Room 418
Room 419
Room 421
Room 422
Room 423
Presenters
Mary Bottari
BIO:
Law Forward's Mary Bottari has advanced progressive policies as the chief of staff for the Madison Mayor, as a legislative aide at the state and federal level, and as a principal strategist for nonprofits dealing with some of the most complex areas of policy making.
Contact:
Email: mbottari@lawforward.org
Jeff Mandel
BIO:
Law Forward's Jeff Mandell is widely recognized as one of Wisconsin’s leading experts in election-law and constitutional litigation. In 2020, as special counsel to Governor Tony Evers, Jeff played a lead role in repelling the bevy of attacks against Wisconsin’s election results. Jeff has handled a variety of high-profile cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, including on absentee-ballot drop boxes, indefinitely confined voters, attempted purges of the voter rolls, separation of powers, and other issues.
Room 419
Keeping Humanity in Control: Citizen Action on AI Safety
“A Republic, If You Can Keep It” challenges us to protect the conditions that make self-government possible. Our session asks what that responsibility means in the age of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. Who decides how AI is developed and deployed? Who bears the risks? And how do we ensure that people—not unaccountable corporations or AI systems themselves—remain in control of our future?
“A Republic, If You Can Keep It” challenges us to protect the conditions that make self-government possible. Our session asks what that responsibility means in the age of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. Who decides how AI is developed and deployed? Who bears the risks? And how do we ensure that people—not unaccountable corporations or AI systems themselves—remain in control of our future?
In accessible, nontechnical language, we will explain catastrophic AI risk: the possibility of large-scale harm, including threats to human survival, from the misuse of advanced AI or the loss of human control over it. We will explore how these risks connect to concentrated power, democratic accountability, and the public’s right to participate in decisions that could profoundly reshape society.
The session will also address what citizens can do, from grassroots organizing to advocating for enforceable safeguards and democratic oversight. The central message is that keeping our republic requires both protecting our democratic institutions and keeping humanity in control of the technologies we create.
Presenters
Julie Derwinski
BIO:
Julie is a Wisconsin appellate lawyer, educator, and AI safety advocate with more than 30 years of legal experience. She has served as a senior staff attorney at the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is co-founder of ControlAI Wisconsin Action Group, which help community members understand AI risks, the need for effective oversight, and advocate for regulation. She holds degrees from Berkeley Law and U.W. Madison.
Kevin Lotto
BIO:
Kevin Lotto is an AI researcher and software engineer based in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He earned his computer science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current focus is on AI safety and existential risk advocacy. Kevin is a public speaker and co-founded ControlAI Action Group Wisconsin with Julie Derwinski. He also volunteers for the Torchbearer Community as a digital communicator and trainer, as well as the AI Safety Awareness Project as a workshop facilitator. Through these grassroots organizations, he drives legislative action and public awareness campaigns to prioritize human safety over the unchecked development of advanced artificial intelligence.
Contact:
Email: kevin.lotto@gmail.com
Website: https://act.controlai.org/groups/controlai-citizens-wisconsin
Phone: 608-492-4546
Room #421
Keeping Communities at the Center: Refusing to Be Taken
Data centers have touched a nerve with the public, across the political spectrum. There are specific arguments against them, some reasonable, some not. The broader issue, though, is this Festival's theme: we elect people to represent us, and they aren't. The sheer scale of data centers and their landscape-changing, long-lasting impact on a small community is bringing people together to effect change, and put the people back at the center of local government decisions. Residents can be sidelined when corporate interests, regulatory systems, and local decision-makers advance projects without meaningful public participation.
Panelists will share lessons from grassroots organizing, public-records research, and community advocacy, with a focus on how residents can reclaim a meaningful role in decisions that shape their communities. A healthy republic depends on an engaged public and public officials who treat the public interest as their central responsibility.
Communities need to understand the threat of many of these hyperscale data center developments and related infrastructure (advanced by monopoly utilities and their majority shareholders), appreciating that state regulators are not protecting us and local governments and communities need to comprehensively protect themselves from the health and environmental harms that are ongoing/being proposed.
Presenters
Prescott Balch
BIO:
Prescott is a retired technology professional who successfully resisted a data center in the Village of Caledonia. Since then, he has been helping communities across the upper midwest understand both risks and rewards with hyperscale data center proposals. He also ran for and won a seat on his village board, and now serves as Village President.
Contact:
Email: prescott.balch@gmail.com
Phone: 262-880-7248
Website: www.widatacenterfacts.org
Dr. Brittany Keyes, PT, DPT
BIO:
Dr. Brittany Keyes is a physical therapist and the Clean Air Policy Manager with the statewide nonprofit, Healthy Climate Wisconsin (HCW). With HCW she organizes with health professionals advancing climate action, meets with state lawmakers and regulators, testifies against new, large pollution sources, and presents at health professional conferences and community meetings about the health harms of AI hyperscale data centers and methane gas plants. Brittany has also served on Beloit's City Council 2020-2022, and currently serves as the Environmental and Climate Justice Chair with the NAACP Wisconsin State Conference and co-lead of Rock County Neighbors for Responsible Development.
Contact:
Email: brittany@healthyclimatewi.org
Winona Storms
BIO:
Winona Storms is a Wisconsin-based nonprofit founder, community organizer, advocacy strategist, and investigative writer. As founder of the Wisconsin Alliance for Responsible Development (WARD), she works alongside communities to advance transparent, accountable decision-making around large-scale technology, energy, and development projects. Her work combines research, public education, digital organizing, and grassroots mobilization to ensure residents have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their land, resources, and future.
Contact:
Email: storms@responsiblewi.org
Web: https://www.responsiblewi.org
Call: (608) 571-4678
Presenter
Diane Cain
BIO:
My name is Diane Cain. I retired from a 45 year career in nursing in 2018. Upon my retirement I vowed to commit my time and energy to wildlife advocacy which includes Rights of Nature. My husband and I sold the apple orchard/blueberry farm we established in 1976 to our daughter and son-in-law in 2020, but we remain active on our farm. My commitment to wildlife advocacy has lead me to serve as a delegate representing my county on the Wisconsin Conservation Congress 2020-2024, the 2021 DNR Wolf Harvest Committee, the WI DNR 2022 Wolf Management Plan & to serve as a member of several wildlife advocacy groups. I have a special interest in wolves and their importance in our ecosystem. I have been a speaker to various groups on behalf of wildlife and to the WI Natural Resources Board. I presented a Rights Of Nature petition to Governor Evers Office asking for Rights of Nature to be part of our WI Constitution. I was chosen as Jackson County, WI Woman in History in 2025 for my work in wildlife advocacy. In 2025 I received a certificate of completion for the Earth Law Summer Course.
Contact:
Email: caindiane68@gmail.com
Phone: Landline 715-963-2303
Cell 715-896-9646
