OCT. 2, 2026
Our 17th Annual WI Grassroots Festival, scheduled for Sat., Oct. 10, has been CANCELED due to insufficient registrations. We regret having to make this decision, but speakers, presenters, entertainers, tablers, and students facing empty chairs was not an option.
FESTIVAL EMCEES
Mike McCabe is an author and social justice advocate who’s been a farmhand, journalist, educator and civic leader over the course of his career. Mike got his start on his family’s dairy farm and has lived his life straddling America's rural-urban divide, calling both cities and small towns home at different times, even living overseas for a time.
He led the independent government watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign for 15 years and started the grassroots citizen movement Blue Jean Nation. He was a candidate for governor of Wisconsin in 2018. Decades earlier, he was a newspaper reporter, worked as a legislative aide at the State Capitol, ran a statewide civic education program and served a stint in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Mali. After having two nonfiction books published, Mike’s first novel Miracles Along County Q came out in October 2024. He also writes weekly articles on a broad range of subjects that are shared online at mikemccabe.substack.com.
Contact:
Email: mikemccabe.substack.com
Nicholas (Nick) Ramos
BIO:
Nick Ramos is a lawyer, advocate, and community organizer who is currently serving as the fourth Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
Prior to joining the Democracy Campaign, he served as the Wisconsin Voter ID Coalition Coordinator with VoteRiders, a non-partisan organization that works to ensure that all eligible voters have access to photo ID in order to cast their ballot and have it count. At VoteRiders, he built and maintained partnerships with over 70 organizations across Wisconsin, developed Voter ID Clinics to assist Wisconsinites with IDs, birth certificates, and social security cards, and created a statewide provisional voter follow up program to help Wisconsin voters cure their ballots.
