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Black Milwaukeeans Are Ready to Fight for Their Communities
Frustrated by empty promises from politicians, the time to mobilize could not be any riper than now
More often than I care to admit, I loop back to the summer of 2016. Before my sister’s Green Bay Packer-themed wedding, I was sitting on the porch steps of a duplex, a ubiquitous classic of Milwaukee architecture, engrossed in an animated discussion of modern American politics. My little sister and her neighbor, Trevell, both Black working-class millennials, were very informed about the upcoming election. They knew the stakes but struggled with their choices.
That sourness lingered even after the convention officially christened Hillary Clinton as the Democratic challenger to Donald Trump. Trevell did not plan to vote that November, and his frustration was palpable. But he had a strategy. He’d skip the upcoming election and place his trust in his fellow voters who would vote Democrat on the ballot. He’d show up for the midterms. He and my sister were angry about the 2010 midterm that had left America’s first Black president with a Congress that stymied the change they’d hoped for.
“That’s my main problem with America,” Trevell said. “We’ll go out there and vote for president, but then we’ll skip the whole fucking Congress.”
My sister took a long drag from her cigarette. “Only time we saw something about Bernie Sanders was on social media,” she said.
I didn’t want to admit it to myself or anyone else, but I intuitively knew at that moment in the summer of 2016 that Clinton had lost Wisconsin before the votes had even been cast. There was an enthusiasm gap as wide as a gulf. I desperately wanted to be wrong, so I said nothing.
In April 2016, I conducted a mini exit poll among my own family, made up of mostly working-class and poor folk. All except one voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. When I asked one of my aunts why, she said she liked his message but, most poignantly, that while she was proud to have had a Black president, she wasn’t sure that much had changed…
