The Wisconsin State Assembly voted Thursday to pass AB 615 creating a task force on missing and murdered African American women and girls.
State Rep. Shelia Stubbs, a sponsor of the bill, tells Madison365 that this issue has always been an extremely personal one for her going back to her childhood when she first heard about the Atlanta child murders that took place between 1979 and 1981. Over about a two-year time period, approximately 29 African-American children, teens, and young adults were kidnapped and murdered.
“When I had an opportunity to do something and I started studying what was happening and researching missing and murdered African American women and girls, it reminded me of the things I read about when I was a kid,” Stubbs says. “The missing African American women and girls look like me and my daughters, so this is personal for me.”
Stubbs thanked her co-authors of the bill including Sen. Jesse James and Sen. LaTonya Johnson and State Rep. Michael Schraa. “This is a bi-partisan piece of legislation and that’s the only way you can get work done in this building,” Stubbs says.
In Wisconsin, African American women and girls missing and murdered at disproportionately higher rates than their white counterparts. Stubbs says that the State of Wisconsin “desperately needs this task force.”
“This is about protecting our African American mothers, sisters, daughters, and neighbors. We must act boldly and decisively to investigate and prevent violence in our communities, and to bring healing and closure to victims and their families,” Stubbs says.
Now that AB 615 has successfully passed the Assembly side of the state Legislature, it is looking for a hearing in the Senate, which Stubbs says has been delayed because the chair of the Government Operations Senate Committee refuses to put it on the calendar.
“Right now the bill is in a committee in the State Senate, and we can’t get a hearing which is appalling,” Stubbs says. “Why are we not able to get a hearing on an issue that is so critical for people in the state of Wisconsin?”
