From Inspiration to Activism, A Personal Journey through Obama’s Presidential Campaign
Level 2, Rooms #1&2, Esch Hurvis
We'll talk about how high the stakes are this November.
- A single page hand out guide on how use your passion for our state and country to get our candidates over the finish line.
- Utilize REI, Respect, Empower, Include, President Obama’s winning 2008 campaign mantra, into your efforts with everything you do for our candidates and the issues.
- Realizing that a “no” on a call, can be a “call me later”.
- Share my experiences of "getting out the vote" in the field and knocking on doors in rural areas.
- Listen, discuss and offer solutions to the concerns of the group.
NOTE: Mary's books will be on sale with all profits going to the Wisconsin Grassroots Network.

Biography:
Mary Lang Sollinger
Sollinger grew up in Campbellsport, Wisconsin, a small farming community, with four brothers and sisters. She went to Madison Area Technical College and opened a young women’s clothing store on State Street from a term paper in 1968. During the thirty years as a retailer, she served and chaired many city committees and led many projects in the downtown area. For eight years Mary served as a commissioner for the building of the Frank Lloyd Wright Community and Convention Center and later ran for Mayor of Madison. In 2007, she organized a fundraiser for Candidate Barack Obama at her home, which changed her life. In fourteen months she did twelve statewide fundraisers and knocked on doors in four different states. Later, she served on his National Finance Campaign Committee in 2008 and 2012. She continued to serve on the Clinton and Biden presidential campaigns. Mary wrote an award winning book “From Inspiration to Activism, A Personal Journey Through Obama’s Presidential Campaign” and remains active in grassroots efforts in getting out the vote.
Cell: 608-212-6889
Email: sollingerml@gmail.com
Website: mlsollinger.com
Voting Maps and Big Money Reforms Still Need Your Support – Updates
Level 2, Room #3, Meade Witter
With 14 years under our belt, Wisconsin United to Amend’s work is more necessary than ever. You know getting money out of politics is critical to reclaiming our democracy! AND while the State Supreme Court decision regarding voting maps earlier this year will help us get more balance in our state legislature, we need to help strengthen this success - or we could lose it again. Please come hear about how both of these reforms still need your help if we want to reclaim our democracy.
Biographies:
Penn grew up in NY, was in the Navy for 6 years and moved to Madison in 1977 to get a degree in Nuclear Engineering. He spent most of his career as an Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Consultant. In 2012, he shut down his business to build the movement needed to Restore our Republic from the corrupted political system. He expects to do this until he is unable.

Email: georgepenn51@gmail.com
Phone: 608-244-6436
WIUTA Website: www.WIUTA.org
WIUTA FB page: https://www.facebook.com/WisconsinUnitedToAmend
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Carlene Bechen
Bechen has been involved in grassroots activism since she was a child canvassing with her dad in her Southeast North Carolina community. A retired public educator, she is a founding member of the Oregon Area Progressives, which organized the Fair Maps for Wisconsin Summit for grassroots activists in the fall of 2019. From that work, Carlene was hired as the Grassroots Organizing Director with the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition. She has instigated many public visibility efforts to draw attention to the need for fair maps and the end of gerrymandering in Wisconsin.
Email: carlene@fairmapswi.com
Phone: 608-513-7655
WI Fair Maps Coalition Website: https://www.fairmapswi.com/
WI FMC FB page: https://www.facebook.com/WIFairMapsCoalition
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Messaging for the Mighty
Level 2, Room #4, Cinema Room
You’re passionate about a cause, have started a website and want to spread the word and need to present a speech in front of a live audience. Unfortunately, speaking in front of people causes anxiety for you. How do you prepare for and handle this new task?
Whether you're already an expert in public speaking or a new speaker Sean Bode has been a public speaker for nine years and will provide tips and ideas on how to prepare a speech and present it effectively.

Biography:
Sean Bode
Few people have been given the opportunity to host the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, Sean Bode isn’t one of them but plans to someday take Jimmy Kimmel’s spot when his flight gets stuck in Aruba. Sean is a low-rent character actor, singer, a member of Toastmasters International and an award-winning speaker for his club, the Madison Achievers. He has also written award winning screenplays and directed short films. His most recent short film, "No Roles Written," addressed the issue of people with disabilities and representation on stage and film, and was presented at the 2020 Wildwood Film Festival at Lawrence University. When not working on films or speeches, Sean and his wife, Patricia, play on a weekly trivia team and battle knowledge with other trivia-obsessed, slightly inebriated patrons at a nearby pub.
Phone: 608-335-0435
Email: seanbode0618@gmail.com
Healing Medicare - Current Threats and the Way Forward
Level 3, Room #2, Nathan Marsh Pusey
If we don’t put a stop to the privatization programs, private for-profit insurance companies will control all of Medicare, taking away recipients choices, denying care, bankrupting Medicare and turning our beloved public program, funded by all our payroll deductions, into another profit-making scheme for investors.
With all its problems, we can’t afford to let that happen. Instead, we can use the money already in the system to expand and improve Medicare and use this as the model for a national single payer health insurance system for everyone. That’s the promise of Medicare for All.
It’s not at all hopeless. We have won some battles on this issue in the past few years and have real supporters in congress who finally understand how to combat these terrible policies. Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is at the forefront of a broad coalition of organizations to transform our health care system to achieve our goal of Healthcare for All.
Biographies:
Laurel Mark, MD
Dr. Mark retired after almost 40 years in clinical practice in Internal Medicine in Wisconsin. She became a supporter of single payer health insurance, now commonly called Medicare for All, through her experiences trying to deliver medical care in our broken, for-profit system. Based in Madison, she has been an active member, leader and speaker for PNHP - Physicians for a National Health Program - for decades. An Emerita faculty member of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, she has taught and mentored students and doctors-in-training.
PNHP is the national physicians professional organization, devoted to education, research and advocacy for universal health care through a single payer system. In PNHP, we believe that Healthcare is a Human Right and our motto is: Everyone IN. Nobody OUT.
Email: laurel.mark@gmail.com
Phone: 608-698-1391
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Nike Mourikes, MD
Dr. Mourikes is an Internal Medicine physician based in Madison. Originally from Chicago, she brings a wealth of experience as a teacher and clinician at Cook County Hospital. She is a long time advocate for a single payer national health program. She has been a member of PNHP for over 20 years is the leader of Wisconsin PNHP.
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Web resources:
PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program): https://pnhp.org
Protect and improve Medicare: https://healmedicare.org/
The American Prospect: https://prospect.org/health/dark-history-of-medicare-privatization/
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Building Unity for Democracy
Level 3, Room #3, Kraemer Conference Room

Biographies:
Panhia Thao (She/Hers)
Thao is a driven and compassionate professional with a passion for creating positive change in the world. Born in a refugee camp, she immigrated to the United States in 2000 and has since dedicated herself to helping others overcome challenges and systemic barriers. Currently, Panhia serves as the WI Chapter Organizer at 9to5 National Association of Working Women, where she focuses on advancing social and economic justice through grassroots organizing, people centered policy change, and power building with communities and collaborators.
Panhia Thao
9to5 Wisconsin Chapter Organizer
Hmong-English Bilingual
Phone: (920) 376-1280
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Phil Trachten
Trachten is one of the directors of the Building Unity Project who has worked in the fields of healthcare and data management for a decade, and is currently active with Jewish Voice for Peace and World Beyond War in their efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza.
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Nick Ramos
Ramos is a lawyer, advocate, and community organizer who is currently serving as the fourth Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
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Building Unity for Sustainability
Level 4, Room #1, Runkel
A panel will explore key “pro-democracy” issues and actions that could be a focus in our statewide “Unity Plan.”

Biographies:
Dena Eakles (They/Them/Their)
Dena Eakles is the author of The Peace Warrior; founder of Echo Valley Farm, a community sustained farm in southwestern Wisconsin; and founder of Echo Valley Hope, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance sustainable living and peace. You can find their blog at letkindnesswin.com
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Dean Muller
Muller is the President for Wisconsin for Environmental Justice which is working to get the State of Wisconsin, as well as cities and counties to pursue litigation against the Fossil Fuel Industry for climate damages.
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Montrè J. Moore
Moore is an esteemed resident of Milwaukee, WI, and a devoted father to two wonderful children. From a young age, Mr. Moore has been an unwavering advocate for urban environmentalism and a catalyst for positive change within his community.
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Gwen Klenke (She/Her/Hers)
Gwen is the Midwest Program Coordinator at FracTracker, working to bolster FracTracker’s Midwest network and aid in mapping and data collection efforts. Gwen applies a critical geography lens to her work at FracTracker. She has a special interest in food systems, remote sensing, and drones. Prior to joining FracTracker, Gwen received her MS in Environmental Justice and Geospatial Data Science from the University of Michigan. There, she discovered her love of leveraging her geospatial skills for environmental justice causes.
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Ted Auch, PhD
Ted worked on his MS in Forest Ecology at Virginia Tech focusing on mine reclamation by way of reforestation and obstacles to success, following his time in Blacksburg he returned to Burlington, Vermont
to pursue a PhD in Biogeochemistry at the University of Vermont, where he also received his BS. His dissertation focused on modeling above and below ground pattern and process as a function of several climate change scenarios.
He pursued two postdocs at Green Mountain College looking at High Vs Low Input agriculture and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio to pursue his second postdoc at the Cleveland Botanical Garden looking at Vacant Lot Repurposing for ecosystem services and stormwater management.
Since 2012, Ted has been at the FracTracker Alliance as their Midwest Program Director looking at the water, waste, and landscape impacts of petrochemical/fracking impacts broadly defined. He is also a member of the John Carroll University Biology Faculty teaching courses in Plant Ecology and Climate Change.
He also serves on several EPA Science Advisory Boards (SABs) advising the EPA on their EJScreen Tool and the Environmental Justice Science and Analysis Review Panel (EJSARP).

Ted Auch, PhD
Phone: 802-343-6771
Email: auch@fractracker.org
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