Cheers to Our Parks” fundraiser at South Shore, and in March 2026 called the traveling garden “an essential part of our strategy” to sustain the system. He told residents to stop by for a brew.
Wisconsin is the beer state, embracing its short summers and celebrating every nice day. Milwaukee still markets itself as the original Beer Capital of the World. County parks sell Sprecher, brats, pretzels, and root beer floats. Crowley’s own administration has spent years expanding those operations, not shuttering them.
Crowley has not walked back the 2021 posts. He has not explained how a public golf course or a park beer garden is an instrument of “systemic racism” while he simultaneously markets both as family recreation and budget saviors. He has not said whether a statewide Crowley administration would apply the same racial screen to municipal golf, county marinas, or the beer tents that define summer in Wisconsin. The Democrat who lectures that tee times and pilsners are racially loaded is the same executive who used those revenues, then reached for higher property and sales taxes anyway.
