MILWAUKEE — It’s starting to feel like fall in southeast Wisconsin and there’s plenty of great activities going on this weekend to get you in the autumn spirit. Check out Adriana’s full list below!

FRIDAY:
Cole Swindell
The Rave / Eagles Club
2401 W. Wisconsin Avenue,
Milwaukee, WI 53233

Colorado Rockies at Milwaukee Brewers
American Family Field
1 Brewers Way,
Milwaukee, WI 53214

Oktoberfest 2024
The Bavarian Bierhaus
700 W Lexington Blvd, 700 W Lexington Blvd,
Glendale, WI 53217

Mondo Lucha
Turner Hall Ballroom
1040 N. Vel R. Phillips Avenue,
Milwaukee, WI 53203

Romance Con
Baird Center
400 W. Wisconsin Avenue,
Milwaukee, WI 53203

The Big Bounce America
Henry Meir Festival Park
639 E. Summerfest Place,
Milwaukee, WI 53202

TosaFest
Village of Wauwatosa
7603 W. State Street,
Wauwatosa, WI 53213

Military and First Responders Appreciation Night
1950 Washington Street,
Grafton, WI 53024

Women of Rock
Milwaukee Repertory Theater,
108 W. Wells Street,
Milwaukee, WI 53202

Apple Picking Season
Apple Barn Orchard & Winery
W6384 Sugar Creek Road,
Elkhorn, WI, United States, Wisconsin

SATURDAY
Grupo Frontera
Fiserv Forum
1111 Vel R. Phillips Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53203

Fiesta Selena
4511 S. Sixth St
Milwaukee, WI

Silver City Fest
VIA CDC
W. National Ave. Between 32nd & 35th Street,
Milwaukee, WI 53215

The FRANK MOTS INT’L KITE FESTIVAL
Gift of Wings, Inc. Kite Store
McKinley Marina, Veterans Park (lakefront),
Milwaukee, WI 53202

National Lawn Bowls Championships
Lake Park, Bowling Green
3131 E Newberry Blvd,
Milwaukee, WI, 53211

Fall Festival
Downtown Oconomowoc
133 East Wisconsin Avenue – Oconomowoc, WI 53066

SUNDAY
Ride on the Wild Side Bike Ride
Milwaukee County Zoo,
10001 W Bluemound Rd,
Milwaukee, WI 53226

MONDAY
Avril Lavigne: The Greatest Hits Tour with Simple Plan and girlfriends
American Family Insurance Am
Summerfest Grounds, Milwaukee, WI

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“The bums will pick it up.”  

I’ve been fuming about this since December, when a playoff-crazed Lions tailgater chose those words to explain why his family was leaving their trash on a grassy strip of public property close to my home.  

My wife and I live on the edge of downtown, less than a mile from Ford Field. We first moved to Detroit in 2006, leaving twice for career opportunities, but always coming back, and always living in the vicinity of downtown.

We love the easy access to concerts, sports and events, and feel joyful about the bigger, steadier crowds of people who live, work and visit the core city. It’s just fun.  

Sometimes, when the Red Wings or Pistons are at home, I go for a run along Woodward just to immerse myself a little bit in the pregame excitement. I have, in particular, long enjoyed the loyalty and enthusiasm of you long-suffering Lions supporters, and am happy for you now, despite being a lifelong Chiefs fan.  

These crowds make great people watching, and it’s easy to get caught up in the spirit. 

As the new Lions season begins, I welcome tailgaters back to our neighborhood. I’m merely asking that you treat it as you would like your own neighborhood treated.

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The hard work of being poor

Living where I do, fans and concertgoers aren’t the only people I watch. I also see how difficult it is to be poor — much more work than simply picking up after yourself ― to wait for the bus in predawn cold or midsummer heat, to pull a little cart home from the grocery store over icy streets, to curl up on a corner of sidewalk to get some sleep.  

I don’t judge. My birth family was far from well off, and some of us, including me, have experienced the ravages of substance abuse. In the “bums” our Lions fan expects to clean up his mess, I see people still awaiting the unbidden grace that lifted me. 

When you are poor, for any reason, the heat is more oppressive, the cold is colder, the distance is farther.  

So when I see people trudging to work in the dark, I think about how much work it is to be poor, just as when I see folks schleping empty cans and bottles for return. And that does happen, so at one level, the tailgater was right – the bottle bill works as an incentive that cuts down on at least some kinds of litter.  

But that doesn’t make it right to leave a mess — which included this family’s paper plates and napkins — because you think Detroit is your garbage dump, or that the less fortunate should clean up after you.  

It may be that this Lions fan — I think this is common — doesn’t come into the city very often, and has an outdated conception. When I moved here in 2006, just after Super Bowl XL led to a hurried makeup job, litter was common. Streetlights were out. Bike riding was frustrating because of broken glass in the street.  

That’s changed for a variety of reasons, but it boils down to investment and sustained effort, along with a much-needed step-up in city services that made it possible for longtime residents to hold the line against disrepair.

No city is pristine, but significant parts of Detroit proper are undeniably neater than they were 20 years ago.  

That Detroit of two decades ago showed its poverty more sharply wasn’t an excuse to act like a pig back then, and it sure isn’t an excuse for littering now.

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Let’s not disrespect Detroit

I, perhaps unfairly, assume our littering Lion lives in some nondescript suburb that would barely exist were it not for the brawn and innovation of Detroit. It’s Dee-troit basketball, not Birmingham Hoops. He cheers for the Detroit Lions, not the Warren Kittens or the Southfield Whatevers, and no doubt takes pride in saying he is a Detroit Lions fan now that they are succeeding.  

So he and his family — he had elementary-school age children with him — would do well to be polite visitors. I merely ask that they pick up after themselves, and maybe not teach the next generation to disrespect Detroit.   

I’ll do the same if I ever have reason to park my vehicle on some suburban street, pitch a tent and have a little party.

Randy Essex is an editor at the Detroit Free Press. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters and we may publish it online and in print.

Surrogates for former President Donald Trump held a town hall on Milwaukee’s lower east side Thursday night in which they framed the November election in existential terms and urged supporters to turn out the vote.

The visit came just hours after President Joe Biden spoke to supporters in the western Wisconsin town of Westby in his first visit to the state since he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in late July.

The town hall is part of the “Team Trump Agenda 47 Policy Tour.” The tour coincides with Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025, a conservative blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation, even as Democrats continue to point out his connections to the plan.

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Janesville Republican, told those gathered at the Jan Serr Studio in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Kenilworth Square East building that the election is an opportunity to “get our country back on track.”

“The final piece of this is we only win if we show up and vote,” he told the 100 or so people gathered. He added that the fast-approaching election will be decided by a narrow margin.

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns have been crisscrossing the state with just two months until the November election. The latest Marquette University Law School poll found Trump and Harris in a statistical dead heat in Wisconsin, a critical swing state that Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020.

The panel was moderated by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who was joined on stage by Steil, former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and former Trump administration official and conservative commentator Monica Crowley, a contributor to Project 2025.

Before the town hall kicked off, dozens of protesters gathered on Prospect Avenue outside with a larger-than-life puppet of Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. Their chants included, “JD Vance you can’t hide, Stop Project 2025” and a slogan from Harris’s campaign, “When we fight, we win.”

Tracy Washington, a Power to the Polls canvasser, was quick with an answer when asked what she wanted town hall attendees to take away from the protest: “I want them to take away (Project) 2025,” she said.

“Project 2025, as you know, is an attack on seniors — our health and security,” said Pat Dunn, 79, of the League of Progressive Seniors. “Now, I want you to help me understand why I got to be this old, and now they want to attack my Social Security, my health and security.”

Project 2025 is billed as a “menu of solutions to the border crisis, inflation, a stagnant economy, and rampant crime” that “dismantles the unaccountable Deep State, taking power away from Leftist elites and giving it back to the American people and duly-elected President.”

The policy blueprint calls for replacing civil service government employees with partisan appointees and eliminating the Department of Education, among other proposals.

Similar town halls are taking place across battleground states and focus on issues like the economy, the border crisis and “ending the threat of World War III,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.

Trump’s campaign billed the Agenda 47 Tour as the “the most extensive surrogate operation in the history of presidential politics” and said it would “enlist some of the most prominent figures in politics, influential celebrities, and a diverse array of everyday Americans across key battleground states to champion President Trump and his Agenda 47 initiative.”

Agenda 47 is Trump’s official campaign platform.

On Thursday evening, the topics ranged from the economy to the opioid epidemic to illegal immigration to “weaponized government” agencies.

The speakers also rallied the crowd, impressing upon those gathered the importance of winning Wisconsin on the road to winning the White House.

Thompson urged Republicans to go to places that aren’t “safe” for them, like college campuses, the Democratic stronghold of Madison and Black churches.

“Ask the people, what do they want? They want our agenda,” he said, adding that Harris is “trying to copy it.”

What wasn’t mentioned during the panel discussion was Project 2025. Only when a reporter asked about it afterward did speakers mention the proposal, saying the event and Trump had nothing to do with it.

“He’s disavowed Project 2025. That’s not his set of his policies. It’s just like any one of a number of think tanks around,” Burgum said afterward. “So I think it’s a complete red herring.”

He added that Project 2025 is “not relevant.”

While Trump has tried to distance himself from it, writing on his social media platform Truth Social that he knows “nothing about Project 2025,” a July USA TODAY analysis found that at least 31 of the project’s 38 creators had connections with Trump’s administration.

Crowley pushed back on Democrats’ tagging the Trump campaign with Project 2025.

“I just want to clarify, when the project got started in the early days, they contacted me to make a few contributions on the Treasury Department piece of it. So I was literally involved for maybe three weeks, and that was the end of it,” Crowley said. 

She stressed that the Trump has “absolutely nothing to do” with Project 2025. 

“The official Trump platform for policy for his second term is Agenda 47,” Crowley said.

Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com. Mary Spicuzza can be reached at mary.spicuzza@jrn.com.