Reckless driving has been at the center of our conversation in Milwaukee since the covid-19. While the problem isn’t new, this matter has intensified in the past few years, and so has the debate among residents. I have personally witnessed many accidents in our Northwest neighborhood. These accidents used to be rare, a once-in-a-lifetime episode that you would talk about it for years, now I see one or two per month, on my way to work while taking the kid to school, while going for a run, you name it. I have lived in the same house for almost six years; it was a quiet, tranquil area right after six pm. The only thing you could hear was kids in the park, some branches hitting other tree branches, and neurotic dogs barking at clouds or other dogs. Since last summer, the landscape has changed drastically; I mean, you can’t go across the street without fearing for your life, sometimes with cars with no license plates driving at 60 mph or more ignoring stops signs and laughing at you when they pass you. I am sure you have plenty of similar stories.
Last fall, I witnessed a driver losing his life right in front of my eyes. I was setting up the restaurant’s patio where I work part-time and another coworker at around 5 AM. The only thing that stopped an SUV driving at 90 MPH and our lives was one tree. The driver took two steps outside of his car before collapsing. We rushed to help, and I couldn’t stop thinking about this day. My coworker and I worked the entire shift. The restaurant has some large windows to the street; we witnessed the crying families in disbelief arriving and leaving, the emergency crews, the cleaning crews. By 2 PM or so, the road went back to normal; a human being who had just lost his life before me just became another number.
Our city is going through some political changes; we choose a new mayor and have some critical federal and local races next year. I don’t want to talk about the candidates, there are so many, and I don’t endorse people. I encourage everyone to vote, inform yourself and vote if you can, either in person or by mail. While not specifying, most candidates address this issue and public safety in their campaigns by enhancing the Milwaukee Police Department with more surveillance and punitive tools, increasing its budget, and augmenting the number of cops in our community.
Declaring war on your neighbors with more police is the wrong answer to a vicious cycle of violence. Mass incarceration is part of that cycle; punishing people with traffic tickets that we know cannot pay is part of that cycle of violence. I favor holding people accountable when they do dumb stuff or illegal stuff. Still, we need some profound solutions to eradicate the ghost of violence that touches every member of our city.
How do we hold people accountable for reckless behavior while addressing the causes and social causes that make people act this way? How do we separate from society those who are willing to hurt us while thinking that no consequences, not just laws, apply to them, while we give a chance to those who make an honest mistake or something minor? Because to be honest with you, and perhaps it’s just perception. Still, it seems to me that those who constantly hurt their inner circle, domestic violence, are always free, or there is a revolving door for them, and of course, they keep breaking their victims until it’s too late. It seems that those with multiple DUIs follow the same pattern until it’s too late as well. So many of those that hurt our community somehow are free, and when they cause some damage, we see that at some point they were arrested, but they go back to the street more empowered, angrier, revengeful, knowing that rules don’t apply to them.
What radicalize people while they are separated from society? We are doing something wrong. We are addressing some symptoms and not the causes. You don’t need to be a Social Scientist or an academic to know that some of the roots of violence in Milwaukee reside in racism, extreme poverty, and toxic masculinity.
I have read some people on social media that claim they have a solution to this problem of reckless drivers; their solution is red light cameras. For those of you who have never experienced poverty, let me share with you what a traffic ticket represents in your life when you have more than one job to cover a roof and food. Let’s say that a traffic ticket punishes a lousy driver with $200.00. To send a message to a person that makes $600.00 every two weeks, think about what that punishment would do to that person’s already difficult social mobility. Yes, I am implying many drivers will be in poverty in 2021 because 25% of Milwaukee lives in poverty, according to the US Census Bureau[1], and a significant percentage of people in the middle class and higher are working from home. I believe this measure is just a mediocre Band-Aid to a more profound problem, and it’s, in fact, just sweeping dirt under the rug.
How do mass incarceration and race fit in the equation? 39% of the city is black, 45% white. Nearly 1 in every 36 black adults in Wisconsin is in prison, 42% of Wisconsin’s prison population is black, in a state that is 87% white, with a majority Black people living in Milwaukee. [2] We are not only punishing people for reckless behavior, but we are also enabling social distress that hurts an entire multigeneration community segregated between freeways, in a district that the rest of Milwaukee avoids, does not talk about out of fear of sounding racist or sounding political, but we are racist, we are enabling inhumane conditions, and we keep proposing punitive laws as solutions, they are not solutions, it is adding more fuel to the fire.
Some people use their vehicles as PPE, it is like their flesh merges with the machine, and the person becomes its alter ego character, a costume. But let me give you my credentials. I am not an expert. You should only take this post as a concerned resident. I don’t have a solution based on spatial or social analysis, I haven’t spent years organizing in the community, but I invite you perhaps pay attention to the experts, not just politicians or outspoken celebrities, if you are a politician, then listen to the experts and exercise some critical thinking so we can go to the bottom of this crisis, we need to desegregate our city, we cannot wait one more year, we have the resources.
While I have neither the credentials nor the expertise to find a structural solution within budget constraints, let me give you some of my ideological brainstorming concepts without a budget and go from there.
· Reimagine the police and fire departments. Replace them with emergency hubs that cover a radio that can assist residents in need within 2 minutes of calling 911, whether it’s medical, burglary, a violent or tactical situation, a fire, or any other emergency. Provide these hubs with robust communications and modernize their vehicles, no more anonymous police cars, but actual emergency cars, that when you see them, you don’t feel fear. Still, you know they are about to help a Milwaukeean.
· Invest in public education, from daycare to college. A technical or associate’s degree should be an option, but not the overall goal. Every citizen should have a 4-year college degree as an entitlement. It is an intellectual and professional investment for the entire region. Every person in Milwaukee should have the right to learn about art, history, science, and if they want to learn a trade, it should be a privilege, not their last resort, because they can’t afford college or are black.
· We need shelters to protect domestic violence victims, with solid programs that immediately safeguard the victim and provide them with a strategy to reintegrate into society. Shelters shouldn’t become a revolving door into homelessness and poverty.
· Rethink institutional marriage. Filing for divorce shouldn’t be complicated and shouldn’t ruin a person’s financial life. It should be an easy transaction that takes no longer than a week. We should freeze mutual financial debt until a different legal resource determines that couple’s wealth redistribution. A person that doesn’t want to be with another person anymore shouldn’t wait for a signature and shouldn’t need an expensive attorney to be safe and free. Some marriages are more complex, but for the most part, it is a legal, financial contract between two people, with a more significant disadvantage on women, especially Black and Latino women.
· Autonomous fresh markets in every neighborhood, run by vendors but publicly owned. Each market should offer subsidized food that can guarantee each person the right to access 20% of protein per day and clean sources of carbohydrates, fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, grains, animal, and vegan protein options. We should focus first on food deserts. A gas station or a dollar store is not a grocery store.
· Free driving lessons offered to every High School student.
· Refurbish the entire 53206 zip code with the community, residents should reimagine their neighborhoods, and we must provide the resources. Freeze every household’s property taxes for a couple of years and offer local businesses financial assistance as well. We should not gentrify this area; we need to integrate it into the rest of the city.
· Demolish the following freeways and connect neighborhoods with boulevards that allow a multipurpose property to develop along the way with mass transit, such as the trolley or buses. 794, Brewers “freeway” from Lisbon to the stadium, and 43, from Glendale to Downtown.
· Redesign Capitol Drive, from H 100 to Shorewood. Add trees, mass transit, new sidewalks, and lightning.
I don’t have a price tag or a budget, but it’s what many of us want. How are we going to pay for it? I don’t know. Let’s ask the experts that found a winning formula to develop two world-class stadiums built with our taxes. I’m sure they can find some creative solutions to rehabilitate our city radically.
Dreaming about solutions doesn’t hurt anyone, but I know some people will get mad at me. That’s a price I’m willing to pay. After all, I am already a seasoned veteran after creating such a horrible controversy over freaking tacos.
I am fully invested in this city, I moved to Milwaukee in 2006, and I love our city; I want to stay here and fight for a better home for all of us. I am not saying we have a terrible city, but the city runs beyond highway 43 out west. We are more than the landmark places that we all feel proud of, so let’s have a civic conversation about it. Let’s question all the candidates. I gave you my crazy ideas, what are yours?
[1] US Census Bureau (2019) https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/dashboard/milwaukeecitywisconsin,milwaukeecountywisconsin,WI/PST045219
[2] The Sentencing Project (2021) https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21084578/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons.pdf
