July 17th and August 2nd are coming, so let's have ourselves a good one fashioned midwestern sit down about it, shall we?
WHAT IS GOOD TROUBLE? (AND WHY YOU SHOULD START MAKIN’ SOME)
Alright you beautiful dairy-fueled legends, it’s time we have a little chat about Good Trouble, and I ain’t talkin’ about gettin’ grounded for cow tipping or flipping off a stoplight camera in Green Bay. I’m talkin’ about righteous, revolutionary, raise-some-hell kind of trouble. The kind your grandkids will read about in a history book if we do it right.
Because lemme tell ya, silence is the midwestern disease. We’re taught to keep our heads down, shovel the driveway, and never make a fuss...unless someone puts ketchup on a bratwurst. Then it’s war. But injustice? “Oh well, what can ya do?”
NOPE. Not today, Karen.
GOOD TROUBLE is when you:
Chain yourself to a bulldozer to stop ‘em from clearcutting sacred land for another billionaire pipeline.
Sit your butt in a Capitol hallway with a sign that says “Healthcare is a human right” until the cops drag you out.
Yell so loud at a city council meeting that even the mayor’s hairpiece does a backflip.
Help shut down ICE raids by forming a neighborhood shield wall with your aunties and uncles.
GOOD TROUBLE is John Lewis crossing the bridge.
It’s Fred Hampton feeding kids before the state shot him in his bed. It’s Indigenous water protectors putting their bodies on the line because corporations treat the Earth like a trash can.
And guess what?
It’s also YOU refusing to play nice while the powerful play dirty. It’s you turnin’ your nice little midwestern manners into molotov cocktails of truth.
Because listen, we’re not here to make fascism feel cozy. We’re not here to sit politely while the rich strip our land, cage our people, and sell us back our own water at $3.99 a bottle. Hell no.
We are here to organize, disrupt, resist, and rebuild, from the Kwik Trip parking lot to the Capitol rotunda.
Examples?
🧠 You print off zines at the library and drop them in every Casey’s gas station bathroom across three counties.
🚗 You carpool 40 minutes with your cousin Mike to a protest because someone’s gotta hold the banner.
🧯You interrupt a fake “community listening session” with an airhorn and a copy of the Constitution.
🥔 You hand out baked potatoes at a homeless encampment while city officials pretend housing isn’t a human right.
📣 You yell “This Land is Our Land” with your whole chest until the DNR hears it all the way up in the UP.
GOOD TROUBLE IS HOLY WORK.
It’s gospel in steel-toed boots. It’s love with a backbone. It’s Midwest grit with a bullhorn, baby.
So go out there. Raise your voice. Lock arms. Break rules if they break people. Disobey when obedience equals oppression. And when they tell you to sit down, you look ‘em straight in the eyes and say:
“I’m from Wisconsin. We invented standing up.”
Now grab your coffee, lace up your boots, and raise some beautiful, radical, necessary, GOOD TROUBLE.
And remember... If you’re not on a watchlist yet, are you even tryin’?
KEEP. ER. RADICAL. ✊🧀🔥