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Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service

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You are here: Home / Neighborhoods / North / Lindsay Heights / Lindsay Heights Lens: Neighborhood Challenges

Lindsay Heights Lens: Neighborhood Challenges

November 27, 2015 by Running Rebels Youth Advisory Council 1 Comment

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  • “I see broken concrete. This tells us that we need to take better care of our community. Natural disasters happen all the time; we just need to better prepare for it and come up with ways to fix it.” —Tiyana Miner
  • “I see broken concrete. This tells us that we need to take better care of our community. Natural disasters happen all the time; we just need to better prepare for it and come up with ways to fix it.” —Tiyana Miner
  • “I see a broken street in need of repairs. Society in Milwaukee is broken. A centralized area is neglected and forgotten, only known by mainstream media when something negative happens. There is very little help for the people in Lindsay Heights, so much so that the streets that are the city’s responsibility are still left untaken care of.” —Tarif Garrett // “I see a street that has a lot of potholes. The street should be smooth, so cars don’t have to worry about driving down a bumpy road. The city has to start working on streets more, so that cars won’t catch a flat.” —Miciah Phillips
  • “I see lots of trash piled up, waiting on the garbage man to come for days, maybe even weeks. The community doesn’t have a weekly pick up, so trash just piles up. It makes it seem like people here don’t care about the looks of the community — they just look, and keep moving.” —Jerimiah Phillips
  • “I see litter and broken down trees and lawns. Certain people have stopped caring all together, causing garbage to pile up in some areas. People have lost hope in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood, so they don’t have any reason to try and fix the neighborhood.” —Tarif Garrett // “I see the people in Lindsay Heights, and they’re trying to make the community better. But this photo shows there is something that’s keeping them from doing it. We should make clean-up fun and better for the community, so that people will enjoy it.” —Miciah Phillips
  • Photo by Yellie Burrell
  • Photo by Yellie Burrell
  • “I see an unsafe stop sign, bending over and beat up, and a ‘no parking’ sign on the ground. The city doesn’t care about the safety of our community, so they just leave it as is, instead of fixing it. The photo tells us that the world is different in many ways. Some care and some don’t. Some people in the neighborhood don’t feel it’s a problem, but it is.” —Jerimiah Phillips
  • “I see an unsafe stop sign, bending over and beat up, and a ‘no parking’ sign on the ground. The city doesn’t care about the safety of our community, so they just leave it as is, instead of fixing it. The photo tells us that the world is different in many ways. Some care and some don’t. Some people in the neighborhood don’t feel it’s a problem, but it is.” —Jerimiah Phillips
  • “I see a busted, abandoned house that is unsafe and a bad sight to look at. The city boarded up the house, left it like that for many years, which allows some people to destroy the property and make it into a place with illegal things in and around it.” —Jerimiah Phillips (Photo by Yellie Burrell)
  • “I see a piece of paper on the door of a house. The building has been foreclosed by the city. When this happens, people have no home and have to leave. The buildings become places for drugs and unsafe activities.” —Yellie Burrell
  • “I see a building for sale. Someone put hard work into the business and it failed. Maybe it represents a lack of community support. It also represents unemployment, and too many people out of work.”—Yellie Burrell
  • “I see a building. This used to be a club where everyone would hang out until it got closed down. This happens to a lot of places in Lindsay Heights.” —Miciah Phillips (Photo by Brian Sims-Smith)
  • “I see garbage and graffiti. This speaks to suppressed voices that have found a way to express themselves, although not in the most productive manner. Here, people are forced to express themselves in unhealthy ways.” —Tarif Garrett // “I see a garage with gang symbols. When I was growing up, the garage wasn’t abandoned and it never had trash around it. The photo tells us that places that were great places are being destroyed, and people should start caring about places in the community again.” —Miciah Phillips
  • “I see an abandoned garage with lots of graffiti. The garage was once new, with no graffiti or boards. This tells me that an owner let it go, and people started to destroy the garage after they saw it was getting picked on.” —Brian Sims-Smith
  • Photo by Yellie Burrell
  • Photo by Yellie Burrell

This is the first of a series of four Neighborhood Lens galleries of photos taken by the Running Rebels Youth Advisory Council (YAC) as part of an adapted photovoice project. Photovoice is a participatory action research method where individuals and/or communities determine community challenges and strengths through photographic documentation. The photos are analyzed, discussed and categorized by the residents into themes that highlight areas of importance. Often used as a tool for community empowerment and for raising awareness to bring about social change, photovoice reinforces the importance of allowing residents and communities to determine what’s important and why through their own photos, discussions and words.

Half of the YAC members grew up in Lindsay Heights, and all of them spend significant time in Lindsay Heights through their proud affiliation with Running Rebels. The youth who grew up in Lindsay Heights served as our leaders, and picked specific neighborhood areas to visit. The youth were then allowed to wander and take photos. Later, the photos were printed and the youth reflected on questions from the first half of the Photovoice “SHOWED” analysis method, writing photo captions to highlight 1) what you first see in the photo 2) the deeper story behind the photo and 3) what this says about the community and why this is happening. The YAC members then shared the thought processes behind their photos with each other and determined bigger themes that connect the photos within categories of “neighborhood challenges,” “neighborhood improvement” and “neighborhood strengths.”

The YAC asked us to first feature the “Neighborhood Challenges” gallery and end with the “Neighborhood Strengths” gallery (a fourth gallery will focus on the YAC).

In the Neighborhood Challenges gallery, the youth came up with themes: “Broken,” “People don’t care how it looks — so it looks like we’re an uncaring community,” “Abandoned” and “Gang Territory.” They spoke to how the gallery of neighborhood challenges, while indicative of problems, also reflects how they hear Lindsay Heights described over and over again in the media. They hope that together, the galleries will educate people about challenges and motivate action, and also highlight neighborhood strengths that should be better publicized. After seeing the galleries, Running Rebels director Victor Barnett echoed the youths’ call to action and noted that the photos also suggest a need for greater communication between city officials and youth.

We hope you will check back each week to see the galleries that show other ways that YAC members see Lindsay Heights: as home, as a neighborhood with strong community organizations and vibrant beauty, and a neighborhood where the optimism of youth is one of its greatest strengths.

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Filed Under: Lindsay Heights, Neighborhood Lens

About Running Rebels Youth Advisory Council

Comments

  1. Jeremy Davis says

    December 11, 2015 at 11:41 am

    This is a great story. In fact, two of the pictures showing challenges are of the garage at the Wally Schmidt Tavern, 1848 W. Fond du Lac Avenue. Just a few months ago, Juli Kaufmann and I purchased the building – it had been a city-owned board up for five years. Two weeks ago, the old roof was torn off, and a new one is in the process of being put on. We are turning this blighted eyesore, that the youth photographed, into a neighborhood destination. Running Rebels Youth Council, I invite you to visit the Indiegogo website to see more about the project! We look forward to helping this property become an asset!

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