Ben Wikler: "Democracy is exhausting until you discover solidarity."

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At his core, I think Ben Wikler is someone who believes in his own agency and the agency of the people around him. He simply cannot look at a broken system without asking, How do we organize to fix it?

Ben and I grew up down the street from one another in Madison, Wisconsin. His parents taught at the University, and he was raised in that distinctive mix of progressive politics, civic engagement and academic inquiry that has shaped generations of Madisonians.

Madison was also the birthplace of The Onion, where a particular strain of absurdist humor found its voice before making its way into the mainstream through shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Although he’s a few years younger than I am, I remember him as the kid who seemed to be organizing everything. He started an alternative newspaper in high school, led walkouts and protests, and had an unusual ability to persuade his classmates that they could accomplish more together than they could alone.

That instinct has never really left him.

Ben’s career has moved back and forth between communication and organizing, often bringing the two together. He got his professional start working for Al Franken, first as a researcher and writer, then as a producer on Air America Radio. He later worked on political campaigns and held leadership roles at organizations including MoveOn, Avaaz and Change.org.

Along the way he hosted political podcasts, lived in Cambridge, Brooklyn and Washington, before eventually returning home to Madison to become chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Talking with Ben, I come back again and again to the role that humor has played throughout his life. Humor, in his world, isn’t the decoration, it’s the infrastructure. He’s not arguing for politics to be more entertaining. He’s funny because to him, comedy creates community, and community is how people find the confidence to act together.

I visited Ben at the house where he grew up, and where he and his wife are now raising their own family. We spent as much time talking about Madison as we did about politics. He speaks about Wisconsin with the affection of someone who believes a place can shape the way people see the world. The tradition known as the Wisconsin Idea - the belief that knowledge should serve the public good - runs through almost everything he says.

His new book, This Is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy, draws heavily on that experience. In Ben’s telling, Wisconsin has spent the last decade wrestling with many of the same political forces that have reshaped the country. He sees reasons for concern, but also reasons to keep working.

It’s tempting to describe Ben as an optimist. I think “disciplined” is closer to the truth. He never suggests that everything will work out. Things can get worse, he says. They can also get better. The outcome depends on what people choose to do together.

Earlier this week, at a Brooklyn event celebrating the publication of his book, the political organizer Ilyse Hogue called Ben “the happy warrior.” It struck me as exactly right. He doesn’t approach politics with outrage as his organizing principle. He talks about democracy as something collaborative. He sounds curious rather than furious. Faced with a difficult problem, his instinct is to gather people, understand what’s happening, and figure out how to move forward.

Whether or not you share Ben’s politics, I think there’s something more universal in that disposition. His belief in collaboration, civic life and community reaches beyond any party affiliation. And the line from our conversation that stays with me isn’t really a political statement so much as it’s an observation about how people endure difficult work together.

“Democracy is exhausting until you discover solidarity.”

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In the Third Story archive you will find. It’s hundreds of deep dives like this one, many over the years that were done during my annual pilgrimages to Madison, including conversations with David Maraniss, Richie Davidson, Michael Feldman, Monica Martin, Mary Sweeney, and many with my dad.

Other episodes are with friends and former associates of Ben Wikler’s like Peter Koechley and Dan Pashman, and there’s even a 2018 panel discussion with Ben Wikler along with political strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio and writer Dan Kaufman about the impact on all of them of growing up in Madison.