HispanicVista Columnists

Milwaukee: The New Selma

By Robert Miranda

March 10, 2005

Milwaukee is a hyper-segregated city. The name of the city should be New Selma, Wisconsin. Indeed, in the 1960s Selma, Alabama was a hotbed of overt racism in the United States. Jim Crow apartheid flourish in that part of the country for years before the civil rights movement finally brought down the backward culture that prevented Blacks from voting just a little over 40 years ago.

However, Milwaukee, unlike Selma, is more sophisticated in its racist culture. In New Selma, racism is more covert; nevertheless still as brutal.

The brutality comes in the form of its justice system

Milwaukee’s police department is in great need of a cultural revolution from within its ranks. This culture of violence and inhumanity has taken fanatical roots among its officers. It is up to the leadership to make this revolution take place. They must establish a culture of professionalism within its ranks, rather than promote the culture of fear among its citizenry.

Indeed, we should all appreciate the difficult work our police have to perform, however, there is no excuse and there is no rational for police to engage in silence when crimes have been committed by their fellow officers.

The beating of Frank Jude should have drawn the condemnation of the rank and file and it should have, in the strongest sense of the word, drawn the condemnation by New Selma Mayor, Tom Barrett. At the minimum the mayor should be challenging his department to produce the criminals of the Jude beating.

However, New Selma’s Black community is not the only community speaking out against police brutality, Asian-Americans have fallen victim to police high-noon like practice when a young Asian male was gunned down a few weeks ago.

These abuses should not be limited to the police, indeed, New Selma has a spokesman who cleverly promotes himself as “Standing for Milwaukee”—or should we say, Standing for Apartheid.

New Selma’s best known bigot is Mark Belling. His show is the top rated radio show in these here parts. Not surprisingly, his attack against Milwaukee’s Latino/Mexican community drew support from most everyone who jumped up and yelled “free speech.”

Interesting, how those conservatives who yelled "free speech" when defending Belling have yet to come forward to condemn the cops for their murderous like beating of Mr. Jude or at best, to condemn members of the department for keeping silent on the issue.

New Selma, Wisconsin is home to many types of people from many different lands and languages. It is a growing city, welcoming new development and opening doors of opportunity to many who wishes to achieve the American dream.

Yet, it is a city in need of reflection. The growing racism fueled by bigoted radio talk show-hosts and practiced by police officers is cause for concern.

Have we lost our sense of community? The growing mentality of hate has to be blocked and our mayor and the leaders of our city must come forward and aggressively decry racism and those who promote hate against a community.
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-- Miranda is a national award-winning columnist, Latino community activist and columnist for the Milwaukee Spanish Journal. rmiranda@wi.rr.com

http://wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=1584