If You Organize Long Enough...

New serial-style podcast follows small-town seniors in the fight of their lives. It's a battle about the future of care, public vs. private, and the role of the elderly in building a "bigger we."

If you organize long enough you get to be part of a handful of very special organizing campaigns, ones where the tenacity and soul of the people you are working with seems too good to be true. I am blessed to be part of one of those fights right now. 

In Season Two of our podcast, To See Each Other, we take you along for the ride on one of those fights. Wisconsin has a history of county-owned nursing homes. These are beloved institutions and often five-star rated.

But, they are under attack - a concerted push by conservative county boards to privatize them and sell them off, in some cases to shady buyers, and often for a song. 

A mighty band of older residents are not having it. They are cramming into county board meetings, marching in local parades, and giving county leaders hell, some with their last breath. 

In Season One of To See Each Other, while I was at People’s Action, we traveled to five states to learn about some of the most compelling rural organizing happening in the lead up to the 2020 election. 

This Season we go to one state, Wisconsin, where small town seniors are fighting tooth and nail to save their county-owned nursing homes and taking that energy straight through the election.

For seven straight Presidential elections, Wisconsin went blue, until in 2016, when Donald Trump won the Badger State by just under 23,000 votes. There’s a good chance whoever wins Wisconsin in November will win the Presidency. 

Here’s the trailer for this season. The first episode comes out on September 24. 

I hope you’ll join in and get to know the tough and soulful seniors leading this fight. You can subscribe here (ITunes), here (Spotify), or wherever you listen to podcasts.