President’s Update – July 2026

Dawn Smith, President

Greetings, League Friends!

It’s been a week!  We live on the west side and got nailed with the weather last week. We have two large Catalpa trees in our backyard, and the one closest to our house split in half.  It fell in my neighbor’s driveway, missing their car by a foot. It’s a miracle it didn’t cause any damage, and my amazing neighbors showed up and helped us clean up the mess, but now Chad and I are going through the process of finding a tree service to clean up and cut down the rest of our tree. The man we ended up going with is estimating the tree is around 120 years old. It’s a huge part of our yard, and it’s going to be heart breaking when they cut it down. I’m just grateful we didn’t lose them both, and the tree furthest from the house seems to be healthy. 

Aside from the wonky weather, June has been a busy month for our League. Voter Services hosted a table at both the Juneteeth event, and Pride, where they got 50+ people to sign up for our newsletter. Thank you to all the awesome members who were able to volunteer at these events. Many people stopped by the booth to talk, and we were able to be a resource for different communities within our city. The more visibility the League has in our community, and more people we will impact, truly becoming a resource to our neighbors. 

We also spoke with the Youth Action Board at House of Hope, discussing how to use MyVote and what kinds of things the different levels of government do (examples:  Local = bus routes and affordable housing; State = Badger Care, access to health care for women, and funding for public education; National = military and taxes). Our focus was on helping the young women we were speaking with make the connection between the issues they care about and the upcoming election. The conversation was robust, and we were invited back to speak to their Self-Care Class in the future.

I just finished up a meeting with a group of Latino voting advocates, and we should be seeing some bilingual content on our League Facebook page. If you aren’t following our page, you should. And if you are following our page, please remember to share our posts with your Facebook communities – that’s the best way we can get out the word on all the resources we have available.

And last, I want to encourage people to sign up for our summer picnic. After the excessive heat at the picnic last year (it’s 92 degrees at 7:00 pm, as I write this), we made the decision to move the picnic indoors, so we’re having our picnic at ADRC on Thursday, August 6, from 5-7:00. ADRC always does such an excellent job with the Annual Meeting, so we decided to have them cater, to make it easy for everyone. All we ask is that you sign up (the link to the sign-up is in the newsletter) so we know how much of everything to order. And bring a friend. (I joined the League after Karen Schley invited me to a Summer Picnic!)