Marquette Students March in Solidarity

Pat and I went with Ms. Lucille to the one year anniversary celebration of Dontre Hamilton’s life and death at Red Arrow Park. We met a lot of people we knew at this celebration of Dontre’s life, a young unarmed black man who was beat and killed by a policeman at this site a year ago. Ms. Lucille knew many persons for in her 87 years of life she had been involved in so many struggles for justice with so many people. Seeing so many people of all generations made me see how many issues, people and events come together. I have not pulled it all together yet but here are some of the many parts of life that came together.

1)There has been a struggle to remove military training off the Marquette campus for many years.

2)The Center for Peacemaking on campus has not contributed to this effort but at times been an obstacle.

3)Marquette students in the Solidarity March at Marquette last Monday told stories of discrimination against black and brown students on campus and how Marquette pays only lip service to their demands for racial equality. A Hispanic persons told me at the Solidarity March how afraid he will be to go to campus when the security officers become police.

4)Marquette University recently announced a million dollar grant from nearby businesses in the Menominee Parkway, just south of the campus. Marquette University plans to use the money to hire a special district attorney to prosecute crime in the areas West and North of campus.

5)The Center for Peacemaking at Marquette will coordinate this grant and effort.

6)Tomorrow, May 1, the Marquette Security department will become the Marquette Police Department.

7)Marquette created an Equal Opportunity Program (EOP) in 1969 to give Black and Brown students and opportunity to attend Marquette but now will not reveal how many African American students from Marquette participate in EOP.

8)The white policeman who beat and shot Dontre Hamilton fourteen times was a military veteran taught the same way of killing with conscience and reflection as taught on the Marquette campus in the military training programs.

There are many other parts but when they are put together in the present, in my mind, I see that Marquette University the only Department of Defense officer military training program in Southeastern Wisconsin will now have an armed police force with its own District attorney to prosecute. The Marquette police like the Milwaukee police can make stops, without cause, of suspicion persons, black and brown. The militarization of police force is of concern to all police forces, especially in minority communities. The Center for Peacemaking coordinating the grant for prosecutor will give creditability to the effort.
The picture of armed policemen on and the around the Marquette campus in neighborhood west and north of Marquette that has a lot of minority persons as well as people of color on campus frighten me and makes see the hypocrisy of Marquette and the center for peacemaking, which maybe should change its name to the Center for prosecution of black and brown people.

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