Reach Out Wisconsin has continued holding our monthly forums, and it’s been…amazing!!
I’ve been busy—running an organization is a lot of work. But I’m bursting to tell you some exciting updates.
First, I’m pleased to report that our last two forums were each a success! October’s was on health care, and this month’s forum was titled “People’s Movements: Understanding the Tea Party; Understanding Occupy Wall Street.”
This last forum was especially fascinating. The speakers were masterful at maintaining a respectful atmosphere even in the face of some testy questions from attendees. It was thought-provoking to hear what they each had to say, and I learned a lot about both of these movements. I know others did too.
And part of the reason for the forums’ success is another piece of exciting news: we’ve been getting a lot of press!
This was unexpected. It all started with a little op-ed piece by David Blaska in the Isthmus, Madison’s weekly paper. The article appeared after our first forum in August, and although we were excited to be mentioned, we felt somewhat ambivalent about sharing the piece with others—its title was “Madison liberals have no interest in opposing viewpoints.”
Blaska wasn’t referring to us in the title. He was grouchily talking about the general culture of Madison, which he said is full of closed-minded liberals who aren’t interested in reasoned debate. (I think it’s fair to say that Blaska is the token conservative writer for the Isthmus, which is a very liberal rag.)
But unbeknownst to us, Blaska had attended our first Reach Out forum. And at the bottom of his grumpy column, he added a little positive note about us, saying that we were practicing civil discourse. He linked to our website and gave the details on our September forum.
Bemused, Scott, Carol, Ron, and I continued with our busy preparations for that forum. The four of us were rapidly learning how to divvy up Reach Out Wisconsin tasks, but there were still a lot of them: finding and booking restaurant meeting rooms; choosing topics; finding, booking, and coaching speakers; advertising forums; updating our website and Facebook page; and answering emails.
The first forum had gone well, but there were so many questions I still had about what we were doing and how to do it better. And some of my questions were just vague feelings of unease. Amidst the pressure of my to-do list, I also wanted to make sure we were doing this right.
Scott has some experience facilitating and leading, but none of us has been trained in conflict resolution or mediation or psychology. I sometimes feel like we’re groping in the dark, making it all up as we go along.
A week or two before September’s forum, a friend forwarded me an email about Parker J. Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit. Looking at the book on Amazon.com, my heart soared. Even the few intro pages I read online were like shining a light into the darkness. It was as if I’d discovered a manual to what we were doing!
Palmer’s book is about how to heal the divide in our country. His writing is eloquent and nuanced; he finds connections between politics, daily life, and spirituality. Looking beneath our “tribal” political conflicts, he explores the internal conflicts within all of us. And he offers solutions, including ways we need to alter our own thinking in order to heal our democracy.
I eagerly bought the book, although once I had it in hand, I found myself reading it very slowly. I wanted its lessons to sink in.
Prepping for September’s abortion forum, I marked passages that I could read aloud to help set the tone of the discussion. And those passages did help—that forum went better than we could have hoped.
Then, in October, we were contacted by a reporter from the Cap Times, another local Madison paper. Writer Phil Haslanger is a local pastor who contributes a monthly article on faith and values, and he’d heard about us through Blaska’s piece as well as through a friend.
He wanted to write his own piece about Parker Palmer’s book, and to mention us in his article. Like my friend, he’d made the connection between the book and our work. Pleased, we decided I’d speak to Haslanger, since I was familiar with Palmer’s book. Soon this new article appeared: “Fostering ways to reclaim the best of democracy,” a beautiful summary of the book with Reach Out Wisconsin as an example of what Palmer is advocating.
I was honored to be mentioned in the same place as a teacher I so admire.
Pleased with these little mentions of our group, we continued plugging away. Now we were organizing our October forum on health care. I’m in charge of checking our Reach Out email account, and usually, there are just one or two messages per week asking a small question or thanking us for what we’re doing.
But in October I was excited to find another media inquiry: Dan Simmons from the Wisconsin State Journal wanted to interview the four of us for an article!
This would be the first article about us that was “for real,” as Ron says. Not just a mention, but an actual article about Reach Out. And the Wisconsin State Journal is a statewide paper, with a much broader audience than those of the Cap Times or the Isthmus!
We all met Dan at a local restaurant and spoke with him while he recorded the interview on his iPhone. He attended our third forum the following Tuesday. We didn’t have the time to think much about his impressions of us that night—we were busy running the forum—but we hoped he’d write something favorable that captured the spirit of what we were doing.
The following Sunday morning, Ron got a text from a friend: “Congrats! Front page!” We’d made the front page of the Sunday paper!
The only trouble was, Ron and I couldn’t find the article—we don’t get the Wisconsin State Journal. When we eagerly opened the computer and looked online, we discovered that the article wouldn’t be posted there until a couple days later. Texts and emails kept coming in with congratulations, so I was excited and determined to go find a copy of the paper.
This took a little doing. Walking to the co-op to buy groceries, I saw a paper in a newsstand on the way, but by the time I returned to the stand with quarters, it was empty. I passed numerous Wisconsin State Journals languishing on the sidewalk, just lying there in their plastic bags as if to mock me, and I actually considered taking one out of its bag just see our article, but my dignity stopped me.
Finally, when Ron went to play frisbee an hour later, he swung by a grocery store and bought five copies of the paper, then called me and read the entire article aloud. “There’s a picture of us, too. We look pretty good!”
The article was wonderful. It’s called “Political opposites reach out for better understanding.” Dan turned out to be an amazing writer who captured us artfully and truthfully; we couldn’t have asked for a better story. We were brimming with pride.
Two days later when the article appeared online, it spent a day as one of the top three Wisconsin State Journal stories. Walking around town with Ron, I wondered if anyone recognized us from our picture. It was fun to have our fifteen minutes of fame.
But beyond the ego trip of being in the paper, I felt proud at a deeper level. I was proud of all of us—not just us four founders of Reach Out, but the dozens of people who had so far attended events and joined us in our mission.
And I was proud of the media, as well! Proud that Dan was so interested in what we’re doing and that his editor found it worthy of the front page. So often, the media focuses on negative stories, and it was exciting to see that they wanted to report on something positive just as much as we wanted to create it.
Simmons’s article paid off: suddenly it seemed that everyone knew what we were doing. This was great; we wanted people to hear about our public forums and attend them.
Still, I was a little nervous to see yet another mention of us soon afterwards by the Wisconsin State Journal’s Chris Rickert: “I reached out with an invite, but who will show?”
Rickert, like Simmons, was very complimentary of us, saying our message of dialogue has the power to make real change in Wisconsin. What made me nervous was Rickert’s invitation to many partisan legislators and media personalities, who he challenged to attend our next forum. Reading his article, it sounded like at least a few “big personalities” might be there. That meant we might need to put extra work into crafting a civil, friendly atmosphere!
I was optimistic, though, that we could do it. And sure enough, although a couple “big personalities” invited by Chris Rickert were in attendance at this last forum, we did keep it civil. By now, we have around thirty people who’ve been at all or most of our forums, and we’ve begun to develop a group culture that’s respectful.
Rickert wrote a follow-up article to his first: “Reaching out for thoughtful talk about politics.” This article was just as complimentary as his first had been, now that he’d seen a forum for himself:
If there is a heaven for nerds (like me) who enjoy thoughtful, diverse talk about politics, government and how we arrange ourselves in a Democratic society, I suppose Reach Out is a pretty close approximation to that.
There was only one error in Chris’s article: he said the November forum had around 60 people. I counted, and there were 70, not including the four of us founders. That’s twice as many as last time!
After all this amazing news, I feel happy, satisfied, and energized. I’ve started a news archives page to keep track of our mentions, here.
This group started as a little project for Scott, Carol, Ron, and me to run, but now it feels like Reach Out Wisconsin is part of something larger—something that belongs to many more people and that many Wisconsinites are longing to be a part of, especially after the tumultuous year. I’m overwhelmed and thrilled to see where it goes.
We’re not hosting a forum in December because it would be too close to the holidays. I expected to feel relieved to have a break, but to my surprise, I feel more sad than relieved. We’ve built up momentum and each forum has been better than the last. I can’t wait for the one in January!
