Newly Elected Alder Joann Prichett for Madison’s 9th District: Voice of the 9th District (Part 2 of 2)
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.
While Pritchett has been involved in the community fopr decades and knows the city well, she wasn’t inclined to get involved in politics. She speaks her mind, which isn’t always an enduring quality in politics.
“My arm got twisted really bad to run for alder,” Pritchett said. “Someone said, ‘Joann, you’re the only one who can do it.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ They said, ‘You’re the only one who will speak up and speak out.’ I look at it this way. If you know something is wrong, if you see something and it is wrong, and then you say nothing, then you are saying it’s okay. And I am saying it’s not okay. And so for me, speaking up and speaking out is important because there was a time in Birmingham, Alabama when there was a penalty to be paid for speaking up and speaking out. In the segregated South, you could be killed. But I have a voice now and no one is going to mute it. I speak up and speak out. This is the way that I operate.”
Pritchett was already primed to be a candidate. When she speaks to you, she looks you earnestly in the eye. And being an avid walker gave her the stamina to do the door-to-door canvassing.
“It was easy going door to door to talk with voters,” Pritchett said. “It was like start and stop, start and stop. That was the worse thing because I’m used to a pretty fast pace. That was okay. Believe it or not, it turned out to just be a fantastic experience. I’ve canvassed before. But not like that because now I knew that I had to make eye contact with the people I wanted to vote for me. I racked up about 525 miles all over the 9th District. Meeting people face-to-face, I can’t go anywhere now. People say, ‘I know you. You’re Joann. You’re my new alder.’ I just left Lussier as I said. And I said to a woman, ‘I know your face.’ And she said, ‘Yes, you were at my house.’”
And she met the voters where they were.
“If people had a dog, we meet and talk,” Pritchett said. “Believe it or not, I remember the names of the dogs and not the people. But it was interesting. People are more likely to engage if they have a dog for some strange reason. And so I talked to a whole lot of dog walkers out there, long detailed, in depth conversations with dog walkers. And if you went to someone’s house and it was the dog that greeted you at the door, you knew it was a friendly place. I had a lot of fun.”
Pritchett was adept at public speaking.
“When I was given a chance to speak, the only thing I had was the microphone,” Pritchett emphasized. “I spoke to the people and told them why I was running and why this priority is very important to them. You look people in the eye and you can read exactly what is going on.”
In terms of economic development, it’s not just businesses locating where their market is. They are becoming a part of a community.
“I would say, ‘When you come into this neighborhood, you become a part of this neighborhood,’” Pritchett would say to a new business. “But you have some businesses that come in and all they want is your money. That’s all they want. And then I said, ‘And then they don’t survive and they wonder why. Well they weren’t an integral part of the community. You can’t just come in and take from the community and then leave. How are you engaged? Are you partnering with the community and meeting their needs? And if not, then your business is not going to thrive. I’ve seen that too often, how businesses come in to many marginalized communities. If you are going to come in and you want my money, then this is a partnership. It’s not you coming in and taking and not giving. “
Pritchett intends to remain engaged in the district on a personal level.
“Just in talking to Arturo at Lussier, I said I wanted to introduce an activity for the kids,” Pritchett said. “It’s the woodworking kits. I said, ‘I’m going to show you something.’ I had one in my car. My dad taught me and my sisters woodworking skills. And so I make birdhouses. I make whimsical, primitive birdhouses. They are one-of-a-kind. No two birdhouses are the same. And so in making these birdhouses, what I do is I will take them to different nursing homes. It can be independent or assisted living. You walk into a nursing home and you see people sitting in a wheelchair and they are nodding off. Put a birdhouse out there and it gives them the chance to watch, observe, look and listen. And then you hear the chatter, the conversations that are going on between them. ‘Did you see this? Did you see that? They’ve got three babies. They are gone now.’ That improves a person’s quality of life. These are little things that you can do.”
As an alder, Pritchett won’t be afraid to go toe to toe with anyone, even the mayor. Pritchett met the mayor during the campaign with some of the district’s residents, including Randy Bruegeman, retired fire chief from Anaheim, UW Prof. Aparna Dharwadker and Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research (CCR) and has worked at CCR at the Nelson Institute for more than 20 years. The meeting was about Sauk Creek and the city’s plans.
“We met over at Yola’s Cafe over by Menards,” Pritchett said. “We were talking about Sauk Creek. The mayor said, ‘I’m the scientist here.’ I leaned over and I said, ‘Madame Mayor, perhaps you are the scientist, but you don’t have a monopoly on knowledge.’ Since then, it’s one of the reasons she supported Nikki up and down, up and down because Nikki is a go along, get along person, but I am not. I have no intention of going along just to get along. I’m not going to do that.”
There were other issues peop[le were concerned with.
“The $22 million referendum was on people’s minds,” Pritchett said. “In addition to that, a major thing was the lack of civility in city hall. People were concerned with how outside influences in city hall, big money coming in from realty groups and others to impact policy. But civility, that referendum, people were ready for that. It’s the way that it was done. The mayor used threats and made statements that if the referendum didn’t pass, we would have to cut this and cut that. It was stuff like that that really infuriated people. This was crazy. I heard from people in Orchard Ridge, in Midvale, in Westmoreland talking about what had happened. The other thing was the refusal on the part of many, many council members to vote for body-worn cameras. I said on one questionnaire, ‘The camera doesn’t lie.’”
With the increased demand on her time, Pritchett is ready for the challenge.
“I know how to manage and budget my time,” Pritchett emphasized. “And I know when to say no. ‘I can do this, but until next week.’ And I have a piece of wood with a little quote that I wood burned many, many years ago on it. And it says, ‘Today is not your day. Tomorrow does not look good either.’ So people know. I will say, ‘I’ll do it, but I can’t do it today. It will be next week before I can get to it.’ And if you can deal with that, fine. But if not, I can’t do it.”
Joann Pritchett is well equipped to represent the Madison Alder District 9 for the next two years. Madison, get ready for some straight talk.