Bounce Milwaukee owners Ryan Clancy and Becky Cooper-Clancy holding an axe from their latest expansion project, axe-throwing lanes.
On any given day at Bounce Milwaukee you will find children jumping on bounce houses, teenagers playing laser tag and adults eating the famous mock chicken leg pizza. Aside from the choice of pizza topping, these are all of the activities you expect to see at a family entertainment center. What may surprise you is that Bounce has also become one of the busiest spaces for organizing progressive activism in the city.
In 2013, husband and wife Ryan Clancy and Becky Cooper-Clancy noticed it was nearly impossible to find activities for all four (they now have five) of their children to do together. Ryan’s solution was to open their own family entertainment center. “I hate those places. Those are the worst and my idea of hell. So no,” was Becky’s initial response. After a little bit of convincing and a lot of nights spent working until 3 a.m., Bounce opened at 2801 S. 5th Ct. in early 2014.
While the couple has always felt strongly about progressive issues, their business wasn’t always as closely tied to their beliefs. Their first foray into overt politics came in December 2015 when, after they were recognized on a “best places to work” list, Gov. Scott Walker sent a letter congratulating Bounce’s achievement. Conspicuously, the letter was only addressed to Ryan, even though Becky owns 51% of the business. Ryan, a former teacher at Professional Learning Institute, an MPS school that was closed due to budget cuts, decided to respond to the letter after consulting with Becky, writing:
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“On behalf of myself and my employees, we wanted to extend our sincere thanks to you for making this business possible. You and your team played a critical role in inspiring us to open our doors… Had I not been stripped of my autonomy and respect as an educator, and had my school closed by budget cuts, I never would have decided to become a job creator, thereby earning the acknowledgement from our Governor that I never saw after more than a decade of teaching.”
Though they knew it would be a risk for their business, they decided to post the letter online. It went viral, and while they received some backlash, the response was largely positive. “We decided that we were going to do it, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because he is doing so many bad things for Wisconsin,” Ryan said. “It was good and I think that what we saw was that it brought our current customers closer to us.”
When Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, Ryan and Becky knew that they had to do more. “I think that after the election we were shaken,” Becky said. “There was that period of mourning for about 48-72 hours after the election where people were flipping out. Then people started to say, ‘We need to buckle down. We’ve got a lot of work to do.’”
They started Refuel the Resistance, a weekly Wednesday gathering where Bounce offers a free drink to patrons who can show one act of resistance from the previous week—like a letter to an elected official or a photo from a protest. A typical week will draw a handful of people, but on weeks with guest bartenders—the likes of which have included Rep. Jonathan Brostoff and Milwaukee County Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic—up to 100 people show up.
“Some of the best people I know are organizers, and they are working their tails off,” Ryan said. “Every time they get together there’s this sense of urgency. It’s nice to see them be able to connect in a more relaxed social way, since this is not the typical context for where organizers have historically hung out.”
Becky’s favorite event that they have done was the Unauguration Ball. On the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, Bounce chose four organizations to benefit. They did karaoke and had themed drink specials. They plan to make it an annual event no matter who is in office. They also hold fundraising events for progressive community organizations.
In addition to the progressive owners, a much more practical reason remains for why activists are choosing to organize at Bounce. “They like it because we have kind of built-in childcare,” Ryan said. “Activists and volunteer parents can come in and their kids have someplace to do something.”
While many businesses have been boycotted over their owners’ politics, Bounce hasn’t seen any real blowback because of their actions. “We get zero star Yelp reviews all the time from people saying, ‘I’m never going there!’” Ryan said. “They’ll say, ‘We spend thousands of dollars here,’ but they’ve never actually been here before. Or they’ll threaten to not come in and we’ll see them a couple of weeks later. We would do the right thing because it’s the right thing, however, we have not seen any sort of financial ramification from doing the right thing.”
Ryan and Becky hope that other business owners will step up and make the decision to use their platform for progressive causes. “I talk to business owners every day, and they say that what we’re doing is great,” Ryan said. “Then they say, ‘We like to keep our business and personal stuff separate.’ But in 2018 I don’t think that that’s responsible. I think that if you have the privilege of owning a business and you have that leverage, you should be working that, or else you’re identifying with the status quo.”
Bounce Milwaukee hosts Refuel the Resistance every Wednesday from 5-8 p.m. They will host Bounce with Brostoff, a fundraiser for Rep. Jonathan Brostoff on Thursday, April 12 from 5-8 p.m. You can find more of their events here.
