Stop Talking!

This morning I got an email from a local peace group reminding me about 5 events: a screening of movie called “Inequality for All”, about the threat to democracy disparity of wealth brings; a discussion on “Alleviating Poverty, Who Is Responsible?”; a prayer service on “Healing the legacy of Segregation”; a talk on “A Catholic Response to Global Warming”; and another talk about “Poverty in the Milwaukee Metro Area/What You Can Do About It”.

I realize all the events are well intentioned but I am old enough to know all the talking about poverty, segregation, and inequality has not changed anything. If fact, I believe the situation in Milwaukee has grown worse over the years. Now people in need not only need food, but a stove to cook it on, a refrigerator to store it and bed to sleep on. I am tired of talk, more talk and no action.

This relates to the racism I was talking about in the posting last night: “white people doing things they think will help the poor people of color while doing just the opposite.”

A friend sent me a copy of the Lawyer’s guild report on shooting in Madison of unarmed biracial young man who was suffering a mental health crisis. My response, below, says something about we can do to change ourselves so we can facilitate real change in the city.

If a person has a car crisis and is injured the person is automatically taken to the hospital, conscious or not.
If a person has a heart attack crisis the person is taken to the hospital, conscious or not.
If a person has a stoke crisis the person is taken to the hospital conscious or not.
If a person has a brain breakdown, mental health crisis, the person is taken to jail or killed by a police officer.

If a person has cancer the person is not called ‘cancerous.’
If a person has a mental health illness the person is at times called ‘mentally ill’.

The former police chief in Milwaukee was working on having every police officer in Milwaukee go through Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training. CIT training consists of specialized training in dealing with individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. The present police chief came into office and eliminated CIT training which had been proven in other cities, like Memphis to reduce police killings of person with mental health illnesses. It was only after the tragic death of Dontre Hamilton and call for justice and the nonviolent and consistent actions by Coalition for Justice and Hamilton family he reluctantly agreed to some training.

The present police chief said recently that 911 should not be the default call for persons in mental health crises as it is for heart attacks, strokes and car accidents. What should it be?

The present police chief believes in “data driven policing” which leads to more stops and frisk of African American males which leads to more arrest, which leads to more African Americans being incarcerated and released to the same environment and more stops and frisk and more arrest.

Maybe the Chief has learned from the massive data breakdown of hard drives on police computers that even non-humans can fail. If the city and police department would spend as much money on African American males as it is paying for computers and the major recovery of the lost data we would see some change.
Stigma Stains the Soul of the individual and the community doing the stigmatizing and the stigmatized. What are we going to do about it, more talk or take action?

Will you help bail me out of jail if I get arrested from the freedom of speech, or better yet for a nonviolent action?

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