Photo via Milwaukee Turners at Turner Hall - Facebook
Indoor Dry-Tooling Festival - Milwaukee Turners and BIPOC Beta
Milwaukee Turners with BIPOC Beta for the Indoor Dry-Tooling Festival
The Milwaukee Turners is the oldest civic group in the city, established in 1853. Since its early days, the organization’s influence has positively permeated regional culture, whether it be from their early support of women’s suffrage and equal rights, or their role in expanding physical education in schools, or being one of the first German American groups nationwide to oppose Nazi Germany.
Photo by Ben Slowey
Milwaukee Turners Sign
A sign at Turner Hall
As a storied building with an abundance of progressive history, Turner Hall preserves significant artifacts like handwritten letters from Milwaukee’s third socialist mayor Frank Zeidler, urns containing the ashes of deceased Milwaukee Turners and even recipes for Prohibition-era moonshine. The building houses both the Turner Hall Ballroom and a restaurant—the Tavern at Turner Hall—which features a smaller rental space known as the Palm Garden.
Executive Director Emilio De Torre loves looking at historic pictures of folks at Turner Hall alongside newer ones, remarking, “The faces and the fashion and the music has all changed, but the joy on the faces of folks gathered to celebrate who the Milwaukee Turners is all the same smile.”
Civic Engagement
In recent years, the Turners have undergone a renaissance with improved and expanded civic engagement and community wellness programming, all abiding by their mission to champion a “Sound Mind and Sound Body” through four guiding principles: liberty against all oppression, tolerance against all fanaticism, reason against all superstition, and justice against all exploitation
“This organization’s mission is greater than the sum of the people who drafted it,” De Torre reckons. “How we walk and carry ourselves in all the different aspects of what we do is universal.”
De Torre stepped into his role in 2020, having been a card-carrying member for a couple of years. At that time, the Turners only had a couple employees on payroll. In five years, they have expanded to almost fifty.
Civic Education
“I always admired them,” De Torre says about the Turners. “Their history spoke to me. I thought the building was gorgeous. It’s like a castle downtown. Where else are you going to have an office where you’ve got artifacts from the 1800s all around you?”
State Representative Darrin B.Madison, who had been previously employed by the Turners, helped develop the organization’s five Sound Mind workshops, which focus on different aspects of civic education. The first of the five is Democracy 101. “A lot of folks don’t know who to call when, and how an elected official’s decisions affect their daily lives,” he explains. The other four workshops are Bystander Intervention and Deescalation, Law Enforcement Encounters 101, Digital Privacy and Intro to Structural and Implicit Bias.
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“These are things that community members need to know,” Madison affirms. “It doesn’t matter if you are an adult or a young person. These trainings are for folks across the spectrum of knowledge so that this information is accessible and palatable.”
Nat Godley, another Milwaukee Turner, helps facilitate the organization’s Legal Observing and Immigrant Rights trainings, which each deliver critical information regarding interactions with law enforcement under the current Trump administration. He comments on who has been showing up, “It’s a mix of people who are themselves affected by changes in immigration enforcement, and people who are not directly affected but want to help those who are.”
Social Advocacy
Additionally, the Turners engage in FPC (Fire & Police Commission) monitoring, confronting mass incarceration through the Zero Youth Corrections (ZYC) initiative, advocacy for jail audits, peer support through their mentorship program, neighborhood exploration through Jane’s Walk MKE, panel discussions with the Vel Phillips Forum and more.
Harm reduction skill-sharing is incorporated into the Turners’ programming by way of free Narcan trainings as well as a vending machine at their facility that contains Narcan, fentanyl test strips and first aid kits.
“The people who become part of this organization are among the kindest, most compassionate, and thoughtful people I’ve known,” Godley attests, “and they’re also a lot of fun! Knowing them, doing good things with them and hanging out with them is a huge source of sustenance for me.”
In addition to their own programming, the Turners often partner with fellow local organizations doing their own crucial community work. Recent collaborations include with Milwaukee 4 Palestine on a Dabka workshop, Sun-Seeker MKE on Gender Justice training, BIPOC Beta on an indoor dry-tooling festival for BIPOC folks, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges on their Big Cleanup, MKE Outdoor Indoor Exchange on their Gear Gala and Voces de la Frontera on May Day.
Rock Climbing
Photo by Ben Slowey
Turner Hall Indoor Climbing Wall
The indoor climbing wall at Turner Hall
The Turners’ rock climbing gym is one of the organization’s centerpieces; built in the 1880s, it is the oldest climbing gym in Wisconsin. With various individual and group climbing packages and classes available, the gym is equipped with multiple rock walls and bouldering areas, including one for dry-tool ice climbing. The facility’s cardio and strength training rooms are ADA-accessible, complete with locker rooms, showers and a pro shop.
Gymnastics classes at the gym serve children from eighteen months up to adults. Additional wellness programming includes free yoga, zumba and tai chi classes throughout the week.
Gabby Cantrall, gymnastics program director, remarks about being a Turner, “I like that I’m able to be myself and do the things that I want to do without getting too serious or competitive. People who are new here get to be part of the community and climb as an adult while their kids do gymnastics.”
Folks interested in becoming a Milwaukee Turner can do so for $35 a year. Membership includes a vote in annual Turner board elections as well as free access to the weight and cardio rooms and discounted rates on wellness classes, among other things.
