Newly Elected Alder Joann Prichett for Madison’s 9th District: Voice of the 9th District
Long-time Madison community activist, a retired professor from the UW-Madison School of Nursing, won the Madison District 9 alder election on April 1
by Jonathan Gramling
Joann Pritchett, who was recently elected as Madison alder for the 9th District has been a community fixture for years. From giving time management workshops for the high school students in the NAACP ACT-SO Program to fall prevention workshops for Safe Communities, Pritchett has been out there doing good work in the community. And don’t be surprised if you have seen her walking with walking poles across her west side district and beyond. Pritchett is an avid, daily walker, something that began as a youth growing up in the segregated South.
“Growing up in Alabama, people always ask me why I walk,” Pritchett said. “And a major reason for that is growing up in Birmingham, Alabama and you took the bus. Of course the buses were not air-conditioned. You would go through some neighborhoods and given that the buses were not air-conditioned, the windows were down. You would have white kids who threw dog poop at you, who would throw rotten eggs at you and other things. On this one particular day, I was hit by a rotten egg. And I had to get off the bus, walk back home and change clothes. My mom said to me, ‘Maybe you can avoid that if you would just walk to school.’ And I started walking and I have been walking ever since.”
Pritchett also owes her medical career to the segregated South as well.
“If you went to the hospital for this or for that, chances are, you wouldn’t get treated,” Pritchett said. “Of if you did, they would send you home, once again, because of segregation. So that’s one of the reasons why I went into nursing.”
Pritchett earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Tuskegee University in Alabama and made her way to Madison where she taught nursing in the UW-Madison School of Nursing. Pritchett has always been determined and resourceful. When she took a pause at the nursing school to earn her doctorate, she didn’t have any fellowships or scholarships to support her right away.
“Before leaving the School of Nursing, I was doing other things, working with kids at the Waisman Center,” Pritchett said. “I was doing wall papering, anything that was going to help support me in graduate school. It was fun. I did later on, get a grant to get me through. But at the same time, you need funds for this and that. So over at Parkwood Village, every unit, if there was something that needed to be wallpapered, it was Joann who did it. And of course, there were other places where I did wallpapering. It was a hobby. It was a fun thing to do.”
After earning her doctorate, Pritchett eventually went to the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy and then retired. That didn’t mean that she stopped doing the work.
“Even to this day, people are always calling and asking me for information,” Pritchett said. “It’s almost like being a medical advocate for people because they want to know what is going on. Charlie Daniel gave me the name of a person. She said, ‘I want you to talk to her.’ She had been in a deep funk, so to speak, not knowing what to do. So I spoke to her on the phone for around 25 minutes. Afterwards, she said, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I feel so much better.’ She had described some of the symptoms that she had. And once she had described those symptoms to me, I pretty much knew what was going on. And so I had asked her questions leading up to that and I said, ‘Can you describe to me what your poop looks like?’ She said, ‘I don’t know. I just flush it.’ I said, ‘Darn it, you have to look at your poop because it tells a story.’ When she called me back last week, she said, ‘I’ve been looking at it. I’ve been looking at it.’ I asked her to tell me what it looked like. She did and I told her that she really had to make an appointment to see the doctor.’ And so she is supposed to be seeing the doctor next week to have a colonoscopy done and all of that. I pretty much know what it is.
“You find instances of people not feeling good and probably know something is wrong, but they don’t want to admit something is wrong. And so, I asked her, ‘Tell me. You’ve been having this pain. What’s the purpose of pain?’ She said, ‘It hurt.’ I said, ‘No, the purpose of pain is to get your attention. You’ve been having this pain and you just are ignoring it and now it is getting worse. It’s getting your attention.’ It’s things like that. Many people just ignore pain and they don’t pay attention to it. So you have to really learn how to understand your own body and what’s working and what is not working. And if you can understand your own body, you can begin to listen to it and you are going to be able to assess daily what is going on if you take time to listen to your body because you are the historian. You can’t go to the doctor and expect them to tell you what’s wrong. How long has it been going on? What have you been doing to fix it? Those are the things that you have to tell them so that they can make some sense out of what is going on with you.”
While Pritchett is technically a senior citizen, she has her youthful energy.
“I just want people to know that it’s important for them to stay engaged,” Pritchett said. “And one way to do that is to get up every morning with a mission. And that is to be curious about something, to have a challenge for yourself and feel uncomfortable in a situation that you have never been in before. And if you can do those three things for you, not anyone else, but for you, you are going to be okay.”
Pritchett comes to the Madison Common Council with a lot of knowledge about the city, which she has gotten to know, one group at a time such as with Stepping On Lunch and Learn, put on by Safe Communities.
“Charlie would say, ‘We want to do a Stepping On Lunch and Learn,’” Pritchett said. “I would tell her to let me know when and I go. I’ve done stuff from Northport to the far west side, as far west as Middleton. I’ve done Stepping On programs in Fitchburg, Verona and Sun Prairie. These were seven-week programs. Now there is a Lunch and Learn because there are some communities who just can’t afford a seven-week program. But key to the program is understanding the importance of balance exercises and strengthening exercises. And I always do a demo and have them sit to stand, standing behind the chair, raising up on their toes, building strength and then balance almost like the tight-rope walker, walking the straight line. And that is how you can learn how to balance. They also involve talking to them about drugs and how some medications can increase a person’s chance of falling. Looking at their shoes makes a huge difference in terms of falling. I always walk around looking at their shoes to see what they are wearing. And older people develop macular degeneration, how eyes can affect a fall. At home, what is on the floor? Is the carpeting busy or the same color?”
And being on the city council isn’t going to get in the way of Pritchett’s community involvement.
“I just left the Lussier Community Education Center,” Pritchett said. “They have a group called Catalyst for Change. I told the group they needed a little more structure, Sure you are sitting there having lunch. But I’ve been listening to all of you. And what you can do is begin to explore effective strategies. They are senior citizens. And the goal is to begin to look at things that you can do collectively here, but at the same time, back in your community. I said, ‘Catalyst, what does the word catalyst mean to you? If you can just look at that word and know what it means, you can become a catalyst. But you can’t just do it by saying the word. You have to do something.’”
Pritchett’s community activism isn’t limited to working with seniors. She has a monthly date with children at Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
“I have been doing woodworking workshops for kids,” Pritchett said. “I have partnered informally with Home Depot. At the first of the month, I am going to Home Depot. They are going to give me the kits for April. These are kits with everything from a screwdriver to badges are in the kit. For example, for the month of March, the kit was a basketball hoop. You put it together. It’s all wood. The kids put it together. They can paint it if they want to. Once they finish it, they can take it home. The goal is to get them to look at skills, using their hands to fix things. When I go over on Wednesday nights — I do it the first Wednesday of each month — from 4-6 p.m. It’s Mt. Zion’s after school program. But the joy that I get out of it is you can be a kid and you can be stupid, funny, laugh or whatever the kids are doing — as an adult you can do it too.”
Pritchett sees the program has much more beneficial to youth than just developing their creativity.
“More and More, I’m seeing more parents or adults come to help supervise the kids because the skills that I am hoping they will learn are not only looking at psychomotor skills in putting things together, but also their thinking skills too,” Pritchett said. “‘This doesn’t go with that.’ I put mine together before I get there so that they can visualize exactly what it is that they have to do. And so when you walk into the room, they see you and they grab you. It’s just a good, fun time working with the kids.”
In many ways, Pritchett’s community engagement prepared her for the next level of community engagement, running for 9th District alder
Next Issue: The Election and Beyond