First Match Struck in Milwaukee

The Negroes are rioting again, 1967, 2016 and
getting worse. Milwaukee Journal cover
from July 31, 1967

Hey, black and brown folks, you get the feeling you're not wanted around here?

Black-brown lives in Milwaukee do matter: Wisconsin politicians have been using resentment against THEM to build up political dynasties, with a lot of help from white billionaires.

The scope of the current Republican project is so ambitious, even now five years into the Lost Decade most people have no idea what is afoot in Wisconsin, (Eidelson, Salon), (Rowen, The Political Environment).

Among most Wisconsin Republicans, black and brown people are illegitimate figures casting votes at the ballot box.

The same could be said of black and brown folks behind the wheel, at a store, walking, getting their all-so-black hair cut, breathing and taking up our oxygen.

Embarrassed, awkward encounters with minorities by Wisconsin Republican whites have been replaced with open hostility, becoming more brazen as a tactic in itself as the fires of Milwaukee are a milestone in the Republican project. Stoking fires and resentment is no accident.

Whites know Scott Walker and the Wisconsin DoJ are Republican operations who will back up nearly anything inflicted onto minorities.

Municipal and county police units have become para-military operations whose police unions back Republican politicians while on the streets police inflict trauma, imprisoning or killing targets of opportunity with impunity, if the moment and feeling are right.

Harassment, tactical blasting of sirens followed by laughter is reality inflicted by white, Republican cops, if you're lucky.

This is Wisconsin - 2016. Milwaukee is just the most visible and tragic manifestation of white racism, a statewide phenomenon.

The great migrations of the 20th century may begin anew, this time from the northern United States to North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

Each encroachment, each incursion cutting into black and brown lives, (and significantly white single women raising children), has been met with a combination of incomprehension, apathy and stunned silence as Republicans probe the moral and political lassitude of non-racists in Wisconsin.

White liberal racists have a partner in racism as never before in modern history.

Venice Williams of Alice's Garden and The Body and Soul Healing Arts Center, casts a critical look at the fires in Milwaukee as whites are explaining away concerns any decent human being has about the targeting of black and browns in Wisconsin.

From Ms. Williams: