Names and Images of Persons
Killed in El Salvador

I have been hearing some about the book: “The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness” and now I am convinced it is about what I have been trying to say and write about in North Central Milwaukee and what the M.A.P.S. project shows graphically. The last few days I have heard a number of persons use one of the findings researchers at UWM who wrote the paper Wisconsin’s Mass Incarceration of African American Males, 50% of Young African American adults have a prison record. The way this fact is being used, which has been known for some time is disturbing since it is being used for people’s own agenda not to help decrease the criminalization of young adult African American males.

Tonight an elder African American leader in Milwaukee wrote to me how this use of this fact is hypocritical since no one is naming names or looking at the source. I agree. It is just like my posting Bed Bugs and Greedy Landlords it makes for good talk but who are the people responsible for it and what are we going to do, besides talk, about it.

It seems to me these days everyone wants to talk about controversial issues but no one wants to take action on the cause or even name names. My recent article Child Soldiers and Teaching Killing at Marquette University was first sent to the Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rev. Jerome Listecki and the President of Marquette University, Father Wild. These are two persons are top two that are responsible for moral teaching at Marquette.

On every issue from putting money into an endowment fund rather than use it, as intended, for welfare of poor in neighborhood, no one wants to name names or hold any group or individuals responsible. A Killer Drone is sent to Pakistan to kill persons on orders of the President yet no one will hold him responsible for an assassination.

If a poor person violates rules and procedures to make money they are named but when rich persons do it, for the most part, we name the corporation or call it “Wall Street.” The punishments for poor and rich are not equal. When a poor person is a victim of a crime, even homicide, police and media go out of their way to talk about the police record of the victim which is not the cause of crime.

Naming a person with an uncomfortable message is usually done, as I have discovered, to marginalize the person so the message can be ignored. Marquette University under President Wild teaches killing without conscience on campus and Archbishop Listecki is taking money intended for the poor and needy and using it to store away in endowments for the future.

I, Bob Graf, would like to be held accountable for my statements but I do not want to be used, as incarceration of young adult African Americans, to ignore the message. Naming a person and holding person(s) accountable is not necessarily playing the blame game but is just placing moral responsibility where it belongs. Let us name names not for blame but to hold persons, including ourselves, accountable for actions.

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