Written by Bill Hogseth, Lead Organizer & Co-Executive Director, GROWW

Something is being done to us. Most of us can feel it, but it’s hard to put into words.

For the last fifty years, corporations have consolidated power, extracted wealth from our communities, and dismantled the institutions that ordinary people built to wield their collective power. The result has been staggering inequality, economic precarity, and collapsing trust in everything: government, our neighbors, the future itself. Right-wing strategies have exploited that wreckage with tremendous sophistication, turning anger into fear, fear into division, and division into a weapon aimed at our neighbors instead of the people actually responsible.

This is not an accident. It is a strategy. 

Western Wisconsin is one of its proving grounds. This is a region that voted for Obama by 17 points, went hard for Bernie Sanders, then swung to Trump and stayed there. In Dunn County, more people sat out 2024 entirely than voted for any single candidate on the ballot. Not because they don’t care, but because no one showed up to have a real conversation with them. 

Modern campaigns deploy ads and targeted mail, extract votes, and disappear after Election Day. That approach has failed rural Wisconsin and working-class people of all races across the Midwest. It has disconnected regular people from the political process. It has left a vacuum that right-wing demagoguery has been all too happy to fill. 

Roughly 4 in 10 voters say their vote doesn’t matter. The system hasn’t worked for them and they know it. What’s missing for them is organized power, rooted in communities, built person by person, sustained year round, and not dependent on politicians or parties.

In GROWW, we are choosing to do something different.

It is one of the most radical things we can do: walk up to a stranger’s door with a willingness to listen, a curiosity to discover shared interest, and a hopefulness that a single conversation might lead to something larger. Knocking on a door can be scary. It is also one of our most enduring ways to build grassroots power. Go directly to people, right where they live, listen to what matters most to them, offer our perspective, and invite them to act together – with us.

This summer, GROWW is training volunteer canvassers to knock doors across our region and have 4,200 real conversations about healthcare. In a single year, two hospitals and nineteen clinics have closed in the Chippewa Valley. Four birthing centers have been shuttered in two years. Federal Medicaid cuts passed by Congress last year are threatening coverage for 270,000 Wisconsinites.

These are real conversations: often 20-30 minutes long, grounded in people’s lives, pains, and hopes, and designed to shift worldviews. They are also strategic. CD3 is one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country, decided by roughly 10,000 votes in 2024. And for the first time in fourteen years, state legislative races will be contested on fairer maps. 

Flipping CD3 could help deliver a check on rising authoritarian power. Winning key state legislative seats will help put a BadgerCare public option within reach in 2027. Every conversation this summer is a step toward both. 

In this context, GROWW is uniquely positioned. A homegrown organization with a history of fighting and winning on issues like housing and corporate agriculture, we have earned credibility to have real conversations with people who lost faith in government and stopped believing change is possible. We meet people where they are, take them seriously, and invite them into a community of solidarity with a path to win a better future.

Authoritarianism thrives on division and despair. It needs us isolated, exhausted, and convinced that nothing can change. The antidote isn’t better politicians or sharper messaging. It’s people finding each other and deciding together that a different future is worth fighting for.

That’s what we’re building. Come join us. 

We are holding Real Conversations Strategy Meetings on Zoom for those who want to learn more. (These are repeat sessions. You only need to attend one.)

• Tuesday May 12th from 11:30am-1:00pm Sign up here
• Wednesday May 13th from 7:00-8:30pm Sign up here

We are holding deep canvass trainings to prepare you with the skills you need to have effective and transformative conversations. 

• Saturday May 30 | 9:00am–5:00pm | Eau Claire
• Sunday May 31 | 9:00am–5:00pm | River Falls

Click here for more details and to register.