The New Year should be a fresh start but the past is dragged with us to the present and into the future. I have a tough time with the Candle Light vigil we had Monday night for the 121 homicide victims in Milwaukee. We have prayer vigils at the site of homicide victims in Milwaukee after the killing happens but at the end of the year we have one vigil for victims and family.

Since many of the victims are young African American adults the vigil usually is in North Central Milwaukee. This year it was at St. Gabriel’s Church of God. There was great spiritual music throughout the service but also there was a lot of testimony. They were good witnesses to lives of victims but after awhile the message was very repetitive. The message was how we individually had to change our ways and pray for peace in our troubled neighborhoods. I agree with this message but think it is only half of the message that needs to be heard. The other part of the message is that we must hold politicians, church leaders, City, county and State governments accountable for the conditions that have been created in the area that is at the root of violence in the area. Yes, individuals must be held responsible for their actions but so should institutions and individuals that create the environment where it is very difficult to be good. The roots of violence, which most acknowledge, are poor educational system, high unemployment, extreme poverty and the institutional prison system which recycles young African American thru the system over and over again without rehabilitation or treatment.

But this is a message that politicians and employees of these institutional do not want to hear. There were a number of speakers on the agenda offering words of inspiration, encouragement, home etc. However, there is a deferment to politicians and every one present from County sheriff to House of Representatives needed to speak. After two hours of speeches my wife, who is recovery from hip surgery, needed to leave. The last speaker we heard was probably the best, a mother of a homicide victim some years ago.

We liked the soulful music the best but both of us thought the many speakers, repeating similar messages and thoughts, was too much and actually distracted from the prayer service. From years past we know the names of the victims are read and a candle is lit for each one but we had to leave after two hours.

I felt the service that had been going on for 21 years had been hijacked by politicians, officials and ministers who want to repeat over and over again how the violence is all the people’s fault and all we need is prayer and faith.

North Central Milwaukee, which is the place of more crime and homicides, is the most segregated part of the most segregated city in the USA, the poorest area of the fourth poorest city in the nation, the part of the city with the highest rate of incarceration for African Americans in the State with the highest rate in the country with highest rate of incarceration in the world. (See M.A..P.S.. As long as people accept these conditions as their problem and fault and not part of the environment that has been created they will continue to exist. Institutional racism, poverty, poor schools, and criminalization of population are the New Jim Crow in the age of color blindness exist. Until we recognize it we cannot change it.

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