North Central Milwaukee in Black
85% plus is African American

In Easter of 2007 I wrote an essay called The Sweet Waters of Discrimination in Milwaukee which talked about the structural discrimination in Milwaukee. I had some nice comments about the essay but it really did not change much. Now six years later with all the violence and killing happening in Milwaukee the “chickens have come home to roost”. With the recent spike of violence the last two months in Milwaukee, which now even the police chief admits, there is the same old talk of more police, parents raising kids better, improving schools, new gun laws and more. However, I find little mention of the fact that our beloved Milwaukee has institutionalized racism and poverty. As the various M.A.P.S showed Milwaukee, the most segregated city in the USA in the last two censuses, has allowed isolated areas to develop for poor African Americans in North Central Milwaukee and for Hispanics on the south side.

Last night the police chief bragged about the thousands of arrest the police have made this summer but did not mention that the same persons, after jail and prison, will be released into the same crime areas with less opportunity of finding a good job or education. Earlier this month I wrote a letter to the newspaper saying how we have already identified the root cause of crime like poverty, lack of education and lack of family support that go unaddressed. I wrote the letter one day, the next day it was approved and the next day printed in the “Letter to the Editors”. Yet nothing is being done to create am environment in North Central Milwaukee which it is “easier to be good”. It is easy to blame someone, family or schools for the problem rather than identify it for what it is, ‘racism’ and take the necessary actions and spend the necessary monies to do something about it.

Institutions like the Catholic Church or the city government can talk about what it would take to get at the causes of crime and poverty. Than the Church closes down Churches in North Central Milwaukee and transfers the money to some trust fund that will preserve it, not use it, for future church funding. The mayor and police chief talk about the “criminals” they are bringing to ‘justice’ which just means legal action, as they know it.

In the meanwhile, while we wait, for violence to subsidize we keep building a racist fortress around North Central Milwaukee

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