Reinventing Milwaukee

Growing up on Milwaukee’s north side, David Bowen was always aware of the inequality inside one of America’s most segregated cities.

“It was very clear that suburban schools were being invested in much more than the [Milwaukee Public Schools] I attended,” says Bowen, now a Democratic state representative. While Bowen feels the schools he went to were “amazing,” he saw that “resources were given to those suburban schools much more.”

Bowen would get up early in the morning and take a bus to the school he had transferred to in another corner of the city. As he remembers, “You literally see all the demographics of the bus change depending on what side of town it drives on.”

With Wisconsin being one of the critical swing states that could decide the November 3 presidential election, much of the energy on the ground in Milwaukee is being directed into electoral politics.

While the Democratic National Convention, which is set to take place in Milwaukee from August 17 through 20, will not be anywhere near the scale of prior presidential nominating conventions, it is still bringing attention to Wisconsin’s largest city (population: 585,589). And that’s a good thing, because of both what Milwaukee represents and what it needs.

Milwaukee’s slice of the Black Lives Matter movement is one of the nation’s longest-running protests. It began on May 29 and daily protests were still occurring as this issue went to press in late July. There are strong constituencies for progressive politics throughout Wisconsin. And yet the Badger State went red in the 2016 presidential election, with a decline in the Black vote being a factor in Donald Trump’s win.

Milwaukee County, with around 950,000 residents, is home to 240,000 African Americans, or 69 percent of the state’s Black population, highly concentrated in the city of Milwaukee. Only about 8 percent of the county’s African American population live outside of the city’s limits.

Like Bowen, Mandela Barnes grew up on Milwaukee’s predominantly African American north side. One of the first things he noticed as a kid was the very distinct experiences some of his friends had, depending on whether they lived in the inner city or surrounding communities. “It was like a night and day difference,” says Barnes, now Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. “So the segregation’s real on so many levels. Whether it’s where people live, or what people have access to.”

 In many ways, Milwaukee’s neighborhoods are still sectioned off according to ethnicity, with African Americans living on the north side, and Latinx residents on the south side. College kids and young adults populate the east side, near Lake Michigan. Heading west, the communities get whiter, the roads get smoother, and the luxuries of upper-middle-class suburbia become more apparent.

Yet while they live in distinct areas, Milwaukee’s racial minorities have much in common.

“So much of the problems that the African American community are facing are shared by the Latino community,” says Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera.

Like the city’s African American community, Latinx Milwaukeeans often find themselves confined to areas which are nearly mono-ethnic, including “a really high number that are working-poor communities,” Neumann-Ortiz says. “So you have a lot of youth who depend on school support for food. You also have the same issues right now with access to technology.”

This “digital divide” between those who have no access or only cell phone access to the Internet and those with easy access has been amplified by the coronavirus pandemic. People in more affluent communities can generally afford to work from home, pay for homeschooling, and get the health care they need. Access to computers has become essential for education, as schools have closed due to COVID-19.

Exacerbating matters is the fact that many minorities work in jobs that are considered essential, even though they are dangerous, notes Neumann-Ortiz: “They’ve been on the front lines of that work, particularly in food production, for a while now.”

Milwaukee’s distinct, segregated neighborhoods were established over time, as various ethnic groups populated the city. The city’s first migration of African Americans, however, arrived relatively late. As such, they were forced to settle in less desirable areas because the best locations were already taken. That first generation of Black residents also had the misfortune of arriving just as family-sustaining industrial jobs began to evaporate.

In some surrounding communities, including the predominantly white Wauwatosa, housing covenants established on-paper practices which barred Black residents from purchasing homes. One of the few Black people who did manage to live in Wauwatosa, Zeddie Hyler, built his own home in 1955. Neighbors at first tried to keep him out; failing that, a spate of For Sale signs popped up. The house is now a designated historic site.

In recent months, Wauwatosa has named its first Black high school principal, and its city council has created an Equity and Inclusion Committee, which has formed an ad hoc committee to tackle systemic racial issues.

“Perspective matters,” Ebony Grice, the newly appointed Wauwatosa West High School principal, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “When you’re a person of color, you have a different perspective often, and I think that those perspectives are important when you’re making decisions for kids.”

Tiffany Henry, president of the Milwaukee Urban League Young Professionals, feels these sorts of steps are critical as Milwaukee reinvents itself. “When you have individuals who have never been around people of color, or Black students before, then the way they respond, teach, and act is going to be much different,” says Henry, a native of Beloit, Wisconsin. “It is no longer 1950, 1960. It is 2020.”

Still, inequity in Milwaukee County is systemic, enduring, and complex. One facet of this that’s often overlooked is environmental injustice. Growing up, Barnes struggled with asthma, like many other children in his community. Numerous studies have shown the disproportionate rates of asthma in the African American population. Across the country, Black children are six times more likely to die from asthma than their white and Latinx counterparts.

“There are environmental factors that cause it,” says Barnes. “It’s not natural.”

Contamination-prone industries are often situated in predominantly minority areas. There is more industrial waste and there are more coal-fired power plants. Last October, a deal for a proposed slaughterhouse on Milwaukee’s north side was rejected by the city after a community uproar. Milwaukee County has declared that racism itself is a public health emergency, with its impact on health outcomes being just one dimension of the issue.

“These things are so obvious and so in your face,” Barnes says. “It’s not even that these things weren’t understood before. It’s that people in the position to change them consistently ignored those issues.”

In 2020, the accumulation of these systemic issues bubbled to the surface due to COVID-19.

As of July 27, at least 379 people have died from the virus in Milwaukee County. Until recently, African Americans represented the largest demographic among the dead. But now, of the more than 18,000 positive cases, Hispanic residents represent the largest group, followed by African Americans. From the economic hardships wrought by the virus, to the outcomes of its worst symptoms, COVID-19 has laid bare the systemic inequalities that drive American poverty.

Nevertheless, the city is pushing to gradually change policies and reclaim its destiny from an oppressive past. Henry feels the city is going through an evolution, a rebranding.

 “One of the things is to help the city have an identity,” she says, “outside of some of the negative stereotypes and data statistics that are surrounding Milwaukee.” Through all the decades-old challenges, Henry sees room for opportunity.

“However, we have to address those things that we know are challenges, that aren’t allowing  for adults and young people to be able to thrive here in Milwaukee.”

Henry and others see Milwaukee’s ongoing protests as a key opportunity to create more preventative, community-based solutions to systemic issues. But any progress in this direction tends to run up against funding shortages.

One complicating factor is Milwaukee’s relationship with the state’s shared revenue program. A 2017 article on the online news site Urban Milwaukee found that the city gets just sixty-six cents for every tax dollar it delivers to the state.

“Municipalities have been put in a tough position of trying to sustain budgets that put so [many] dollars into rising police costs,” Bowen says. “And other services have taken the hits, and the cuts.”

 The city of Milwaukee spends nearly half its total budget on police, with other budgets like the health department and school district suffering cuts and stagnation. “We’ve been stuck on doing things the way that we’ve always done them,” Bowen says. “Rather than thinking outside of the box, rather than funding outside of the box.”

Milwaukee’s Black Lives Matter movement is calling for the reallocation of funds away from police and toward community and social services. The city’s Common Council has discussed decreasing the Milwaukee Police Department’s budget by 10 percent, as well as other reforms. The school district has also canceled its contracts with the Milwaukee Police Department to provide school resource officers and event security.

Different factions of protesters have different demands, though many follow similar themes. The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Re- pression, on June 4, took part in a press conference in which it discussed alternatives to holding police accountable. It’s pushing for a Civilian Police Accountability Council, which would make investigatory responsibility for police misconduct inquiries into a civilian body, rather than falling under the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission.

At the same press conference, Community Task Force MKE (“MKE” is the airport code for Milwaukee) issued its own list of demands, after police escalated the use of force against protesters. The group called for divesting $75 million from the police department, with $50 million to be reallocated to fund public health and $25 million for housing cooperatives.    

Another urgent issue is a requested freeze on evictions during the pandemic. “Right now, we have evictions soaring through the roof,” Bowen says. “And we’re trying to get ahold of so many landlords, a lot of whom aren’t from Milwaukee or don’t live in Milwaukee.” Many landlords, he says, are overcharging for substandard housing and “don’t provide any grace” to those who can’t pay. “During a pandemic, that has taken a very big toll on our community.”

For Henry, part of what needs to happen is a firmer idea of inclusion. “For far too long, people have felt as if they’re being dictated to” and shut out of the process, she says. But the protests represent a revitalization of civic engagement. The marches have united thousands of residents of all ages, genders, and ethnicities under a single banner.

Indeed, a majority of the protests Henry has attended have been led, organized, and facilitated by young people. “I’ve seen youth who have decided to take a stand and say, ‘Hey we’re going to organize this. We’re going to create a list of demands. We’re going to attach our names to this.’ To me, that’s refreshing.”

Neumann-Ortiz agrees: “I definitely think the protests are very important for both immediate bringing to light [of] the kinds of changes that are necessary to challenge issues around police accountability and racial inequality.” Vaun Mayes, an activist and co-founder of groups including Community Task Force MKE and Program the Parks MKE, is also optimistic.

“The opportunity is definitely there for change,” he tells The Progressive. “The entire state is uncomfortable and on high alert. Of course, we know incarceration and segregation are issues, here more so than other places. This push against the factors driving those two, directly confronting white supremacy and systematic oppression so consistently is definitely going to be a problem for those who want things the way they are.”

Bowen has attended many of the demonstrations as well, and is impressed by the show of engagement and civic attention. “One of the ways that people can help be part of the change is to actually get engaged, get involved, and help push the change that we’re trying to see,” he says. “That means getting out in the streets. That means contacting your elected officials. That means being part of the political process, supporting good candidates.”

With Wisconsin being one of the critical swing states that could decide the November 3 presidential election, much of the energy on the ground in Milwaukee is being directed into electoral politics. Groups including Voces de la Frontera and BLOC (Black Leaders Organizing for Communities) have worked diligently for many months to mobilize voters for this election, which also includes state legislative races.

In Wisconsin’s “pandemic primary” election on April 7, which the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to delay, there was a strong voter turnout among minority and young voters. Still, COVID-19 has created pressing and stressful challenges in the voting process for minority and at-risk communities.

Marching from the streets to the ballot box will be crucial for progressives in the city and state. “Rather than just assuming that other people are going to handle it,” says Bowen, “it’s a time for people to get a hands-on approach to democracy, to government. And to show that they have a role.”

Barnes says it’s also important to broaden the focus on particular issues regarding inequality. “Talking about issues like environmental racism is important because it directly impacts Black lives,” he says. Climate change, a big focus for Barnes, is impacting Milwaukee in significant ways. Infrastructure is increasingly strained by more frequent flooding, including in Milwaukee’s 33rd Street corridor, a mostly Black neighborhood. And many of the lead water-service lines in Milwaukee’s minority communities have never been replaced.

All the civic engagement leading up to the election offers a vision of what Milwaukee could become. “Too many times, other people, other cities, are defining what the city is,” Henry says. “Folks [here] need to be able to define and create the brand and identity of Milwaukee rather than allowing other people to do that.”

What’s happening in Milwaukee, and across the state and country, is a part of that renaissance. But transformation will not come easily.

“This is going to be an uphill battle,” Henry cautions. “We’re not going to be able to change the minds of everybody. But, at the end of the day, the work is about justice. And the work is about making sure there is equity that lives in this city, and in the suburban cities across this entire nation. It’s high time, past time, for America to get right.”