
The La Follette School of Public Affairs concluded its six-week, statewide Main Street Agenda Community Conversations project last Tuesday with a town hall in Milwaukee covering inflation and the economy that featured faculty members Menzie Chinn and J. Michael Collins.
Before ending at the Clinton Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee on October 15, the project took La Follette to La Crosse, Pewaukee, Green Bay, Eau Claire, and Madison to engage Wisconsinites, promote civil dialogue, and offer space for citizens to discuss their top policy issues according to the WisconSays survey as we approach the 2024 election.
More than 400 Wisconsinites participated in the two town halls and four dinner conversations designed to promote civil dialogue and find common ground.

Connecting important issues in La Crosse
The series, a collaboration with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the UW–Madison Division of Extension and supported by Wisconsin Public Radio, began on September 11 in La Crosse with a town hall featuring La Follette faculty members Morgan Edwards and Yang Wang.
The event was moderated by Casey Meehan, the director of programming with the Sustainability Institute, who seamlessly weaved together the event’s topics of climate change and health care and made a case for the interconnectivity of issues. “Policies in one of these areas can impact policies, or outcomes, in the other area,” Meehan said after the event. “If people have some awareness of that then hopefully, they become more informed voters and they’re thinking in a nuanced way about how the issues they’re passionate about impact all the other issues Wisconsinites are dealing with.”

Finding common ground across the state
After the La Crosse town hall, La Follette began four weeks of dinner conversations focused on practicing and promoting civil dialogue, with K-12 education as the issue of concern. More than 130 people participated in the first and largest conversation event in Pewaukee on September 18. Over dinner, tables of seven to ten people with diverse political viewpoints discussed K-12 education in semi-structured conversations guided by a moderator. Participants were pleasantly surprised by the humility and curiosity on display during the two-hour event. “Everyone cared, and everyone was very interested in both listening and learning, as well as expressing their views. In today’s divisive climate, it was very refreshing,” Annette Duncan of Franklin said after participating in the event.
Following Pewaukee, more than 50 Wisconsinites turned out for dinner conversations in both Green Bay and Eau Claire, respectively. These events yielded similarly enthusiastic responses from participants who had yearned for opportunities for frank and respectful conversations. “I think people are starved to give their input, you know. People feel, I think, that they don’t have an outlet to do this outside of their own little circles, which these days are smaller than ever,” Joshua Aspenson of La Crosse said after the Eau Claire event.
The final dinner conversation took place in Madison on October 9 with more than 100 Madison-area residents coming together with a historic election less than a month away.
“I think this should be happening in every community,” Kelly Remus of Fall River said. “Even in my very small town, the yard signs have a lot of opinions. I think it’d be great to get those people in and have a meal and have an open discussion about their thoughts.”

Tackling inflation in Milwaukee
For the Milwaukee town hall that concluded the Main Street Agenda Community Conversations, Chinn and Collins were joined by Milwaukee community organizers Dynasty Caesar and Melody McCurtis. Journalist James Causey of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel moderated the interactive conversation that connected economic trends to the lived experiences of Milwaukeeans.
“I liked the dynamic of having the data and the scholars in the room, and also the community organizers and activists who are close to the ground in the community,” Pastor Walter Lanier said. “I think in Milwaukee in particular, being a very segregated city, it’s important to make sure we touch both the air and the ground.”
While the Community Conversations have finished, the Main Street Agenda will continue through the end of the year with Policy Perspectives written by the La Follette School’s faculty. These op-eds, published in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Ideas Lab, analyze the most pressing issues for Wisconsinites.
As one of the first projects of its kind to test the effectiveness of moderated, civil dialogue-promoting interventions, the four dinner conversations may also lead to important insights for researchers studying polarization or seeking evidence-based strategies to counteract its detrimental effects.
Civil dialogue will also be a cornerstone of the new undergraduate major the school is seeking approval for. Lessons from these events will help instructors create classes to teach these skills to tomorrow’s policy leaders.