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BEYOND SHERMAN PARK – AIRDATE – AUGUST 10, 2017 - Hello, I'm Portia Young. Welcome to Beyond Sherman Park, a special one hour edition of 10thirtysix here on Milwaukee PBS and simulcast on WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio 89.7 FM. This program is coming to you from Parklawn Assembly of God in the heart of Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood. We have gathered Milwaukee area residents as well as community and government leaders to help us talk about some of the issues that may have led to the frustration and violence last August 13th here in Sherman Park. More importantly, we want to focus on the present and the future. Over the next hour, we'll talk about what's changed in a year and what social and economic issues prevail not only here in Sherman Park but beyond in other neighborhoods. We'll look at some of the positive efforts to help improve the lives of young people and our families. And we'll extend the community conversation to our audience members here at Parklawn. You'll have a chance to voice their thoughts and concerns about police relations, community pride, housing, education, employment, and a whole host of other issues. We begin though, with a closer look at this diverse community called Sherman Park. 10thirtysix's Mark Siegrist talks with residents who are committed to calling this community home. - The act of hidoa, a separation, is central. - [Mark] Harriet McKinney and her husband, Rabbi Steve Mandleman reflect on the heart and soul of their long-time neighborhood, Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood. - I don't see any, maybe there's one or two, but I don't see any for sale houses. I don't see any deep divides in the community. I've certainly had nothing but good relations with my neighbors. - I see Jews walk by. I see people of African heritage walk by. I see families walk by. I see LGBTQ couples walk by. I see everyone. - [Mark] Religious and cultural diversity is apparent when gazing from their window and among the artifacts and family photos in their home. Walking to services at nearby Congregation Bethjehudah is a chance to mingle. The journey among friends is as important as the destination. - Here in Sherman Park the silos get broken down. - Back in the turn of the century, the landscape here was rural. Eventually settled and built by Milwaukee professionals, mainly German-American, looking for greener pastures. Craftsmanship and architecture is exceptional. In the ensuing decades, a variety of ethnic families migrated to the near northwest side. During the open housing movement, Sherman Park leadership was
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instrumental in attracting African American neighbors and continued to build a reputation as a progressive face of Milwaukee. But as a variety of social economic issues were bubbling in the city, parts of Sherman Park were also feeling the pressure. On August 13, 2016, a fatal encounter between 23-year-old Seville Smith and Milwaukee police triggered a violent neighborhood outcry. Though confined and limited, the images of burning and looting went global. And just like that, Sherman Park neighborhood's public image changed overnight. Dr. Ken Harris, Junior, a retired Milwaukee police officer, media professional, and Sherman Park resident has an eye for scenery, and he's using it to capture another image of this part of town. The ongoing photo presentation is called Spotlight on Sherman. Images of the neighborhood's art, architecture, and people, a collaborative effort with Sally Media Group. - What we really wanted to show is the uniqueness of Sherman Park, that in few cities, even being from Chicago, there are few cities that have such a rich, diverse neighborhood like Sherman Park. - [Mark] Dr. Harris, Junior plans a series of showings about town, perhaps even a book and documentary to better illustrate his favorite place called home. - I think that people here are not working towards, not necessarily changing the way that they were seen but enhancing what they already are. - Sherman Park is in a time of healing. Remnants of last summer's uprising are being replaced with a changing landscape, but healing of the human spirit comes with more time. One year ago, the morning after the police-related shooting and civil unrest, the Senior Pastor at a Sherman Park anchor church raised a very important question. - All eyes are on our city. We have been infamously noted as having the worst zip code in the nation 53206 for racial and economic and social and criminal disparities. What are we going to do? - Bishop Harvey's words, what are we going to do, certainly sets the tone for our discussion. In fact, just days after the unrest last August, Milwaukee PBS and our partners at WUWM produced a program to reflect on living in Sherman Park and how to help move this neighborhood and our city forward. Let's listen to what was said one year ago. - We're joined now in the studio by three people with a couple of things in common. They care a great deal about the future of Sherman Park and the city as a whole, and they've written eloquently about it in the past week. - No downtrodden community in history has healed itself alone. All of the devastating statistical evidence points to a community that is hurting. This is how they cry out for help. It may seem irrational to many inside and outside of the community. If it allows people to see the pain more BSP TTHIR0110
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clearly, perhaps it was worthwhile. If the city takes corrective actions to improve the lives of its African American citizens as the current commission recommended 49 years ago, it will be considered progress. Resolving these issues will take time, passion, energy, sympathy, empathy, and a tremendous amount of compassion and hard work. - 10 years ago, I began an unlikely friendship. I'd like to tell you about my friend because I've never met anyone like her. My friend is Sherman Park. And I say this to you now, Sherman Park. I hear you. I'm not gonna insult your intelligence by coming at you with quick and simple answers to your complex questions. I'm not gonna sit inside my home only to watch your story unfold on Twitter, the news, or Facebook. I am gonna walk with you in this. And I am gonna serve you while you struggle. - We invited some of those same panelists to join us again as we look back and look ahead. WUWM reporter, Latoya Dennis, who was part of that original program joins us now to lead this discussion. Latoya? - Thank you Portia. I'm going to start by introducing the panelists. First, we have veteran Milwaukee reporter and contributor to Milwaukee PBS, James Causey. Reggie Jackson from the Dr. James Cameron Legacy Foundation. And Sherman Park resident and blogger, Laura Marshall. Thank you all for joining us this evening. And we're going to jump right into questions. Reggie, I'm gonna start with you. I guess I want to ask what's changed in Sherman Park for better or worse? - One of the positive changes that I've seen is that our conversations that are being held now that weren't being held prior to the events in Sherman Park last year. I think more people are engaged in these types of conversations about the struggles that the city of Milwaukee has because what happened in Sherman Park was really a Milwaukee issue. Many parts of Milwaukee were affected by it. And one of the things I think that is really, really very heartwarming for me to see is that young people, in particular, are becoming a part of that conversation for the first time. We typically tend to not listen to the voices of younger residents, but when we look back at the footage of what happened last year, we see a lot of young people were in involved in that, so I'm very happy that their voices are finally being heard for the first time. - And Laura, what about you? What have you seen? Better or worse? - I think that Milwaukee wants to know what kind of help is the most helpful. I think that's why we're having this panel tonight. I think that the city wants to ask Sherman Park what can we do? And because Sherman Park is a big neighborhood. It's a diverse neighborhood. We're gonna have so many different answers for what kind of help is the most helpful kind. There's so many things that need to be addressed. There's loss of jobs. We need more stable homeowners. We need trust to be built again between the police and the community. And we're not gonna agree. But the bigger BSP TTHIR0110
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question I think is what is already true about Sherman Park, and what needs to be true about Sherman Park in order for this type of investment to come here and to be sustainable here? But I think that the city of Milwaukee needs to be reminded of that. Sherman Park is not a smudge on its existence. It's a jewel in the crown of Milwaukee. We are Milwaukee's most established, most diverse, most integrated neighborhood in a city that has been segregated historically for many, many years. So if we are that neighborhood, and if we are here and committed already, and if Milwaukee is poised and wants to be an urban area that is able to attract and retain talented, diverse people, then it's gonna have to make significant investments in the diversity that's already here. And that means Sherman Park. Because as I see it, in the way that Sherman Park goes so will Milwaukee go. - James, what do you think? - Well, if this conversation is talking about beyond Sherman Park, let's look beyond Sherman Park. I still think that we have a long ways to go. And I think when you look at the state of how some African Americans still can't find work, how our young people still struggle every day, how we still lead the country in the number of negative statistics, I don't think enough is being done. So when you talk about Sherman Park, we can talk about Sherman Park, but this is a city-wide issue. And when you talk about this city-wide issue and how African Americans and why the gap is so wide and nothing has been done, in my opinion, to close that gap. I think that, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we have more uprising because people are not listening to the people who are struggling every day. - Now, you say nothing has been done. I'm wondering, Reggie, if you think you've seen any movement across the city to help with some of those issues. - Well, you know, one of the things that we find when events like this happen, what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, what happened in Milwaukee in 1967, Detroit in '67, Watts, all of these events that happened. I was living in Los Angeles when the Rodney King eruption took place, and there were a lot of conversations afterwards, you know, for several years. And I agree with what James is saying is that we have a lot of conversations about the changes, but we don't recognize that we want to fix things quickly that have taken decades to create. So you have these decades of segregation in the city of Milwaukee that have created a great deal of division within the city. You had the loss of manufacturing jobs, which devastated, you know, many parts of the central city, which we're still kind of struggling to find how do we get past that? We celebrate, you know, the 50th anniversary of the open housing marches coming up very soon, but what we don't recognize is if we look back, say seven years after the open housing marches, I found a study that showed that segregation still wasn't occurring on the south side of Milwaukee. So it's an ongoing issue, but we have to actually take concrete steps and not just have conversations about it.
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- [Latoya] Thank you very much, and thank you all for your insights. Portia? - All right, thank you. Thank you to our panel. You know, there's been a great deal of talk about police relations in our city and the use of force in many situations. James Causey from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel talked with Milwaukee Police Chief, Ed Flynn. Let's listen. - [James] Police Chief, Edward Flynn, believes that the Sherman Park unrest last year was not an isolated flareup. It is part of an historical pattern. - Every one of the great riots of the '60s, whether it was Watson, Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit, or any other lesser disturbance, the flash point was almost inevitably a police action. But according to the authors of the report, it wasn't the fundamental cause of the conflagration, that there were significant overlays of social challenge, failure, government ineptitude, economic dislocation, et cetera, et cetera, that created communities that felt disconnected from the mainstream, that felt unrepresented, that felt left behind by the American dream that everybody shared. - [James] He believes the community frustration is not just towards the police department. - I think people expect the criminal justice system to make up for the fact that for too many years police agencies, when the verdict came out, said okay, well, that's over, and they put somebody back to work, okay. The reason often there isn't a conviction, the most general rule, is the law does offer certain enhanced protections to police officers using force under the color of office, okay. And the reason they do that is the same reason that we don't charge every soldier in Afghanistan who has a friendly fire incident or accidentally drops your artillery rounds on the wrong village and kills innocent. We don't charge them all with war crimes. Their careers are over, okay. People make amends. Our government makes amends to the village, but we recognize that in the fog of war, so to speak, sometimes there's downright incompetence. Sometimes there's just good faith error and mistake. But the levels of proof, you know, to prove intent to commit a crime for an officer in a circumstance like that, it's a higher bar. Sometimes criminal culpability is exactly the right place to go. There are some egregious actions that are clearly a crime. But in many others, the level of proof required is more than for you or I, well, you know, me off duty or you getting in an argument with some guy at a bar. It's a different standard of proof because it recognizes that we empower this one group of people to use deadly force in society, and it is inevitable that they're not always going to be right, all right. And so then question is, what requires a criminal determination as opposed to a civil liability or you should be fired? I think our profession needs to do a better job of holding people accountable for incompetence, and if we'd been doing that for the last 50 years, there might not be all this frustration with the criminal justice system 'cause it would be clearly trying folks that, I think, that more obviously were outside the balance of legality and competence.
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- What's the makeup of the police department? What percentage of the police department is African American? - I would say right now it's somewhere in the order of a quarter, about 25% of the department. I think there's another, you know, 15 or 18% Hispanic. So the overall minority representation is increasing. I would say that in recent years, the Hispanic representation has been increasing faster than the African American. I mean, ironically, we've probably got more African Americans in senior levels than we have had in decades, but incoming, we're having difficulty. - [James] Why is that? - I think it's a combination of factors. First of all, for those who have solid educational backgrounds, there are an array of, Black, White, or Hispanic, there are an array of opportunities that don't require you to work nights, weekends, and wear body armor. The other issue, I think, is not dissimilar from the era when I entered policing, which is in the very communities whose representation is most needed, there are strong mixed feelings about sending their sons and daughters into this world at this moment, okay, that there is this ambivalence. On the one hand, everybody understands that they need quality policing, but for the young men and women in that recruiting era, the message they're getting is largely negative from even their own community leaders. Okay, in some ways policing becomes yet another wedge issue. - You can hear the complete interview with Chief Ed Flynn online at milwaukeepbs.org. James Causey speaks with several other local state leaders. That's coming up later in the program. Right now though, the relationship between police and kids and young adults is often at the core of some of the frustration and the violence that occurs. Just before the unrest last August, two people did something about the already built up tensions. Vaun Mayes and Gabby Taylor tell 10thirtysix's Amanda Roselansky about how their frame of mind is making a difference. - If y'all are ready to have a water balloon fight, make sure y'all come over here and sign in. 'Cause we can do it real quick. We started Program the Parks pretty much I have another company that I started called We All We Got MKE. You know, just policing the police, helping businesses, helping individuals with different issues they may have in the community. Facebook we saw a video of the police kicking the kids out of this park. - Out of Sherman Park. - Out of Sherman Park, and the response we got back from the community was that the police had the right, and they should have kicked all the kids out of the park. The kids were up here constantly every day having fights. There were robberies. There were shootings. People were gettin' jumped,
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hazed, all that kind of stuff, and from there we saw the need to be up here constantly every day just to make sure the space was safe. - I just came here. It was a big old sign up that said Program the Park. These people walking around saying they was violence-free people like to stop violence in the parks and stuff. And then I asked, can I be a part of it, so I was the first one to actually be a part of it. So now, all I do is I go around talking to other people telling 'em about it and stuff. They do help get jobs. They help you like, personal problems, if you need somebody to talk to, like, they just like another family basically. - Your community needs you out here. You don't have to have a title to help. Our first few days up here, I grew up in Charlotte, and we were just walking around observing them. We started hearing them shouting out stuff. When he comes up here, I'm gonna beat his ass, or I can't wait to see her, or I'm hungry, you know. So we started hearin' that, and we was takin' it like, okay, maybe they have something to do with what's going on up here. - We're referred to as the program that services people that fall in the cracks. So for existing programs such as the Boys and Girls Club, all these different traditional organizations or organization that were already established, they don't reach a lot of kids and a lot of adults. So we get the people that don't necessarily fit into any of those programs or that won't go into any of those programs. The activities are the front for what we do. That's the face of it. That's not root of what we actually do. The root of what we actually do is sit down and actually address people's issues. So why you need food, why you need money, why you need these things, and address that. That way, get someone a job who doesn't have a job. If we show a person who is hungry how to get their food for themselves, how to grow food, or whatever the case may be, we're actually fixing the problem, the direct problem to why they need the service in the first place. That's why our program is a lot different from most other programs. - You see all who's doin' this right here? Look at all that. That's what we need more in the community. We don't need to be fighting. No violence, no guns, no nothin'. Just peace and quiet and everybody runnin' around, tag. - That is what we need more of. It's time now to hear what our audience here at Parklawn has to say about policing and police relations and community pride. Our journalists James Causey and Latoya Dennis are in each of the aisles here at Parklawn with microphones in hand to help facilitate these community conversations. Please keep your comments and questions brief and focused on the topics at hand. Latoya, we'll start with you. - And since we had Vaun Mayes and Gabby Taylor in the audience, we thought it would be perfect to invite them up and just ask you guys, what's been the impact of Program the Park thus far?
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- I think we've made a lot of progress since last year. I know particularly, dealing with law enforcement, there was a high need for them to be in that area, a lot of calls that they complained about having to be there all day. We took them calls down. I believe we had a great impact on the crimes specifically in the park and then outwards into the area. We got a lot of kids employed. We got a lot of kids back in school, back at home if they were runaways, or you know, got them services, so we alleviated a lot of the things that were going on last year. - Do you want to add anything? - No. - Okay, all right, thank you. - Thanks. - Please state your name for me, and tell me where you're from. - My name's Ken Dale Allen, and I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. - And you have a question? - Yes, I do. My question is there are a lot of resources here in Milwaukee. I used to live on 27th for about 15 years, and my thing is there's jobs. There's, you know, schools. There's after school programs. But what I realized was when I walk through the communities, there's different community resources in their own community. So how can people actually share the resources if everyone got different resources? So we can we all just come together, bring our resources, not just in the Amani neighborhood, but in every community neighborhood and actually come up with a way of feeding us knowledge, education, apprenticeships, scholarships, you know, and give us the financial literacy education that we need together instead of separate. 'Cause it's just not working that way. - Good question. Who would like to take that? The question is what can be done to share resources, so we get the most impact to help people? - I'm not a professional in this area. I don't have, this is what I will say. As a result of Seville's shooting, as a result of all of the different services that are needed in Sherman Park, I've seen many, many organizations pop up, and everybody kind of hearkening back to what I said before, everybody thinks that this is the right way to do it. And it's not misled. It's not uninformed. Because they do think that their way is the best way. I agree with you. I think that, I learned today about four or five other organizations in Sherman Park that I hadn't heard of until this morning. If there was a BSP TTHIR0110
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way for these leaders of these different grassroots organizations to meet together and to share resources, I think we'd be able to address these questions a lot more efficiently. I think that we'd be able to consolidate these resources and maybe the investment in the community and probably have a more potent outreach. So if there's some sort of mechanism for these leaders to come together, I think that would probably be the best way. - I believe that there are a lot of resources available, but part of what happens is that the people that have those resources in their hand, they don't necessarily go out into the community to talk to people in the community. There's a reluctance to go out into the community with the programs and make people more aware of them. - [James] Please state your name for me. - David Muhammad, City of Milwaukee, Violence Prevention. - And can you answer that question? - Sure, absolutely. I think what was said by Vaun was critical. And in the presentation that was seen before that traditional institutions have to be more responsive to the needs of the community. And that means removing barriers to access. That means retooling some of the things that have been done and making sure that they are informed and that those with the decision-making power for resources to be shifted to those services make that happen. But it does take a degree of community engagement in a way that has not happened up until instances like what happened last summer. - Thank you. - So we're going to go next to Representative David Bowen. And I guess I'm gonna ask you, are we doing any better here in Milwaukee? Have you seen any movement in the right direction in terms of getting people jobs and educations? - I think one of the things that I see is that it's becoming more and more clear of what is missing. And the piece of systemic change, right. Being here almost a year later, knowing that the population that Seville Smith identifies and shows in this community really shows the clarity of how much that population has been left behind out of opportunities systemically in this community. And that the movement to actually invest and to prioritize the lives of those young people, twentysomethings in this community, and make sure that they have a place in the economy, that they have a place in their neighborhoods where they can also be treated with respect by the law enforcement agencies that should be there to protect and serve them as well, that we are still following up short to be able to fulfill what demands, to really be able to make that a reality. BSP TTHIR0110
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- [Latoya] Thank you. James? - Emile Mays, Sherman Park Community Association. What I would like to say is in response to the young man speaking about people working in silos. What we find often is that the people with the passion don't have the funding, and the people who have the funding don't have the passion. - Thank you. - PB Holmes from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. - And what's your question? - So my question is so I have the great pleasure of working for the greatest company in Milwaukee at Northwest Mutual, and from there I know that we deal a lot with strategy and strategy maps. So I lived here my whole life, and this has been a topic that I've heard my entire life, and at what point do we stop talkin' about it and start putting a road map together and hitting certain milestones? So I don't know what's the next step for that, but I would love to see what our action plan is. - Would anyone like to respond to that? Anyone on stage or any of our VIPs in the first row? - In terms of action plans and things that are taking place, Milwaukee's got a lot of plans. The question is when do the boots hit the ground and those plans hit the community? So currently, the city of Milwaukee is undergoing the Officer Violence Prevention, city-wide Violence Prevention Plan. That's one plan that's taking place, but it's calling alignment with other initiatives. And the community is the one that needs to be empowered with that information about what is happening in the city, where the resources are, and how those can be best aligned with where we see Milwaukee in five to 10 years. But it means having the community at the table instead of on the table in these discussions that take place often without the community. - Thank you. James. - I have another question. Please state your name, and tell us where you're from. - Markasa Tucker, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My question is if we all pretty much know the problems and the issues in Milwaukee, my question is when is the city of Milwaukee going to push resources into the solutions that are already present like the programs in the park and other grassroots organizations that are already out organizing and doing the work? - Good question. BSP TTHIR0110
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- I think one of the things that happens in these types of situations is there are resources in Milwaukee to do lots of things. It's not a matter of resources. It's a matter of priority. Where are we placing the priority in terms of the resources that are available? There's a lot of redevelopment happening around the city. We all see what's happening downtown and the money that's being spent in different parts of the city. But we're looking at some of the poorer parts of the city, and those same level of resources are not being placed into those communities. Those communities, I believe, in many respects, need those resources much more than they need it in other parts of the city, but I don't think that we've placed enough pressure on our elected officials to make that a priority. - I'd also like to add that I did recently hear that Common Ground is developing the area from Sherman Boulevard to 60th on Center Street. And I believe that they're starting with that track and field area outside of Washington High School. And Washington High School is gonna match whatever fundraising is able to come in from the community to make that more of a community center because there's a lot of walking clubs and kids that play there, so I do know about that initiative that's happening, which I live right off of Center Street. It's very exciting for me, so I do see that Sherman Park hasn't been ignored in all respects. I'm glad to see that some of the funding is moving toward Sherman Park. - All right, we will take more comments and questions a bit later in the program. Right now though, we want to focus on some of the other positive efforts going on here in Sherman Park and beyond. In fact, as Liddie Collins tells us, Parklawn Assembly of God, where we are today, has led some key initiatives that bring healing and development to the area. - [Liddie] Cleaning up in Sherman Park shows one element of the Adopt a Block program that's out of the Parklawn Assembly of God. Youth and Community Outreach Minister, Samuel Coleman, said this is one of the churches ongoing youth activities, which is a response to what the community says the challenges are in the neighborhood. - Sometimes there's direct response things that we can do like cleaning up, like bringing activities to the communities. Back to school bashes where we provide students within the community with book bags and school supplies. Other times, it's connecting community member to resources. - You may hear of what other needs in this community you fill. - [Teen With Backpack] Besides like cleaning up the community? - Yeah, how could we help you as a church?
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- I feel like our community needs to help people be educated. - Yeah. - [Liddie] Another project the church is involved with that played a role during the Sherman Park incident is the The Declaration Project. This project made up of area ministers has been on the front line addressing community issues since the Dontre Hamilton killing in 2014. Bishop Walter Harvey, Senior Pastor of Parklawn Assembly of God said this project continues to address some of the community's deep-seated issues. - The criminal justice system needs to be addressed. There needs to be a civic engagement and personal responsibility. There needs to be education reform. There needs to be an economic development strategy. And those type of things have become pillars within the Milwaukee Declaration. And so every month there's a group of pastors that I'm meeting with here to strategize and to bridge those gaps and bring test scores up and close the income gap and close the education gap and restore marriages and families. So the Milwaukee Declaration is a red, yellow, black, white, brown collective group of Christian leaders that are really trying to bring a sense of heaven here on earth. - [Liddie] After the unrest in Sherman Park, the church shifted their staffing and vision prioritizing the engagement of youth. - Not only addressing the children who are here, young people who are here, but you're also tasked with engaging the young people who are not coming to church. How can we go to where they are? And so we have changed our entire programming so that Wednesday night in this very space and in our gymnasium and in several other classrooms, 90% of the church is dedicated to the youth ministry on Wednesday night. - [Liddie] And they have let the neighborhood know they are there for the long haul. - After the Sherman Park unrest, there were a lot of groups that came in and then went away. But what our message is and what our truth is, we've been here before the Sherman Park unrest. We've been there through the Sherman Park unrest. And we're still here after, and we will be continually. - It's time now to hear from some other key leaders in our community and our state. James Causey talked extensively with them about how we saw some of our problems. - We are, Milwaukee, Southeastern Wisconsin, the second highest concentration of low income people in a geographic area. In other words, 72% of this region is low income people live in the city BSP TTHIR0110
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of Milwaukee. That's higher than every other metropolitan area in the country except for San Antonio. That presents challenges. And it presents challenges in the areas of employment, in housing, in public safety. And we as a city continue to address those issues. I think the jobs issue is a little confusing to people. I'm happy to report that our unemployment rate in the city of Milwaukee is probably at a 25 year low. Now, if you walked through the neighborhoods, you'd be shocked to hear that. And part of that is the wages that are being paid. This is a state-wide issue. Last year, wages were down in the state of Wisconsin. So some of this is how do we get the family supporting jobs? And make sure that people can support their families. And that's one of the things that we're trying to focus on as well. I want people to be in the work force, but I want them to be on a path where they can enter the middle class if they're not in the middle class already. - [James] Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, feels that the state is doing its share. - Post Sherman Park, the governor said we need to deploy additional resources. He committed four and a half million dollars on top of what we have already designated as our Transform Milwaukee Project. Now, four and a half million was designed not just for entrepreneurial activities but also job training activities. In addition to that, some of the mentorship activities that we know ultimately prevent violence and create healthy relationships. I think we should spend time in our areas where we have great potential, and that's what I see. When you've got a 3.1% unemployment rate state-wide then you know you need all hands on deck when it comes to filling the 100,000 open jobs we have. Yet you compare that to the African American male unemployment rate in Milwaukee, 21%. You see potential. - [James] She believes that we need to bring the unemployed to where the jobs are like The Joseph Project does. But she also believes that we need to bring the jobs to where the unemployed are. - Like why are people not moving toward the jobs they already have, and why are companies not moving within a city block of long-term unemployed? Those are both important questions that leaders and neighbors, community activists, people who provide education and healthcare should all be asking themselves. - [James] Common Council President, Ashanti Hamilton, believes jobs are an important part of the solution. - There's been an effort to create a pipeline of employment opportunities, economic development, and tie those opportunities directly to these neighborhoods. So we did some particular outreach into specific neighborhoods to show how young men in those neighborhoods can get connected to the construction jobs, the boom that's happening downtown. So we've created priming zones throughout the city where we're having direct outreach into those neighborhoods both for youth and BSP TTHIR0110
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for adults to get training and get connected with transportation to jobs in the surrounding counties. Because a lot of the young people that were involved in the unrest didn't necessarily live in the Sherman Park neighborhood. They came from different areas around the city. So we have to recognize that it's not a problem, you know, that will be contained in any single neighborhood. There's some things that we gotta do throughout the city. - [James] State Senator Lena Taylor believes strengthening the relationship between the police and the community is important. - I think we need more things to encourage community, police relationships. I saw something that an officer did most recently starting an organization to help individuals who have a prior record to get jobs. We need more of that. Get out here and play ball with 'em, or do somethin' with 'em, so you can build trust. Next thing you know, they were out mingling with folks. So they were doing their job, but they were also building relationships. More of that has to happen for us to get past things that happened long before you and I were even born. I would also argue that we can do different police style approaches that have proven to be more successful. In particular, cop houses have been done in Racine, which is basically using, take a foreclosed property. And convert it into a building where it becomes a community center in a way, but it's also a place where the police are stationed out of. Where in addition to that, maybe the probation agent is stationed out of. The inspectors in the city can go there to be able to do their reports. It becomes a community hub for neighborhood organizations to use. It could be a job center access point even. - [James] Reggie Moore heads the Mayor's Office of Violence Prevention. I asked him what has changed in the past year. - I think that progress has been made in some areas in a sense that I feel like the community has come together a lot more in supporting each other and being more conscious about what's happening. I think what happened in Sherman Park forced people to ask questions that they hadn't asked before. I think the community had been asking those questions, but in my conversations with the philanthropic and business community, I think they started asking questions that at least were new to me in terms of being asked. I think when people started to look at, Sherman Park was the iceberg. I think people were really trying to inquire. What was going on under the water that sort of led to the manifestation of that level of rage? And I think that that has broadened the conversation not only about public safety, unemployment, about housing, about what does it mean to have a safe and sustainable neighborhood? These are conversations that I think were happening in silos and also happening on a very grassroots and community level where now, I think people started to, whether it was driven by fear or out of concern, starting to recognize that what happened in one part of the city affects everybody in the city.
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- Another reminder you can hear the entire interviews with Chief Flynn, the Lieutenant Governor, and other leaders by going to milwaukeepbs.org. Right now, we want to continue our community conversation with the audience here at Parklawn Assembly of God about jobs, housing, education, and other social issues. Again, please keep your comments brief and to the topic. Latoya Dennis and James Causey have been standing by in the aisles with microphones to help facilitate this next round of our community conversation. This time, we'll start with James. James? - Thank you. Homer Blow is here to give us his take on everything. Go ahead. - I'm, you know, Herman Blow, Program Director, Music Director of WNOV, Blowradio.com. One of the things that I heard a sister mention about the passion not being there. I think that some of our elected officials and other people need to utilize the ways that we have to cut through the red tape so organizations like Program the Park, the grassroots organizations can get the funding without having to go through too many unnecessary hassles. Again, you see them doing the work, the work that you can't do, they're doing. And I think it's important that we make it more accessible and we make some of the funding available for those kind of organizations. I think that a lot of the youth out here right now, they're not listening to people who ain't lived what they lived. If you haven't lived where they live, you don't know that. You're not hearing about the things that are going on at home. You're not hearing about these things, and I think we take these political positions, and well, you got to do this and you gotta do that. If you want that change, you gotta let the people that have it in their hearts a chance to make that proper change. So some of you elected officials gotta put more into it, and make those funds, they're available. Because if it was happening with heroin, guess what? There's gonna be a program about it. But when it's happening with our people that look like me, all of a sudden, well, well, well. - Before you walk away, hey, good point. Good point. We often hear this a lot about the funding, you know. You have non-profits fighting each other for that limited amount of funding. How do we get the funding to them though? How do you do that? - Well, again, I've seen funding come, and I see a lot of cute little carnivals and things like that. Where did that funding come from? Where they don't have the amount of people that some of these grassroot organizations are able to pull out and utilize that. They have tons of extra food, tons of, they're wasting a lot of these things. Where we're in where with these hungry people are. We're hearing their cries. We're seeing what they're going through. We're talking about human trafficking and all the abuses going on. There has to be a way to circumvent that. And I'm just saying that's where the conversation needs to happen. You got some people that may not have the college degree that some others have, but they got that passion to make things happen. And if we want to see a change, we have to make that change. - Thanks, Homer. BSP TTHIR0110
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- My name is Anthony McCarter. I am from, born and raised, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. - And what's your question? - My question pertains to as my cousin, Homer, was stating, funding, but funding in a sense of creating more homeowners for the residents of the city of Milwaukee since being a realtor, being a credit restoration specialist, I've worked with buyers who want to actually buy city-owned properties. But because of details such as scope of worth, which can range from anywhere from 30 to 60, 70 dollars more than the properties themselves are worth. How can we increase opportunities for them to create stable communities by increasing residents in them becoming homeowners? - [Latoya] We have someone over here. - Oh, we do. - [Portia] Housing expert. - [Latoya] Yep. - Please state your name. - Yeah, I'm Rob Kusner from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I'm not the expert on this, but I am tangentially involved with this project, but there is a project just north of here where they are taking foreclosed properties, and they actually want to have homeowners for those properties. I think that there is something that's ongoing. I think that there's some other initiatives associated with it that would really benefit the community, but at the same time, I think the funding is slowing it down a little bit. But we do have programs in place, and we just need to keep going forward with them. We may need a little patience, but we also need to give 'em a little shot in the arm and just push forward, especially this renovation of the foreclosed properties. - Thank you. - The other thing that I'm struggling with is that the current state of where young people are in this economy in Wisconsin, in Southeastern Wisconsin. We're talking about many of those young people being under-employed right now, right, and I would definitely agree that we definitely have to have the sustainability in our community so that those same individuals can have access to actually buy and afford to buy homes in our community. The problem is they aren't making enough to actually buy those homes and invest into them. We're talking about individuals that are making BSP TTHIR0110
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usually, so low of pay that they're still dependent on government assistance, right. And how do you lift up those young people and those people that are underemployed systemically? That's why I kind of highlighted that earlier, but that specifically means that your tech college system has to be free, right. It means that it has to be afforded to everyone that needs access to it to rip down those barriers that have been up for so long. That means, and it comes to actually instilling, you know, resources in our neighborhoods on a neighborhood level that that training, that education, it's very accessible, and right now, we have so many barriers that are still up. You know, those things that we would love to see are light years away that it feels like of what it would be truly accessible to the young people that we have. - Thank you. - Barry Givens, Sherman Park Community Association. I just wanted to make a comment regarding some of the funding that's available to the city. A lot of it, I mean, it never gets to hit the ground. It never gets to the people that really need it. And you can't go out and try to solve some of these social problems from behind the desk. You gotta be out there, grassroots, talking to people, trying to organize, and those types of issues. Also, I just want to say, too, that Sherman Park is not Sherman Boulevard West. Sherman Park starts at 30th Street. So, you know, we can't ignore what's happening over on the eastern part of Sherman Park because sooner or later, it's gonna come west. So we've gotta deal with it, and unless we really put a genuine effort in, it's not gonna improve. - Thank you. - Hi, my name is Rashaun Whitman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I think I'd be remiss if I didn't speak to the fact that the silence of the majority even in this room is far more damaging than the actions of the minority in Sherman Park. I think that we have safe spaces such as this. I think it's important to hear the perspectives of those who have historically, even if it has been unintentional, benefited from the plight that is plaguing the African American community. I think it's important that they unpack that and get uncomfortable because this is a safe space, so I just would love to hear a couple more people who belong to the majority help us. Because they have great ideas, and I think that they're just not speaking. And I think half of the issue why those young people did what they did in Sherman Park, is because they didn't feel like they had an advocate that was powerful enough to speak for them. - Thank you very much. - We are getting close to the end of our program, but before we wrap up, we want to hear about the efforts to spruce up homes in our communities. Common Ground is a community action group here in Sherman Park. It's a collection of residents and about 40 churches who want to maintain the BSP TTHIR0110
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beauty and sense of community in their neighborhoods. Joanne Williams tells us about one of their programs, Milwaukee Rising, that's doing just that one house at a time. - [Joanne] You can see and hear revitalization happening in many areas of Milwaukee's Sherman Park. It might be putting on a new roof or something bigger like the inspiration and work of real estate agent and Milwaukee Rising developer, Randy Jones, and his team of workers. He's taking me on a tour of a house built in 1928 that he's rehabbing. - Joanne, you'll love this part, lead glass windows. - Yes. - Here, here, in the cabinet. - [Joanne] He's rehabbing the house on beautiful 51st Boulevard. Jones says it's been standing vacant and boarded up for five to seven years, just the type of eyesore that the Milwaukee Rising project wants to bing back to life. Keisha Krumm, lead organizer for the community action group, Common Ground, explains. - The essence of the Milwaukee Rising Project was to, a strategy to bring back the housing market in Sherman Park after the foreclosure crisis in 2008. - [Joanne] There are other community groups in the area with a similar mission, but Milwaukee Rising, a project of Common Ground has been at this for more than 10 years. How many houses were foreclosed? - [Keisha] So when we started, we focused on the 120 blocks around Saint Joe's Medical Center, and there were about 300 abandoned, boarded-up houses. And now, we're down to about 60, between 63 to 65. - [Joanne] Most of the houses were owned by five major banks: Wells Fargo, US Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and the biggest and the one that owned thousands of homes in Milwaukee and around the country, Germany's Deutsche Bank. Community members met with executives of the banks and convinced them to put money back into the neglected houses. That included buying stock in Deutsche Bank so representatives could participate in the stockholders meeting in Germany and plead their case. - So we leveraged 33.8 million dollars with like, sustainable mortgages, but then in addition to that there was about 900,000 in cash that we got to actually do the rehab work.
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- [Joanne] But Milwaukee Rising has made it work due in large part to the persistence of Sherman Park residents like Toni Wagner. She's lived in the neighborhood for 46 years. - We got involved in Common Ground because my parish, Saint Catherine's parish, was one of the founding members in 2008. We need this in our neighborhood. We need to stabilize it. My church is on 51st and Center. My parish members are here. How else are we going to keep this neighborhood viable without having people involved? - [Joanne] And Common Ground has plans to soon expand the successful model of Milwaukee Rising into other neighborhoods. - Home ownership, or living where you want to, should be an American right. Unfortunately, it wasn't always that way. We're coming up on the 50th anniversary of fair housing marches here in Milwaukee, and on Milwaukee PBS, we will have a special, Crossing the Bridge. It examines Milwaukee's civil right struggle for open housing 50 years ago and today. Watch Crossing the Bridge, premiering August 23rd, a Black Nouveau Special, at 6:30 p.m. on Milwaukee PBS, channel 36. I want to thank all of our panelists, community, and government leaders, segment producers, and production staff, and special thanks to James Causey and Latoya Dennis. Also thank you to our audience here at Parklawn as well as our Milwaukee PBS viewers, you at home, and our WUWM listeners. We want to extend a special thank you to Parklawn Assembly of God for hosting us this evening. We will continue the conversation with Parklawn audience in just a bit. You can listen to that online at milwaukeepbs.org right after this program. Thank you all for being part of this community conversation. On behalf of Milwaukee PBS, I'm Portia Young, Beyond Sherman Park. Thank you and good night. TTHIR0110.txt Open with Google Docs Displaying TTHIR0110.txt.
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