Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Nneka's impact has been felt across the country. She has been a core team member for the WiLD Project since 2015 and was a trainer during the recent online WiLD Academy. For Nneka and her Houston Protesters' Defense Team, the Academy offered practices immediately put to use during Black [...]
"We have done the math and if we can turn out 1,600 votes by having 2,000 conversations, then we can flip our county for progressive candidates." Diana Witcher, Casey Green, and Bill Hogseth joined our 8-week online organizing course to launch their new campaign, Western Wisconsin Votes. Utilizing the age-old art of deep conversation, the [...]
Joshua Alade and Adenike Bamigbade joined the WiLD Academy from across the world. Representing the Nigerian Youth SDGs Network, the team hoped to strengthen their campaign for Nigerian youth employment. The goal? To create 500,000 new jobs for young Nigerians. In a major milestone just this week, the youth-led team saw a massive outpouring of [...]
Meet Juliet Tomkins, one of 84 leaders who participated in our online WiLD Academy community organizing course and developed a real-life campaign ready to take off. Juliet and her Pierce County Grassroots Organizing team have launched the Voter Empowerment Project campaign with the following organizing statement: “We are organizing 100 residents to mobilize 1,000 infrequent [...]
Many WiLD-trained leaders have gone on to run for public office at all levels. A significant number are actively involved in voter engagement through registering new voters, educating citizens on their rights and relevant issues, and getting them out on election day.
In 2018, a grassroots team of “political rookies” from Oneida County and the Lac du Flambeau Tribe set out to inform their community about the urgent need to protect the Willow River and Flowage from the risks of sulfide mining being proposed in a November ballot referendum. With only a few months to get organized [...]
In 2015, Wausau’s Hmong community—who arrived in the area over 40 years ago as refugees and now wanting to step more fully into their role as citizens—had to deal with a very public tragedy. As a result of a bullying dispute between two groups of Wausau youth, a threatened Hmong teenager took the life of [...]
Students experiencing racism on UW Madison’s campus formed Blind Side—to win a majority of student council seats and gain access to power and resources they didn’t have. The team grew to 90 trained students across campus who increased student voter turnout by 58%. In March 2016, they elected a slate of 19 members to the [...]
In early 2019, WiLD partnered with the ACLU of WI and WI Public Education Network to train over 300 people in four regions on: the budget process, telling your story as a way of giving testimony, and developing local organizing tactics. Action teams were formed by legislative district to advocate for a WI Biennial Budget [...]
Together with the WI Public Education Network and other partners, we set our sights on impacting the 2017-19 WI Biennial Budget. The campaign resulted in 282 people trained from 84 cities, 6 budget hearings attended by 754 people that garnered $639 million increase in K-12 public education funding. According to former Joint Finance Committee Member, Rep. [...]
