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Saturday, January 31, 2026
Flip the 3rd CD
Fundraiser for 3rd CD candidate Emily Berge
Sunday, February 1, 5:30 to 7 p.m.
Pearl Street Books, 323 Pearl Street
Thursday, January 29, 2026
General Strikes Change Everything
If you can, withhold your economic activity from this odious regime on Friday, January 30.
If you can, no work, no school, no shopping.
If you need something, find alternatives - locally owned, independent businesses; co-ops; second-hand, Etsy, allies ...
If you can, use the day to contact our elected officials. Use 5Calls.org or Indivisible if needed. (Find your elected officials here.)
If you can, withdraw from Amazon, Target, Delta, Hilton, Enterprise, Home Depot--enablers of the occupation. Or spend time researching other collaborators. Boycotts work.
If you can, start disentangling from the oligarchs' networks - FB, IG, TikTok, etc. Here's a guide.
If you can, donate to StandWithMinnesota.com or local agencies like What I Need Now, Coulee Region Immigration Task Force, or Hunger Task Force.
If you can, find and read about or watch an online training about how to document, oppose, and protest ICE.
If you can, help Ellie Leonard comb through the released Epstein file documents.
If you can, connect with neighbors to strengthen our local support systems.
If you can, organize a Visibility Brigade.
If you can, write a blog post or letter to the editor.
Whatever you can do will make a difference. The general strikes here seem small and scattered but they matter.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
More training
What kind of democracy sets up conditions that force its citizen to attend countless training sessions about how to stay safe from rampaging, unaccountable taxpayer-funded employees? But, here we are.
Immigrant Defense Network Brave of US Tour
STAND WITH OUR FAMILIES
Tuesday, Feb. 3, 5 to 7 p.m.
Location TBA
February 5 EYES ON ICE - Document & Record Training . 7 p.m. Online
Indivisible will cover the latest updates on ICE and CBP’s out-of-control and dangerous operations. We will talk through rights when documenting and recording law enforcement encounters, and how you can continue to take action.
This training will go over the Parental Interest Directive and parental rights and children’s rights in the ICE arrest, detention, and deportation contexts. We will also cover emerging risks in this enforcement environment and some ways that parents might navigate and lessen those risks.
This training is for non-attorney advocates, including organizers and others supporting community members facing immigration enforcement, as well as parents who might face arrest and detention.
This training will be presented in English with Spanish simultaneous interpretation and is not eligible for CLE credit.
Goodwill offerings accepted to help pay for trainer expenses. Childcare available.
Media Disinformation
MEDIA DISINFORMATION - Why it matters and what to do about it
Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 6:30 p.m. Online
Hosted by Dane County League of Women Voters
In this webinar forum you’ll participate in a lively discussion with our speakers about
- What disinformation is and how it affects our civic lives
- What media changes have led to the growth of disinformation
- How to spot disinformation
Register for link: https://www.lwvdanecounty.org/forums/media-disinformation
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From the Media Education Lab
Disinformation DetoxMedia literacy activities often position students as detached outsiders applying fact-checking skills to help them spot dis- and misinformation from a distance. In a landscape of ubiquitous screens, infinite scroll, algorithmic curation, and generative artificial intelligence, fundamental fact-checking skills do not match with the on-the-ground realities of how people encounter, interpret, and share information.
Learn more and register: https://mediaeducationlab.com/index.php/events/disinformation-detox
January 29 at 3 p.m. from the Alliance for Retired Americans
Scams targeting older adults are escalating through social media and AI. This webinar will launch the Alliance’s Stop the Scam Campaign, a year-long education and action initiative. Learn how these scams work, how communities can mobilize, and how collective action can strengthen protections. Open to all.
Disinformation Nation is an education project of the Freedom Forum Institute, a nonpartisan organization headquartered in Washington D.C., that fosters First Amendment freedoms for all.
Other resources
- Facts Aren't Enough, Revealing Your Unconscious, and Our Brands, Our Selves from Hidden Brain
- How Data-Fueled Neurotargeting Could Kill Democracy from The Secret Life of Data by Aram Sinnreich & Jesse Gilbert
- How to Counter the Far Right's Messaging with Anat Shenker-Osario
- The Rise of the Right Wing Media Machine from Fairness and Accuracy in Media (1995!)
- Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth with author Joe Conason on CSPN (2003)
- The Right Wing Media's Lie Machine from PRWatch (2010)
- The Russian Disinformation Threat: Strategic Goals and Overarching Themes by Alexander Vindman (2024)
- Manufacturing Impunity: Russia’s Use of Information Alibis and How They Materially Contribute to the Planning, Execution and Cover-up of International Crimes from Global Rights Compliance
Monday, January 26, 2026
ICE Watch & Community Defense Training
The MAGA regime is escalating violence and lawlessness through ICE abductions and killings, international aggression, and open defiance of Congress, including the refusal to release the Epstein files.
Our movement must get stronger together to meet this moment. Join us for a national Action Training — a coordinated and interactive training to establish what Nonviolent Direct Action means and looks like in practice, then build the skills we need right now, including:
- Making Political Violence Backfire
- Women’s Protection + Safety Teams
- Mutual Aid
- Corporate Accountability
🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥
Wednesday, January 28 from 6 to 7:30 pm online. ICE Watch & Community Defense training.
Register here (use a nickname if you want): https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1ljKUChmQ9m_Ivl7jE8n2Q#/registration
Join this 90-minute training from States at the Core and Protect RP on effectively protecting your neighborhoods from federal enforcement incursions. ICE Watch and other rapid response tactics are key strategies being used by people across the country to protect their communities against aggressive activity from federal law enforcement agencies like ICE and Border Patrol. Whether or not you are part of an established community response network, this training will share important skills for building neighborhood resilience, documenting ICE activity, and supporting neighbors. In addition to covering the basics of ICE Watch, we will discuss new analysis on ICE operations, rapid response tactics, and safety guidance. Please Note: Due to security and safety concerns, we do not record these trainings. To keep up to date on upcoming sessions, sign up for our Substack: https://statesatthecore.substack.com/
Federal immigration agents have shot and killed another person in Minneapolis, the third such incident in just weeks amid aggressive federal enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents -- at the behest of Trump's Christofascist regime -- have beaten and threatened us, killed us in broad daylight, held our children as bait, separated our families, arrested our faith leaders, and terrorized our communities. All this while our supposed leaders in Congress lack the basic decency to take action.
It’s time for all of us to strengthen our demands for accountability. It’s time for people of faith to join together and be the moral voice in this moment. It’s time to abolish ICE.
Sundance online
Single film tickets are $35 each. A ticket that gives access to most of the shorts (on demand) is $45.
Shorts include documentaries, animations, dramas, comedies, and more.
Learn more at https://festival.sundance.org/tickets/online
Saturday, January 24, 2026
ICE OUT rallies Sunday
Sunday, January 25 from 1 to 1:30 p.m at Bridgeview Plaza near I-90 on Rose Street. Accessible by #6 bus
Hosted by La Crosse Indivisible
🧊🧊🧊
Tell the SENATE - NO funding for ICE
🔥🔥🔥
☮️☮️☮️
Sunday at 6 p.m.
VIGIL FOR PEACE
First Congregational, Main & Losey
The UnCompromise
La Crosse has spent a whole lot of time, energy, and money on making active transportation-related plans. We had the Toole Design Group-led 2015 Transportation Vision plan which promised separated bike lanes on Losey, La Crosse Street, Third and Fourth Streets, and South Avenue. We have the 2018 Transportation Demand Management Plan, the 2022 Climate Action Plan, the 2040 Comprehensive Plan (2023), our Complete Streets ordinance, and the Bike-Ped Master Plan 2024 update.
The plans say we want more and better bike infrastructure. We want fewer cars. We want safer places for kids and families, people of all ages and abilities, to bike. We want healthier, safer spaces for bicyclists and pedestrians. We want reduced vehicle miles traveled. We want people to be able to replace cars with active transportation for short trips.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation drew from those plans and several public input sessions as it worked on its own plans for upgrades to the Highways 16, 35, and 53 corridors.
And then, a surprise.
The state Department of Transportation offered a plan that includes protected bike lanes where people actually want to go. And the DOT will pay for it.
In late 2025, two options for Highway 53 were presented to the city, including upgrades to the section that runs through downtown La Crosse, Third and Fourth Streets.
Alternative One removes one lane of parking and provides a parking-protected two-way bike lane on each street.
Alternative Two offers slightly wider sidewalks, slightly narrower parking lanes and zero biking infrastructure.
Many people weighed in at the public input sessions and in emails to the city council supporting the bike lanes. Even the AARP wrote a letter of support for bike lanes.
But, some of the people who own businesses downtown don't want more access for bicyclists. They want parking.
In November, the Judiciary and Administration committee voted to endorse the no bike lanes option - Alternative 2. But, at the November Common Council Meeting, Council Member Larry Sleznikow, chair of the City's Bike Ped Advisory Committee, offered an amended resolution that would endorse Alternative 1.
During the discussion, another amendment was offered, to push the decision to February and ask WisDOT to come up with a third alternative that gives us limitless parking plus bike lanes (and a unicorn in every back yard). That amended motion passed.
Since that request is physically impossible, in January, WisDOT proposed a third alternative which they called a compromise but which is really a Bugs Bunny-style UnCompromise. In this version, there are no bike lanes that go to places people might want to go - restaurants, shops, services - but there are some bike lanes added from Vine Street North to La Crosse Street where there is not much people would want to access.
(The genius Andy Singer has a cartoon for that, too.)
There will be a special meeting of the city's Bike-Ped Advisory Committee on Wednesday, January 28 at 1:00 p.m. You can access it online at Zoom link: https://cityoflacrosse-org.zoom.us/j/83941902780?pwd=dm96S21idGJMdWdxUkdRRE96RUZSdz09 OR Meeting ID: 839 4190 2780, Passcode: 856024
At their regular meeting on January 13, BPAC members seemed to be leaning toward the UnCompromise. Should advocates be satisfied with, "the best we can get"? Who decides what's the best we can get?
This issue will come before the Judiciary and Administration committee at its Feb. 3 meeting at 6 p.m. in the council chamber. Public input is allowed at this meeting. Arrive and register before 6 p.m. if you wish to speak.
The council will vote on which option to support at its February 12 meeting. There is no public input allowed at City Council meetings unless by special exception.
If you want to have input, please attend meetings if you can, and email zzcouncilmembers@cityoflacrosse.org AND cityclerk@cityoflacrosse.org before February 3 if possible, or by February 12 if not. Reference resolution #25-1265. Visiting the resolution site will also provide access to the many emails sent so far about the issue.
Here are a few things to consider:
- The city's many plans say we want better biking, more safety, less car pollution, fewer carbon emissions, and more equitable and healthier ways for people to get around.
- Our Climate Action Plan, which is our roadmap for reducing carbon emissions, a requirement for averting climate disaster, says we must reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled and we must improve and promote bicycling.
- Bicycles are not toys or sporting equipment. Bicycles are the most efficient method of transportation on Earth.
- Good bike infrastructure = protected bike lanes. Not paint. Not sharrows.
- Good bike infrastructure increases the number of cyclists, especially women, older people, and children/youth.
- Good bike infrastructure encourages more people to cycle.
- Good bike infrastructure reduces carbon emissions.
- Good bike infrastructure reduces pollution.
- Good bike infrastructure is healthier for residents and communities and more climate friendly.
- Good bike infrastructure makes our roads safer FOR EVERYONE (not just cyclists).
- Roads and highways are public spaces paid for by the public and for the public. They are not exclusively for cars. We have been bullied and marketed into giving up our rights to these important public spaces. Streets are for everyone.
- There are waaaay more than enough parking spaces in this area, including expensive, subsidized ramps and surface lots that are a drain on the city's economy and vibrancy. There are five public parking ramps with more than 3,300 spaces and several public and private surface parking facilities in the downtown. Removing a few publicly-subsidized on-street parking spaces still leaves hundreds of extra spaces downtown. The city's Transportation Demand Management page notes that, "An average parking space costs close to $5 per day in lost revenue by displacing higher tax paying uses. Parking is typically oversupplied in the city by 65 percent, as well."
- Countless studies have shown that improving bike-ped infrastructure improves business. Here's another one. Here's another one. Here's another one.
- Studies have demonstrated that business owners tend to "underestimate the percentage of their customers who arrive by means other than private automobile and underestimate latent, unmet demand for access to their business by means other than private automobile."
- WisDOT estimates that more than 40 percent of the residents in the City of La Crosse are non-drivers. If you just consider ages 15+ it's 30 to 40 percent, tens of thousands of people. Many, if not most, non-drivers are bicyclists.
- Community benefits, health benefits, safety benefits, stronger economies, and more transportation options come from good bike infrastructure.
So, our city plans, public input, research, and facts say we need bike lanes. And some, not all, business owners say we don't.
What do you say?
Friday, January 23, 2026
Strike
Just heard of a NOON solidarity visibility event near JavaVino in La Crosse.
The official strike is in Minnesota, but we can all strike in solidarity.
No work (except essential services)
No school
No commerce
True to form, House Democrats have conveniently helped Republicans increase funding for ICE. UPDATE: Per Indivisible, "The DHS funding bill will move to the Senate where we expect a vote next week. Reminder: the bill needs 60 votes to pass, which means Democrats have real leverage here. But they won’t use it unless we force them to." Contact Senators today.
The remaining demands are
1. ICE must leave Minnesota now.
2. The officer who killed Good must be held legally accountable.
3. No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming budget and accountability for all illegal actions.
This strike is supported in Minnesota by a huge and growing list of businesses, agencies, unions, and organizations, a model for the rest of us as the increased funding ensures many more ICE travesties and tragedies to come.
Are we prepared? What if ICE comes for your neighbor or school? Talk to others. Let's get organized.
Thursday, January 22, 2026
More training and organizing
Join this 90-minute training from States at the Core and Protect RP on effectively protecting your neighborhoods from federal enforcement incursions. ICE Watch and other rapid response tactics are key strategies being used by people across the country to protect their communities against aggressive activity from federal law enforcement agencies like ICE and Border Patrol. Whether or not you are part of an established community response network, this training will share important skills for building neighborhood resilience, documenting ICE activity, and supporting neighbors. In addition to covering the basics of ICE Watch, we will discuss new analysis on ICE operations, rapid response tactics, and safety guidance.
Register at https://defend612.com/events
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Tuesday, January 27, 2026 8:00 PM
Join the first ACLU People Power Action Call of the new year on January 27th at 7 PM for an update on where the fight stands—and how you can take action.
We've seen a flurry of attacks on our freedoms, from executive orders rolling back civil rights to ICE raids unleashed on immigrant communities. But we haven't just been watching. We've been fighting back together.
On this call, we'll break down the biggest moves from this administration so far—and how our movement is rising up in the courts, in the states, and in the streets. We'll share how trans communities and Medicaid recipients and so many others are leading the charge, and share how you can take action and get activated with ACLU People Power.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
No ICE Funding - CALL NOW!
Believe it ir not, some Dems are negotiating to increase ICE funding in exchange for BS "improvements" in training*, body cams, and other useless idiocies. No.
CALL now. No funding for ICE. Reform is useless. No Democratic votes for ICE.
If this isn't a red line, what is?
*Per Allison Gill (Mueller She Wrote), "Whistleblowers just shared a memo showing DHS instructing ICE to force their way into peoples' houses without a proper warrant. ... This is a criminal conspiracy to violate rights under color of law."
TONIGHT
Thanks Indivisible!
Our Rights webinar/Emily Berge Online program
The conversation will cover what's next in the fight to defend our civil liberties, democracy, and the rule of law from the Trump administration's relentless attacks, with ACLU speakers including:
- Executive Director, Anthony D. Romero,
- Chief Political & Advocacy Officer, Deirdre Schifeling,
- National Legal Director, Cecillia Wang,
- ACLU of Minnesota's Executive Director, Deepinder Mayell.
And all moderated by ACLU Deputy Executive Director for Strategy and Culture, A.J. Hikes.
Register here: https://action.aclu.org/signup/aclu-national-town-hall
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Wednesday, Jan. 21, 6 p.m. online
3rd CD candidate, Emily Berge conversation on mental health care
RSVP for link: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/berge-jan21
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Films For Fighting Fascism
Free movie screenings with guided syllabus by Dr. Shannon Mancus every other Wednesday starting 1/28 at Rivoli Arts District.
FREE, but seating is limited!
RSVP to events@rivoli.net. with subject line FFFF.
Monday, January 19, 2026
Walk Out.
On Tuesday, January 20, participate in the national Womens March Walkout. Tune in to the national livestream at 1 p.m., then use the day to learn, call, email, write letters to the editor, and, if you can, donate. Below*, find links to a few Minnesota orgs raising funds to help and support communities under siege by the regime.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rUko3I_aRfm04KsFqRzqEQ#/registration
Join the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin for a one-hour virtual gathering in solidarity with the Free America Walkout. This event offers a powerful virtual option for those participating in the walkout who want to take collective action, reflect together, and ground themselves in purpose.
New linktree: MPLSMutualAid
Another great site to help us Stand With Minnesota.
Uptown/North Minneapolis restaurants and businesses are raising funds to help feed neighbors who can't get out to shop or work and supply community members working to keep their neighborhood safe. Several are noted in this Racket article.
More ways to help from The Solidarity List: If you buy a pizza at Wrecktangle and put in the notes that you won’t be picking it up with a message of solidarity, they will make two pizzas and donate them to local community members who need them. You can also make a donation to Joyce Uptown Foodshelf or directly to MN Ice Watch via their Venmo as well as MIRAC. MN Ice Watch also has a lot of GoFundMe’s linked in their Link Tree.
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On Friday, January 23, participate in solidarity with the MN Walkout. Here are notes from Jess Craven, political organizer and activist.
Friday, January 23rd will be a statewide day of non-violent moral action and reflection in MN: no work, no school, no shopping — only community, conscience, and collective action. Learn more at iceoutnowmn.com
We will be pressuring orgs like Target, The Home Depot, Enterprise Rentals, Delta, and Hilton to stop cooperating with 🧊 (meanwhile BOYCOTT)
We are pressuring Congress to block funding for DHS until 🧊 is constrained. We have huge leverage on this because they need seven Democratic votes in the Senate to pass anything.
We are demanding that the man who unalived Renee Good must be held accountable.
Learn more at http://iceoutnowmn.com/
Watch MN State Senator Erin Maye Quade (Apple Valley) describing the situation on the ground.
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