While the nation has seen three straight weekends of passionate anti-Trump protests, activists throughout the United States are worried that these protests might be too easy to ignore, and are now calling for a nationwide strike in order to demonstrate just how many people disapprove of President Donald Trump and his growing number of controversial executive actions. Their hope is that the strike will bring government to its knees.
In a recent column in The Guardian, Francine Prose called for a “nonviolent national general strike.” She wrote: “Let’s designate a day on which no one (that is, anyone who can do so without being fired) goes to work, a day when no one shops or spends money, a day on which we truly make our economic and political power felt, a day when we make it clear: how many of us there are, how strong and committed we are, how much we can accomplish.”
That idea for a national strike has been gaining momentum on social media since, with activists setting Feb. 17 — the Friday before President’s Day — as the day for a #nationalstrike against the presidency of Donald Trump.
In order for this nationwide strike to be the least bit successful, white progressives must confront their own demons on race and make sure that this event – and the larger overall movement – is much more racially inclusive than they have been in the past and that racial justice issues are central to its platform. The problem remains that white progressive activists too often assume that people of color will fully support them, but they seldom give priority to the many different issues that people of color face.
In a recent viral photo, Angela Peoples wore a hat that read, “Stop Killing Black People,” and carried a sign that read, “White Women Voted for Trump” amidst a sea of white women at the massive Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21. She explained to The Root a common complaint of people of color about white activism: “It tells the story of white women in this moment wanting to just show up in a very superficial way and not wanting to do the hard work of making change, of challenging their own privilege,” she said. “You’re here protesting, but don’t forget: The folks that you live with every single day— and probably some of the women that decided to come to the march — voted for Trump, made the decision to vote against self-interests to maintain their white supremacist way of life.”
Peoples went on to say how much she and other black women that she talked to attending marches that day throughout the United States felt so alone in these spaces. Having attended the massive Women’s March in Madison on Jan. 21 and seeing the 75,000-100,000 people who amassed at the State Capitol that day, I can personally attest to the overall lack of racial diversity at such a historic event.
The elephant in the room is that progressives have a race problem. Representative Yvette Clarke, of Brooklyn, said this yesterday in an article in the New Republic: “I will tell you one of the things that I found most disheartening in the last election cycle was this implied distrust of communities of color. ‘We cannot vest any resources with you, but when we need you, you should be ready to be deployed,'” she said, summarizing the attitude. “We had the strategy on the ground already. We were just waiting for manna from heaven. It never showed up. And when it did, it was an insult. It was an insult. I don’t want to go through another election cycle like that.”
“As white liberals continue to plan this nationwide strike and, more importantly, how they are going to fight back long term in this weird, Trumpian world that we now exist in, they must take to heart certain facts with extreme urgency: People of color will become a majority of the American working class in 2032 and the majority of the overall U.S. population in 2043, according to the Census Bureau. Until white liberals begin to honestly and sincerely engage people of color, they will continue to meet the same dismal electoral fate. You can go ahead and start that engagement right here in white, liberal Madison where the racial segregation is stark and saddening and the racial disparities are amongst the worst in the nation.”
All of this does not bode well for the upcoming Feb. 17 national strike, the basic idea being that the entire working population, or at least a significant portion of it, stops work and engages in mass civil disobedience in order to paralyze the government – in effect, shutting society down until the objectionable policies are withdrawn.
It sounds like a good plan, but I’m trying to figure out how this will go down in real life in Wisconsin, for starters. Here in Madison, you would be shutting down a lot of great businesses – businesses that are socially conscious and very pro-worker and pro-living wage. By closing all of these businesses and restaurants, you would be punishing the people of Madison who went overwhelmingly against Trump in the election. Much worse, you’d be taking a day’s wage away from many lower-middle-class workers (and judging from Madison census and racial disparity data, disproportionately black and brown workers) who desperately cannot afford it. City and government workers and officials staying at home would be stressful on the low-income people of color, some of whom desperately need social work and/or health and human services. Madison’s many, many non-profits taking the day off – like the Urban League, Centro Hispano, Boys and Girls Club, Literacy Network, etc. – means that they are unable to serve constituents, a majority of whmo are people of color, in the excellent way that they do.
Do you see where I’m headed here? Who best can afford a day off of work? Middle-class and upper-class white Madison liberals.
Who will most definitely feel the pain? Low-income people of color.
People of color in Milwaukee, of course, will face the same problem as in Madison. Missing a day’s work for a Latino immigrant on Milwaukee’s south side working two or three jobs and living paycheck to paycheck is not a fun, social media day full of jokes and clever anti-Trump memes. And how much exactly will you shut down in Milwaukee? The white, suburban, conservative Trumpsters that surround Milwaukee in massive numbers and who consistently mobilize to out-vote the city in election after election will show up in double-force to make sure the day runs as smoothly as possible (See Chick-a-fila protests backfiring, for example).
Elsewhere across the state, four liberal activists will skip work in Sheboygan, two in Shawano, one in Hayward, and eight in Green Bay. In other words, things will run as usual.
What happens in Indiana, a state far more conservative than Wisconsin? Probably not much. What happens in the 18 states to the south of Indiana that are even more conservative? Probably even less.
What happens in Chicago? People who left Chicago to live in its dozens and dozens of suburbs for “lower taxes” and to get away from black and brown people … will they come out in force enough for one day to shut down Chicago? Will somebody not being able to get an $8 latte in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco or Austin for a day be enough to make Trump and his cabinet resign? Or even, at the very least, pause?
Not likely.
Here’s what will happen. Middle and upper-class white liberals will show off on Facebook on #nationalstrikeday. Working-class people of color, if they decide to risk their livelihoods and that of their children to join, will suffer. Safety pins are great, I guess, but what non-white, non-upper-class fighters in this struggle for social justice really need – besides consistent access to an actual seat at the table – is financial support and resources. Seldom do they get it.
As white liberals continue to plan this nationwide strike and, more importantly, how they are going to fight back long term in this contentious Trumpian world that we now exist in, they must take to heart certain facts with extreme urgency: People of color will become a majority of the American working class in 2032 and the majority of the overall U.S. population in 2043, according to the Census Bureau. Until white liberals begin to honestly and sincerely engage people of color, they will continue to meet the same dismal electoral fate. You can go ahead and start that engagement right here in white, liberal Madison where the racial segregation is stark and saddening and the racial disparities are amongst the worst in the nation.
A national strike sounds like fun for a lot of white people, but it is meaningless without the full support and participation of people of color. And if you don’t have the deep participation, support, and integration of people of color involved in the planning and the execution – including people of color at the top positions – then you might as well go ahead and cancel the strike right now. Without a well-planned, detailed, long-term plan that includes all races of Americans, a one-day strike is useless beyond giving middle and upper-class white people a chance to show out.
“If you’re going to plan an event to flex ‘people power’ while continuing to ignore a huge section of your people – people of color – then your national strike will be doomed to fail. ‘Cuz supercapitalism eats one-day disruptions for snacks.”
Because, in the end, Trump is carrying out the exact actions that he said he would during his presidential election campaign. Those protesting that he is a politician who keeps his promises are too late to the game. The real intense effort needed to be made (and wasn’t) before the election.
So now that the cat is out of the bag, a national general strike needs to be well thought out and well organized to have impact. It needs to be surgical and deep and cut-throat and ongoing. It can’t be hippie-dippy. More importantly, it must have core values of racial justice and inclusion instead of the usual white liberal lip service and tokenism. And it needs to be THE starting point for an all-inclusive movement that morphs into a long-term day-in, day-out general strike that calls on all of us (of ALL races) to live together, to support each other, to take care of each other, to nurture each other, and to work for each other. It must include substantial amounts of people of color and the overall acknowledgment that there are wildly different lived experiences between people of color and college-educated white liberals. And it has to be much, much, much more than just one day.
If you’re going to plan an event to flex enormous “people power” while continuing to ignore and disregard a huge section of your people – people of color – then your national strike will be doomed to fail. ‘Cuz supercapitalism eats one-day disruptions for snacks.
In Joan Morgan’s ground-breaking feminist manifesto, “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost,” the author recalls a conversation she had with the mother of a childhood friend. The mother shames Morgan for being single and implies that her focus on her career is the reason she can’t keep a man. Morgan responds, “It’s like Gloria Steinem said. Our mothers did a great job raising their daughters to become the men they once wanted to marry. But how about raising their sons to become the men their daughters need?”
I showed this chapter of Morgan’s book to my own mother after a conversation about what she perceived as the loss of all cognition on my part; I told her I was quitting my job to pursue my writing full-time (after I returned from an impromptu trip to Jamaica where I would spend a month working on an organic farm … but that is a story for another day.)
My mother fired questions at me: “What are you going to do for money? How will you survive? What happened to graduate school? What about your boyfriend? I think you’re making a mistake.”
Her reaction to the news was understandable. As a parent, it is natural for her to be concerned about how I progress in my personal and professional life; but I was a tad bit vexed when she proceeded to praise my older brother’s parenting skills based solely on the fact he showed up. “He is here. That is more than most women can say about their fathers.”
The Black feminist in me (inaudibly in front of my mother, of course) sucked her teeth and stood flabbergasted as a result of this double standard.
For a myriad of reasons I couldn’t possibly begin to cover in the scope of this article, there is an onus to protect Black men: their lives and livelihood are relentlessly threatened by systematic oppression. Everything from the education system, the prison-industrial complex, and encounters with law enforcement (that all too often turn fatal) put a target on the backs of our brothers. Out of communal fear of losing our boys, we wrap our arms around them. Simultaneously, Black girls are raised to be strong and independent. Since Black men are often removed from households unexpectedly and indefinitely, Black women are expected to survive without assistance from a man.
This instability creates a cycle that produces, as Morgan describes, “strongblackwomen -n- endangeredblackmen;” As Black girls grow into Black women, they are accustomed to fending for themselves. As Black boys grow into Black men, they are accustomed to insulation. Morgan laments, “I kinda feel like before mothers start bashing their perpetually single career girls they might want to check themselves. After all, the brothers we date are the sons they raised. These mothers are creating totally dependent men who will expect all women to do for them. Yet these boys are future husbands and fathers.” Angela Fitzgerald says, “Black women get dinged a lot for being too independent. People don’t understand that we do what we have to do, not because necessarily that we want to do it.”
Some Black women in Madison feel the effects of this cycle in the city’s dating scene, especially when it comes to sustainability and balance in heterosexual, cisgender Black relationships. Self-care champion and cosmetics entrepreneur Angela Fitzgerald moved to Madison three years ago to further her career, and believes Black women receive a lot of unfair backlash for the “Strong Black Woman” archetype. “Black women get dinged a lot for being too independent,” she says. “People don’t understand that we do what we have to do, not because necessarily that we want to do it. Women would gladly accept a man that makes decisions. I want to take that hat off. Don’t dismiss me because I’ve been doing it on my own, help me alleviate that load.” Kira Stewart: ““I want someone who is a leader, a protector, who will let me take a step back. I am in charge all day. I constantly have to make decisions. When I come home, I want you to take the lead and be confident in that.”
Sistas are accustomed to taking the lead and carrying the load, oftentimes to our detriment. A National Institutes of Health report details the struggles Black women have with depression and the stigma around mental health care. Many Black women are not seeking treatment because of the strongblackwoman archetype; regularly deciding to silently cope with mental health crises.
Kira Stewart spends the majority of her day advocating and caring for some of Dane County’s most vulnerable populations. A native Chicagoan, Stewart moved to Madison as an undergraduate, and agrees with Fitzgerald’s perspective about the strongblackwoman label. “I want someone who is a leader, a protector, who will let me take a step back,” Stewart says. “I am in charge all day. I constantly have to make decisions. When I come home, I want you to take the lead and be confident in that.”
Although Black women in Madison want Black men who are comfortable co-leading in their relationships, they are also willing to work with brothers who are still learning the true meaning of partnership. Black women are re-evaluating their definitions of an ideal partner for the sake of building meaningful relationships. “I’m willing to work with people.” says Chartrise Conard, who grew up in Madison. “I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes in my life. Everybody makes mistakes. If you have drive and dedication and you are willing to work on us as a partnership we can see where it goes.” Chartrise Conard, who grew up in Madison, says: “I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes in my life. Everybody makes mistakes. If you have drive and dedication and you are willing to work on us as a partnership we can see where it goes.”
As a mother of two, Conard is acutely aware of how her romantic life will be a mirror for her children and seeks to raise them with a degree of consciousness around partnerships. “What I allow into my life that my son sees, he will think that is how he is supposed to treat women,” she says. “When my daughter sees how men treat me, she will grow up thinking ‘it’s OK, I saw my mom do it.’”
Coming to Madison helped Fitzgerald realize that, in seeking meaningful relationships, a person’s life purpose is more important than common relationship tropes. Fitzgerald is happy in her relationship with a brother that she met in Madison. “Who I’m dating now does not fit the mold of who I thought I would be dating in terms of their background being really different from mine,” she says. “I had to change the ideals I had in mind to be OK with that …[living here] has made me more flexible. I’m big on purpose. If I see our purposes align, we can work it out.”
The dating scene for Black women in Madison is not atypical. Sistas all over hope to align their purpose on a path with their partners.
March on.
(Coming soon: Part 2. Black women and dating and religion in Madison)
Judging from the comment sections of the Madison365 webpage and Facebook, it appears that many Madisonians were upset that some Madison365 editorials stuck up for Genele Laird during an extremely physical recent arrest by the Madison Police Department. (Some of the e-mails to us were downright mean, including one with the title “F**K You” that read, “I’ve been a liberal my whole life, and you guys are f**king nuts.”)
Today, we present a column presenting a parallel universe that we hope, if nothing else, can simply inspire a little bit of empathy that may some day turn into understanding.
—Ed.
There is a city in a parallel universe that is the best place in the world to live – but only for black people. Not only is it the best place to live, it’s the best place to work, the best place to go to school, best place for millennials, best parks, best craft beers, best place to bike, best place to do yoga. It is wonderful. Some people say it’s glorious.
As I said, it’s wonderful for black people. For white people, it’s one of the worst places to live. White people in this city face the worst racial disparities in the nation. White people disproportionately live in poverty in segregated areas of the city. Eleven of them get arrested for every one black person that gets arrested by the parallel city’s world-class mostly black police force, even though statistics show that they use drugs at a lower rate than their black counterparts.
Recently in this parallel city, there was an incident with an 115-pound white girl … we will call her, hypothetically, “Becky.” She was getting a little squirrely with a black cop at East Towne Mall. Nothing too extraordinary … just not quite ready to be arrested. Nothing compared to how to very drunken black girls get when they are arrested on campus every weekend for underage drinking – doing some really erratic maneuvers as they are scared and desperate not to bring that underage drinking fine back to Rhinelander for their parents to pay. Certainly, nothing compared to the pure chaos that we can see at drunk tanks, arresting areas, and up and down nine blocks of Regent Street on every Badger football Saturday.
Anyways, this large black cop was working to get control of the little white girl and he seemed to be very calm and patient when another large black cop sprang from seemingly nowhere and delivered five well-placed MMA-style knees to Becky’s ribs and liver without saying a word. He delivered another straight punch to her kidney while the other black cop was holding her down. The two black cops forced Becky’s face to kiss the dirty pavement while delivering 50,000 volts of electricity through her little body 8 times. Then they put a bag over her head.
As it turns out, a lot of “oversensitive” white people were offended and hurt by this. Some of the “oversensitive” white people were old enough to have seen young white boys beaten, disfigured, castrated, and bludgeoned to death by black men (many times aided by black police) for crimes as innocent as looking at a black woman. All of the “oversensitive” white people were old enough to see a 12-year-old beautiful blonde white boy killed when black cops rolled up to him playing with a BB gun in the park and literally dozens and dozens of similar situations. Many of the “sensitive” white people have lived a lifetime of witnessing disparate actions by the black police only to be exacerbated by a wildly disparate justice system.
Because of a plethora of incidents and statistics, white people have grown to be scared and distrustful of police in this city and nation for decades and decades. They wanted a review. The black chief of police scoffed it off as a few people who were “perpetually offended.” He felt comfortable in that statement because he was a black chief in a mostly black city that has had its narrative set by its all-black political players and the all-black major media of the city.
So, back to Becky. Becky caught the luckiest break in the world — mostly because of a few “politically correct” perpetually offended, race-pimping troublemakers in this city who are always raising a fuss and questioning the status quo. Becky only has to complete restorative justice to amend for the damage her white ribs did to that black cop’s knees and to amend for the 400,000 volts they wasted on her little white body with those 8 tases. If she completes it, everybody might forget about the whole incident. Well, except for Becky — who is and always will be traumatized by the incident for the rest of her life.
It’s hard to say why there has never been a beating incident like this in all of the decades upon decades on this parallel city’s almost-all-black college campus that is one of the largest in the United States and famous for its over-the-top destructive binge drinking culture. It could be that these black cops just don’t want to tangle with these excellent lawyers that a lot of these black rich college kids have. Everybody is well aware of the national news of a black Stanford College kid openly raping an unconconscious woman in an alley who then got the tiniest of slaps on the wrist for his rape when poor white kids have been regularly getting 25-30 years for the exact same offense. That is some serious attorney power you don’t want to mess with. But probably closer to the truth is the fact that even though 5 MMA-style kicks, an open punch to the gut, and 8 rounds of 50,000 volts is a “by the book” way to apprehend a subject, that many officers very quickly throw that book out the window when the 115-pound girl looks like their own daughter. Because, in the end, she’s just “blowing off some steam” and “this mistake shouldn’t define her own life” and, most importantly, they are two well-trained large men in a “world-class” police force who can easily arrest a tiny woman without beating the hell out of her.
And they do. On campus. All the time. Every time.
But back to the parallel city, which pretty much returned to normal after the incident. Black people continued on with their segregated lives in the better-off parts of the city going to their Farmer’s Markets on the Square, Concerts on the Square, Mallards games, UW games, and all-black picnics and BBQs. White people languished in the poorer parts of the city, mostly out of sight of any farmers’ markets, world-class bike paths, craft beer fests, or ultimate Frisbee competitions.
But it wasn’t quite over. The ruthlessness of the takedown of the 115-pound white girl by the two black male cops still stuck in a few people’s minds even after the incident settled down – what if that was my own daughter and she was being assaulted like that? How would I feel? They – like everybody else — have been on campus after 6 p.m. and, every day, they have seen the ridiculous drunkenness and drugs that are used and abused rampantly by privileged black college students weaving in and out of traffic who clearly have too much time on their hands and sometimes just too much money. They’ve seen young girls out of their minds getting chased and cuffed, resisting, calling police officers nasty names and telling them what their lawyer dads are going to do to them if they don’t let them go. They’ve been to Badger football Saturdays where things literally get out of control starting with the first 14 beers at 9 a.m. They’ve seen police roam the streets and stadium arresting dozens of drunk and unruly college girls without incident. They know how ridiculous these young girls can get. They know what a general nuisance they can be to dozens and dozens of police officers on the downtown beat. They know that cops are often overworked and put in tense, terrible situations. Shoot, personally, I couldn’t handle a half hour of the debauchery and idiocy that is a Badger Saturday as a cop, no less a whole shift. Could this “Becky” butt-whooping happen to my daughter, too?
Well, no. It hasn’t happened and it won’t ever happen. You see, this “Becky” girl was somehow different than our own drunken, out-of-control girls who do not want to be arrested. And we justify that difference in our heads a million ways, and so many of those ways don’t even make sense. But as awkward as those justifications for white Becky’s beat down are, they are still far better than openly coming to grips with another feeling that has been gnawing at us from deep down … beating like a tell-tale heart: Simply that we think Becky is less of a human because of the color of her skin and that she got exactly what she deserved.
Mixed.
Multi.
One-half-this and one-quarter-that. Biracial, mixed-race, “two or more races.” In a world obsessed with labels, the pressure to claim oneself as part of a racial group is an inescapable reality for a small but growing population. We are confronted by it with questions like, “What are you?” which we can instantly recognize as a question pointing to heritage. Census forms or surveys ask us to check a box identifying our ethnicity; on rare occasions we’re offered “Multiracial” but we frequently settle for “Other.” People identifying as mixed race may feel connected to all of their backgrounds, only one or some of them, or to none; race is complex enough as it is, but once two or more categories come into play, even more questions are raised.
What is clear is that people who carry a mixed race identity do not experience their race in the same way, even if they share the same racial mix. Location, social interaction, family attitudes about race and environments all inform how they think, feel and speak about being mixed race. Even more, an individual’s own interpretation of their multicultural background may shift and change with time; it is a process of discovery, affirmation, questioning and rejection.
Below, five individuals share their own journey of a mixed-race identity. No story is the same, but all lead to one reality that is obvious: they are hardly a fraction of a race. They are full, whole, complete, and here are their stories, in all their diverse glory.
Zachary Elvord-Zolot: Native Son
The thing about mixed-race folks is that they are, at times, hard to identify. As I searched for people willing to speak with me and share their story, I asked Zachary if he knew anybody who identified as mixed race, only for him to reveal he himself identified as biracial. With so many possible mixes and the multitude of ways DNA chooses to physically manifest, it’s difficult to tell whether someone is mixed race just by looking at them, as was with Zachary.
Born to a Jewish mother and an African American father, Zachary’s connection with both sides of his identity is clear. He speaks of a desire to improve unequal conditions Black Americans must deal with, while also speaking about his trip to Israel with a clear love, respect and awe.
“We are connected to each other,” Zachary said of African Americans. “There’s a bond that connects us, for the most part. There’s always been a connectedness with the people.
“As far as [being] Jewish, I feel there is more a connection with the earth. When I went to Israel, [I felt] an amazing connectedness with the world around me, and I think that helped me connect with the people around me, too. When you’re in Israel, everyone is connected by that one thing.” Born to a Jewish mother and an African American father, Zachary Elvord-Zolot’s connection with both sides of his identity is clear.
Zach is warm and lighthearted, and throughout the interview he is relaxed, maybe even nonchalant. He strikes overly-dramatic poses when I get up to snap a picture, and twice stops mid-sentence to look past me and smile; he’s watching a little girl jump on top of picnic tables, fall down, cry to her dad.
“I’m sorry, I’m distracted. That little girl is adorable,” he says.
I met Zach while volunteering at the Lussier Community Education Center in Madison, Wisconsin, where he mentors, organizes and hangs out with kids of all ages.
This semester, Zach, myself and other University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students are working with kids in radio club to create a radio show that will be aired on the Center’s radio station. Just from the little time I’ve spent at Lussier, I can tell it has an important role in the communities it serves. Nestled between Jefferson Middle School and Memorial High School, it’s lively every Thursday we volunteer, with kids playing basketball and eating snacks, using the computer lab, or chasing each other through the main foyer, their voices and laughs bouncing off the high ceilings and walls.
Many of the kids Zach works with at Lussier are kids of color, some from low-income backgrounds. In Dane County and Madison, which is heralded as a progressive haven with a world-class university and some of nation’s best bike lanes, the achievement gap between white and black children is one of the worst in the nation. In Madison in 2011, 50 percent of black kids did not graduate high school on time. In Madison, black kids are 13 times more likely than white kids to live in poverty. Zach knows this; he can cite the statistics. Not only that, but he sees the effects racial and economic marginalization can have on young minds. His tone changes when we shift gears to talk about the kids, and it’s clear this isn’t the first time his has considered what it means to be a person of color in Madison.
“That is the idea that we have set out as a community: that if you are poor and black, you will not succeed, or you will have to work ten times harder to do it. That is wrong,” Zach said. “That is derogatory.”
I think back to what Zach said about the emotional and organic connections he feels with the African American and Jewish communities, how he feels completely a part of both simultaneously. The injustices he witnesses in Madison are in his community, done unto his people, occurring where he grew up and now once again calls home. Zach has started writing letters to Gov. Scott Walker and senators Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin about funding decisions that he sees as failing to address the disparity that exists between white Madison and communities of color. Zach gestures to a large, block-like building under construction on the downtown skyline— “luxury high-rise apartment buildings that don’t get filled”— and asks why the state funds them instead of homeless shelters. It’s a good question, asked by someone who sees the implications firsthand. So, I ask Zach, what should we do to fix it? Legislation? Grants? A task force?
“What we can do is start caring. What we can do is start funding these kids,” Zach said. “We can make them feel like they’re not defeated right away. That’s what we can do.
A baby Renee Moe with her American father and her Chinese mother who hails from Taipei, Taiwan.
Renee Moe: Perfect Fit
For many mixed race individuals, it’s easy to connect with one another due to similar experiences related to racial identity. I spoke with Renee Moe, president and CEO of United Way Dane County, about her upbringing and journey of coming to understand her identity as a mixed race woman, a mother, a community leader and more.
I spoke with Renee Moe, president and CEO of United Way Dane County. She shared her experiences as a prominent mixed-race woman in her community, and how her racial identity informs, shapes, and inspires her life and work. Here is our conversation
Sato: Could you tell me about your background?
Moe: Yeah, it’s Taiwanese and Norwegian. My mom is Chinese and my dad is American. I carry a biracial identity, I carry an Asian identity, I carry a mom identity, a wife identity, a daughter identity. And just from a professional identity, I feel like I’m a community connector and collaborator and change-maker.
Sato: So Renee and I actually share quite a few things in common. We’re both half Asian and half white; her father is white and her mother is Chinese, and my father is Japanese and my mother is white.
Moe: I’m always conscious of [my identities]. That’s what I think is so interesting about being biracial is you think about it all the time, it’s always a part of you, and I think it’s a huge part of who you are. The racial identity specifically, I feel like I’m always conscious of that. I walk into a room and I notice what are the racial compositions of the folks that are there. I’m in a meeting and I think about the conversations that are being talked about.
Sato: Of course, I really relate to this sentiment. For me, I feel like my race always plays the most prominent part. As I was growing up, I always felt conscious of my race. I was conscious that I was not white, and in Japan, I was conscious of the fact that my mother was white, and therefore we were a mixed family.
Moe: As I was growing up I felt never white enough to be white, never Asian enough to be Asian. Right, that’s a very common feeling. I had always thought of myself as Asian American until coming to college, where I heard ‘biracial,’ ‘multiracial.’
Sato: Like her, I have felt not white enough to be white, not Asian enough to be Asian, and feeling a lot of confusion and displacement as to where I fit in in the fabric of society and the fabric of labels and groups of people.
Moe: Just you know … how people interacted with me based on what they thought I was. So if they thought I was Asian and the kind of Asian: if they thought I was Vietnamese or Japanese or Chinese, or if they thought I was Latina, or if they thought I was Italian or Black or white, it all felt very different. I kind of learned early on that people make judgments based on what they think you are, before getting to know who you actually are.
Sato: Renee said for the most part, race doesn’t really come up in conversation, or at least it didn’t. It was always something she thought about in her head, but really didn’t take forefront in conversation with other people, until more recently.
Moe: In the last three to five years specifically, I think I’m known more in the community as a biracial person, as a person of color, as an Asian woman more so than before. I think it’s definitely an asset when it comes to solving community problems.
Sato: The pain mixed race people often face over confusion about their identity is often also their greatest strength.
Moe: So I really grew up [with] two parents of different races, three continents, half a dozen schools … you just really knew the world was so much bigger than the community right in front of you. I have a feeling that people who are mixed race — it doesn’t necessarily have to be race either, people who come from mixed backgrounds. Maybe it’s religion, maybe it’s international, maybe it’s sexual orientation, maybe it’s whatever — that people who can sort of see the different facets of tension, of coming together, can accelerate learning and accelerate collaboration and create change. Because you can see different points of view, you can meet people where they are.
Something that I realized in my early adulthood was “if you don’t fit anywhere, then maybe you can fit everywhere.
Sato: Although my journey in my racial identity is far from over, I hope to one day feel like Renee does — that I can fit wherever I need to. Not that I’m half of something, not that I’m not enough, but a perfect fit.
Matthew Braunginn: The Good Fight
“What are you?”
It’s a question mixed race people hear frequently and without warning. Strangers on the street, people you’ve just met, adults who should know better than to try to guess a child’s racial make-up; the question can come up anytime, anywhere, with anyone, as casual as a question about your weekend.
You can add Matthew Braunginn to the side that hates that question. As a light skin Black man, Braunginn is used to the questions, the stares, the guessing games due to his lighter features—what some call “white passing.” Matthew Braunginn
“I remember as a kid being with my parents at the Memorial Union Terrace. My [Black] father went into the bathroom and I was waiting outside for him, and a man asked me if I was safe and if that was my dad,” Braunginn said.
Despite “passing” as white at times, Braunginn said he also has experienced the opposite response of being treated as a person of color.
“Particularly white classmates of mine, growing up in Madison, would be sure to let me know that I wasn’t quite white. They would let me pass at their own convenience, and then call me ‘niglet’ or ‘half and half’ and a bunch of other things,” he said.
The double-edged sword can extend beyond strangers and classmates, insensitive questions and name-calling. Braunginn described an instance in his teenage years of being in a car full of friends that was pulled over by police officers. He and an Asian American friend were the only people of color among other white friends, but all were carrying marijuana.
“He and I were the only ones arrested,” Braunginn recalled. “But I know that those police encounters that were a little bit more aggressive towards me than my white peers, would have been much more aggressive if I was darker. There have been certain encounters that could’ve very much ended in the loss of my life if I was darker,” Braunginn said.
Sentiments like the above show that Braunginn situates himself carefully and precisely within the Black community as a mixed race, light skin man. Although he self-identifies as “a mixed-race, Black male,” he is also keenly aware and conscious of the privilege that exists in regards to the actual pigmentation of one’s skin. In his work with the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, Braunginn says he is careful to recognize his privilege as a cis-gender male who is also has the lightest skin.
“I understand that is means I need to step back and cede space to others,” he said. However, the distinct place Braunginn finds himself within the Black community does not prevent him from feeling connected and embraced by those in Black spaces. He recounted being a high school student, encouraged to more fully embrace his blackness than he was, and contrasted those experiences with how he felt in white spaces, where he said sometimes he feels uncomfortable and hyper-conscious of his race.
Braunginn is specific in his racial identity, and his landing place as both biracial and Black is nuanced, informed by his 30 years in his skin and the countless instances of being labeled as “not really Black” and “not really white.” But through his lived experiences, Braunginn has found where he fits… and where he does not.
“Through time and study and being able to intellectually understand the types of experiences I was going through, the subtle oppression, I [began to understand]. It’s not that I’m not Black enough or white enough, it’s just that I’m mixed race, I’m Black, and I’m part of that Black American experience and that Black story and history,” Braunginn said. “I’m not part of the white American experience because I’m not white; I can’t ever be white.
“I think my own experiences have given me unique insight into the depths of white supremacy and what it is, how extensive it is, in a very unique way. Like being able to look past the curtain when you meet the Wizard of Oz.”
Does Braunginn want to be part of the white American experience?
“No. Not at all. It’s not anything I want to be a part of. I think there’s a sickness that rises out of it. The U.S. built its empires on oppression and enslavement and genocide and this idea of superiority.
“You can’t tell me things are going to be better. Even [now], police are killing us — it’s a different form of lynching. A different coat of paint,” he said. “The structure is the same. I’d be a bad student of history to believe [things are different].”
He pauses briefly when asked what should be done about white supremacy; that’s the magic question. Braunginn doesn’t think fixing it is enough. We need to start from scratch.
“I want to not just deconstruct it — I want to conquer and destroy that mentality. It’s sick,” Braunginn said. “My ultimate goal would be a constitution founded in the idea of inalienable human rights. Just because you’re existing, you are given the rights to determine where you want to go — housing, food, education, being able to live and exist without having to fight to survive. So many people are fighting.”
If that sounds like a tall order, it’s because it is. To upend the white supremacy that built, sustained, and remains in America’s institutions and identity would be to challenge and overturn what the country was built on, and Braunginn is under no illusion that it is an easy — or even possible — victory. He isn’t optimistic that change will happen in his lifetime, maybe not ever. But that’s not really the point. The liberation is in the struggle, the fight, and the inherently political and personal act of defiance.
“I don’t know if the fight is worth it. I just think is has to be fought. Whether it’s worth it or not, whether there will be an outcome or not, someone has to fight it,” Braunginn said. “The act of resistance in itself has to happen, no matter what the outcome. You must always resist. Always.”
I’m white until I’m not
I’m told I’m white cus I’m light skinned
My dad’s black
I’m white until I commit a crime
I’m white until I speak out
I’m white when I go to school
I’m a “statistic” when I’m not
I’m white when I’m silent and proper
I’m white until I’m not
I’m black when my classmates call me half & half
I’m white when someone ask if my dad is my dad
I’m black when my dad and I get told, “we don’t have non-smoking”
I’m black when I’m called nigglet & half nigger
I’m not “really white, but not really black”
I am “what are you?”
I would’ve been black If I was expelled from school
I would’ve been black if I was locked up for a felony
I’m white when I do good
I’m black when I don’t
I’m white, until I’m not
I’m told when I’m white and when I’m black
I am white, unless I’m not
I’m black in this complicated world of Black America
Unless, I’m told I’m not
I’m white, until I have my hands up saying “no gun, don’t shoot”
Then I’ll be black, with a “criminal” past, laying face down, shot by the cops
I am Black
—Matthew Braunginn
Students of Lussier: Precious Stories
Over the course of eight weeks, I worked with a small group of other University of Wisconsin-Madison students to assist the Lussier Community Education Center with the launch of their own radio station. It’s a unique and empowering idea, to allow middle and high school students the freedom to conceptualize, write, record and edit their own program, and then give them the resources to make it real; to let their voices, thoughts and opinions on the air waves for several thousand listeners to tune into.
Every student I encountered was bright and thoughtful. We watched them become more comfortable in the recording studio, open up, and show their beautiful personalities every Thursday afternoon. At the end of the semester, two students spoke with me about their own experiences being mixed race openly and eloquently. It wasn’t their wisdom that surprised me—I knew they were capable of thinking critically about race and what it means to be a person of color. What surprised me the most was that they even agreed to speak with me at all. As a reporter, I am learning to recognize that I’m not entitled to anybody’s story, especially not stories as precious and personal as these. Their candidness was humbling, their cultural competency and sensitivity despite their young age was inspiring, and as they shared their own experiences living as biracial people, I felt so much gratitude to be able to share relay their lived experiences.
One student, Malcolm Gibson, 16, described the increasingly frequent conversations about race he has with his Afro-Trinidadian mother as he gets older. Malcolm said he talks about race with his mother, but not with his father much. Malcom Gibson
“My mom wants me to break the stereotype of the lazy Black person who doesn’t do much,” Malcolm said. “But I don’t personally see that [stereotype] ever happen.”
For the most part, Malcolm says he does not think about his race much— he focuses more on himself as an individual rather than someone who is biracial. However, he senses that race is often on his mother’s mind.
“I think my mother thinks about it a lot. She’s always paying attention to what I’m wearing, how I act around other people, and it also usually connects to my grades,” Malcolm said. “She wants to pressure me to do my best, and I can understand that.”
Educational outcomes and their relation to race is very likely on most parents’ minds, considering the striking disparities in Madison for students of color and their white counterparts. As I observed Malcolm grow in his role as a future radio show host at Lussier, though, it was clear that Malcolm was not only intelligent and thoughtful, but witty, quick and engaged with the task at hand— to create his own radio show. With each new take he improvised lines and cracked jokes, proving to be a natural in the recording studio and the perfect host for a radio show about movies, or wherever else he might want to be in life.
Mia Rose Sato: In My Words
When we learned about World War II in U.S. history class in high school, we didn’t talk about the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans beyond a sentence in passing. Instead, we were assigned to make propaganda posters; I made a poster condemning Nazism. Some of my classmates recreated anti-Japanese propaganda, and the posters hung in the classroom all year, the word ‘JAP’ large and foreboding, staring at me everyday. Mia Soto
My teacher must have forgotten to mention it was a word brewed in hate and racism. He must have not known I was Japanese, my dad was Japanese, my blood and heart and homeland are Japanese. He must have not known the heat I felt in my cheeks every time he said the word without an asterisk after it, to teach his students it is a word of division, a word of national disgrace, and a word nobody should be using in a high school classroom beyond educating teenagers of the injustice of Japanese internment. He must have forgotten all of that, because I sat through weeks of my classmates casually tossing the word into the air I breathed, fighting to keep breathing as the back of my throat constricted tight enough to hold back tears.
I didn’t tell my white mother about the incident until more than a year later, while I was trying desperately to make her understand even a fraction of what it is like to be a mixed-race person of color. Despite her and my dad witnessing every step and defining moment of my life, my racial identity is one thing they will never understand.
When I spoke with my mom, she echoed this reality — she will never understand what it is like to live in my skin. But the more I talk about my race, the more I hear a person who is trying their hardest to listen and accept the things she cannot understand. The more I talk, the more both of my parents can begin to see the pain I have felt, the confusion I’ve wrangled with, but most of all the joy and pride I have come to feel in who I am.
“You ever have the feeling you’re going to live forever? I mean like you’re never going to die? I’m going to be great, I don’t know how I know but I do. Just watch. I’m going to change the world.”
—Tony Robinson
Tony Terrell Robinson’s life ended much too early bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds to the head, torso and right upper extremity on Willy Street on Madison’s near east side on March 6, 2015. Since then, some people have noted that Robinson’s death has forever changed the way that Madisonians think about race and could be a catalyst for addressing nation-leading racial disparities in Madison. Others have noted that it hasn’t changed a damn thing. Thousands of articles have been written about Tony Robinson in these last 14 months as the nation has looked in on Madison to find out more. But very few have really delved deeply into the question: Who was Tony Robinson? Andrea Irwin with son Tony Robinson Jr.
“He had the most unique laugh. It was infectious. He loved to see other people happy. He was happy making other people happy,” Andrea Irwin, Tony Robinson’s mother, tells Madison365. “He was definitely someone who everybody talked to. That’s what I hear from all of his friends. They could call him no matter what time it was and he would talk to them on the phone until they felt better … give them advice and help solve their problems. He was very, very generous.
“He was a funny dude. I call him my gentle giant,” she adds. “He was a big boy – 6’4” – but back him into a corner and he would fold. He just wasn’t a fighter.
“He used to get kicks out of irritating me. He thought it was funny. But then he would pull me in and hug me until I hugged him back,” she adds. “He’d say, ‘C’mon, Mom! You know you love me!’ I had no other choice but to smile. And then he’d lick my face and run away. This was him at all ages – all the way up until he was gone. He was something else.” “In some ways it hasn’t fully hit me yet. All of his friends went away to college in August so I find myself thinking that he’s away at college, too,” says Andrea Irwin.
Irwin has been through way more than a lifetime of pain since the fateful night that she lost her son.
“In some ways it hasn’t fully hit me yet. All of his friends went away to college in August so I find myself thinking that he’s away at college, too,” says Irwin. “I know that he’s gone, but I haven’t really fully been able to grieve yet.
“Even cooking dinner it’s not the same. That boy would eat you out of house and home. He would eat dinner and everything left over and then back for more in the middle of the night,” Irwin adds. “I know that every time I got some fast food and it was too much, he’d finish it off. I find myself now looking at leftovers and saying, ‘Dang it, Terrell, if you were here, this wouldn’t even be here.’
“He was a goofball. I didn’t know how many people he knew and how many people just loved him until after he died,” she continued. “If you knew him, you liked him. You could not not like him.” Andrea Irwin with her three children (Photo by Leslie Amsterdam Peterson)
All of those emotions and more were evident at a #JUSTICE4TONY reception at MMoCA Gallery Night this past weekend at the Jackie Macaulay Gallery of the Social Justice Center, a half block from where Robinson was killed on that fateful night. On the 14-month anniversary of his death, the reception featured an intimate photographic art show documenting how the community coped during the first year without Tony Robinson in our community. Photos were taken by local photographer Leslie Amsterdam Peterson.
“Leslie has been taking pictures from the beginning and I am so thankful,” Irwin says. “Many of the things that happened after his death I didn’t know about because I was so busy, so I’m grateful to have those memories. Because of Leslie, I have those moments. She’s captured them all. There are some really special photos in there. [Photographer] Nate Royko Maurer took a lot of pictures, too … beautiful black and white pictures. They’ve been able to capture some really, really deep moments.” A close friend of Tony Robinson looks at pictures of Tony and family at the Jackie Macaulay Gallery at the Social Justice Center May 6.
The pictures are very powerful. Some attendees had trouble making it through the exhibit without crying or having to exit. Pictures and memories are all Irwin has left of her son and these powerful snapshots at the exhibit — combined with the visceral emotions that Mother’s Day weekend brings — are making things especially distressful for her and her three kids.
“Mother’s Day is very difficult for me. I miss him,” Irwin says. “The kids told me that they wanted to go out to the grave and spend Mother’s Day with Terrell and I thought that was sweet … thinking about him … because they know I was thinking about him.
“When I start feeling really bad, I try to think of something good or funny. My therapist told me that some people take years to grieve, so I don’t know how long this will last,” she adds. “The anniversary of his death really got me down. The holidays do, too. But I can’t let myself get to a bad place. I have other children to take care of. I’m just trying to be as proactive as I can be.”
Things have gotten a little better for Irwin, but at one point it was just really, really bad. The nastiness and virulent racism around Tony Terrell Robinson’s name on the Internet after his death was endless. Plenty of that nastiness was reserved for Irwin, too. Robinson’s death really brought out the demented side of humanity and Irwin and her family bore the brunt of it.
“From the beginning I was in shock and it was so chaotic. I never had a chance to wrap my mind around it,” Irwin says. “So when I was seeing the things people were saying about my son, I was dead set on presenting an image of my son’s family that this wasn’t who he’s being made out to be. We’re not violent or ignorant people. I wanted to change people’s minds that he wasn’t this thug criminal they were trying to make him out to be.” Family and friends of Tony Robinson gather outside the house on Willy Street where Tony was shot. (Photo by Nate Royko Maurer)
It was a futile exercise. The nastiness kept coming in droves.
“There were a couple times where I got on there and I wrote long passages with a whole bunch of cuss words. But I never hit ‘send.’ I deleted it all,” Irwin says. “It did feel good just to write it. But in the end, I just told these people, ‘God forbid you ever find yourself in my or my son’s position, I pray that you are given much more mercy than what you have given to me and my family and my son.’ To speak so ill of somebody who’s not even here to defend himself … someone you don’t even know! You’re judging him based upon what you are seeing in the media and that was only half-true. Please do some research!
“Some people have to be so miserable to be so hateful. After I tell somebody, ‘I’ll pray for you!’ there’s not much else I can do,” she adds. “But after that, I just stayed off [social media]. I’d have friends tell me about some nastiness and I’d be like, ‘I don’t even want to know.’”
The attacks on her and her son would continue. Even to this very day. In real life, too. Irwin says people would flick her off in her car while she was driving and or she would get called nasty names. Still do this day. It hasn’t stopped.
“The weird thing was that attacks were coming at me and I wasn’t even being negative or violent or hateful,” Irwin says. “What is it that I did that has made you so angry? You’re mad at me because the son was killed and the media picked it up? I’ve been standing out here trying to be as peaceful as I can … not saying anything negative against the police.
“I could never be so evil to people,” she continues. “For nothing else but for the fact that I just lost my child. Please give me that respect. You don’t have to like me, but you don’t have to be so hateful.
“The things I said on the news, I never really believed. I knew there wasn’t going to an indictment,” she adds. “But, publically, I wasn’t bashing anybody. I just want the truth. I just want justice. That’s it.” Irwin with her boyfriend, Jeff Jackson, immediately after the death of her son (Photo by Nate Royko Maurer)
Irwin and I discuss the actual death of her son at the hands of the Madison Police Department. Robinson was having a bad reaction to hallucinogenic mushrooms when he was shot and killed. I explain to her what happens on a daily basis on UW campus (and campuses throughout the United States) and what I’ve seen many times in my lifetime that transpires a little over a mile down the road from where Robinson’s life ended – massive binge drinking, LSD, heroin, mushrooms, cocaine. Young people weaving in and out of traffic, vandalizing, assaulting. Young – almost all white — college students doing insanely stupid things in mind-altered states. Get your Google going, if you don’t believe it. Try “White Kid Actually on Drugs and Grabs Cop’s Gun” or “White teen in BMW hits three cars, assaults cop” or “Armed White Guy Has Standoff With Police, Then Gets His Gun Back.”
It’s a very long list. But nobody ever ends up dead.
Realistically, what Robinson needed that night was for somebody to sit him down and tell him that everything was going to be OK.
“When I was growing up, police officers … they knew you. They’d get out of the cars and they’d walk the streets with you. And it’s not so much like that anymore. I think that’s something we need to get back to,” Irwin says. “If you had a situation with the one we had like with my son, the officer that patrols the neighborhood would have known him. He would have known who he was and that this isn’t normal behavior. I don’t think it would have ended that way. And I think that’s really important. You have to know the people that you are out there trying to protect for any situation. Not just for the people’s safety but for the police officer’s safety, too. It’s very important.
“We have to do everything we can to keep the fear down. Because as the fear escalates, things like this will keep happening more often,” she adds. “And I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. Not my worst enemy. This is a club that nobody wants to be a part of ever.”
Dwelling on all of this negativity is simply not healthy for Irwin at this point and her therapist constantly tries to keep her focusing on the positive – the many beautiful memories of her son.
“He was a deep thinker. He wouldn’t sleep much sometimes. He had insomnia and he would just sit up at night thinking about all of these different things,” Irwin says. “His mind just never turned off. You could just sit and have some really deep conversations with him.
“He said that he wanted to go to school for business management. He told me that he didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he just wanted to be the boss,” Irwin adds. “He had two jobs – Pizza Ranch and Copp’s – and I think that he didn’t like doing all the grunt work, so I think he wanted to be the person someday to tell somebody else to do it. He was a smart kid.”
Irwin says that Robinson loved music like crazy. “We both loved music. But for the first year I could listen to music, I couldn’t listen to the radio. I didn’t want any music on around me,” she says. “Whatever emotions you have, music can pull them right out. I wasn’t ready for that. I’ve been hiding from this grieving because it hurts. It hurts so much. I’m afraid of it.
“There were just so many things to be done after his death and there was nobody else to do it but me,” she adds. “I had to keep things together. I had to do so many things. I felt like if I allowed myself to slip into those bad, bad feelings that things wouldn’t get done the way they were supposed to. It’s scary.” Madison rallies for Tony Robinson on Willy Street days after his death. (Photo by Nate Royko Maurer)
Tony Robinson has become a movement in Madison and well beyond. For many people, his death has increased the passion to create change in Robinson’s honor. Irwin says that she is grateful for all of the love and support she has gotten in the community. “He is marked on this city forever. It’s never going to go away. And I think, for the most part, it’s a positive image,” she says. “I’m glad that many people recognize him for the kid he always was rather than where he was a few hours before he passed.
“The image of who he was kind of became this whole thing in Madison. I didn’t know him as ‘Tony,’ I called him ‘Terrell,’” she adds. “His family called him by his middle name because his dad was Tony, but at school and everywhere else they called him Tony. And that’s what he preferred.
“The Tony Robinson issue is different for me,” she continues. “I think the problem for me was that I wasn’t able to separate my Terrell from the image that had become who he was. It was hard for me to mourn. My Terrell, who he was to me … is different.”
Irwin’s therapist is helping her work through this and many other issues.
“I appreciate people and the things that they say. But a lot of people come up to me and say, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ There’s really nothing you can say,” Irwin says. “There’s nothing right. There’s a few wrong things to say, though.
“There are a lot of good people in this city and they do genuinely care,” she adds. “They came out to show so much love and support for people that they didn’t even know. I will forever be grateful for that.”
In the years to come, there will be annual events around Tony Robinson to help keep his name and memory alive. Irwin hopes that the people of Madison don’t forget about her son. “I know over time things will die down, but to have his name kept alive … that’s important to me. I hope that this city finds a way to rebuild relationships,” Irwin says. “I don’t ever want to go on in my life without saying his name or thinking about him. He was my son. I had him for 19 years. I just don’t want it to stop, I guess.”
As Irwin looks back in hindsight, there is one last thing that she can’t stop thinking about. She is convinced that there was something in the way her son was behaving on his final days on this earth where he knew something was going to happen to him.
“He went around to say, “I love you” to every one of his family members before he passed,” Irwin says. “It wasn’t normal the way he did it. His dad [Tony Robinson Sr.] and him would not say, ‘I love you’ a lot to each other and the last thing he said to his dad was, ‘I love you, Dad. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He was at a BBQ with his dad and he asked him to save a burger for him in the refrigerator. I think his dad saved that burger for him for seven months [after his death]. Tony Terrell Robinson Jr.
“Him and his friend Elijah had been in a fight for a month and not really speaking, and on the morning he died he went over to Elijah’s house and he made up with him,” Irwin remembers. “They were lifelong friends.”
Robinson came over to Irwin’s house on the Wednesday night before his death – much too late on a school night for Irwin’s liking. “He came into my room and I was like, ‘Why are you here so late? I have to work in the morning! You can’t come over this late!’” Irwin remembers. “He was in a great mood and he was like ‘C’mon, mom.’ He ran upstairs to see his brothers and his sister. He woke each and every one of them up and hugged them and told him he loved them. That was not normal for him to do that.”
Robinson came back downstairs and Irwin was still mad at him. “I said, ‘Why did you wake them up?’ He just said, ‘C’mon, mom. You know you love me.’ He pulled me in tight and just held me there for a while. I can remember his heartbeat. His heartbeat … I can still hear it in my mind today.”
Irwin had just gotten a promotion at her job and Robinson was going to treat her to dinner on Friday. As abruptly as Robinson was in, he was making his way out the door.
To celebrate Black History Month, Madison365 will give three awards named in honor of local community leaders who left lasting legacies in Madison. The titles of these awards are being announced over the first three Mondays of the month, and the award winners will be announced in the last week of February. Last week, we announced the Eugene Parks Disrpution Award. Today, we announce that the Ben Parks Small Business Award Award which will be given to member of the community who has made their mark through their tremendous entrepreneurial spirit and dedication.
“Ben Parks was one of our most successful black entrepreneurs in Madison history. Period,” says Kaleem Caire, CEO and founder of One City Early Learning Centers and longtime Madison southsider. “He stayed in business for such a long time and cared about his community and took care of his family. His business created opportunities for other people and some retirement for he and his wife and it allowed him to do things that he wanted to do.”
For over a quarter century, Ben’s Barber Shop on Madison’s south side was much more than just a place to get a shave and a haircut. It was an important community resource center and a place where African Americans could freely socialize and discuss contemporary issues.
“It was typical of what you’d sometimes see on television where black men in the barbershop are just talking politics and going off,” Caire tells Madison365. “They’d have us dying from laughter. I would love to go there … just for the comedy of it. They’d have you on the floor whether it was about sports, politics, entertainment, music, God.”
Ben Parks in “The Shop”
It was such a fun and interesting place that Caire says he used to pop in even when he didn’t need a haircut. But it was also a place that could be much more serious and introspective. It was a place where African-American men became entrepreneurs, made career decisions, and forged lifelong friendships.
“A man could go there to consult or to debate or deepen his relations with others. It was a place where loyalties formed,” says Glenn Parks, Ben Parks’ son, who spent plenty of time in Ben’s Barber Shop. “For my dad, that was something that resonated deeply with him. He was an engaging person. He loved the social aspect of it and the chance to build friendships in the community, but also the chance to debate ideas and thoughts. It could be a pretty charged atmosphere in there sometimes.”
For many black men, getting a haircut is more than a commodity — it’s an experience that builds community and camraderie and shapes political action. It’s where one discusses life’s most important decisions.
“I can recall many discussions at The Shop where there were serious conversations about whether someone should pursue a certain vocational path or people talking about their personal goals in life,” Glenn Parks says. “It was a place where consulting was done and resources were shared … where people found ways to support one another and helped each other facilitate a better life.
“There were times I remembered people talking about tangible ways to combine their resources to assist one another,” he adds. “There was a general understanding that we were operating as a collective and that each of their personal ambitions and goals were sort of interlinked and that they had an interconnectedness in their dreams and desires.
Ben Parks came to Madison from Georgia in 1953 in search of a better life.
A young Ben Parks
“When I came to Madison, they were sayin’ it was about 300 black people. You could walk around the Capitol Square pretty much for three or four hours and never meet a black person,” Ben Parks recounted in David Giffey’s “The People’s Stories of South Madison (2001)”
“Everybody seemed to be happy back during the Greenbush days. It was better than where I came from, that’s for sure. But it was prejudiced here, just like it is now, back then,” Ben Parks continued. “You couldn’t find a place to live. That was my main concern. A white person had a house, had an apartment for rent … and they wouldn’t rent it to us. You’d call ’em, and when you go to ’em, they see black, and that’s when most of the time you’d have a problem.”
In the early 1960’s, Parks worked for Rev. James Wright, who would go on to become the first executive director for the Equal Opportunities Commission for the City of Madison. Wright and his wife Jacqueline had founded and constructed Jackie and Jimmy’s Beauty. Parks would go on to buy the barbershop from Rev. Wright and he ran in until the late ’90s when he retired and Ben’s Barber Shop transitioned into Style and Grace on 1610 Gilson St. not far from South Park Street.
It was a struggle being a black-owned business in Madison back in those days. Racism was alive and well.
“He had people like Rev. Wright who were really in his corner and served as a mentor in a professional and personal sense. That was important,” Glenn Parks remembers. “But there was also a reality that existed in trying to operate a business [as a black man in ‘60s and ’70s Madison].
“I recall there were times, especially in the early years, him trying to get financing for the business … and even if he met the criteria, it was a struggle to get support from the institutions in the area,” he adds. “There were things that were beyond his control, but he still fought through it and made sacrifices. There were some tough times.”
Taylor “Smitty” Smith and Ben Parks
“He really watched over that business. He was right on those receipts,” Caire adds. “Every night he would always make sure his receipts and deposits were together. He watched those books. And he didn’t have to do any publicity – you might see a little ad here or there – because he was that popular.”
If you rolled into “The Shop” back in the day, you were just as likely to see Parks’ good friend Taylor “Smitty” Smith, a barber since coming to Madison from Greenville, Miss., in the ‘50s.
“It was always him and Smitty,” Caire says. “Once in awhile one or two young people were in that he would apprentice. It was the place to hang out. It was the only black place that we were aware of so everybody went to Mr. Parks place to get their hair cut. He was popular. You’d have to book your haircut 3 or 4 weeks in advance.
“Ben always wanted to keep things in the black community. He was big on that. He stayed in the black neighborhood,” Caire adds. “He didn’t move out to the west side or other places – and he could have afforded to. They stayed right there. They raised their children well and they did well.”
Margaret and Ben Parks with children Glenn and GlennaBen Parks’ daughter Andrea
Parks’ daughter, Andrea, graduated from Madison West and is retired from the military after 21 years in the U.S. Army. She now lives in Killeen, Texas. His son, Glenn Parks, graduated from Madison Memorial and is a behavioral and mental health counselor living in Georgia. Daughter Glenna also graduated from Memorial and is a nurse who lives in Milwaukee.
Ben Parks’ influence went far beyond his barbershop. He was a leader in the neighborhood and the community, a father figure, a mentor, and a role model.
“Their yard was always immaculate. His wife [Margaret Parks] had a nice little garden back there. I got to see them as a husband-and-wife team. It’s something that I didn’t get to see otherwise … and that was huge for me and others,” Caire remembers. “To see them work together, plan together, and love each other … that was important to me. They lived that traditional middle-class black life.”
Growing up, Caire says he was at Mr. Parks’ house just as much as I was at his own house. If not more. “He had some strict rules for the kids; but they weren’t too strict,” Caire says. “They had to finish those chores. We’d have to scatter every day at 4 or 4:30 so they could get those chores done! That was serious stuff.”
Margaret and Ben Parks
Caire specifically remembers Mr. Parks as a kind man and a man who really loved golf.
“He’d go out to golf every Monday; the barbershop would be closed every Monday,” Caire says. “Occasionally, he’d go on a weekend, but he was always in that barbershop – Tuesday through Saturday.
“Mr. Parks loved to go fishing, too. He was the only black man I knew with a boat!” adds Caire, with a laugh. “He’d park his boat right in his driveway – that first house on the left on Taft St. by the Boys and Girls Club. There weren’t too many brothers with boats on the water!”
Ben Parks was 84 when he passed away in December of 2013. It was a giant loss for not just the Madison south side community, but for the Madison community as a whole.
“Great father, great family man, great community steward, great man of the village,” Caire says. “I love that man. I miss him. He was like a father figure for me.”
“He was proud to be an entrepreneur and to provide employment opportunities,” adds Glenn Parks. “That was something that was very substantial for him … to be able to have an impact economically speaking on his own community. Especially, back in that time in the ’60s and ’70s for people in that area who were struggling. He loved that he could create some opportunities that would increase the quality of life for people in Madison.”
Last year I trained and ran my first-ever half marathon with my best girlfriends. The tough, yet empowering experience made me think about how the practice of regular running strengthened my lifestyle, health, bond with my girls and self-confidence. However, after completing the half marathon in Chicago, I couldn’t help but notice how few black people, particularly women, ran the race. Out of thousands of participants, I was one of only a few. To me this was surprising, especially given the widely discussed health benefits of running and the increasing trend of running organized races (The Color Run or Tough Mudder, anyone?). Why aren’t more black women running? Some reasons that come to mind include constrained time, low energy, fear of failure, not knowing where to start, or not wanting to sweat out a press. But, hell, I don’t know.
Let’s be clear: All abled bodies should consider running as a form of exercise and stress relief. There’s been extensive research on its benefits, and as far as I am concerned it’s the most basic and accessible (free!) type of cardio. So why should black women run?
1. THE HEALTH BENEFITS ARE UNDISPUTED.
And black women need this more than ever. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, African-American women hold some the highest rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity in the country. Running jumpstarts weight loss, strengthens your heart and can reduce your likelihood of developing these health issues.
2. STRESS RELIEF From the constant media coverage of discrimination and violence toward blacks to concerns about your family, career path and value in this world, being young and black in America right now is stressful! Running is a great way to disconnect from all the noise and clear your head. Not only does it release endorphins, but it also connects you with your body and mind and can serve as a little therapeutic space.
3. IT’S AFFORDABLE!
My aunt always jokes that she runs because you don’t have to pay anything to do it. No gym fees. No weights. No team membership. No trainer. Aside from a good pair of running shoes (upwards $100) and some nice weather, you’re set.
4. HAIR GROWTH
Running sparks hair, skin, and nail growth, and with all the protective styling you have to do with your hair you see little-to-no breakage.
5. YOU START TO LOOK FLAWLESS.
And if you’re an outdoor runner like me, you gain this great sunshine-y glow that keeps you looking sun-kissed throughout the day.
6. AND ALL THIS PERFECTION BRINGS THE BOYS TO THE YARD
Not only do you look better but you feel better. This fact alone has an exponential effect, with increased strength spawning more confidence and magneticism. You are enticing. Furthermore, it becomes an impressive talking point in social settings. Relish in the new attention you attract.
7. TAKES YOUR SELF-CONFIDENCE TO NEW LEVELS
Any runner will tell you, some workouts are harder than others. The first mile is sometimes harder than the second. Just like getting through tough days, getting through tough runs is a mental game. You remind yourself to put one foot in front of the other and to just breathe. In doing so, you gain a mental strength and tolerance that goes far beyond anything physical. It’s a deeply spiritual experience. And man do you feel incredible when you finally make it over that physical or metaphorical hill. You run your world. That empowerment is gold. That confidence is what black women deserve.
8. WHILE RUNNING IS PERSONAL, IT CAN BE SOCIAL.
You can use running as a social outlet, swapping a happy hour out for a group run. Most cities have running groups you can casually join for free. In my case, my girlfriends and I planned to do this race together because we live in different parts of the country and we wanted to find a positive and healthy reason to come together. Using an app to track our runs, we were able to hold each other accountable and share our stories (or in my case sweaty selfies) from across the nation. Making it social can make participation an incentive and foster a culture of support.
9. AS THE BENEFITS INCREASE, THE BARRIERS CLEAR
Being busy is real and part of life. Having low energy is exhausting. The beautiful thing about running is that you can take it in pieces. You can jog for a half a mile and walk another. You can train for a half marathon or build up to running one mile three times a week. It’s your goal — it’s your journey. No matter the pace, however, the truth of the matter is once you make it a part of your life, the things that discouraged you (fear of failure, fear of commitment, low energy, outside demands) will become less of a hindrance.
10. YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING FOR YOU
And what black queen doesn’t deserve a little something for herself? #treatyoself
There’s endless data and statistics that tell the story of what it’s like to be an African-American student at a predominantly white college. Those numbers across the nation paint a dismal picture.
And it’s even worse here in Wisconsin. According to Academic Planning and Institutional Research, just over 2 percent (1,403) of UW-Madison’s 29,302 undergraduate students identified themselves as African-American last year, as well as 2.6 percent of faculty and 1.3 percent of instructional staff.
But the crisis we have seen for students of color that are starting to be highlighted in college uprisings across the nation can be described much better with personal stories than it can with numbers.
Students of color — especially African American students — overwhelmingly feel isolated and alone and often depressed amidst white campus culture. Research earlier this year from Harvard University’s Voices of Diversity project detailed that racist treatment on college campuses often take the form of microaggressions that cause their targets confusion, sadness, self-doubt, anxiety, and frustration and a constant drain on their energy and attention.
“I’ve had numerous times when I felt like I didn’t want to be here anymore. I couldn’t go to class. I have struggled with my grades because there are times when I feel like I just don’t belong and I don’t know how to survive here,” says UW-Madison student Taiyani Hennings. “It’s hard because you want to say something but you don’t know who to say it to.”
Bad college campus climates for students of color cause grades to suffer; jeopardizing not only students’ academic careers but also future success. And that’s for the students that plow through. Research shows graduation rates fall for students of color when they’re forced to pursue their collegiate education in a hostile environment.
“That struggle has been true on every campus I’ve been on as a student and a professor,” says Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor in curriculum and education at UW-Madison, who has also been at the University of Washington, Stanford University, and Santa Clara University. “It’s not always overt racism, either. They tend to be what is identified now as ‘microagressions’ or what is called ‘1,000 tiny cuts.’ Constantly little things. It’s constantly seeing the inequitable ways things play out on campus. That’s a frustration the students are facing.
“I just hate to see students come out of the university as survivors rather than thrivers,” she adds. “But that is the reality.”
Problems with campus climate for people of color is as old as the universities themselves. “I can remember being miserable at school at the University of Washington. I was absolutely miserable. Every single day,” Ladson-Billings says. “I wanted to leave. But I decided, ‘You know what … I’m here. This is an opportunity. I’m going to get this done. I have to get this done.'”
“That struggle has been true on every campus I’ve been on as a student and a professor,” says Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor in curriculum and education at UW-Madison.
So while racial climate has been a problem for decades and decades, little effort has been made to address it. Do white students, professors and faculty just think that black students are being whiney and overdramatic when it comes to campus climate?
“Yeah, some clearly do,” says Ladson-Billings, who is known for her groundbreaking work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory. “Others, know that it goes on but they don’t understand the depths of how much it really hurts.”
Ladson-Billings teaches a class in the fall called “Multicultural Perspectives on Education” and for 20-some years she has had her students read a book by Jane Smiley called “Moo.” The setting is a Midwestern college and there’s a point in the book when the one black female student named Mary living in a Co-op with all white women gets called the N-word by a visiting white male. “Mary is just traumatized by it. Her young white friends come to her rescue and ask the male to leave,” Ladson-Billings says. “In the minds of the white students, it’s over. We’ve dealt with it. Mary, meanwhile, is beginning to spiral out of control. She no longer feels safe. She doesn’t know how to respond. She’s sad. But her friends are not sympathetic. ‘We’ve dealt with that, Mary. It’s over.’ She’s not finding any sympathy.
“That’s part of what our students experience,” Ladson-Billings adds. “It’s not that white students aren’t aware of things that go on as a person of color on this campus; it just that it doesn’t have the same significance.”
Are colleges and universities to blame? Isn’t it a lot of the same problems that go on every day overall in Madison, leader in the nation for racial disparities?
“There are some similarities. The advantages that people have in the wider community is that they are often in spaces of choice,” Ladson-Billings says. “I can leave my job and head over South Madison or friends in Darbo/Worthington. I can drive to Milwaukee and hang out with friends. There’s always those spaces.
“Our students don’t have that here. And many are coming from communities where there were plenty of black people and people of color,” she adds. “When they get to campus, it’s cultural shock.”
CONSTANT STRUGGLE
Awa Fofana came to UW-Madison after attending Madison East High School, which is significantly more diverse than the UW campus. “It was definitely a big difference. Many of the white students at UW come from small cities throughout Wisconsin and they’ve never seen or interacted with a person of color in their life,” Fofana says. “It was really eye-opening for me to see that some people really just don’t care if they are offending people.”
UW-Madison student Awa Fofana
This past Halloween, Fofana spent time with a friend of her friend at a UW campus party who was dressed as a “Drunk Mexican.”
“It’s so hard to see that. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and explain why it’s so offensive. They actually went around calling themselves ‘a Drunk Mexican,’” Fofana recalls. “It’s hard to be the advocate for everybody on campus because then people think you’re uptight or stuck up because you believe in being fair and being culturally aware and competent.”
The social media around campus initiatives and activism is where the real nastiness surfaces, especially the anonymous app Yik-Yak.
“On Yik-Yak, I see so many people making some extremely derogatory comments about people of color. People have a lot of confidence on social media and the things they say towards people of color are so outlandish and rude,” Fofana says. “Seeing those comments on social media make me wonder: Who are those people in my classes that think like that? Am I talking to those people right now? How do they perceive me? Constantly thinking about that is a struggle for me. Who is on my side? Who likes me? And who thinks I don’t deserve to be in college? Who hates me and sees me as that stereotypical person in their eyes? That’s the issue I face every day.”
Fofana says that these issues need to be addressed. It can be difficult to be a good student while always having to be an activist on the side. “It’s very overwhelming dealing with your personal life, dealing with school, dealing with activism and having these conversations and still having time for yourself,” Fofana says. “College life can be so demanding and this just adds an extra layer.”
The day-to-day grind of being the token person of color can be difficult, Fofana adds, especially in the UW Business School where she sticks out even more than usual. “I’m often the only black person in class. It’s hard for me feeling different and not wanting to say or do the wrong thing that might make people question my character,” she says. “But at the same time, it’s really empowered me to be active and have my voice heard when topics of inclusion and diversity come up in class.”
. WAITING FOR THE NEXT RACIAL SLUR
Decades of neglect and campus abuse have come to a head up in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Oumou Cisse and other Lawrence University students of color have been a target of a lot of vitriol and hate speech. “The day-to-day climate here at Lawrence has been one of fear,” Cisse tells Madison365. “For me, it’s waiting for the next racial slur to be yelled out of a car window or almost getting hit by a car. It’s about facing constant microaggressions or constantly getting singled out to speak on behalf of all black people if you are the only person of color in your class.”
Oumou Cisse is a student at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Cisse is originally from Mali, a country in West Africa, and she came to Wisconsin from Washington D.C. where her family still lives. She says there are very few students of color on campus.
“There’s a climate of fear in anticipation for the next thing to happen,” Cisse says. “I walk around campus all the time on alert. I have my phone on camera mode or record so that I can capture incidents as they happen.
“What really happens is that people try not to think about it,” Cisse adds. “People think of Lawrence University as this safe bubble and nothing bad ever happens here. People get so stuck on this idea that they don’t want to think that these bad things happen to students on this campus and in the community. A lot of these issues do get brushed off and swept under the rug along with other issues.”
“The demands we are making now are pretty much the same as the demands made in 1972 at Lawrence when the students of color took over the president’s house,” Cisse says. “Nothing ever gets done. You go in and you speak to someone and they tell you to grow a tougher skin or grow up.”
“A number of the things that the students have brought forward are things that have been discussed. Training for faculty and staff is going to be an ongoing process because we have new people all the time and because issues change,” said Truesdell. “These efforts are never done. I think it’s clear to us we have much work to do as many colleges would say these days.” Lawrence University’s students of color are standing against racism and discrimination they face on campus, in the classroom and in the local community.
Cisse would like to see more of this kind of support.
“It’s time for people to use their privilege to help oppressed and marginalized groups have their own voice and to help others. There’s just a lack of compassion and empathy. People say this all the time: ‘You should realize that you’re in Appleton, Wisconsin. You’re in the Midwest. That is why people act this way.’ But our location shouldn’t justify people’s hatred and bigotry.”
NOT WORTH IT TO SPEAK UP
The whiteness of the UW-Madison campus was a shock for Hennings who hails from the north side of Milwaukee.
“I went to Rufus King High School, so I felt like I had good sense of diversity and what that was,” says Hennings, who is also the treasurer of the Wisconsin Black Student Union. “I was just kinda placed into a world that I’ve never seen before. I feel like the experience has enriched me a little bit because once I get to the real world, this is probably what I’m going to experience. But dealing with it now is very real and it’s hard.
“I try to push myself to be more involved in diversity and culture than I ever was before. But I feel like a negative aspect of my existence on campus is that I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time,” she adds. “You walk outside and there are no people who look like you. So, you constantly look at yourself.”
On campus, students of color are pressured into giving up their identities to fit in to the white middle class style of talking, dressing, and acting. Hennings says she’s not into code switching any more. “I don’t think about the clothes I wear any more or how I talk,” she says. “I just am who I am at this point.”
It’s not just a problem with the students.
“Just get through it,” says UW-Madison student Taiyani Hennings. “A lot of us are here on scholarships so we want to be able to get our degrees … that’s our main goal. If they take that away from us because we’re causing a problem, than we are the ones who lose out big time; not them. “
“My sophomore year I was really into political science and I was taking a course where we were talking about politics and I was told that I was wrong for not believing everything Obama was saying,” says Hennings, a communications arts major and an Office Assistant at PEOPLE Program. “It’s politics. I know there is right and wrong in what everybody does. But I was basically told that, ‘You’re black. You’re supposed to think he’s the most amazing person ever.’ I was, like, no. The professor wanted me to be the spokesperson for all black people and not question anything Obama did. What do you say to that?”
It’s very difficult to speak up in a climate where you are so significantly outnumbered. And who would you tell? And why create more problems for yourself?
“I’ve heard a lot of similar stories from my peers but we never say anything to people who are higher [up],” Hennings says. “We know that even if we say something, it’s going to roll right off their backs. We’re just causing more headaches for ourselves if we speak up.”
Students of color are expected to maintain academic expectations as racism and discrimination saps away their time and energy.
“Just get through it,” says Hennings with a sigh. “A lot of us are here on scholarships so we want to be able to get our degrees … that’s our main goal. If they take that away from us because we’re causing a problem, than we are the ones who lose out big time; not them. “
NATIONAL COLLEGE UPRISINGS LEADING TO CHANGE
Colleges and universities across the United States have known about these problems for decades but movement to address them has historically been at a snail’s pace. For many, it seems like a hopeless situation. But is it?
The recent events that have transpired at the University of Missouri have changed the game. If African American students can’t appeal to people’s humanity, they have shown that they can appeal to their pocketbooks.
“I knew about Missouri back when it was small and before it went national, I have a friend that goes to school there and she has been keeping me updated on the situation going on,” Hennings says. “Black people have tremendous economic power. If we stop buying from these stores than they would take notice and listen. I think what happened in Missouri was important. We should feel comfortable in a country that naturally none of us belong to …. but we all want to belong to.”
Awa Fofana
“Since we are such a minority on campus, I thought it was fantastic to see how many allies we have across the nation,” adds Fofana. “Seeing other schools come together and other UW systems together shows a lot of progress to where we are moving forward to.”
As a result of Missouri, student protests over racial inequality and campus climate have spread to colleges across the country.
“I think all chancellors and presidents are on alert and they don’t want Missouri. I think that has made everybody decide they need to do something,” says Ladson-Billings.
But the case for diversity and cultural understanding should not be like forcing people to eat their vegetables. Ladson-Billings hopes it would be common sense. The nation is becoming much more diverse every day. The state is becoming much more diverse, as is the city. Madison will lose out big time if it lags behind on diversity.
“We have plenty of research that tells us that when you have a variety of perspectives, you have a broader range of possibilities for problem solving … you begin to think about things that you hadn’t considered before,” Ladson-Billings says. “It’s interesting to me that the larger society recognizes the benefits of diversity in every other endeavor. Diversity will make us better.”
In Madison, however, diversity is a term that is batted around like a beach ball at a Badger game. (Indubitably an all-white crowd at said Badger game). At some point there needs to be action.
“My problem is that I’m a product person stuck in a process community. What I mean by that is that we love to talk here in Madison. We talk this stuff to death. In fact, as long as you are talking, people consider that to be action,” Ladson-Billings says. “You’ll hear people here say, ‘We got all the input! We’ve heard from everybody.’ Yeah, but what did you do? That’s the way that Madison functions. It takes so long to get to product. So people get frustrated. They give up. And the sense of urgency heats up.
“We like to study everything. And I’m a scientist so I’m not anti-study,” Ladson-Billings adds. “But, when you’re in the midst of crisis, you have to do triage. You have to treat what’s dying right there before us. You have to act.”
When we put Brandi Grayson on our list of the 28 most influential African Americans in Wisconsin, we called her “disrupter of the year.” Her tactics rub some the wrong way, but they do the job — and command attention. Last year, she and other advocates formed Young Gifted and Black, a local organization loosely affiliated with Black Lives Matter.
She’s put racism front and center in every conversation. Inequity and injustice– both personal and systemic — are never far from her mind.
Rank your Top 5 MCs. Eve, Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, OutKast, MC Lyte.
A lot of people have their own opinions of who you are. In your own words tell us: Who is Brandi Grayson? Brandi Grayson is a 35-year-old Black woman. Who happens to be a grandmother. I am a grandmother of three beautiful little girls: Markia (2), Jazz (1) and Nahla (6 months).
I am the biological mother of two girls, Antavia, 21 (Nahla’s mom) and Ciara, 15. I am also the mother of Quetta, 21 (Markia’s mom) and Destiny, 15 (Jazz’s mom).
I’ve lived in Madison since the age of 10.
Prior to living in Madison I lived in Chicago. During my short stay in Chicago I experienced a lot of trauma, abuse and neglect. Like many children living in the inner city, I joined a gang at a very early age.
I surprise myself sometimes when I think about the reality in which I’ve lived. Surviving the streets of Chicago at the age of 8; being sent to Los Angeles at the age of 7; watching my mother prostitute; panhandling to eat.
My grandmother died and I was sent to Madison to live with my mother who had relocated here a couple years prior.
Within a few months of living with my mom, I was placed into foster care.
I was in and out of the foster care system most of my life. Even in Chicago I was part of the system.
My childhood was unstable, but I was a smart kid and extremely resilient. I was always happy, particularly at school. Despite my hair not being combed and not having clothes to wear, I was excited to get out of the house.
In high school I found stability when I was placed with Rita Adair. She provided me with stability and security. Thus I was able to thrive. I had a baby at the time, Antavia, and she was my priority. Nothing mattered but loving her and providing her with the best. And that’s what I did.
Despite bad relationships and job losses after high school, I was able to get my stuff together. I went back to college. I started reading and writing. I found that I was extremely passionate about the plight of Black people. I was hungry for the answer of WHY my people suffered so?
Which led me to all kinds of theories. Theories rooted in theology, theories rooted in white patriarchy, in Ancient Egyptian Kemet and other ancient civilizations.
I also stumbled upon great works by great leaders such as Dr. Amos Wilson, Carter G. Woodson, Dick Gregory, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Bell Hooks, Patricia Hill, Frances Cress Welsing, etc. I found stories of great Black leaders and theories and explanations rooted in the black experience. It was nothing close to what I had learned up until that moment. So in essence I found myself. And when I did, I became unstoppable.
I was able to see my greatness and my purpose. I was able to understand all the trauma, pain, abuse and feelings of nothingness that had prepared me for this moment.
So Brandi Grayson in essence represents the poor families in Madison. I represent those who have survived poverty. I represent those who will never see opportunities or have access to resources that would set their lives on a different trajectory.
I am that woman you judge in the school with her children crying with her on the phone. I am the woman who went to college while on a Section 8 voucher for housing and supported by food stamps and Medicaid.
I am that girl in the classroom whom teachers dismissed, disregarded, or had a hard time communicating with.
I’m that little girl who grew up in the foster care system. Whose mother suffered and suffers from mental wellness challenges and drug addictions.
I’m that girl who folks said wouldn’t amount to nothing.
I’m that little girl who begged God to change my skin so kids and adults wouldn’t call me mean names.
I am that girl who dreamed about a different reality, and believed that all white people lived in nice houses and drove nice cars.
I am that girl who prayed to God to be different so everyone would like me. And no matter how hard I tried to fit in, I never fit. In church, I asked too many questions. In school, I asked too many questions. At home, I asked too many questions.
I am that girl whose only desire was and is to be loved and accepted for all of me. Not pieces of me that feel good. But all of me. The good, the bad and the ugly.
I am that girl who grew up without a father, who still struggles to feel whole as a result.
I am that little girl who grew up alone and too fast, but somehow I made it.
Brandi Grayson (Photo by Nathan Royko Maurer)
I am the 350. I am part of the most disenfranchised, most marginalized—the forgotten, the undeserving and the uncared for. Yes. It is true. That is me.
I am a woman who has dedicated her life to the fight for Black Liberation. I am a woman who anchors herself in personal development—getting better at everything that I do, in every possible way.
I am a woman in search of ways to heal, and I’ve found some.
I am a woman who works 45 to 60 hours a week for my 9-5 job, and another 10 to 20 doing activism work. Working not because I have to, not because I’m paid to or funded to, not because we are responsible for white privilege, white power or racism, but because it’s the ONLY thing I can do to stay sane in an insane world.
I am that Black woman whose anger cannot be comprehended from the luxury of white privilege.
Despite all that makes me who I AM, most importantly I am Lover of LIFE! I love to read books and articles. Watch documentaries and ride my motorcycle (a 2007 Yamaha V Star 1100). I love spending time with good people and family. I love hosting dinners. I love expanding my knowledge. I love trying new things. I love laughing. I love my children with ALL that I am. I love my grandchildren in a way that can’t be explained with words. When I look at them, I feel whole. I feel like I have done everything right. I’m filled with love and HOPE. It’s something special about being a grandmother that makes you thankful all over again for your children. I love life. I love people. I love working with my people and for my people.
I love LOVE!!!
Do you prefer being called Black or African American? I prefer to be called Black American. One, I don’t know where my ancestors are from, where they’re from in Africa; two, I don’t have access or direct connection to African culture, except what I read; three, I believe the term African American is reserved for people whose family is first generation immigrants from Africa, which I am not. My people were not immigrants. They did not come here looking for a better life. We were brought here and forced to become inanimate objects. If it were up to me, I would call all Black Americans “the stolen children of Africa.”
In past interviews you mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King’s disruptive tactics and reasoning. At the core of what drove Dr. King was his faith in God. What is your driving force? The driving force behind me is my burning desire to be free. To be free from my current existence, which is rooted in making sure white people feel safe. My ability to exist is measured by how safe I make white people feel. I have to make sure they feel comfortable with the words that come out of my mouth. I have to make sure they feel comfortable when I enter the store with two of my friends. I have to make sure they feel comfortable if I’m walking towards them at night. I have to make sure if I get pulled over, that I say or imply nothing that could or would be seen as rudeness or lack of respect. The consequence could be my life.
I have to make sure I give space to white people when they’re dealing with white fatigue, or I might lose my job. I have to make sure when I respond to racist behaviors, comments or suggestions, that I respond in a way that is safe for the white person who offended me.
I have to make sure when I’m expressing my emotions, my hurt, my pain, my grief—over the bloodshed of my people—I have to make sure white people around me don’t feel like I’m attacking them or blaming them. Because then I become the angry black woman who’s always pulling the race card.
I have to make sure they’re comfortable; thus I have to follow their rules, understandings, matrices, frameworks, ideologies, culture, etc.
I have a burning desire to be free from all of that. To self-actualize as I see fit based on my understanding of my existence. I desire to have dominion over my life.
Tony Robinson
Tamir Rice was murdered at the age of 12 because he was not free to be a child. He was not free like other boys his age to play with a toy gun; thus his life was taken. Tony Robinson wasn’t free to be a boy. You know the saying, “boys will be boys.” That doesn’t apply if you’re black. It’s not allowed. To do so sparks fear into certain people. And when they feel unsafe, the black body is no longer perceived as a human, but an object that must be dealt with.
The driving force behind me is my burning desire to be free from horrific stories of our children being beaten and/or murdered by grown men in uniforms.
I have the burning desire to be free from people telling me what I must do to be accepted. I have a burning desire to SPEAK my truth without having my truth questioned and/or dismissed because it doesn’t align with the truth of my oppressor.
My burning desire for black liberation is my driving force AND God is my driver. God is the Creator of my soul — and thus I AM.
Who has had a bigger impact on the African American culture, Jay-Z or President Obama? I believe they have similar impacts that manifest differently.
Jay-Z
Jay Z represents the power that comes with money, the power that comes with playing the game of capitalism. Jay Z represents the dreams and hopes of many of our poor children and families.
He represents that which we are told we are capable of achieving as children. We can aspire to be a rapper, a singer, an athlete or a drug dealer, but nothing more.
Obama represents what it means to have power and a title in name but NOT in actuality. Obama is the president of the United States of America and there is nothing he can do about our children dying in the streets. He represents just how powerless we are as a Black Nation.
The same holds true of Jay Z. Despite all his money, all his fame and power, he is powerless. He can’t do anything about Black people dying every eight hours due to White Patriarchal Supremacy that controls and rules every system.
The impact on Black Americans is that we know our place in America. We know Jay Z and Obama are representatives of the objectification of our entire being. We also know that we only have two options: become that which is violently oppressing us, or fight with all we have until our last breaths.
You have become a public figure. How has that affected your life, for better and for worse? There has been much more for the better. I would say I’ve learned so much over the last year about politics, agendas, affiliations, power dynamics, who controls who, unspoken allegiances, etc.
I’ve learned that my voice does matter. I’ve learned just how powerful people power is. I’ve also learned patience. I’ve learned the pain behind the weight of racism from the white perspective. I’ve learned that most people desire to do the right thing and just don’t know how.
I’ve learned how difficult it is for black people to effect change from within systems. I’ve learned that systems are designed to eliminate those who desire real change. I’ve learned if I don’t play by the rules, even folks who look like me will stand against me.
I also learned that if I don’t take care of me, no one will. I’ve learned not to take things that people say or do personally. I’ve learned that it’s okay to be me. Even if being me doesn’t work for other people. I’ve learned how hard it is to walk in love when you are surrounded by hate. I’ve learned a lot. Some lessons were growing pains and other lessons left scars.
Many amazing relationships and friendships grew out of the work of YGB. I meet some amazing people. My ideas and beliefs around transgender, non-conforming, queer, gay, and white allyship was challenged and polished. I grew personally, spiritually and emotionally.
But there have been some changes for the worse. The harassment and fear of harassment by the hands of the Madison Police Department is the worst thing that has happened. A close second is the hate that I experienced and continue to experience. So much hate from so many different people.
I’m okay with people not liking what I have to say, but the nasty, hateful things that folks have done and have said to me are frightening. I’ve never said anything hateful to anyone, even when I was in pain and grieving over the loss of one of our children.
I’ve learned that change will come, but it will take a lifetime of suffering to RISE as a NATION.
Coming Thursday: find out what advice Brandi would give black police officers and school district leaders, her questions about do-gooders and what motivates her more: doubters or supporters? She has a lot of both…
Intellectual Ratchet hosts a Paint Night (Photo by Naku Mayo)
Intellectual Ratchet. Sounds like a contradiction, right? How can someone be well-versed in the social theory of Michel Foucault, and still appreciate a profanity-laced, “hair-weave-killer” brawl on Love and Hip-Hop: Atlanta? Well, I do; and when I left the diverse, bustling nightlife of Miami to move to Madison, Wis., I assumed that the turn up was over.
That was until I discovered Intellectual Ratchet.
Intellectual Ratchet (IR) is a lifestyle group with a mission to connect young, urban, professionals who seek an alternative to Madison’s typical nightlife experience. Madison is a college town and there are a lot of bars, a lot of bros, and a lot of bubbles. It is difficult for people who are new to Madison, or detached from the established networks, to carve out a thriving social space. IR promotes the subculture that exists in Madison, and provides an enclave for the folks who identify with it to explore the city on their terms. Martinez White with Intellectual Ratchet CEO Ja’Mel Ware (right) (Photo credit: Naku Mayo, “In His Eye” Photography)
Founder and CEO Ja’Mel Ware, Branding Consultant Kimberly Cho, and Social Connector Britney Sinclair make up the IR team. Ware began to see Madison in a different light after graduating from the University of Wisconsin. He asked himself, “Where does the young professional go to experience Madison? Where do you go when you are not the status quo?”
Now, you can attend a multitude of events hosted by Intellectual Ratchet. Eric Upchurch shows off his artwork at “Hard in the Paint” (Photo credit: Naku Mayo, “In His Eye” Photography)
IR’s recent event “Hard in the Paint” was at Paintbar, a re-appropriated warehouse space covered floor to ceiling in original paintings created by artists in residence. Participants munched on artisanal flatbreads and sipped popular Wisconsin microbrews while Notorious B.I.G.’s classic “Big Poppa” induced rhythmic head-nods. West Label Art’s Ashley Robertson commissioned the reference piece for the event: Three owls stylized as the iconic Run DMC. The vibe continued well beyond the last stroke of a paintbrush, as folks exchanged numbers and business cards, and social and entrepreneurial networks manifested. IR routinely partners with local businesses to expose their guests to a uniquely Madison experience.
“Hard in the Paint” was the first event of its kind in Madison, but Intellectual Ratchet creator Ja’Mel Ware envisions much more. Ware sees IR expanding beyond Madison’s borders, and promoting the brand nationwide. Ware is conscious that there are towns all over the country just like Madison that have populations of young, urban professionals who may feel disconnected from the general social space of their cities. Ware envisions that IR will continue to do what it does best: building partnerships among people who “embrace the contradiction.”
On the night Tony Robinson was killed in early March, a large crowd of people quickly amassed on Willy Street to protest well into the night. Robinson’s east side extended family where he grew up and later died was out in force as was Young Black and Gifted and other concerned community members. Some people were distraught. Some were extremely sad. Others were very angry. The crowd hurled furious chants at the lines of motionless police officers sent to the area to maintain the peace. One of the more popular chants was “F**k the police!”
Lester Moore, an African American police officer who serves the Darbo/Worthington neighborhood, was there that cold night enduring the constant chants and insults. Moore has spent most of his career working in Madison’s most troubled neighborhoods doing the hard work of community building and developing community trust. That night, he talked with some of the near east siders that he knew well and listened to their concerns. But he also listened to the chants. There was no missing them. Like he had done in his lifetime of police work, he let it roll right off him.
“There was a lot of anger, but I was OK with that because people have to vent and people have to grieve,” Moore says. “That was a long night for me. But when I look at the things that YGB[Young Gifted and Black] are doing, for me, it’s reminiscent of the civil rights movement. It’s non-violent civil disobedience. We’ve got it good here in Madison. When you look at Baltimore and when you look at Ferguson … we’ve got it good here. I don’t feel upset when people are out there doing what they are doing. I’m OK with that.
“[YGB leader] Eric Upchurch … I’ve had good conversations with him. He’s a good guy. Even [YGB leader] Brandi [Grayson]. I know Brandi from way back in the day,” Moore adds. “There are some things that Brandi says that I definitely agree with. You can’t ignore that Race to Equity report. The things that they are talking about we need to have a serious conversation about.”
Police officer is the rare occupation where you can be doing your job passionately and perfectly and you will still get blamed, scapegoated, denigrated, and abused for something that some other police officer did – oftentimes thousands of miles away.
At the same time, there’s no denying that young black men have been disproportionately been the victims of police violence in America. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Michael Brown. And, yes, Tony Robinson. They are just a few African-Americans that have been killed by police officers this past year.
“Every time there is an incident like in South Carolina where a person [Walter Scott] gets shot in the back running away from a police officer, that is just devastating to any trust that might have built up,” says Wayne Strong, a longtime African American neighborhood police officer and detective in Madison who is now the Criminal Justice Program Chair at Globe University. “Every time something like that happens, it hurts. It’s a major setback.”
There’s no doubt that the shooting of Tony Robinson was a significant setback in Madison for police/community relations. Or, maybe it just brought the frustration and resentment to the forefront in a city where police arrest African-Americans at more than 10 times the rate at which they arrest whites.
LIVING IN TWO WORLDS
Officer Moore, who grew up around poverty in Houston, Texas, clearly lives in two worlds as a person of color and as a police officer. He can’t help but see both sides. “When I see things that may be police brutality, I want to know more. I want to know what happened. I want to see the video,” Moore says. “Because there are things that we do that sometimes the public doesn’t understand why we do what we do. As a person of color, I want to see what happens because things happen to us that are unjust. I need to see because it affects me in two different ways.”
Moore has been the neighborhood officer at Darbo/Worthington since November of 2013 where he has worked hard to really become a part of that community.
“It was important for me to build those relationships so when the hard stuff comes it makes it a lot easier to deal with,” Moore says.
“Because of the obvious things that have been going on throughout the nation between communities of color and police, I’ve been trying to redevelop that trust with the African American community,” he adds. “That’s to say if we ever had it. Looking at the history of people of color and the police … that’s been a rocky relationship, so how do we make that better? How do we make people feel valued and respected and well-served within the community?”
Moore has his rough days on the job in Darbo where he gets pushback. “I had to figure out a way to deal with that emotionally and mentally and I’ve come up with a mantra that I say to myself: It’s not my job to judge a person’s worth in society. I only have to make a decision about their actions,” he says.
Moore does feel like he has to take the time to give a person a positive word if he can. “This is a very unique job. We meet people at a point of crisis and at the worst times in their lives,” he says. “We should be giving people something positive. Even if it is small. What a person is today may not be what they are tomorrow.”
Moore retells a recent story where he had to arrest an older person who was drunk at the East Transfer Point. “When I walked up, he squared off on me. I quickly got him into handcuffs but he was like, ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’” Moore remembers. “I took a long hard look at him and I said, “Mr. So and So, you remind me of my pops. You look a lot like my pops.’ And we started talking and that changed the whole dynamic. We got to the jail and I said to him, “I really need you to take good care of yourself.’ And I gave him a hug. I said, “I just want you to know I love you, man.’ He said, ‘I love you, too.’”
Moore’s job requires him to be creative and to use outside-the-box type of thinking. “My strong suit is communication … because I talk a lot,” Moore smiles. “There’s always time to talk.”
Some people in law enforcement would view that as weakness. Moore views it as a strength. “I talk about everyday things with people,” he says. “I call it working in the community versus being in the community. I like to be in the community.
“Having me riding around in the neighborhood [and] walking in the neighborhood should be a regular thing that they see as non-threatening. It’s just ‘Oh, that’s our neighbor – Lester Moore.’ He works out here, but he’s also a part of the community and is somebody we know, we love, and we can trust to do the job to the best of his ability,’” Moore adds.
But no matter how hard he tries, there will always be people that see him as the bad guy.
“Whenever I have a kid that says, ‘I don’t like the police. I’m not gonna talk to you.’ …. That’s a challenge to me. I just smile big and say, ‘You might not like me today … but in about two months you’re gonna love me.’ I’m going to keep coming and keep coming,” Moore says.
STRONG IN THE COMMUNITY
Strong has spent a lifetime working on Madison’s south side, sometimes in very dangerous situations like in the early ‘90s when he was an undercover copy trying to get crack cocaine and other drugs off the streets and out of the hands of young people. In ’94, he started to work in the south side neighborhood as their Baird-Fisher neighborhood officer. “That was, by far, my most rewarding experience as a police officer … working with the community and being a liaison between the police and community,” Strong remembers.
Even as an African American, south side community members didn’t always readily accept Strong. “They wanted to know how much I really cared about the community I was working in,” Strong remembers. “So breaking that barrier – what I call that blue barrier – and people seeing me through that uniform was important. That I was there to serve and protect but also be an advocate for those in the community working with different neighborhood groups and associations and civilian groups around South Madison.” Globe University–Madison East criminal justice program chair Wayne Strong
Strong’s perspective comes from decades and decades of police work but also from coaching and mentoring youth that come through this South Side Raiders football and cheerleading program. The Raiders pride themselves on being much more than football and the coaches are often surrogate fathers for troubled youth who need some positivity in their lives. Strong has been working in troubled communities in Madison for a long time now — for so long that some of his work was done before many in the current Black Lives Matter movement was born.
“I support Black Lives Matter. We need that kind of dialog. We have to have that kind of dialog … but I would also encourage people not to paint the broad brush that all cops are bad,” Strong says. “There has to be a give and take and there needs to be a very difficult and tough conversation that takes place so we can get to a place where we can move forward and better serve all of our people.
“In life, everybody brings a different perception and a different history to the discussion. It’s critical for everybody to listen to other people’s points of views,” he adds. “It’s a chance for dialog. Once we get past our immediate differences, then we begin to find out the many things we have in common. What is our end goal?”
Strong wants to see accountability and scrutiny and improvements. Everywhere.
“I look at Black Lives Matter and I say that’s a great movement … but what concerns me is the fact that if you are a black person in this country you are far, far, far more likely to be killed by another black person than anybody else. We have to look at that, too,” Strong says. “When we say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ we have to make sure that we are not only holding police accountable – and we should because cops in America kill far more people than they should – but we’ve also have to look at all of the violence in our own cities in terms of the black-on-black crime rate. It doesn’t mean that we are excusing, mitigating, or minimizing in any way, fashion, shape or form the fact that we are dying at the hands of police … which we are. But we’re also dying at the hands of each other – far more frequently than we’re dying at the hands of the police.
“Whether you die at the hands of a police officer or another black person, you are a statistic. You are a dead person,” Strong adds. “We want to save lives and prevent tragedies from happening. They way to do that is to keep the dialogue open and to keep collaborating. Because if we say that we’re not going to talk to them because they’re cops or we’re not going to talk to them because they are protestors, we’ve really lost. We can’t afford to do that right now.”
IT’S ALL A MATTER OF TRUST
Strong does not hold back his disdain for bad cops. “We need to weed them out. We don’t want them as police officers in any city in our country,” he says. “Let’s tighten up the hiring process. Let’s do better background checks. Let’s do better screening. Let’s do aptitude tests and let’s find out what people’s attitudes are towards people who are different than they are. Let’s figure out a way to get the best people out on the street who do the best job in protecting all of our people going forward.”
That will really cut down on the mistrust. And that, Strong says, is huge. “That mistrust between the black community and law enforcement is historical. That goes waaaaay back. There’s room for improvement. There’s a lot of work that we can do in building those bridges between the police and the community. That, to me, is the important work. That’s my life goal: to increase that. Increase the peace.”
The Madison Police Department – and police departments across the nation, for that matter – could go a long way towards solidifying that trust by examining how, when, where, and why they pursue and arrest different racial groups. I point out to Strong something that I’m sure he’s probably aware of: Study after study shows that white people use drugs at a rate higher than black people do but get arrested and go to prison at a tiny percentage.
“I agree. We need to have enforcement strategies that are just not targeted to one group,” Strong says. “If you are caught on campus doing drugs, you should be punished for that. You shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it because you are a white middle or upper class student. There needs to be consequences, I think. You need to have enforcement policies that are fair across the board.”
One could argue that fairness always ends with rich white kids’ attorneys. As Ray Charles once pointed out, just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice. For minorities, harsh sentencing policies often turn minor crimes into lifetime sentences. The same minor crimes that become a slap on the wrist for the wealthy white kids who have fantastic attorneys. Strong agrees that work needs to be done on the disparate impact of the drug war on people of color.
“I think we need to look at what impact we are having on furthering the disparities that exist within the criminal justice system,” he says. “You look at who’s in prison for drugs, and it’s more black and brown people. We have work to do as a society. A lot of work to do.”
It’s not just the justice system that is out of the control of dedicated neighborhood officers, individual police officers did not set these economic policies that limit opportunities for people of color nor do they segregate the community along racial lines. Almost 75 percent of African American youth (compared to 5.5 percent of white youth) live in poverty in Madison.
“What I see the most every day is poverty and we really need to put some money into solving issues of poverty and homelessness,” Moore says. “I don’t think people realize how poor some people are in this city. There are a lot of homeless families and a lot of homeless kids in the school district. Having everybody feel like they’ve got something.”
“If you can’t work inside the established economy, you have to get it some other way,” Moore adds. “You’re looking at people with no safety nets in life … literally living day to day. I would take money out of incarceration and put it into things up front like social programs and drug treatment. I would support a lot of programs that are already working but don’t get a lot of pub like Mentoring Positives [Darbo program run by Will Green that works with youth].
The curtain needs to be pulled back so the rest of Madison can see what is going on in these communities. “A lot of people are oblivious to what’s happening in parts of Madison. I think we need to do a better job of exposing that … putting it out there so that people understand that there are kids out here who are really suffering. There are kids out there who have food issues, home issues, school issues … and they are all related,” Moore says.
“We need to have a knowledge of what some of these kids are going through that lead them to get in trouble so we can work to prevent it up front,” Strong says. “Sixty percent of the kids in JRC [Juvenile Receiving Center] right now are African American children. It’s a cradle-to-prison pipeline that we need to stop. As a society, we really have to be a safety net for our children … because they are our future. This is the future of our city. If we continue to neglect it now, it will be troublesome later.”
In trying to solve this problem, Moore, like many of people of color in Madison, is not afraid to put Madison itself on blast.
“When the racial disparity numbers came out in Madison, it was no surprise to any person of color. It’s very liberal on the surface and very conservative underneath,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of experiences here based upon my race and color. I’ve had more experiences here than I’ve had in North Carolina, Virginia, and even Texas. It’s different. It’s covert rather than overt. It hurts more that way … because you say you’re this but you’re that. You’re thinking it’s good; but then you find out, ‘Woooooah. This isn’t cool.’
“I have always had talks with my kids about how to navigate the system and about being stopped by the police. And I’m a police officer!,” Moore adds. “I get nervous when I’m driving my personal car and I have the police behind me because of my experiences in the past with police. I know what that feeling feels like. It’s a horrible feeling and I don’t want anybody to feel that way. I think that’s the motivation on why I do things the way I do.”
But true to his nature, Moore doesn’t dwell on the negatives when asked about the prospects of his city.
“I’m optimistic. I’ve got officers coming up to me and talking to me about what they want to do,” he says. “They are just really positive about going out and having these connections and building these relationships with people. Officer Lester Moore (4th from left) meets with Darbo community members at the Salvation Army.
“There’s a great possibility for us to turn a corner. People are working hard. There’s a lot of good that’s beginning to happen,” he adds. “People are tired. They want to see something different and they want to see something better and I think they are open to letting those happen … even in the face of everything that’s going on right now – every officer-involved shooting of an unarmed person, every officer killed in the line of duty. People are still willing to have conversations. People are still willing to talk to people wearing the uniform and talk to people who don’t look like them. I think Madison has good stuff going on, we just have to keep pushing it forward and believe in it.
“We’ve got to continue to work and develop these relationships across both sides. If we don’t, it’s gonna be ugly,” He continues. “I think there’s hope. Especially here in Darbo. I’m seeing fathers get involved in the neighborhood. I’m seeing kids getting active in politics and social work and in the community. That’s something we haven’t seen since SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] and back in the day.”
Strong says less segregation, more community engagement, more resources to fight poverty. “We need to be out there talking to people about how we as a city can address issues related to poverty, joblessness, education. We have to make sure that we have strategies in place,” Strong says. “I’m optimistic in the future that things will get better, but that’s going to take work on everybody’s part. Everybody in this community needs to be invested in it; not just a few.”
The ambitious experiment to have a Spanish-language radio station in Madison first started in April of 2000. More than 15 years later, La Movida 1480 AM is stronger than ever.
“I remember those very early days,” says Luis Montoto, the owner and program manager of La Movida 1480 AM radio. “It was just La Movida weekends. That first weekend we had [Centro Guadalupe’s] Romilia [Schlueter] and Lilliam [Post]. Actually, they were our very first guests on the very first La Movida Show.”
Two years later, on Oct. 14, 2002, La Movida started broadcasting 24/7 and have never looked back. They are still Madison’s only Spanish radio station and are extremely popular with Madison’s 50,000-plus Latinos. Owned by Mid-West Family Broadcasting on Madison’s west side, the station airs local Spanish language music and talk programming along with national news breaks from CNN en Español Radio. La Movida is a balance of Spanish news, weather, sports, talk, and Top-40 music.
The Latino husband-and-wife duo of Luis and Lupita Montoto, who have innumerable connections to Dane County’s Latino community, are what keep La Movida thriving.
Luis does not need a script because he is a natural-born talker. “Before I met Lupita, I worked in radio in Texas. So, I was always comfortable talking,” he tells Madison365. “Even before that, I was a musician. I first got on the microphone when I was with one of these garage bands and they needed somebody to be the emcee and talk on the mic at these events we went to. We were just kids. Everybody in the band was afraid to do it. I was like, ‘Hand it over. I got this!’ From there, it just grew and grew.”
Lupita, who is also co-founder of La Movida Radio and one of its favorite radio personalities, always comes off as shy, but that is probably because, more often than not, she’s next to her gregarious and outgoing husband, Luis.
“I never had radio experience until La Movida but I learned very quickly,” says Lupita Monoto, born and raised in Veracruz, Mexico. Lupita Montoto has become a great interviewer because she knows the community so well — not just the Latino community, but the whole community. It’s easy for her to make personal connections with guests and listeners.
“Many people in the Latino community find themselves in difficult situations when they are here. For a little bit of time we try and take them back to their country with the music and with the culture and help them forget their problems they might have here,” Luis Montoto says. “And we in the Latino community do have a lot problems that we are facing.”
Sometimes they temporarily take listeners away from their life problems. More often than not, they are working to help them solve those problems, too. La Movida is music and entertainment and jokes and fun, but it is also a vital community resource.
“I think it’s important for us to be educational and to bring important resources and information to the Latino community, but we also like to have fun,” Lupita Montoto says. “Both are important. Through all of these years operating 24/7, we have done just about everything. It’s important that we keep contact with the people and keep them engaged. They are what make our station a success.”
Lupita and Luis Montoto in the La Movida studios on Madison’s west side
La Movida regularly hosts many important Madison people and agencies that give listeners access to information they would never otherwise have. “Information is power … and our goal is to empower our community by providing information that they want and need,” Luis Montoto says. “I like to describe our station as a bridge. We’re a two-way street. The Latino community benefits from the information on health, education, and life. They also benefit from information on our local Latino businesses and what they have to offer and promotions that the local Latino community can take advantage of. The business community takes advantage of the buying power that the Latino community has.”
Through the radio station, the Montotos have been exposed to so many great people and personalities in the Dane County area and have gotten to know many agencies, businesses, and organizations from throughout the Madison community.
“We all work together in the Madison community to keep people informed whether it with Centro Hispano, Catholic Multicultural Center, LASUP. We all collaborate to benefit the Latino community. We can work with anybody and everybody,” says Lupita Montoto. “It’s all about partnerships. It’s a privilege for the Latino community to have so many resources here that you won’t find in other communities in other cities and states.”
La Movida has its share of traditional radio listeners, but they also are streamed online and have an app so you can listen on your phone. An important part of La Movida’s mission is not only touching people through the airwaves, but through the many events they host. “We love events because it gets a chance for us to see and meet all of the people who are listening to us every day,” says Lupita Montoto. “We love the personal contact and interaction with people.”
“What gives me a lot of satisfaction, personally, is to see somebody in person and the camaraderie that you build,” Luis Montoto adds. “‘Hey, Montoto. ¿Cómo estás? Nice to see you.’ There are so many people out there that we are able to touch and sometimes we lose track of how many people we reach.”
La Movida volunteers their time at Radiothons in the city to raise funds for worthy causes and are regulars at the Dane County Fair and the Jefferson County Fair. They help host a “Family Day” at Little Amerricka in Marshall, Wis., and the Viva Mexico celebration at the Alliant Energy Center. They also host the annual Hispanic Heritage Luncheon which is now in its 5th year and growing.
Every year, more and more gringos show up at the events that La Movida hosts because there is no ignoring that the Latino populations here – like everywhere else in the U.S. – continues to explode.
“Our numbers have grown by leaps and bounds. And I think the Latino community has evolved,” says Luis Montoto. “I think we at La Movida have played our part and helped to bring the Latino community around in keeping them informed and engaged. I think the Latino population here is very well informed – much more than [in] many major urban cities.”
As they inform, La Movida is careful not to do it in a partisan way. Politics, Luis Montoto admits, can be a double-edged sword. “We don’t get involved too much one way or another,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we don’t work hard to give people all of the resources and information they need to make good choices.”
On their show, La Movida does talk about immigration, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). They talk about the presidential primaries. “We do talk about all that. That’s out there. We can’t hide that from the Latino community. That’s on Univision. That’s on Telemundo. It’s part of what we have to do as well,” Luis Montoto says.
“We get the information out to the people that they need to know. Just like the police, we are here to serve and to protect the Latino community,” he adds. “That’s the community that provides for us. And that’s our job.”
Mayor Paul Soglin was a recent guest on La Movida Radio.
The Montotos also own Voz Latina, a Spanish-language newspaper that compliments the radio station in keeping the Latino community informed. A few years ago, there was talk about the Montotos starting a Latino TV station here in Madison. They’ve backed away from that a little bit for now. “We do want to create a YouTube channel because we do have the equipment and we do have the capabilities to do things locally,” Luis Montoto says. “We were thinking about a full-fledged TV station but we kinda stepped back from that for now.”
Two years ago, La Movida expanded their radio station into Rockford, Ill. Northern Illinois is now home to WNTA-La Movida 1330AM. “I would even dare to say that Rockford has a larger Latino community than Madison,” Luis Montoto says.
“In Rockford, the Latino population is very largely Mexican. Here in Madison, it is more diverse,” adds Lupita Montoto.
That expansion has made the Montotos eager to get into other markets, too.
“La Movida is no longer a regular old radio station; we are La Movida Network now,” Luis Montoto says. “La Movida can expand to any other city that it wants to. That’s what we want to do. We’ve talked to station owners in Nebraska and Iowa and upper Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana about expanding La Movida.
“I could see us in Appleton, Green Bay, Eau Claire,” he adds.
What about Sheboygan — hometown of Madison365 editor Dave Dahmer?
“Si!” smiles Luis Montoto. “I think I see some potential there, too! I’m going to look into that.”
Facebook memes do the dirty work for Republican politicians to dog whistle to
“Of all men distrust most the man who tries to incite one set of Americans against another set of Americans.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Get in line, and we’ll take care of you with free stuff.”
That’s how presidential candidate Jeb Bush characterized the Democratic Party’s message to black and Latino voters in a recent speech.
The Republican contender joined a long list of Republican presidential candidates in United States history in sounding the age-old racial dog whistle when he asserted that black voters are just looking for handouts from the government.
Never mind the irony of a man who inherited an obscene amount of wealth, privilege, and power from his parents weighing in on “free stuff.” Jeb’s public words were more disturbing because they continued the longtime Republican pastime of securing political votes by trashing African Americans who are fighting poverty.
To be clear, what Jeb said was not a “gaffe.” It was the sounding of a well-calculated racial dog whistle to help boost his low Republican poll numbers.
This tried-and-trusted idea was hatched by Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater with his coded racial appeals, developed extensively by Republican President Richard Nixon and his “Southern Strategy,” and perfected by Republican President Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen,” portraying non-white women as lazy schemers who loved to take advantage of the government rather than working.
Whenever GOP poll numbers need a quick bump, the dog whistle and racial code words come out.
A little dog whistle — “free stuff,” “entitlement society,” “state’s rights,” “food stamps,” “law and order”– comes in handy because even the most craven politicians in this day and age know they can’t be outright racist. The dog whistle compliments the real hardcore racist dirty work that is done mostly anonymously on social media through millions of racist cartoons, memes, forum postings, and more (see cartoon below).
The “free stuff” dog whistle is built on the foundation of a great lie. Somehow a significant portion of the United States population is convinced that despite the obscene trillions of dollars spent on Middle Eastern quagmires, corporate welfare, tax havens, corporate subsidies, government contracts, tax loopholes for billionaires … it’s the relative pennies we spend on little brown or black kid getting a free or reduced-cost lunch that is single-handedly ruining this country.
For example, our American seniors – overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly conservative — are receiving far, far more in Medicare benefits than they pay in taxes. Today’s typical Medicare beneficiary will have paid into the system just 13 percent to 41 percent of his or her expected Medicare consumption. The rest is funded by payroll taxes paid by today’s working Americans.
But the old white person as a parasite does NOT make for good GOP campaign speeches and literature. For some reason, the paltry $125 a food stamp recipient receives does. I think we all understand why.
While many Americans misunderstand who gets the “free stuff,” they are also mistaken on the amount we get. Despite commonly held beliefs, we have shrunk our free stuff down to a tiny percentage compared to what other equivalent countries get out of their governments. Citizens in much of Europe, for example, have generous paid family leave, free child care, free university education and inexpensive (and universal) health coverage, all paid for through taxes.
So, next time somebody posts a meme about an “ObamaPhone” on Facebook, I’m going to ask you to do a few things. First, do the research to understand that an “ObamaPhone” is actually a “ReaganPhone.” And then ask yourself: What is the agenda? What is somebody trying to hide? Why am I demonizing the poor? Why am I letting unfounded fear allow the 1 percent to continue to tear up the fabric of social safety net? What important issues are my politicians NOT talking about when they lazily sound the dog whistle instead?
Trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, huge tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations, a prescription drug program written by the pharmaceutical industry, $21 trillion in corporate tax evasion, and the deregulation of Wall Street got the United States in the economic problems we now face, not a poor black child needing food. Poor people did not make the middle class wages decline, health care costs and college tuition skyrocket, and mid-wage jobs disappear.
As somebody who has seen people in poverty up close quite a bit, I can tell you that it is a very rough existence. Living life with no money, no safety net, and small prospects for advancement is daunting and demanding and stressful and demoralizing. It takes a constant toll on a person mentally, physically, emotionally and psychologically. To suggest that people want to purposely live in this existence is almost as insane as suggesting that the tiny percentage we spend on a simple safety net for our nation’s most vulnerable is the cause of all of our nation’s problems.
The dog whistle can only live on if it works. It’s time for it to go away.
Madison, Minneapolis, Austin, Portland, San Francisco.
These are America’s most progressive, forward-thinking, open-minded, and social-justice-focused cities. They also have the worst racial disparities in the nation and some of the worst racial segregation.
It just doesn’t make sense on paper. It’s not supposed to be this way. But the statistics don’t lie. Rampant black and brown poverty within blocks of white affluence. Eye-popping racial disparity numbers in employment, education, health, housing, and more. Black and brown people of all socioeconomic backgrounds feeling uncomfortable and unwanted in progressive cities that are often segregated as bad as Jim Crow Deep South. In the end, there is very little “Coexisting” in the land of “Coexist” bumper stickers.
Tim Wise, one of the nation’s most prominent anti-racist essayists, educators, activists, and pioneers, tells Madison365 about a conversation over coffee he had with an African American friend in the San Francisco Bay Area who explained in very stark detail why San Francisco was the most racist place he had ever lived in. “This man was in his 50s and had lived in Birmingham, Alabama. He’d lived in Dallas. He’d lived in St. Louis. He said that San Francisco to him was the most racist place he had ever lived,” Wise recalls. “As we teased that out, of course, he was talking about what Ralph Ellison talked about in ‘Invisible Man’ … that feeling of being invisible and of people looking right through you and not really being seen. In some ways, to have that happen in a place like San Francisco has to be more weighty … to have a reputation of being X, but you’re really Y.
“At least if you’re in Birmingham, you know you ain’t X and you know how to protect yourself and prepare yourself,” Wise adds. “This guy was like, ‘It’s amazing living in San Francisco all the crap I experienced that these white liberals just didn’t see at all.’ He ended up moving back to the South, too, because it was so much easier to deal with the overt racism than the covert, colorblind racism that you deal with in liberal cities.”
Tim Wise is one of the nation’s most prominent anti-racist essayists, educators, activists, and pioneers.
Wise, whom scholar and philosopher Cornel West calls “a vanilla brother in the tradition of (abolitionist) John Brown,” says progressive cities need to take a deep look at themselves on issues of race. It’s a populace that is so preocupied with pointing out and condemning racism in more conservative parts of the country, he says, that they completely ignore what is happening in their own progressive backyards. For example:
◆ In comparison to their white counterparts, black adults in San Francisco are much more likely to be arrested, booked into county jail and convicted, according to a racial and ethnic disparities report
◆ Closer to home in Madison, African Americans in Dane County are 5.5 times more likely to be unemployed than their white neighbors. African American families are 6 times more likely to be poor with children 13 times more likely to live in poverty than their white classmates. This disparity in child poverty was the largest among any jurisdiction in the United States. Nearly three-quarters of black children in 2011 were poor compared to 5.5% of white children. This is just the tip of the iceberg, to read more about Madison racial disparities click here.
How can this be, in a “unversity town”?
It’s true, some more affluent people reside in this city due to the existence of a large, world-class university. People with more money do create disparities.
Does that explain the exodus of brown and black professionals when they complete their four years at the university because they feel so uncomfortable and unwelcome in this town?
Does that mean that Madison has to be so severely segregated by race?
Does that mean that we have almost zero affordable housing in Madison for people of color forcing Blacks and Latinos to live in separated areas on the fringes of the city where they are disenfranchised economically, socially, and politically?
Does having an elite institution mean huge disparities in prosecutions and arrests and incarceration?
Wise says that Madison, like over progressive cities, has been lulled into complacency that pretty much renders the entire city complicit in the segregation and racial disparities they face. What perplexes people the most is that it is simply incompatible with everything the progressive platform represents. Wise believes the problem is that northern progressives came to their politics in other non-racial areas and have trouble seeing racial problems in their day-to-day lives.
“I think that white progressive liberal folks outside of the South almost always got politicized and radicalized around issues other than race,” Wise says. “So, if I’m a west coast, midwest, or northeast white liberal, I might be really progressive on the issues that I got politicized around which might have been the ecology, war, schools, health care, or LGBT issues. For most white folks, that’s their entry into progressive politics and race is oftentimes so far down the list of things that they get radicalized around that even for really well-intended people, it’s just a huge blind spot.”
Wise has studied this phenomenon and written about it in numerous books and essays. He has produced a DVD titled On White Privilege: Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality and a double-CD entitled The Audacity of Truth: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama. Wise contends that it is a different scenario in the South. “Those of us who are white, progressive, and radical in the South – and granted we are a distinct minority of people in the South — almost always came to politics through a racial analysis of some sort because race has always been so central here,” says Wise, who lives in Nashville, Tenn. “I’m not saying that’s true for all white progressives down here, but on balance we tend to be a little bit better on race because it’s constantly in the background of our lives.”
It’s the problem we’re seeing with Bernie Sanders right now and some of his diehard supporters who come from extremely white enclaves in the northeast. “Although they implicitly understand the issues, it’s really underneath a ton of stuff,” says Wise. “If you’re a senator from Vermont or the mayor of Burlington, you don’t really have to go to bed thinking about race. You don’t have to wake up thinking about race. You don’t have to think about it on a daily basis.”
Rather the issue is, are you connected enough to black and brown leadership to actually sit in struggle with them, listen to them, learn from them, and then offer your feedback from a place of solidarity, comradeship and love? Because if the answer to that last question is no, then you shouldn’t be surprised when the black and brown peoples you criticize think you’re full of shit. If they haven’t seen your face in their place, working on the issues that they prioritize as if their lives depended on it – because they do — then why in God’s name should they presume your commitment to the cause? On the other hand, if the answer to the question above were yes, my guess is you wouldn’t be losing your mind about what #BlackLivesMatter folks are doing, even if you had some strategic differences with them. You would take that shit to them, because you would be part of them, or because you actually knew them, and you’d work it the hell out.
And if you don’t know where those circles are, within which you could have those discussions productively, then that is the problem. It isn’t that white folks have to agree with everything black people do. Rather, it is this: until we show ourselves to be folks who are down for the eradication of white supremacy as a primary concern (and not something we’ll get to later, after we address the corporate oligarchy or climate change or Wall Street criminality), then we cannot expect to be taken seriously by those whose ability to put matters of racial justice on the back burner is constrained by this thing we call breathing.
These struggles that progressive cities face around race issues are the reason you see black folks leaving in large numbers for the last 20 years or so moving back to larger Southern cities. Gentrification has forced many blacks out of these cities — many of them have been left isolated, leaving them culturally, economically, and socially vulnerable.
“It’s not like they are even moving to Milwaukee, Chicago, or New York … they are moving back to Atlanta or Charlotte,” Wise says. “They will tell you very clearly that those places are not as progressive as other states. They know that politically they will be dealing with white folks who are far more reactionary. But it’s almost easier is what black folks tell me when we talk about it. I’d rather deal with the foe I know than the one I don’t.”
Universities need to play a much bigger role in halting this tremendous people-of-color brain drain if progressive cities want to thrive in the future, Wise says.
“For a lot of people in Madison at UW, it’s the most diverse place that they’ve ever been since they are coming from small towns in Wisconsin and neighboring states and they are like, ‘Oh, my God, this school is so diverse!’” Wise says. “Black students and other students of color will tell you it’s the least diverse place they have ever seen.
“Part of it is if a community is so embedded with a school and the school is so committed to putting forth a particular image that doesn’t comport with the lived experience of the people who come here or the people in the community that are left out of that experience, then it’s not all shocking that people will leave, transfer schools, go to a different city, or just never come there in the first place,” he adds.
So, it’s not enough to Photoshop a black guy into a football game and reproduce it on the university literature?Diallo Shabazz (far left) was photoshopped onto a UW application booklet.
“Yeah, that didn’t help. I do make jokes about that in speeches sometimes,” Wise laughs about the 2000 incident in which University of Wisconsin officials added the face of a black student, Diallo Shabazz, to a file photo for the cover of the school’s 2000 application booklet. “They found a guy that hadn’t even been on the campus for two years and inserted him into a football stands where he was clearly not sitting. It’s like, ‘We really love this picture from the Badger game but, damn, there’s no black people. Let’s get some Clipart!’ If that’s your go-to move, then that’s a problem. And I haven’t really seen too much from them to address that problem in a substantive way since then.”
But I tell Wise that Madison is going to be different now. Madison has studied the problem. It has analyzed the numbers. It has held forums and panels and pow-wows on race. I tell Wise that we have the resources here. We have wealth. We have passion. We have nothing if we don’t have activism. We have 100,000 people swarming the Capitol when Gov. Walker does something we don’t like. What will it take to put that passion into racial disparities?
“I’m not quite sure what it will take to get good white liberal folks really animated behind racial issues there,” Wise says. “The good news is that we are beginning to see nationwide some white involvement because of Black Lives Matter and the police violence issues. There are possible entry points and we are seeing a few white people make it out of their comfort zones and talk about these issues that maybe they wouldn’t have a couple years ago.”
Cities and towns need to commit to doing somethings differently, Wise says, that will take away the option for white folks to continue to ignore racial issues. “We need to implement policies that limit the ability of white people to opt out of this work,” says Wise, who was recently part of a panel on “Undoing Racism in the Nation’s Cities” for the National League of Cities at the Washington D.C. Newseum.
“We are going to have to have a lot of conversations about issues like gentrification and housing and inclusionary zoning, but I think that at least now we have a couple of ways of entering into the conversation because of the BLM movement and hopefully that will continue to bear fruit and we will continue to develop emerging cadres of white allies and accomplices in the struggle,” Wise adds.
They can be creative. Policies, practices, and procedures can definitely help, but the people in community need to work at it, too. They need to live less-segregated lives. It’s one thing to tell people that they should intermingle and socialize [with other races.] But if you don’t do it yourself, you send the message that you’re not really serious about it. So if a mayor of a town or the City County or a business leader says, ‘We should do this!’ but then you know where they live and you know who they socialize with …. Then it just becomes a very contradictory message.”
In the meantime, what can Madison do to be that unique city that doesn’t go down the path that every other city has?
“It’s very much about having leadership that’s willing to acknowledge the problems both historically and contemporaneously and naming institutional and systemic and structural racism as one of those issues,” Wise says. “We need to talk about ways that we have done things from schools to policing to housing policy to economic development policy that have perpetuated, not necessarily on purpose, racial injustice. That’s going to really require getting as many of the stakeholders in Madison as possible involved in that conversation. It can’t just be the UW. It can’t just be the big employers. It can’t just be the state government. And black folks and people of color are going to need to be very prominent in the conversation to figure out what really needs to be done.”
The main problem in Madison and in progressive cities, Wise says, is that people of color don’t really have the autonomy and self-determination that they need to make decisions that affect their lives. “We can have city leaders and mayors and council people make all kinds of pronouncements, but unless the communities themselves actually have a say — here’s what we need and here’s what we’re talking about — it’s not going to work. It’s about giving more power to those in the marginalized community whether it be how they run their schools or how policing gets done.”
Wise says that cities can do things to desegregate and bring down the levels of racial isolation right away.
“They can be creative. Policies, practices, and procedures can definitely help, but the people in community need to work at it, too. They need to live less-segregated lives,” Wise says. “It’s one thing to tell people that they should intermingle and socialize [with other races.] But if you don’t do it yourself, you send the message that you’re not really serious about it. So if a mayor of a town or the City County or a business leader says, ‘We should do this!’ but then you know where they live and you know who they socialize with …. Then it just becomes a very contradictory message.”
A little over a year ago, Palestinian-American Professor Steven Salaita was fired for posting tweets attacking Israel and its U.S. supporters in harsh language during Israel’s operation in Gaza last summer.
Salaita, who had been vetted by the appropriate faculty committees and approved by the provost, was essentially “unhired” from a tenured position in American Indian studies at the University of Illinois when donors pressured the university after they found the tweets on his personal Twitter account.
Salaita became the center of an international protest against academic censorship. He embarked on a national speaking tour and has received support from high-profile organizations such as the American Association of University Professors and the Modern Language Association.
Salaita explained his tweets in these words:
“In the weeks before my move, I watched in anguish as Israel killed more than 2,100 people during its recent bombing of Gaza, 70 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Like so many others, I took to my Twitter account. I posted tweets critical of Israel’s actions, mourning in particular the death of more than 500 of Gaza’s children.
“A partisan political blog cherry-picked a few of those tweets from hundreds to create the false impression that I am anti-Semitic. Publicly disclosed documents reveal that, within days, University of Illinois donors who disagreed with my criticism of Israeli policy threatened to withhold money if I wasn’t fired. My academic career was destroyed over gross mischaracterizations of a few 140-character posts.”
Salaita has filed a lawsuit against the university, the board of trustees, and several administrators claiming that they violated his constitutional rights, including to free speech and due process. He also is suing for breach of contract and intentional emotional distress. Salaita is seeking compensation and the job as a tenured professor in the American Indian studies department.
He just recently was assured of his day in court against the university. In a 56-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber denied the university’s motion to dismiss and ruled that the case could proceed to the discovery stage, and perhaps to trial.
Leinenweber cleared Salaita to pursue his claims that the university breached its contract to hire the scholar. He found implicitly that university officials lied about the terms of his employment deal in their desperation to keep him off campus. Those officials now stand accused of sophistry and dishonesty.
In the meantime, Salaita, the author of six books and numerous articles, was recently hired as the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut. He is currently in Beirut getting ready for the fall semester, but took time to talk with Madison365 about the federal judge’s ruling, about Israel and Palestine, and about Madison – where Salaita and his wife Diana lived when he was an assistant professor of English at UW-Whitewater from 2003-2006.
Madison365: In recent news, a federal judge has allowed your lawsuit against the University of Illinois to proceed. How did that make you feel? Steven Salaita: I was really emotional when I heard the news. I’m pretty skeptical of the state as a repository of justice, but I have to confess that it felt remarkably good to read the judge’s opinion that I was in fact hired and that my speech and due process rights had been violated. It was a moment of great validation, though I never really doubted that what had taken place was an old-fashioned firing. Still, I understand that it’s in the courts where precedent is set, and one of my goals is to make sure that what happened to me doesn’t become common practice.
Madison365: The last year has been a tough one for you and I know that you have been harassed in real life and disparaged on social media …. But what are the positives that you have drawn from this extraordinary experience? Steven Salaita: It’s been terrific to see so many folks fighting to preserve academic freedom; to create new cultures in which criticism of Israel is no longer verboten; to ensure that our universities aren’t given over to private interests or destroyed by retrograde politicians — something, sadly, that has become an acute problem in Wisconsin. So many people — faculty, students, activists, journalists, parents — have been energized by these attacks on higher education. That energy needs to maintain itself. The forces seeking to transform campuses into consumer playgrounds are strong and determined.
Madison365: How do you feel like the American public has been misled on what really transpires in Israel and Palestine? Steven Salaita: There are lots of reasons, but an important factor is a docile mainstream media, what I prefer to call corporate media. We don’t hear enough about the so-called conflict as a form of colonization. Instead, commentators talk of ancient tribal rivalries and religious acrimony. It’s quite simpler than that: one group of people is colonizing another group of people. Obviously, much more is happening, but if we’re going to reduce things to a soundbite, this is the soundbite that’s most appropriate. Also, there are elements of Israeli history that are deeply familiar to Americans: the settlement of a land of milk and honey, overcoming hostile conditions to create a glorious democracy, and so forth.
Madison365: How can we get people to think more complexly about what it means to be pro-Palestine or pro-Israel? Steven Salaita: We can ask them to think about the conflict in context of the histories from which it emerged and the geopolitical forces that sustain it. In other words, Jews and Palestinians didn’t just start hating each other one day. There’s a particular set of conditions we have to consider. And those conditions both inform and arise from the traditions of European colonization. I think it’s better to think in terms of pro-equality. That allows one to transfer her political interests all over the globe.
Madison365: What type of parallels do you draw between the Palestinian movement and other civil rights struggles, particularly, Black Lives Matter [BLM] movement and the fight for immigrant rights in the United States? Steven Salaita: They’re deeply interconnected. There’s been terrific interaction between BLM and Palestine solidarity communities. These interactions aren’t always perfect, but activists across the spectrum have done a great job connecting their concerns to power structures that affect numerous communities. It hasn’t passed the attention of many BLM organizers, for example, that dozens of police chiefs in the United States have received training in Israel. And the same xenophobic communities that disparage immigrants are deeply hostile to Palestinians.
Madison365: If you could teach a course on things you’ve learned and experienced during this whole ordeal you’ve been through, what would that look like? Steven Salaita: There are lots of good books and articles about academic freedom and the changing cultures of campus life. I’d probably also use readings that focus on activism and media representation. There would probably be room for analysis of social media, in all their glory and awfulness. Hell, you’ve inspired me to cook up something!
Madison365: What do you like and remember most about your time in Madison? Steven Salaita: Meeting great people (you, for instance!). A wonderful little house on the near west side — I left before they finished redesigning Hilldale [Shopping Center], but I loved it in its old incarnation. The beautiful scenery. The arboretum. Great bike trails. Pitchers of beer overlooking Lake Mendota. Michaelangelo’s coffee. The Farmer’s Market, of course! I’m sure a lot has changed in the near-decade since I left, but I reckon certain things are timeless.
In the wake of the devastating Trayvon Martin decision back in 2012, the Black Lives Matter movement was born and gained traction in national media as a new and exciting black liberation movement. Unlike past movements that focused on a broadly brushed black narrative – one that often excluded women, trans, queer, and disabled folk – the Black Lives Matter movement boasts high inclusivity. The mission says they go “beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within black communities, which merely call on black people to love black, live black, and buy black, keeping straight cis black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.” With this fresh take on civil rights, the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn a strong following and made activists out of people who may have never considered themselves the activist type.
Identified by its social media hashtag #blacklivesmatter, the movement is a unified call to action, a declaration of injustice, and the exclamation point that follows the important question: When are black lives going to be valued in the same way as other American citizens?
Using social media as a catalyst, Black Lives Matter has garnered national attention in the wake of these events in part due to its ability to amass a following, streamline its message, quickly respond to injustice, and organize its protests.
As a concerned woman of color, I eagerly follow news about the Black Lives Matter movement. Following these national injustices, story after story, is emotionally charged. Especially when I see the poor reporting, sensationalism, and holes in the narrative.
It’s overwhelmingly apparent that women of color, though deeply embedded in the movement itself, are largely ignored in the national coverage.
The national media fails to recognize that women are a large part of the movement — both as advocates and as those being advocated for.
Currently, the image of the Black Lives Matter woman in the national media is one-noted. There was the Baltimore black mother, Toya Graham, who pulled her son from the throngs of protesters, saying she didn’t want her son to be killed or arrested. Next was Michael Brown’s grief-stricken mother shown leaning on her husband for support over the death of her son. There’s the image of Eric Garner’s wife holding her children in the wake of her husband’s death.
This is how the national media has shown black women in relation to this movement: as strong supporters of black men, as the victims of the deaths.
Toya Graham is the Baltimore mother who gained national fame when she slapped her son several times and pulled him out of a protest.
I believe these women are vital in the national dialogue, but the discussion has failed to recognize the role of women outside of this regard. Black women are not only the grieving wives and mothers, but are far too often the victims of police brutality themselves.
Little does the public know the names Rekia Boyd, Shelly Frey, and Kayla Moore. The lack of attention for their deaths is unsurprising and overwhelmingly disappointing. Rarely do the media present complex and varied takes on people of color, women, queer, and trans and disabled people.
Just as national media has deemed black men ‘thugs’ and ‘violent hardened criminals,’ black women’s voices have been erased or restricted to typical gender-specific roles.
Moreover, hardly do we hear about the three black queer women who created the Black Lives Matter movement: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.
We do hear about Marissa Johnson, more recently, as an interrupter of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Johnson has made headlines only because she interrupted the rally of a presidential candidate – a candidate who is seen as sympathetic to her cause.
Women like Johnson and Monae, and others, innovatively created and participated in a movement that is both inclusive and very specific in mission. This is some serious black girl magic. Why don’t we hear about them more often?
(L-r) Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza hold up their fists in unison.
Social media plays a huge role in the way that this movement has delivered its message and gathered a following. The movement has spread its message primarily through what is referred to as “Black Twitter,” a forum of black people on social media weighing in on social to political issues. Black Twitter has brought a great deal of attention to the female victims and combats the one-noted narrative that is often portrayed, if portrayed at all. One particular campaign that has gained steam has been #SayHerName — a push to combat the silencing of female activists and victims. Through the SayHerName hashtag, people post articles on female victims such as Rekia Boyd and bring attention to the activism surrounding her death. Where national media has failed these victims, social media, in particular Black Twitter, has taken up the narratives and proved to be a place where their stories can be filled in and released from the box.
Chicago police detective Dante Servin killed Rekia Boyd when he fired five shots at a group of people in a dark West Side alley.
As feminism plays a key role in the advocacy component of #blacklivesmatter, one might wonder where mainstream feminism fits in. There is an abundance of participation in Black Lives Matter from different communities of color, but rarely have I heard or read anything from the white feminist lot. Where are their voices of support? Don’t they also value black (women’s) lives?
The other day I saw two white women wearing black lives matter shirts and found myself taken aback. I realized it was the first time I had seen a white woman advocate in this manner. While it was great, it reminded me of how often white feminists leave their sisters in the dust when racial issues come into play. Even from a quick scroll through the hashtags on social media, it’s apparent that white feminists are not speaking out as much as they should about female victims of police brutality.
That said, it is important that everyone, men and women, come together on the issue of police brutality. Unfortunately, there has been some pushback from the campaign nationally. Critics have called for #alllivesmatter. However, others argue that this detracts from the black identity in this movement. Hashtags associated with #blacklivesmatter include #BlackTransLivesMatter and #BlackDifferentlyAbledLivesMatter in awareness of the intersectionality and diversity within black identity. While diverse, the black identity is never dropped from the conversation. It takes away from the very point of the discourse: that it is black lives that are being devalued. Addressing the point an interview with Feminist Wire, Garza states:
When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgement black poverty and genocide is state violence…And the fact is that the lives of black people — not ALL people — exist within these conditions is consequence of state violence.
As people continue to push against the Black Lives Matter movement with the All Lives Matter ideology, others will continue to counter their ridiculous arguments. One of these people is outspoken activist and actor Jesse Williams (of Grey’s Anatomy fame) who posted on his Instagram a meme that depicted a burning house next to a house that was perfectly fine.
Cartoonist pokes fun at #AllLivesMatter movement
The meme takes a jab at the movement and makes the point that yes, all lives do matter … but to talk about the black lives that are being threatened under dire conditions doesn’t undermine the lives of others.
Ironically, it seems the only time that All Lives Matter comes into play is when it is countering the Black Lives Matter movement. I have yet to see the All Lives Matter movement actually advocate for any victims of police brutality. The All Lives Matter argument is a distraction — an annoying, divisive distraction at that.
I hope, as the Black Lives Matter movement moves forward, there is a continual drive to see, in the national media outlets, a more varied portrayal of the women involved in this movement.
I hope that justice for the countless female victims stays vital.
I hope that a light can shine on some of the black girl magic that I see every day.
I hope for a quite a lot of things and I love to see the innovative social media work being done on Twitter, Instagram, and countless websites like Blavity, Colorlines, Tea & Breakfast, and Madison365.
Despite my sometimes pessimistic nature, I stay optimistic as people continue to fight the good fight.
Commitment, fortitude, teamwork, discipline, respect. To be a Southside Raider, you must carry yourself, both on and off the field, in a way that is in line with the principles that the program was built on.The values that young people learn from the Southside Raiders football program has had a positive impact on the Madison community for more than four decades.
“It’s more than just about football …. it’s about life,” Southside Raiders head football coach Wayne Strong tells Madison365. “It’s about preparing kids for life … teaching them how to deal with adversity and teaching them how to deal with conflict. It’s about stressing the importance of education and staying in school and [staying] out of trouble. If they do, they will be successful in life. That’s really our goal here.”
Founded by Will Boyd Smith, the Raiders just started their 45th year of molding young men on Madison’s south side. They are all about those core values, but make no mistake about it: They are also very much about football. The Southside Raiders are always a team to be reckoned with and they have produced some incredible athletic talent including St. Louis Rams wide receiver Derek Stanley, former NBA guard Reece Gaines, and former Wisconsin Badger linebacker Jeff Mack, to name a few.
The Raiders have five teams grades 4-8 that play seven games a year in the Dane County Area Youth Football League. The Southside Raider cheerleading program has girls from grades 3-8. Most players live not too far from Penn Park, but some come from as far away as Verona and Sun Prairie, partially due to the Raiders’ low participation fee.
“We have an excellent coaching staff lined up once again and we’re really seeking the support of the families and the community to make another successful season,” Strong says. “I love this time of the year. Fall is my favorite season; maybe it’s because I was born in September. Every Saturday being at the park is an incredible experience. I love our fan support. It’s a huge part of our community. It’s a southside institution. People look forward to the Southside Raiders.”
It’s Strong’s 20th year with the program; he first started out with the Raiders as a Madison police detective in the ‘90s when he was assigned to the South Madison precinct. Coaching football was a good way to get to know the community.
Strong says there are about 150 young football players signed up this year. “The program has grown exponentially since I first started in 1995. That year, we had two teams and we had to combine grades. Fourth, fifth, and sixth-graders had to play on the same team.”
A lot of the Southside Raiders come from single-parent and low-income families. Strong and his staff want to give the kids as much positivity as they can because a lot of the kids have seen a lot of bad stuff and dealt with trauma in their lives.”
“There are some really heartbreaking stories of kids coming out of tough situations. We’ve had kids who were homeless or who’ve had families that have had to move several times during the season because of housing issues,” Strong says. “Our coaches understand that they are more than football coaches … they are role models. In some cases, they are pseudo-parents because a lot of these kids come from single-parent families and don’t have dads. In a lot of cases, our coaches are substitute fathers for a lot of these kids and these kids look up to these coaches.
“That’s why it’s important for us to have the right people in there coaching who understand that this is more than about football; this is about life and teaching life lessons so that these kids will go on and be successful,” he adds.
Former players will always come back to the south side to visit with Strong and the other coaches. Some of them will have beards. Others will have wives and kids. Does that make Strong feel old? “Haha. It makes me feel old … but it makes me feel good at the same time,” Strong smiles. “Some of these kids that I coached in the late ‘90s are in their late 20s now but they still call me ‘coach’ after all these years. But it’s really a blessing. You know that you’ve had a real positive impact on these young people. That’s what we strive for.”
Some of his old players from the ‘90s now have kids in the current program. “That’s funny when I get a kid whose dad I once coached,” Strong says. “But that’s a positive thing along with the families that come back year after year and coaches that come back year after year.”
The Raiders program as seen some of their coaches move on to coach in local high schools and elsewhere. “That’s part of what we do, too. Along with developing players, we develop coaches, too,” Strong says. “We want coaches to move on to high school and college. We want to give them that solid base so they are prepared to move on when they are ready to do so.”
“There are some really heartbreaking stories of kids coming out of tough situations. We’ve had kids who were homeless or who’ve had families that have had to move several times during the season because of housing issues. Our coaches understand that they are more than football coaches … they are role models.”
The Southside Raiders kicked off in late July with their second annual football and cheerleader training camp where players could run through some basic drills and conditioning to shake some of that summer rust off. They practice at Penn Park three nights a week and host home games there on Saturday mornings.
How does Strong tell a young Southside Raider with bad hands that wide receiver might not be his best position? Very carefully.
“Well, more importantly, their parents need convincing,” Strong laughs. “We try to work with kids to help them play the position they want to play but we get them to look at other positions as well. We’ve had parents that come in as early as fourth grade and say, ‘My kid’s a linebacker!’ or ‘My kid’s a wide receiver!’ But at that age, you don’t know. And we try to get them to play multiple positions to find out what’s best for them and what they like.”
The young people need to be enjoying what they are doing out on the field for it to work, Strong says.
“It’s not about how many touchdowns you score and how many games you win but it’s about: are you coming to practice every day? Are you listening to your coach? Are you participating? Are you prepared to do the work that is necessary for you to be successful?” Strong says. “And more importantly … the overall issue is: are you having fun? We really want kids to have fun here.
“If the kids aren’t having fun. If it’s just drill, drill, drill, drill,” Strong adds. ‘They’re not going to come back.”
For years, the Raiders were under an umbrella organization – the Boys and Girls Club — but very recently transitioned into a non-profit organization. As a non-profit, the Southside Raiders now have a board of directors of which Strong serves as president. Fundraising is an even more key component now because equipment, travel expenses, paying the referees, and other miscellaneous can add up quick.
“We’re in the process of developing a fundraising strategy in order to keep the program going,” Strong says. “Fundraising will be big for us. We want to raise money and keep the program moving in a good direction. We’ve got a good, solid board of directors. We hope to establish those key partnerships and collaborations with others in the city that will help us grow.
The Southside Raider goals are the same as they’ve been since 1970: raising young men to become successful men. Strong hope to get younger people involved on the coaching side, too. “The millennials will be taking over the program someday so we really want to get them involved now and teach them how to run a program,” he says. “Learn from the mistakes we made and hopefully learn from the good things we’ve done.
“The program is growing. Our quality is high,” he adds. “We’ve had our challenges over the years, but we’ve been resilient. We’ve been a strong advocate in our community for our kids and our families. “We’re trying to improve the overall quality of the program in terms of services that we provide to families. We’re moving in a very positive direction with the program.”
As a nation, we have desensitized, or whitewashed what we really are. There is no such thing as American exceptionalism, we are no different than the horrors other nations have perpetrated. The banality of America, the banality of our racism and not seeing it that way is dangerous. In fact, we have perpetrated some of the worst atrocities in history and are not much more than a step away from those we see as evil. And, in fact, it is one of America’s original sins. Racism is evil, it’s horrible, it’s monstrous, and it is also normal. People often believe they cannot be racist because they are good people, they don’t do bad things. They are good fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, they give back to their community, and more “good things.” The fact is, that racism, in all its normality, has infiltrated all of us, yes even those of us that believe in equality, those of us that are “liberal” or “progressive.” The banality of racism means one does not have to be a bad person to be racist.
The normalization is ingrained through many aspects of our culture. We see this in the daily images that we see in our media. The majority of people living in poverty we see on screen are black. The majority of criminals we see on screen are black. This creates an image that criminality and that poverty is Black. The normalization seeps into everything — like many national media outlets not labeling the massacre that happened in Charleston a terrorist attack. The normalization is when the media calls Richard Sherman a thug. The normalization is when our media isn’t investigating the connection of our elected representatives to white supremacist organizations. The normalization is when the white general public shows no outcry over the fact that our there are many declared white supremacists in our military. The normalization is that the FBI issued a report in 2006 that detailed infiltration of our law enforcement by white supremacists to crickets and our media is still largely silent about that report to this day. The normalization is when you say you don’t see color; we are Black, see us. The normalization is when you do not confront your own bias or even refuse to accept that you have bias. Racism is in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Racism is in our ghettoized cities, which was not done on accident; it is everywhere we look. Yet many chose to look past it and you have probably looked past it more times that you know. That is part of your privilege, you can look past it when we live it.
There are many more, insidious ways this normalization comes across. It can come across as a woman clutching her purse as black men are walking her way or thinking a Black interviewee “isn’t a good fit.” It can be anything from discounting our interactions with police, to questioning our life experiences, and to believing that we need to be saved.
This savior complex, this idea that we need to be saved is a form of liberal racism. We are not the ones that need to be saved, you are. We did not invent racism, you did. We did not create systematic oppression of Black people, you did. We did not create the ghettos, you did. We did not implement the broken window policy, Bill Clinton did. You created the conditions we live in. You are the ones that need to save yourselves, from yourselves. Everyone has skin in the game, racism is not just a black issue it is an American issue. We want equity. We are demanding that you stop doing what you’re doing. We need investment, not to be saved. We need you to stop oppressing us. Not to be saved. We’re drowning and you’re holding our head down. Don’t hold us down and say we need a lifeguard to try and save us; stop holding us down. We are not what our police chief may believe, that we are a 5-year-old throwing a tantrum for candy and we just need to be disciplined. We aren’t children that don’t know any better and these issues aren’t like candy. Apparently, jails full of Black people and an arrest ratio of 11:1 are just us screaming for candy.
Liberals and progressives want to believe that they would have been abolitionists and not owned slaves. But the truth is, most would have either owned or defended slavery, which at first was not limited to the south. We forget that the many of the first police forces came together as slave catchers. We forget that escaped slaves were still fugitives in the north. We forget that Madison was a sundown town, meaning if you were black you needed to leave town before sundown. Abolitionists did want to end slavery, but most did not believe in full equality for black Americans. They felt that we still must be taught to be civilized. The truth is: most of you would have accepted slavery as just the way things are or that we needed to be taught how to behave. The truth is many of you believe that in 2015 and many of you don’t even realize that.
This paternalistic racism still goes on today by our “liberal” allies. We see this in the pool of applicants in Teach for America. It is saying “All Lives Matter” instead of “Black Lives Matter.” It is generally accepted that white lives matter, but it is not accepted that Black lives indeed do matter. There would not be a disproportionate number of Blacks lives living in poverty, incarcerated, or murdered by police if we did. It would not mean that a Black male with a college education is just as likely to be hired as a white man with a high school diploma.
Cartoonist pokes fun at #AllLivesMatter movement
So many white “allies” are doing work that they feel is in our best interests, the well-intentioned ally. The most recent example is when Black Lives Matters protesters interrupted the Netroot Nation conference and many Bernie Sanders supporters were upset about that, feeling that Sanders was the candidate that we must support. They told us how we should support Bernie Sanders because of his economic message, or because he marched with King. This is racism. Bernie Sanders has not gone into depth about the racism rife in our judicial system, but has just mentioned it. Bernie Sanders has not gone into the depths of the uniqueness of the economic oppression of Black Americans experience, but has just mentioned it. We are told that doesn’t matter and that someone, say Scott Walker, would be worse for us. Walker would be horrible, but you don’t court voters by saying we should be thankful, without talking about issues that are important to us. I don’t care he marched with King; I want to specifically hear how he will address the institutional racism we face today. Not glossing over the fact and turning it back into a general economic message, especially when black poverty is so much deeper than white poverty. Earn our vote; you are not entitled to it.
Racism comes in many forms, but to defeat it, you must defeat it among yourselves. And to do so you must center black people, you must let us lead it. But that doesn’t mean that our allies do not or cannot play a large role in this. You must be conscious of your own bias, your own racism. You cannot tell us what is “best for us.” You have to listen to help change the American culture of racism, the American culture of white supremacy. It is no longer acceptable to speak ‘diversity” and not practice it. It is no longer acceptable to tell us what we need. We are and have been telling you what we need. It’s time to listen and move in the direction that we want to move in. It means that you cannot center yourself; it means you must help in deconstructing your white privilege. It means you must work against your best interest, as white supremacy is in your individual interest; it gives you an advantage over all. Your privilege is part of the normalization of racism. We are here to say it is no longer acceptable to ignore the reality of the racist society we live in every day of our lives.
Although it told us what most minorities in Madison have been talking about for decades, the damning findings of astounding racial inequities from the Race to Equity report made many of us Madisonians squirm and feel uncomfortable. It caused us to get defensive. The national microscope was on us. People from all over the world were making derogatory comments about our great city – the best city in the United States to live, to work, to bike – calling it “Madison: The most racist city in the U.S.”
Understandably, Madisonians were concerned and they did what Madisonians generally do: They analyzed it, studied it, talked about it. They took a break to go to the Farmers’ Market and then they talked about it some more. And then studied it again. And then re-analyzed it.
Meanwhile, the city continued to become more segregated. Blacks and Latinos are increasingly living in separated areas on the fringes of the city where they are disenfranchised economically, socially, and politically. Affluent white people continue to go to farmers’ markets, Badger games, and Madison festivals with other affluent white people — events that half of the minority population doesn’t know exists and the other half doesn’t feel welcome at. A good portion of Madison’s low-income black and Latino families continue to live in about 20 tiny, crowded residential concentrations scattered within the city and around its perimeter and isolated from the rest of us.
About a month ago, I spent the Fourth of July in my hometown of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Along the beaches of Lake Michigan, there is a huge party where all kinds of families play volleyball and beach games while listening to music. It was interesting to see how incredibly diverse this Sheboygan celebration was for a city its size – only about 49,000 people. There were numerous Hmong families and black families and Latino families celebrating with white folks along the long Lake Michigan shoreline.
The point of this Sheboygan story is twofold. One, the United States is becoming much more diverse. A city that contained less than a handful of minorities as I was growing up as a kid in the ’80s now has some incredible diversity, and it was on display that 4th of July.
The second and more incriminating point is that the tiny, conservative city of Sheboygan significantly eclipses super-liberal Madison in its willingness to intermingle among its races.
You see, I’ve been to a lot of events and festivals in Madison, and there is no arguing that most of our Madison festivals and celebrations are extremely white affairs. Our near east side festivals – the whitest liberal area of a white liberal city – will have a token person of color or two at each event. I know who those handful of people of color are by name because it’s the same people every year. If one of them is not there, I get concerned. The number of tokens has slightly increased since the Race to Equity report, but the numbers are still small. More importantly, you never, ever see any black or brown families at these events, amidst all of the white families.
Likewise, our Madison standards like the Farmers’ Market are embarrassingly white. Our Concerts on the Square are even whiter. There is an undeniable whiteness at all major events in Madison that you just don’t see in other cities – even cities five times smaller like Sheboygan. So, it’s no surprise that a high percentage of talented minorities who come here for college immediately jet after their four years for Chicago or Milwaukee or New York. They don’t feel comfortable here. They don’t feel like they belong here. They don’t see events where there are people that look like them. They feel depressed and alone.
So, the races don’t intermingle here in Madison and that’s what highlights the problem: How are we supposed to really care about each other if we don’t associate with each other and we don’t really know each other at all? Tiny, conservative Sheboygan – whom I’ve heard many white Madison liberals derogatorily refer to as “hickish” and “backwards” — is stronger at embracing diversity. Yet, somehow in Madison, despite overwhelming damning evidence to the contrary, we have the audacity to have a superiority complex on racial issues.
Madison social media is awash with groups and forums and pages of mostly white middle-to-upper class liberals talking extensively about race equity issues. Talking it to death. They are extreme experts in “microagressions,” “cultural appropriation,” and “white privilege.” There are so many white liberal race experts in this town pointing fingers on social media, and yet, strangely, I never saw a single one of them at the hundreds of black and Latino and Hmong events I attended in my decade as Editor-in-Chief of The Madison Times.
In Madison, we’ve studied and analyzed and talked this thing to death. We are booksmart on race. Yes, thank you for linking me to 17 different Huffington Post stories on “Why It’s Not A Good Idea To Touch A Black Person’s Hair.” I appreciate it, but I want more. Much more. It’s long overdue. It’s time to get out of our [white] comfort zones and get a little bit uncomfortable. It’s time to get out from behind our keyboards and get at the real work. It’s time to move.
If we could get one-tenth of the passion, activism, and mass motivation working towards racial disparities that we have in this city every time Gov. Walker does something we don’t like, we would have crushed racial disparities by now. It would be amazing if we could get the same turnout and passion to help save a young and brilliant but troubled, low-income black kid who is falling through the cracks that we get at a Madison neighborhood association meeting when a light goes out on the bike path.
Madisonians do care about the tremendous racial disparities in our city. We are, for the most part, good and caring people. The problem is that we don’t care about these tremendous racial disparities. It’s something that most Madisonians don’t see in their day-to-day lives. It’s not urgent. It’s something going on over there. It’s on the periphery. It’s like a TV commercial that shows starving kids in Ethiopia: “Oh, that’s really sad … Honey, is it Fleetwood Mac night at Concerts on the Square tonight?”
If we could get one-tenth of the passion, activism, and mass motivation working towards racial disparities that we have in this city every time Gov. Walker does something we don’t like, we would have crushed racial disparities by now. It would be amazing if we could get the same turnout and passion to help save a young and brilliant but troubled, low-income black kid who is falling through the cracks that we get at a Madison neighborhood association meeting when a light goes out on the bike path.
But that bike path light you see every day. (And, yes, it’s annoying!) The struggling black or Latino kid that lives in a segregated apartment complex in Darbo or Allied is out of sight. Out of sight, and out of mind. That kid might as well be in Ethiopia.
One of our goals at Madison365 is to close that gap. We are going to bring things right to you and encourage you to reckon with them. Our young, creative, and talented black and Latino writers are dying to tell you these important stories from a grassroots level. In a city of 250,000 that has historically had an astounding dearth of black and Latino journalists, this will be a powerful endeavor.
But beyond these young people of color writing about important issues, people, and events in Madison to keep the community informed, Madison365’s goal is to show you how you, personally, can get involved in a community that is rapidly becoming more and more segregated. How you can intermingle. How you can volunteer. How you can mentor. How you can learn. How you can decrease this trend towards a segregated city that Milwaukee and Chicago and Minneapolis have become before us. How you can move. So that you will really want to care. So you will want to march and to blow Vuvuzelas (“This is what racial disparities look like!”). So you will want to go to door-to-door with passion and to fight for all of Madison.
At some point in time, every major U.S. city has faced the particular demographics challenge that Madison now faces and every time that city tipped in the wrong direction. Every city has failed. Massive segregation, decline in schools, economic downfall … White flight … Insane racial disparities.
There is no doubt in my mind that Madison has the unique resources, unique talent, unique wealth, and unique activism to be that first city that doesn’t tip. That doesn’t fly to the suburbs. That doesn’t ignore. That doesn’t refuse to intermingle. That doesn’t say, “That’s sad. But that’s not my problem.” That engages all of its community and fights for everybody in it.
Madison is under the national microscope in the most negative way right now. How do we respond? Are we going to keep talking and analyzing and studying and posting and re-posting or are we going to move? If you need a Winston Salem moving company, call City Transfer And Storage.
Madison365 was born out of a tremendous need at a critical time. It was born out of a disturbing lack of journalists of color in a city of with a quarter-million people. It was born out of dismal racial equity statistics and worsening segregation. It was born out of the need to tell grassroots stories from the perspectives of people of color and to challenge rampant racial and economic inequality, segregation, and a lack of mobility.
The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on June 27, blocking enforcement of the state’s law a day after the opinion was inadvertently posted on the court’s website in an astonishing departure from its highly controlled protocols.
(Photo: Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
By Tierney Sneed and John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law a day after the opinion was inadvertently posted on the court’s website in an astonishing departure from its highly controlled protocols.
At issue in the case was a state law that banned abortions except for the life of the pregnant woman. The Biden administration argued that a federal law required hospitals to also provide abortions in cases where the health of a pregnant woman is at stake.
The unsigned opinion drew a flurry of concurrences from conservative and liberal justices, who formed an unusual alliance to dismiss the case and temporarily block enforcement of Idaho’s strict ban. Though the decision was technically a loss for Idaho, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed in a partial dissent that the potential impact is likely to be short-lived.
“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Jackson wrote. “It is delay.”
The decision sweeps abortion off the Supreme Court’s docket in the middle of a highly contested presidential election, even though the issue is almost certain to return to the justices. Earlier this month, the court dispensed with another abortion case, an appeal challenging expanded access to the abortion pill mifepristone. There, a unanimous court held that the anti-abortion doctors and groups who sued did not have standing.
Almost as notable as the Idaho decision itself was the fact that the public received an early glimpse of the outcome when a version of the opinion was inadvertently posted online briefly. Bloomberg spotted the opinion and posted it online Wednesday before the court removed it.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Artwork from Java Cat Coffee's Humanitarian Aid for Gaza Silent Art Auction
(Photo by Omar Waheed)
Java Cat Coffee’s Humanitarian Aid for Gaza Silent Art Auction will go live on Friday as the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP) partners with artists for humanitarian aid in Gaza.
MRSCP’s auction “Art For Humanity’s Sake: A Silent Art Auction for Gaza” will start on June 28 and go until July 8. The auction features 66 donated works from artists around the country with the intention of raising funds for humanitarian aid. The goal amount for the fundraising auction is $6,000 with the proceeds going to Middle East Children’s Alliance.
“What is needed right now is a huge worldwide aid response to the situation in Gaza. And I hope, personally, that that will happen,” Cassandra Dixon, a member of MRSCP, told Madison365. “I hope that my country will be a part of that at some point. But in the meantime, I think that it falls to just regular people to try to make that happen.”
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project was founded in 2003 seeking to build person-to-person relationships with Rafah, Palestine. It aims to increase awareness of ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflicts and influence United States public policy. While it is not an official sister city recognized by Madison, it has been working to spread awareness on protests, policy, news and aid efforts.
Palestinians receiving aid in Gaza have seen ongoing difficulties as Israel’s government has prevented deliveries from arriving. Aid via Rafah, on the border between Palestine and Egypt, has been building up due to continued military operations,the Washington Post reported.
The art auction comes after garnering interest from a previous silent auction. Auctioning off art comes with the hope of bringing some tangibility to a “situation so unimaginable,” Dixon said.
Artwork on display at Java Cat Coffee (below)
“None of us really can imagine 2 million people facing starvation. We can’t imagine the devastation of all housing, all infrastructure, all education. It’s so hard to take that in, and yet we have to in order to respond,” Dixon said. “Art also requires imagination, and it requires putting yourself into a creation to appreciate it. It requires the person who created the art and the person who’s experiencing it, to have a partnership in a way.”
Aid will go towards providing fresh produce like rice, shampoo, soap, sanitary pads, laundry detergent, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, along with helping prepare hot meals, clothing, blankets, clean water, and beginning installation of solar-powered water desalination and purification units.
Bill Cobbs at the 2010 Sunscreen Film Festival in Florida.
(Photo: Tim Boyles/Getty Images)
By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
(CNN) — Bill Cobbs, a veteran Hollywood actor known for roles in “Demolition Man,” “That Thing You Do!” and “Air Bud,” among many others, has died, according to a family member. He was 90.
The news was confirmed by Cobbs’ brother Thomas Cobbs, who wrote on Facebook that the actor died on Tuesday “peacefully at his home in California.”
“A beloved partner, big brother, uncle, surrogate parent, godfather and friend, Bill recently and happily celebrated his 90th birthday surrounded by cherished loved ones,” the post continued.
CNN has reached out to Cobbs’ representatives for further comment.
With a career spanning five decades, Cobbs had nearly 200 film and TV credits, and appeared in many beloved titles including the 1993 action-thriller “Demolition Man” and the Oscar-nominated 1996 classic “That Thing You Do!”
The Cleveland native’s career began in the mid-1970s when he got his start on the stage, appearing in Broadway productions including “Black Picture Show” and “The First Breeze of Summer.” He also later appeared in stage productions for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
Throughout the ’70s and into the ‘80s, Cobbs’ career took off. He appeared in various TV shows and TV movies including “Good Times,” “The Equalizer,” “One Life to Live” and “Sesame Street.”
He also appeared in a number of films including “The Hitter,” “Trading Places” and the Oscar-winning “The Color of Money.”
In 1987, Cobbs had another big break when he landed the role of The Dutchman opposite the late Dabney Coleman in the ABC sitcom “The Slap Maxwell Story,” appearing in every episode of the show’s single season. He also played Webb Johnson in one episode of the legal drama series “L.A. Law” that same year.
The 1990s were a dynamic period for Cobbs. Appearing alongside Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, Cobbs played the role of Devaney in the 1992 Oscar-nominated thriller “The Bodyguard.”
He appeared in the 1993 sci-fi thriller “Demolition Man,” alongside Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock. In 1996, Cobbs played a fictional jazz pianist in the musical comedy “That Thing You Do!” starring Tom Hanks, Liv Tyler and Steve Zahn.
The following year, he portrayed Arthur Chaney in the beloved family-friendly movie “Air Bud,” about a Golden Retriever who plays on a high school basketball team.
On TV, Cobbs had one-off roles in classic shows throughout the ‘90s including “ER,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wayans Bros.” and “Northern Exposure.” He was also a series regular on the first season of “The Gregory Hines Show.”
He went on to appear in a number of additional iconic TV shows of the aughts, including “Six Feet under,” “The West Wing,” “The Drew Carey Show” “NYPD Blue” and “JAG.” In 2006, he played Reginald in the Shawn Levy-directed “Night at the Museum” and went on to reprise the character in the 2014 sequel “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.”
In 2013, Cobbs played Master Tinker in the cinematic adaptation of “Oz The Great and Powerful,” based on author L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” books.
Cobbs in 2020 appeared on the TVOKids children’s series “Dino Dana,” which won him a Daytime Emmy for outstanding limited performance in a daytime program. His final acting credit came in 2023, when he appeared on the TV mini-series “Incandescent Love.”
Cobbs’ passion for acting never waned throughout his decades-long career.
“I enjoy what I do, I really enjoy it,” he said in a 2012 interview. “It’s exciting to have a project and work on it and see it come to fruition, so I can find joy doing this so much.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin that asks the court to declare that access to abortion is a right protected by the state constitution, according to a draft court order obtained by Wisconsin Watch.
The draft order also indicates that the court has decided to deny an effort from a coalition of anti-abortion groups — Wisconsin Right to Life, Wisconsin Family Action and Pro-Life Wisconsin — to intervene in the case, but will allow them to file a brief opposing the lawsuit.
“This is not a public order,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler told Wisconsin Watch in a statement in response to questions about the draft order. “I am not in a position to release any further information.”
After the story published, Ziegler issued the following statement publicly:
“Today the entire court was shocked to learn that a confidential draft document was ostensibly leaked to the press. I have contacted law enforcement to request that a full investigation be conducted. We are all united behind this investigation to identify the source of the apparent leak. The seven of us condemn this breach.”
The court’s other six justices did not reply to questions from Wisconsin Watch about the draft order.
The case offers the court’s four-member liberal majority the chance to issue a potentially broad ruling that could include sweeping protections for access to abortion. The draft order obtained by Wisconsin Watch does not include any concurring or dissenting opinions, leaving it unclear which justices voted for or against accepting the case.
Oral arguments in the case likely won’t happen until after the court’s next term starts in the fall.
The lawsuit was filed directly with the state Supreme Court on Feb. 22 by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, two abortion providers and a group of anonymous women who have received abortions. The group argues the Wisconsin Constitution protects both a pregnant woman’s right to have an abortion and a doctor’s right to perform the procedure. The draft order defers a decision whether and how to keep the identities of the women anonymous.
“It is ordered that the petition for leave to commence an original action is granted, this court assumes jurisdiction over this entire action, and the petitioners may not raise or argue issues not set forth in the petition for leave to commence an original action unless otherwise ordered by the court,” the draft order reads.
Original actions, which are lawsuits filed directly with the state Supreme Court, are uncommon and usually reserved for litigation that carries substantial weight and has a statewide effect.
This would be the fourth original action taken on by the court this term. During the 2020-21 term, under a conservative majority, the court accepted three original actions, according to a tally from Marquette University Professor Alan Ball, a diligent court tracker. During the 2019-20 term, the court took seven original actions. In 2018-19, it accepted one direct suit. In all of the 15 terms prior to that, it took a total of four.
Planned Parenthood’s argument is rooted in Article I, Section 1, of the Wisconsin Constitution, which states, in part: “All people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“All Wisconsin residents … have inherent rights to choose whether and when to have a child, and whether or when to seek medical care,” Planned Parenthood argues in its lawsuit.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare, among other things, “that the right to equal protection guaranteed by (the Wisconsin Constitution) encompasses the right to make one’s own decisions about reproductive health care, including whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term and a physician’s right to provide appropriate abortion care.”
The anti-abortion groups sought to intervene in the case because they “have an interest in protecting various abortion-related laws that they have advocated for and publicly defended,” according to a legal brief.
The draft order does not make clear what the court plans to do with a separate lawsuit involving abortion rights.
That case stems from a lawsuit filed by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul in June 2022, seeking to block an 1849 Wisconsin law widely considered to ban abortion. The lawsuit was filed days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the court’s landmark precedent establishing a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, triggering the 19th-century law.
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Diane Schlipper ruled last year that the 1849 law banned feticide and did not apply to consensual abortions. Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski asked the state Supreme Court to take up an appeal of Schlipper’s ruling, but it has yet to rule on that request.
“As I have repeatedly stated, it is my view that, properly interpreted, the statute at issue prohibits performing abortions (including consensual abortions) unless the exception for abortions necessary to save the life of the mother applies,” Urmanski said in a statement at the time.
The Planned Parenthood case is the latest in a series of high-profile cases that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to hear since shifting to a liberal majority in August 2023.
In December, the court threw out Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative districts. More recently, it has heard oral arguments in cases that could further alter the balance of power in the Capitol and restore the use of unstaffed absentee ballot drop boxes ahead of November’s presidential election. Rulings in those cases are expected soon, with the court’s current term wrapping up next week.
The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
Two presidential task forces formed to recommend how Harvard can combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian activity on campus have spoken: Harvard needs to act now.
(Photo: David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
By David Goldman, CNN
(CNN) — Two presidential task forces formed to recommend how Harvard can combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian activity on campus have spoken: Harvard needs to act now.
The two groups issued preliminary reports on Wednesday aimed at restoring the university’s trust with students, faculty and the broader community. The recommendations come after a string of disruptive and, at times, violent campus protests. And they follow a rise in hateful speech and activity against Jews, Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs after Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands.
After 85 listening sessions that included close to 900 members of the Harvard community, the task forces said Harvard’s students and faculty feel the university has fallen short of its stated values, particularly respecting differences and diversity, in its response to the protests and upheaval on campus.
“The situation over the past year has been quite grave, and unless we take significant steps forward by the beginning of the coming academic year, we could be in a position similar to last year, which we want to prevent,” said Derek Penslar, a Jewish history professor and co-chair of Harvard’s task force on combating antisemitism.
Harvard needs to do more work to promote diversity education and promote multiple perspectives on campus, the task force chairs recommended.
“Intentional engagement with diversity is a very important skill that all our students should have, regardless of what school they attend,” said Ali Asani, a Middle Eastern studies professor and co-chair of the task force on combating anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias. “Not having those skills and the tools to engage has serious consequences for our world as it leads to polarization.”
The anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias task force broadly recommended promoting safety, representation, freedom of expression, transparency and relationships among affinity groups among other areas. The antisemitism task force sought to get Harvard to clarify its values, act against discrimination and hate, improve the university’s disciplinary process, promote dialogue and training on the topic and support Jewish life on campus.
Among the suggestions, the task forces said Harvard should publicly condemn all forms of discrimination and stay out of topics that don’t concern the university. Harvard last month said it will no longer weigh in on public matters that don’t impact the Ivy League school’s core function. The groups said Harvard should review its Middle East academic program, create a prayer space for Muslims, work to prevent doxxing and add combatting antisemitism to the purview of the university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office.
Of particular concern for the task force on antisemitism was the sentiment that complaints about anti-Jewish hate and activity on campus were going unheard. The group said that the university failed to follow up on many complaints, and the consequences for some of those actions was insufficient.
Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said he appreciated the recommendations and the task forces’ candor.
“The work ahead of us will require a concerted effort,” Garber said. “We will commence detailed review and implementation of the shorter-term recommendations over the summer. Those that are longer-term will be developed, refined, and implemented in due course.”
Harvard has been under particular scrutiny for its response to rising incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. The Anti-Defamation League gave Harvard a failing grade on antisemitism in a recent report. And the House Education Committee lambasted the university for its response to a subpoena seeking information on how it handled campus protests.
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned earlier this year following her testimony to the House committee, and an ensuing plagiarism scandal.
Rev. Dr. Marcus Allen, the longtime pastor at Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Madison’s South Side, has a teenage son who has played football for years. While running with him one day recently on the football field, inspiration hit him.
“I thought, ‘Hey, maybe there some other kids that want to do the same and get out here and exercise with us.’ Then the next day at [Mt. Zion] church, a kid came up to me and said, ‘Hey, how can I be better at football?’ And I said, ‘You got to make sure your conditioning is right, make sure you got stamina, make sure you can run.'”
With that, Rev. Allen thought it was time to invite all of the young people in the neighborhood and beyond out to run and do conditioning drills to help prepare them for their fall sports seasons in their middle schools and high schools.
Rev. Dr. Marcus Allen
“‘Then other adults asked me, ‘Hey, can I come, too?’ and i was like, ‘Yeah, anybody can come,'” Allen says.
The first conditioning session was held Saturday, June 22, at Penn Park and despite the rain, a bunch of young people came out to exercise. The plan is to continue to host the sessions every Saturday at 9 a.m. at Penn Park, and hopefully watch the attendance grow until the final meet-up on July 27. By August, when many of the sporting seasons get underway for students, these youths will be in great shape and will have picked up some good habits.
“So right now, the youth conditioning sessions are open to the kids ages 12-18, but any adults, especially males, are invited to come,” Allen says. “People are free to come just for the fellowship. Of course, we need cardio and exercise to keep our hearts going strong so that we can be able to continue to live on this earth.”
Allen makes it clear that he’s not a professional when it comes to fitness and training but he is “an involved dad.”
“It’s something that evolved out of me just helping my child and being an involved dad. I know that there are a lot of kids out here that don’t have father figures that they can look up to and I wanted to be able to provide that for them, especially the African American community where many of our African American children are growing up without parents in their homes,” Allen says. “So I want to be that positive male role model for them while also helping them try to achieve their goals in sports.
“So I’m passionate about kids, passionate about mentorship, and just having an impact in their lives,” Allen says. “I want my son to be great, and I’m pretty sure parents want their children to be the same, and I just want to provide that outlet for them over the summer, because I don’t know if anything else is open.”
According to experts, young people should be doing at least two types of physical activity each week including aerobic exercise and exercises to strengthen their muscles and bones. Young people should aim for at least 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous intensity physical activity a day across the week.
“Every conditioning session there is gonna be a warm-up, then some form of cardio exercise, either we are running laps around Penn Park or running on the football field. Then we’ll end with core exercises and a cool down,” Allen says. “There’s no sports-type drills, no football drills. None of that. It is all cardio conditioning, trying to get that heart rate up and those lungs ready to endure when they go on the practice field or football field.”
Rev. Dr. Marcus Allen (blue shorts) leads young people in a variety of core exercises at Penn Park on June 22. (Photos courtesy of Rev. Allen)
The conditioning sessions will be held every Saturday, rain or shine. Allen not only hopes to get the young people in superior shape for their sports seasons, but to also build some camaraderie and friendships.
“The physical fitness of these meet-ups, of course, is a very important part. That’s the part that’s bringing them together,” Allen says, “but we’re also trying to keep the young people off the street and trying to keep them engaged in something positive during the summer. I think it’s important to just be getting the young people out of the house and over to the park and getting their bodies moving.”
Allen says that they will have water at Penn Park to hydrate the young people along with some type of fruit like watermelon or oranges or bananas.
“We will have all the safety precautions in place, and just being mindful of everything, but we will make sure the kids stay hydrated and make sure they get the cardio that they need,” Allen says.
The next conditioning session will be held on Saturday, June 29, 9 a.m. at Penn Park, 2101 Fisher St. For more information or if you have questions, e-mail Rev. Dr. Marcus Allen at [email protected].
The Black Men Coalition (BMC) Foundation is engaging in a transformative collaboration with eCornell, the online learning platform of Cornell University, aimed at breaking barriers that contribute to a persistent cycle of poverty and limited opportunities.
This collaboration aims to uplift underserved and vulnerable individuals by offering them the tools they need to succeed. The organizations will host a press conference today at 2 p.m. at BMC’s second office space, 1 N. Pinckney St. on the Capitol Square, to talk more about the plans to provide hundreds of learners from low-income backgrounds with free access to online professional certificate programs annually.
“In Dane County, we encounter many individuals who are eager to advance but encounter obstacles in developing their skills, which can make it challenging to land good jobs or advance within their companies,” says BMC President Corey Marionneaux in a statement. “Providing free access to these courses helps eliminate financial and other barriers, creating a path to success full of hope, empowerment, value and ultimately a hand up for those looking to earn a better living wage.”
Designed by Cornell’s Ivy League faculty, participants will benefit from eCornell’s prestigious certificate programs by learning in-demand skills across a diverse array of fields, opening the door for social and economic growth. Typically priced at $3,900, these courses are being offered for free thanks to support from Ascendium Education Group and Diane Endres Ballweg, philanthropist and lifelong educator.
Patrick Braxton will officially become mayor of Newbern once the court approves the settlement – the first Black person to hold the position in the town’s 166-year history.
Newbern is about an hour drive from Selma in the western part of Alabama and has a population of 133, according to the 2020 Census.
After being sworn in as mayor, Braxton was later denied full access to the office by the man who was mayor before him, Haywood Stokes III, who is White, and the majority-White city council, according to a lawsuit.
Braxton along with four residents he wanted to appoint to a new city council and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund filed an amended complaint to force the town to honor the election.
Although “a factual dispute exists regarding who has lawful authority to serve as mayor and town councilmembers,” according to the settlement, signed June 21, the parties now agree “Braxton is the lawful mayor of Newbern, and he shall hold all the powers, privileges, duties … entrusted to the mayor of Newbern under Alabama state law.”
The settlement does not require that the defendants admit to any wrongdoing and specifically notes that they “deny having engaged in any wrongful practice, or other unlawful conduct.”
Leah Wong, an attorney with the Legal Defense Fund who represented the plaintiffs, called the outcome of the settlement positive because “the town will be able to move forward.”
“Most of the Black residents still recognized (Braxton) as mayor …,” Wong said. “It is a shame that he had to fight for his right to actually execute his duties for the last four years.”
CNN has reached out to Braxton and the town of Newbern for comment.
Under the settlement, Braxton has 14 days after the effective date to submit names of residents to the Alabama governor he wants the state to appoint as town council members. If Alabama Governor Kay Ivey does not appoint people to fill the town council positions, Braxton must hold a special election on December 31, 2024.
Braxton, along with his new town council, will also be responsible for conducting the regularly scheduled elections set for 2025.
The settlement states the town agrees to pay the attorney fees of the plaintiffs which will come from town funds. And the town’s finances will be independently audited by an entity jointly agreed upon by Stokes and Braxton.
A lifelong Newbern resident and volunteer firefighter, Braxton previously told CNN he decided to challenge the status quo in his townand run for mayor. He asserted in the lawsuit the mayor and town council were not responding to the needs of Newbern’s majority Black community, CNN previously reported.
The town had not held a mayoral election since at least 1965, when the Voting Rights Act became law, according to the lawsuit. According to court records, the voting age population in Newbern is 64.3 percent Black and 34.8 White.
According to the lawsuit, “to prevent Braxton from appointing a majority black Town council, the Defendants … agreed to hold a secret meeting and adopt resolutions to conduct a special election,” CNN previously reported.
At the meeting, Braxton’s lawsuit claims Stokes set a special election date for the council, “because the council members had allegedly ‘forgotten’ to qualify as candidates for the 2020 municipal elections.”
Braxton and the people he appointed as councilors say in the lawsuit thatno notice of a special election was published and the only people to file to run were Stokes and former council members Gary Broussard, Jesse Donald Leverett, Voncille Brown Thomas and Willie Richard Tucker.
And as they were the only candidates for the October 6 special election, they won by default.
The lawsuit claimed the locks on the town hall were changed so Braxton could not get in, adding he was denied access to the post office box used for official mail, and a local bank would not let him see the town accounts.
“Patrick Braxton accomplished something no other Black resident of the City of Newbern had ever accomplished since the city’s founding in 1854: he was duly elected Mayor of the City,” the lawsuit claimed. “However, the minority White residents of the city, long accustomed to exercising total control over city government, refused to accept this outcome.”
In court filings, the defendants said there was no conspiracy and no racial discrimination, CNN reported.
CNN’s Meridith Edwards and Rachel Clarke contributed to this report.
Jim Latimer conducts the Capitol City Band. (Photo supplied)
Jim Latimer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus music professor, has been leading the Capitol City Band and conducting hundreds and hundreds of concerts for 43 years now – since 1981.
This Thursday, June 27, 7 p.m., at Rennebohm Park, Latimer will conduct a very special concert on his 90th birthday that will be the opening concert for the 56th season of the Capitol City Band.
When the Capitol City Band first started back in June of 1969, Elmer Ziegler, a mentor to Latimer, led the concerts which back then took place in Vilas Park. Most of the time in the last half-century, the band has been led by Latimer, who was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Wisconsin Percussive Arts Society in 2018 for a lifetime of education, performance, and promotion of percussion as a solo and ensemble art form, leading the way.
The band’s weekly Thursday concerts will take place at 7 p.m. at Rennebohm Park on Madison’s near West Side and run for nine weeks from tonight until Aug. 22.
Concerts are free … rain or shine. Bring a chair to sit in. Rennebohm Park is located at 115 N. Eau Claire Ave. in the Hilldale neighborhood.
For information about the event, call 608 835-9861. To donate to Jim Latimer’s 90th birthday fundraiser for the Capitol City Band, click here.
Young professionals dance at a previous networking event hosted by Martinez White and Intuition Productions.
(Photo supplied.)
Martinez White, a.k.a. DJ M. White, loves to host local live entertainment events to inspire new and organic connections amongst the emerging working young professional culture in Madison. On Saturday, July 6, 7-11 p.m., during the upcoming Fourth of July weekend, White is inviting people to come and celebrate on the rooftop of the Black Business Hub with an all-white R&B ladies’ night affair called “Pangea II”
“I’m looking to motivate a lot of millennials of color to come to this event, but also a lot of just open-minded and progressive thinking young people across the board, no matter what your background is,” White tells Madison365. White is the founder and CEO of Intuition Productions LLC, a multimedia brand and millennial event planning business.
Pangea II is the second installment of a one-day live edutainment mixer showcasing “the power of togetherness, especially in a divided sociopolitical atmosphere.” There will be a live DJ, spoken-word montages, raffles and live music performances to entertain guests.
The events are always a lot of fun, but also an important chance to network and for young professionals to advertise and grow their businesses and side hustles.
“Networking brings a lot of economic growth to businesses that we work with and we are very proud of that. Over the last 18 years that I’ve been doing music, we’ve done significant numbers,” White explains. “We’ve calculated that in the last five years or so, we’ve helped businesses grow over $250,000 in cash … just by helping with music support and elevating the frequency so that people’s positive vibration is expressed in currency.
“So I think that’s what we’re looking to accentuate and really do it with another historic black entity in the Urban League and the [Black Business] Hub,” he adds.
At previous events hosted by White, local BIPOC millennial artists, musicians and textile designers have gathered in safe spaces to promote acceptance of difference and celebration of diversity.
“This is our 38th ‘Lovezone’ branded event. Lovezone is just basically R&B Ladies Night type of vibe, karaoke vibes, people singing along, where the artist is the audience and the people become the centerpiece of the celebration,” White says.
“I think, specifically, this space and this time is important because even though this is our 38th Lovezone [event], it’s only our second Pangea [event],” he continues. “So Pangea is a music, art and cultural mixer. It’s like an expression fest. We have some artists who will come and present some work and paint live, spray paint, and do some art while people are hanging out and networking. The whole purpose of it is to celebrate togetherness.”
Milwaukee-raised artist Adam Villegas, who owns a clothing company called Living Out Unreal Dreams, will be helping White with the art installation for Pangea II.
“He is an art grad from UW. So we’re both Badgers. He’s the art director. He’s helping with the art installation, and it’s gonna be nice,” White says. “It’s going to be a ‘The Land Before Time’ theme. You remember that cartoon? We’re really excited about it.”
White says that his vision is to create a safe, vibrant, intergenerational networking environment for professionals ages 21-40 years old. He says that people really love the karaoke part of the event.
Martinez White
“Karaoke can be a lot of fun. Music is what our feelings sound like,” he continues. “And if somebody has a feeling about a certain record or a memory or some experience that’s attached to their record, they may grab a microphone and express those feelings through the song. It’s a lot of fun.”
American Family Insurance will be the presenting sponsor.
“We excited about it, There’s gonna be some R&B vibes, some Afro beats and some reggaeton songs and music,” White says. “Reach out to us on our Intuition Productions Facebook page, and they can find the ticket information there.
“I just want people to come and party with us on the rooftop at this all-white affair at the Black Business Hub,” White says. “It’s an opportunity for us to celebrate together.”
