The Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WisPIRG) held a meeting to announce its campaigns for the fall semester last night. The meeting was attended by a little over a hundred people.
Megan Grunke, chapter chair of WisPIRG, described the group as “an environmental and consumer watchdog group that acts in the public interest.”
Megan Fitzgerald, state-board chair of WisPIRG, opened the meeting by talking about the current status of Wisconsin’s natural resources.
“We have power plants throwing tons of smoke into the air,” Fitzgerald said. “One of the ski trails that I used to ski as a kid I can’t even find anymore, the area has been so heavily logged.”
The group’s different campaigns introduced themselves with skits.
Grunke said the Hunger and Homelessness campaign is trying to organize a Hunger Awareness Week in November that would include a sleep-out on Library Mall.
Before breaking up into meetings of specific campaigns, group member Shane Siemers spoke to “psych up” the crowd.
“Right now, there’s a lot of things going on in government that should be pissing you off,” Siemers said. “We’re living in the richest, most powerful country in the world, and 27 million people don’t have a place to call home and don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”
Siemers added that he continues working with WisPIRG because he knows the group can achieve results.
Siemers was met with cheers when he announced, “Wisconsin has the strongest clean-water regulations in the country.”
The individual campaigns WisPIRG is running include campaigns to demand that companies label foods that are genetically engineered, a campaign called Eco-Pledge, which will try to stop companies from polluting the environment and to encourage them to recycle, a campaign that will try to prevent the government from “rolling back” legislation that is protective of the environment, and a campaign called Vote 2002, which will attempt to register 8,000 voters.
For several years, WisPIRG has also run a campaign known as Big Red, Go Green. This campaign has been working to reduce energy costs at the university, which could in turn reduce tuition.
Aaron Honor, a UW junior, said last year Big Red, Go Green scored a victory for energy conservation in the university’s computer labs.
“We did a computer-lab survey, then we did a press release, and we got the computer labs to finally start using sleep mode,” Honoré said.
“We can have a say on buildings being built on campus. We can make sure they’re energy-efficient,” said student Lisa Barnes.
WisPIRG’s individual campaigns are run by interns, but the workers are mostly from concerned volunteers.
