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About

Third Act Wisconsin has a vision of our state and nation that supports and sustains our natural environment because its health is essential to supporting and sustaining us; a just and effective representative democracy, because we benefit from the freedom, equality, and opportunity that it provides; and the principles of eco-justice.

We launched on Oct. 23, 2024.  View recording of launch here.

To contact a member of the Coordinating Committee, email wisconsin@thirdact.org.

Our Mission

  • Actively support the mission of the national Third Act organization to ensure the success of its national campaigns;
  • Raise awareness, encourage engagement, and expand participation throughout Wisconsin;
  • Create and execute Wisconsin-specific programs, activities, and partnerships.

How We Do It

  • We follow Third Act’s working principles, participate in its national campaigns, make maximum use of its resources, and leverage its national reputation and influence to make our work more efficient, more fulfilling, and more effective.
  • We invite and seek out 60+ elders from all walks of life to ensure that our work benefits from and is informed by the full diversity of our state.
  • We partner with and support the inter-generational efforts of other Wisconsin organizations where our mutual goals can be more effectively realized.
  • We appreciate the regional nature and challenges of pursuing our mission and seek ways to collaborate with our local and neighbor governments to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
  • We defend the environment by identifying the most serious issues to Wisconsin and beyond for which we can make the most impactful improvement, and we devise and organize effective programs to address those issues.

Third Act Wisconsin (TA WI) Campaign Teams

Climate Finance

To reverse climate change, we must de-fund it.  The goal of this team is to pressure Wall Street to move money out of fossil fuels and into renewables.

Citi is one of those banks that is overheating our planet. The billions of dollars they have loaned to oil and coal contribute to weather disasters around the world.  But while Citi executives are slow to act on the science, we think they will be quick to respond to their large clients.

Costco, with its credit card partnership with Citibank, is one of Citi’s top clients.  If Costco and other institutional clients were to give Citi a “Defund Climate Change” ultimatum, the bank would have little choice but to comply.  Thus, this team’s primary strategy is to join the Costco Clean Up Your Credit Card campaign.

We are looking for people all over Wisconsin to meet with the managers at the 10 Costco warehouses in the state, deliver petitions to other institutional clients of Citi, write postcards to Costco executives, wear Costco hotdog costumes during climate protests, …and plan new creative actions.  To learn more and express interest, contact Julia and Seth  ℅ Wisconsin@Thirdact.org.  And come to our webinar event kicking off the Costco campaign in Wisconsin (Dec 4th at 7 pm CT).

Communications Team

The Communications Team is charged with communicating to TAWI members the working group’s mission and activities.  We do this through our website, monthly newsletter, social media posts (FB) and a select, limited number of emails to the membership.  In order to avoid exhausting Third Actors with email overload, Third Act Central advises its working groups, like us, to limit  emails to it membership to 3-4 per month.

The TAWI Communications Team is composed of volunteers and we welcome new members. We seek people with interest in reporting, writing, social media posting, photography, and videography.  If you have such skills or wish to develop these communications skills or refine existing skills, please join us.  Please contact Steve ℅  at Wisconsin@thirdact.org

We accept contributed articles, photographs, original artwork, short videos, etc.   If you have web or newsletter content you would like for us to consider, please contact Steve ℅ Wisconsin@thirdact.org

 

Power Up Communities

The TA WI Power Up Communities team’s goal is to pressure the WI Public Service Commission (WPSC) to more effectively pass policies that rapidly advance local and state goals for transitioning from fossil fuel to renewable energy sources in ways that are fair to all our residents.

 

Our primary strategy for achieving this goal is to establish partnerships with organizations across the state that share this goal, and in collaboration with these organizations to;

  • Educate our members about the roles, challenges, weaknesses and strengths of the WPSC, drawing as appropriate from resources at this location on the TA Central website;
  • Garner broad public support for proposals (“dockets”) for clean energy policies and projects under review by the WPSC; and
  • Identify and publicize green-washing, stalling, and obfuscation strategies used by the energy companies (primarily investor-owned utilities) with which the WPSC interacts.

If you want to help achieve these goals with these and yet other strategies that you know of to achieve them, please contact Susan, c/o wisconsin@thirdact.org. Our team meets monthly for an hour by Zoom.

Democracy and Voting

Third Act’s national Democracy & Voting (DV) campaign aims to elect candidates and approve ballot measures that support climate action and justice, while protecting and enhancing voter rights and widespread election participation.

In line with Third Act’s DV Campaign, our Wisconsin DV Team has three Goals:

  1. Help elect climate leaders up and down the ballot.
  2. Register new and/or lapsed voters, and reach out to disaffected voters who are concerned about climate and related environmental justice issues.
  3. Help protect safe and efficient voting access for all eligible voters, especially among under-represented demographics.

In many cases, we partner with other organizations who have more capacity to generate calling and address lists. We also share publicly scheduled actions and events in support of climate candidates. Any of the following types of action can move us toward our goals: phone-banking, writing postcards or Letters to the Editor, canvassing, posting on social media, person-to-person organizing, voter registration drives and events, and election protection volunteer work.

Please check out our Volunteer Action Page for ways you can get involved.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rHO5X05_o9sCHoCYth6dUHvyWCoA0SuaH-bFELx2qbg/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0

 

Our TAWI DV Team meets online monthly. Contact Scott Lowery (slowery969@gmail.com) if you’d like to be more involved, or to share suggestions for Wisconsin-based actions that we can help publicize and strengthen. (Please use DV in the subject line, such as “DV Suggestion” or “DV Volunteer”.)

 

 

 

Disclaimer: Working Groups are volunteer-run groups organized by affinity or by geographic location. Working Groups engage in campaign activities, communicate with their Working Group volunteers, and maintain the content on their Working Group webpages.