October 2-8 Week Without Driving

 Join us October 2-8, 2023 to take on the challenge.

Take the challenge! Experience a week 

without driving and consider what life is like for the up to 40% of fellow La Crosse adults who are non-drivers. 

Sign up for the challenge: https://tinyurl.com/WWD23-LaCrosse

Or

Print out or grab a #WWD bingo card and turn it in by October 16 for a prize. Bingo cards can be picked up and dropped off at any of the following locations: City Hall lobby at the Parks and Recreation desk, Grand River Station, any La Crosse Library Branch, and Smith Bikes.

Try out a Drift Cycle bike share for one hour free with code WWD2023.

Try out the MTU for free on Wednesday, October 4.

Try out the SMRT Bus for free on Thursday, October 5 (join La Crosse Area Transit Advocates on that day for a Ride SMRT 2 Viroqua)

🚶🏼‍♀️ 🚍 🚶🏿 🚲 🚶🏿‍♀️ 🛹🚶🏽‍♂️

From AmericaWalks.org:  People without a car or unable to drive should be able to get to where they need to go safely and effectively. But every day, Americans who can’t drive – approximately 25 percent of the population – face significant barriers to mobility such as inadequate sidewalks, poor transit, lack of connectivity and dangerous roads. The needs of non-drivers are too-often disregarded in transportation infrastructure and policies. Our goal should be a transportation system designed to support all individuals, regardless of ability, age, or income, that will strengthen our communities and enhance our quality of life.

In 2020, Disability Mobility Initiative began documenting the experiences of non-drivers in the State of Washington. In 2021 and 2022, they challenged elected officials and other decision-makers to a Week Without Driving – with profound effects on those who participated. For 2023, Disability Mobility Initiative is partnering with America Walks to take Week Without Driving national.

America Walks urges elected officials, public officials, transportation professionals, organizations, advocates, and individuals to participate in the National Week Without Driving. We want those who have the option to drive regularly to understand the barriers and challenges that non-drivers face when trying to move safely in their communities, and work with non-drivers to create better communities for all.

Oct. 1 - Ask Me About My EV

Cross-posted from Coulee Region Sierra Club: 

On Sunday, October 1, La Crosse area electric vehicle owners and enthusiasts will host an event to allow community members to get their questions answered about what driving and owning an electric vehicle is really like at the ASK ME ABOUT MY EV event from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the La Crosse City Hall Parking Lot, 400 La Crosse Street, La Crosse. The event is part of the 13th annual National Drive Electric Week (NDEW).

National Drive Electric Week, a coast-to-coast celebration of electric vehicles (EVs), will be held Sept. 22 through Oct. 1, 2023, and is expected to include more than 200 online and in-person events.

There are now more than three million EVs on the road in the United States, and a recent survey from Cox Automotive found consumers considering purchasing an EV for their next vehicle is at an all-time high. The increased interest in EVs makes NDEW events important to educating the public about the incredible benefits of owning an EV, from cost-savings on maintenance and fuel to improved air quality, convenience and performance.

The La Crosse event will include electric car and bike owners plus information about EVs, charging, tax credits, and more. This is expected to be the first of a series of fall “pop-up” EV outreach and information events in the La Crosse area. EV outreach and education is one of the City's climate action plan goals as it works to reduce community-wide carbon emissions.

Owners of plug-in electric cars and e-bikes, as well as those who are considering making the switch to electric vehicles (car or bike) or who just want to learn more, are welcome to sign up to show and talk about their vehicles. Participants and visitors may sign up at tinyurl.com/Fall23LaxEV or by calling or texting 608-315-2693. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/994259485190262

Oktoberfest ends on September 30 this year.

A Healthcare Conversation

Do you have a healthcare story or just care about healthcare in Wisconsin? Please come share your story in person or on zoom. Find out how Citizen Action of Wisconsin is working to transform healthcare for Wisconsinites.

Join Citizen Action of Wisconsin for

A Healthcare Conversation in the Driftless

Thursday, Sept 28th - 5:30-7:00 p.m.

UU Fellowship, 401 West Avenue South, La Crosse

or join us via Zoom!

    

RSVP for in-person or Zoom link

Have you had a frustrating healthcare experience? A bill you didn’t understand? Numerous calls with providers and insurance companies where things don’t get resolved? High medical debt? 

 

We want to hear your story! 

 

Join us for a discussion on healthcare in Wisconsin and hear about how one woman is standing up against unfair practices. When we come together to share our stories, we start to build the power we need to fix our broken healthcare system and put Care Over Cost! 

Citizen Action member Lori Toso wants to stop this from happening to other folks.  She has taken on the challenge and dedicated over 80 hours working with her insurance company and her healthcare provider to find out why she isn’t receiving the benefits her family works and pays for. After five months and all her work, she still hasn’t had resolution and is stuck with a huge bill.

Healthcare systems and Insurance companies know most people don’t have the time to wait on hold or sift through the mountains of paperwork.  We work hard for access to healthcare and insurance is expensive. Yet so often complicated bills, overcharges and denied claims leave us with high medical debt.  Lori is taking on this fight not only for her family but for all of those families that can’t.

We believe that health systems in Wisconsin have a systemic problem with billing issues including improper coding, overcharging, lack of transparency, incomplete review processes and unfair collection practices.

 

We will also discuss:

• Citizen Action of Wisconsin statewide efforts around a Badgercare Public Option bill that will offer a lower cost healthcare option to Wisconsinites and Wisconsin employers with fewer than 50 employees!
• Healthcare as a commodity
• Unfair charges on ACA covered wellness visits
• Future actions against other healthcare systems, insurance xompanies, and greedy pharmaceutical companies
• Fair Share medical deficits in our state (when healthcare systems don’t live up to their charity obligation to maintain non-profit status)

 RSVP TODAY!

Progressives

 

RSVP for Our Revolution’s LIVE National Town Hall with U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee, Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley, and Mark Pocan, and Minnesota AG Keith Ellison on Tuesday, September 19 at 8:30 p.m. Rep. Lee will also have news about her Senatorial campaign.

March to End Fossil Fuels

 

March to End Fossil Fuels

Hispanic Heritage Month

 

Latino presence in Wisconsin predates statehood but is not included in traditional historical narratives. This lectures reviews the presence of Spanish colonial traders and officials, their relationship with Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi region--named "Pais de los Ilinueses" in the eighteenth century, and follows the arrival of Mexican and Mexican American traders and workers in the nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, followed by an overview of various Latino communities, and their struggle to access opportunity to the present.

This Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration

"Wisconsin's Latino Past & Present" presented by Víctor M. Macías-González will take place on Monday, September 18 from 10 a.m. to noon at The Bluffs, UWL Student Union.

September 19 - Voter Registration!

 

The League of Women Voters of the La Crosse Area will observe National Voter Registration Day by assisting voters at the City of La Crosse Main Library from 11 am to 4 pm on Tuesday, September 19. All are welcome.

If you haven’t voted since the last presidential election, your record may well have been deactivated unless you replied to the Wisconsin Elections Commission postcard mailing about this process.

On August 4th, as required by state law, the WEC deactivated 108,378 voter records as a cleanup of those who have moved to a new address without re-registering, voters who have died, others who have asked to have their registrations deactivated, and those who simply have not voted. 

You can go to our state’s online site for all voting needs: myvote.wi.gov – a quick, user-friendly service that can be accessed by computer, smart phone or tablet – to check your registration, and if necessary, re-register.

If you have questions we can assist in person at this event, or you can contact us at lwvlacrosse.org.

If you can't make the local event, join in an online smash-up of National Voter Registration Day AND National Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Ahoy!

Join us on the high seas of civic engagement for an unforgettable virtual event on National Voter Registration Day (which also happens to be National Talk Like a Pirate Day)! Mark your calendars for 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, September 19 and prepare to embark on an adventure that will empower you to seize your freedom to vote. Arrr you ready to register? We can promise fun and information, but we can't promise that we'll slow down on the pirate puns!

Register: bit.ly/NVRDPirateParty

What to Expect

• Stories on the importance of voting
• Answers on your voter registration questions
• Create and share fun content about voter registration
• Sessions to text friends with info
• Opportunities to win merch and prizes

Sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Water: Issues & Actions

 

,,,

Join an expert group of thinkers and reporters for an informative discussion about Wisconsin’s water heritage and a new initiative to cover the Mississippi River basin. Journalists and speakers will deliver updates on their reporting/topic followed by a Q&A session and discussion about water quality, environment, and sustainability.

Wisconsin Waters: Issues and Actions will be held at the Lunda Center at Western Technical College on Thursday, September 21 from 7 to 9 p.m. Free registration is available here.

Read more about the event and its reasons in this Wisconsin Watch article. They describe some of the programming:

[Wisconsin Watch's Bennet] Goldstein and [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Madeline] Heim will be joined by JC Nelson, acting center director for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, Lee Donahue, a supervisor from the town of Campbell on French Island, where residents have been drinking bottled water since 2021 because of PFAS contamination in private wells, and a representative from the La Crosse Urban Stormwater Group.

Casey Meehan, director of Sustainability and Resilience at Western Technical College will moderate the panel discussion and a question-and-answer segment with the audience. Lee Rasch, executive director of LeaderEthics a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting integrity in American democracy, will serve as the emcee.

Pride

 FREE - Family Friendly!

Community Groups!

Merchants - Food Vendors!

Kids Activities & more!

Free Speech on Campus

What does free speech mean? Bringing up and discussing difficult ideas? Challenging the status quo? Calling out misinformation? Confronting a powerful hierarchy? Calling for violent acts against individuals or groups of individuals? Bullying people into silence? Lying? Gaslighting? Publishing liars, bullies, and gaslighters? 

Here's what the campus free speech movement means to some of us old folks. 

UC Berkeley student, Mario Savio, 1964

But things are different now. Having won their freedom of speech, at a campus victory rally, Savio noted,

"We're asking that there be no, NO, restrictions on the content of speech save those provided by the courts. And, that's an enormous amount of freedom. And, people can say things, within that area of freedom, which are not responsible. We've finally gotten into a position where we have to consider being responsible, because now, we have the freedom within which to be responsible. And I'd like to say, at this time, I'm confident that the students, and the faculty, University of California, will exercise their freedom with the same responsibility they've shown in winning their freedom."niversities started designating "free speech zones," outside of which, speech was restricted, 

The boundaries of responsibility are broken. Dishonest speech seems to have been weaponized to encourage violence and mistrust in basic institutions. Marketing and manipulation, wrapped in free speech, are not meant to further understanding and connection. Then what?

Does free speech mean a Nazi must be allowed to encourage violence or a dominion isn't must be able to push for restrictions on rights for fellow citizens? 

Respectful disagreement, maybe, can't easily occur in a hierarchy. Where one party holds control over or can affect the well-being of the other, can the speech of the powerful party really be non-threatening, and can the speech of the threatened party really be free? Maybe this program will help answer those questions. 

"LeaderEthics is proud to be a partner with the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in presenting A Conversation About Free Speech on College Campuses. This free event will be held at 7pm on Tuesday, September 19th at the Weber Center for Performing Arts, 428 Front Street S., La Crosse."

One of the panelists, apparently, "a champion for integrity and community collaboration," might be asked if publishing lies and threatening opinion articles and cartoons is responsible speech or not. Get more information here.

A raffle, a plan

This raffle is open to anyone. First prize is an e-bike or cash. Second prize is a B&B stay with spending money. You need not be present at the 10/21 drawing to win. The money raised is for a good cause.

🌎🇺🇸🌎🇺🇸🌎🇺🇸🌎🇺🇸🌎🇺🇸🌎🇺🇸🌎

If you're not gearing up to vote for the sane candidates in 2024 , help others vote, and do whatever you can to make sure we are not participants in the end of America as we know it, you have not been paying attention.

For the past few months, news outlets have reported on a comprehensive 180-day plan being cooked up by a right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation, that would immediately jerk the country into Republihell should #TFG or one of his sycophants win the presidential election in 2024. 

Project 2025 (you can read it online) would double down on the unprecedented changes made after Trump took office in 2017--filling public service positions with partisan ideologues, packing courts with Federalist Society hacks, using laws to benefit wealthy cronies' businesses, selling off public assets to the highest bidders, and weaponizing programs against the vulnerable groups they were set up to protect. And forget about climate action.

Here's a description of some of the environmental changes in store if P25 gets its way from The Guardian:

The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugely expand gas infrastructure, was authored by Bernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.

The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.

Now is the time to pay attention. If you were afraid the current administration isn't doing enough to stop drilling and fracking and subsidies for fossil fuel companies, wait 'til the other guys take control. Or do something now.