There is a hunger in Wisconsin for thoughtful conversation about pressing policy issues.
This fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs was excited to team up with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Public Radio on the Main Street Agenda project. It is part of our mission to bring people together to solve the problems affecting our communities, and our faculty have remarkable research and expertise to help inform those public policy discussions.
The Main Street “experiment” took 11 different La Follette faculty around the state in the weeks leading up to the November midterm elections. We heard directly from voters and discussed the issues people care about most. We learned a lot, too.
We learned that there is an absolute hunger across our state for thoughtful conversations about pressing policy issues. Hundreds of people turned out in person and online to learn from one another and to talk about topics ranging from the economy and inflation to health care and foreign policy. We heard constant expressions of gratitude from attendees, thankful that we organized these much-desired community conversations.
We learned that voters want their elected officials to be talking about these topics, too. We often heard frustration that it was difficult to know where candidates stood on the important issues, and that campaigns do not focus on the topics average citizens care about.
We learned that voters want policymakers to work together in a bipartisan manner to solve society’s problems. The audience members for these events were engaged, intelligent, informed, and they asked thoughtful questions. They treated each other with respect and dignity, even when they came from different political perspectives. They modeled the civil behavior they would like to see in the larger public discourse.
We learned that perhaps we are not as politically divided and polarized as it sometime seems. Even topics that have often been politically charged – like climate change and health care – were seen as important across the political spectrum. We saw similar results in our La Follette Policy Poll, which asked 5,000 state residents about the problems they most want solved.
Most importantly, we learned that most people, even when they disagree, aren’t disagreeable.
Our faculty, including me, left these events inspired by the people they met − regular people who care a lot about their communities and our country.
We live in a complicated world. Every generation has to rise to the occasion and confront its own challenges. And, history tells us, successfully tackling society’s most pressing problems requires working together. At the La Follette School, we embrace our mission to serve as a convener and to identify policy solutions by finding common ground.
Susan Webb Yackee is a professor of public affairs and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.