Sister Angela Walker:
I am a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I am old enough to remember the murder of Ernest Lacy by the Milwaukee Police Department in the early 80s. I have witnessed, over the years, the erosion of our public school system, the defunding of our public transit system, de-industrialization that disproportionately hurt the Black community here, and gentrification which is currently looming. Milwaukee’s Black community has had to contend with mass incarceration, job discrimination, and subsequent generational poverty for decades, while the rest of our state watched it happen. As long as these things were contained in the Black community, it was acceptable.
The very recent murder of a 23 year-old Black man by the Milwaukee Police Department has brought to a head the simmering anger this community has been harboring, and rightly so. The expectation that people will simply tolerate indignity and abuse is absurd. As a revolutionary socialist, I fully support direct action and the need for careful organization and political education to accompany it. I believe that this is not the time to mince words about how we got here in Milwaukee, and that we have to be very explicit in calling out the capitalist white supremacist attitudes in our state that created the conditions people are rebelling against. The only way forward for us is to be honest about the root causes of poverty in this city and work diligently to correct that. Until Black people’s dignity and humanity are respected, Milwaukee will continue to be the volatile place it has become, and all of the police saturation in the world will not change a thing.
I said it. I mean it. If we are serious about solutions, then it’s time we stop playing politics as usual.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
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