When I was a teenager, because of my dad’s work, I lived in a town in France. Sometimes, chanting mixed with the buzzing of the doorbell would wake me up in the middle of the night: USA GO HOME, USA GO HOME. I would lie in bed, my throat tightening and stinging as I refused to cry. It’s true — I am from the U.S. Along with the last five generations of my family, I was born in the Midwest.

I know now that the people chanting were simply repeating what they had heard. It’s really convenient for corporate interests and billionaires to blame people from other countries or people who are poor to divide us and distract us from the harm they are inflicting on us.

Why has the wealth gap between the top 1% and the rest of us grown every decade since the 1970s? Greedy billionaires and corporate special interests have organized, lobbied and spent billions to rig the rules and extract every last resource from our communities. And it’s happening right under our noses. Last summer, they passed the largest ever transfer of wealth — over a trillion dollars — from working Americans to the top 1% in HR1.

How do they get away with this? Divide and conquer politics. This same bill that further lines the pockets of the ultra wealthy, puts $170 billion into the hands of immigration enforcement with the intention of dividing us and distracting us from their wealth extraction.

Our families and neighbors in Wisconsin will bear the costs, starting with higher health insurance costs for most of us in 2026. Cuts over the next four years will kick Wisconsinites off Medicaid and FoodShare, leaving children, seniors and working people to go to bed hungry. Local hospitals and nursing homes will close. It will mean more of us deciding between paying the rent and seeing a doctor when already the cost of living is crushing us.

But let’s take a moment and imagine what it would look like if we refuse to be divided by narratives that pit us against each other. Instead, we can stand in solidarity to fight for what we need to live with dignity, to provide for our families, to take a break from work and rest for a while. This is why GROWW exists: to build power for regular people so we can create a world for regular folks like myself and like you, the reader, can thrive.

I can imagine a world where we see a doctor when we are sick, without a single thought about bills. I can imagine a world where every person working full time receives a wage that allows us to take care of our families. I can imagine a world where we can decide to have kids without any concerns for affordability. I can imagine a world where we all have a safe and healthy home and can trust a glass of water.

This world is within our reach if we stand together.

What if instead of taking the bait when they divide us and distract us, we stood together? This is how my great grandma won the right to vote. This is how my grandpa won the 40-hour work week. This is how we’ve won operations ordinances to protect our family farms in Pierce County. This is how we won the construction of more homes in Dunn County. This is how we’ve won fair maps in Wisconsin. We may not all vote the same way, come from the same place or look the same but we all want to provide for our families. We want to have a say in what happens in our community. We want the freedom to have a voice in the decisions that impact us.

This world is within our reach if we stand together. Join us.

Jenelle Ludwig Krause
Executive Director, GROWW