2024

In October 2024, Spatula&Barcode hosted weekly conversations (over dinner or brunch) in private homes in Milwaukee to discuss topics that participants felt were being overlooked in current electoral politics.

For each event, our collaborating hosts (Erin Winkler, Lisa Moline & Lane Hall, Amy Cannestra & Brian Bowles, Paola Hernández) created the guests lists, while we provided the discussion prompts and the food.

With slight variations, the menu included:

Jamon Serrano
Homemade New York Style Pickles
Long Stemmed Artichoke Hearts

Sourdough Focaccia
G-F crackers

Dips & Spreads: Feta, Baba Ganouj, Chopped Liver, Hummus, Green Goddess, Guacamole, Muhammara,
Sun-Dried Tomato, Tapenade

Caesar Salad
House Salad with Herb Vinaigrette

Seven Siblings Succotash
House-smoked Salmon
Tortilla Espanola

Apple Dessert

And the questions we discussed are:

• What issues are important to you that don’t appear (enough) in the electoral conversations?

• What do you wish that candidates were talking about more or differently?

• Are the conversations that you care about taking place in other contexts? If yes, what are they?

• How can electoral politics be reimagined to better include the conversations that matter to us?

• Are there issues that are better left outside of electoral politics?
  What actual conversations do you imagine happening between now and November?

• What conversations do you hope will happen after the election?

The topics that emerged in conversation are:

abolition, aesthetics, affordable housing. aging, anchovies, anxiety, backlash, billionaires, biodiversity, boycotts, building bridges, care, censorship, childcare, civic engagement, civility, climate change, colonialism, community, complexity, contradiction, cultural politics, debt forgiveness, de-growth, distraction, economic justice, education, electoral reform, ending capitalism, enfranchisement, environmental justice, exhaustion, expanding the supreme court, facism, farming, fear, food (de)regulation, food access, food security, food sovereignty, gender, gerrymandering, greed, grief, guilt, gun violence, habitat, healing, health care, homelessness, hope, integrational alliances, , isolation, justice, kindness, living wage, media, mental health, migration, militarization, palestine, participation, passion, philanthropy, pleasure, precarity, privilege, public infrastructure, public space, racial justice, racism, rage, ranked choice, resentment, risk, segregation, sexism, social media, social safety net, sociality, slowing, support for the arts, third parties, tolerance, toxic masculinity, truth, unionization, youth