Out in the Cold—Fitchburg Kicks Black Children out of Shelter, Wisconsin Winter Looms

Beautiful children in Fitchburg Wisconsin
are relegated to picnic tables by City officials.
Those who dare care for minority children
are targeted by the Fitchburg Common Council
and white City Hall bureaucrats.

Fuck you, Fitchburg—An editorial

Update: Group is now meeting at an area church, Facebook reports. Good hope; one feels confident cops will not invade, harass, fine or kill there.
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Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Fitchburg is a suburb just south of Madison run by white people, for white people, wrestling with the Black Problem.

It's August 2014 and a Fitchburg cop pulls outside of the polling place in district one with red and white lights flashing, creating a barrier between the polling place and King James Way, the black sector of the Jamestown neighborhood named after a 17th century Virginia slave colony.

I'm working as a poll worker and I point out the cop car outside the polling place: "Good," says the new chief election inspector, a white racist named Dale Zahorik.

Zahorik hates black people. Do you think communities of interest who don't trust cops should have to encounter a cop car with lights flashing as a condition of voting? I ask.

Zahorik evades the question, and I call up the City Clerk's office, and its reaction, from one Patti Anderson, vacillates between feigned indifference and hostility toward me challenging why I am questioning the presence of the cop.

The cop is but one example of white hostility towards black folks here. There's Zahorik's refusing to put out a polling place sign out on Election Day, April 2016, short-staffing the ballots table, open antagonism towards black voters, intimidation, stuffing the roster of polling workers with white racists, Ron Johnson and Pat McCutcheon for example, several instances of voter obstruction I have witnessed, challenged and documented between 2007 and 2016, most recently in a related civil case in Fitchburg Municipal Court where I testified under oath a detailed chronicling of the placing of the White Power Caucus in Fitchburg aldermanic district one polling place.

Zahorik and the City Clerk's attitude exemplify the white consensus towards black residents from City Hall. Blacks are not wanted here and they should leave.

Sometimes though, pictures tell a clearer story.

Wanda Smith runs an informal, after-school club to help out children with homework, structure, comfort, encouragement, a little something to eat, and a general peace-and-love gathering to help children not-quite-yet-traumatized by living in Fitchburg.

Fitchburg knows how to handle Wanda Smith.

For working with minority children, Smith has been unremittingly harassed by City Hall and the Common Council. In a piece that is shaking the conscience of Dane County Wisconsin, Nicholas Garton reports, "Fitchburg alder Dorothy Krause wanted to use police records and licensing requirements to shut down the after-school homework club run by longtime community volunteer Wanda Smith, who she considers 'not someone who should be in charge of groups of children,' according to emails obtained by Madison365."

This is pure character assassination and harassment of a peace-loving citizen.

There's a small, unoccupied park shelter off King James Way in Fitchburg in the black sector. Smith meets with the children near there.

Writes Amelia Royko Maurer in Facebook last night:

Wanda Smith has to conduct her after school program outside if they want to be near their homes, which they do because it builds a sense of place and community and saves on transportation costs. The city of Fitchburg won’t let them use the unoccupied park shelter without paying an unaffordable amount. [Alders] Dorothy Krause, Jason Gonzalez, Tony Hartmann, [and former Mayor] Shawn Pfaff, if you’re looking for criminal behavior, look no further than yourself and colleagues. This is unconscionable and your collective regrets and care are proven hollow by your willingness to let this continue.

Soon, the kids are going to get cold. But besides the weather, they have to cope with Fitchburg City Hall and the Fitchburg cops who relegate the kids to a picnic table.

Below are recent shots of these human children.

Fuck you, Fitchburg.

To Wanda Smith and those children blessed by her love, this is for you:

"Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Robert F. Kennedy
University of Cape Town, South Africa
"Day of Affirmation" Speech June 6th, 1966