Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service invites community members to submit opinion pieces of 500-800 words on topics of interest to central city Milwaukee. To send a submission for consideration, please email info@milwaukeenns.org. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.
Over the weekend, seven young people in Milwaukee were connected to firearms incidents. Seven. In one day. That number is not just a statistic, and it should not be treated like one. It is a signal. It is a mirror. It is a warning.
And if we are honest with ourselves, it is also the predictable outcome of systems we have allowed to remain underdeveloped, under-resourced, and, at times, misunderstood.
I write this not simply as a professional working at the intersection of public health and community, but as someone rooted in Milwaukee, shaped by its contradictions, and committed to its future. What we are witnessing is not random. It is patterned. It is layered. It is structural.
We continue to ask young people to navigate environments that offer little physical refuge. There are neighborhoods where, after school hours, the options narrow quickly. Recreation centers are limited, programming is inconsistent, and safe, youth-centered third spaces are scarce. When we say “there’s nothing to do,” we often fail to grasp the full weight of that statement. It is not boredom. It is the absence of sanctioned belonging.
And when there is nowhere to go physically, we must also consider where young people are expected to go mentally.
A sobering reality
In recent months, we have returned to a sobering reality that many educators, parents, and community leaders have been sounding the alarm on for years: The state of literacy in our public schools is not just concerning, it is, in many cases, deplorable. We are encountering young people in middle and even high school who are reading far below grade level, struggling not only with comprehension but with the most basic elements of fluency.
This is not a critique of our young people. It is an indictment of the conditions surrounding them.
Literacy is often framed narrowly, reduced to test scores and benchmarks. But in practice, literacy is the foundation of how individuals make meaning of the world and of themselves. It is how we process information, how we communicate our experiences, how we regulate emotion, and how we imagine alternatives.
When a young person cannot fully read, they often cannot fully process. When they cannot process, they cannot effectively regulate. And when they cannot regulate, they are left to navigate complex emotional landscapes without the tools necessary to do so safely.
‘Developmental rupture’
What we are seeing in classrooms is not just an academic gap. It is a developmental rupture.
Imagine being asked to sit in a classroom where the material feels inaccessible, where frustration builds daily, where embarrassment is constant, and where disengagement becomes a form of self-protection. Now imagine carrying that same frustration into the streets, into peer interactions, into moments of conflict.
We should not be surprised when that frustration manifests externally.
Milwaukee’s literacy crisis is not disconnected from its violence. It is embedded within it.
We also cannot ignore what science continues to reveal about environmental exposures. This is a city that has grappled, publicly and painfully, with lead contamination. Entire neighborhoods have been impacted by aging housing stock and the long shadow of disinvestment. Lead does not just affect the body. It alters neurological development. It disrupts impulse control, attention, and decision-making.
We are still uncovering the full implications of this. But we know enough to say this: When a child grows up in an environment shaped by neurotoxic exposure, the expectation that they will self-regulate at the same level as a child without that exposure is not just unrealistic. It is unjust.
Layer onto this the modern reality of social media.
Behavior that was once localized is now amplified. Conflict that may have once dissipated now circulates, replays, and escalates. There is a new economy of attention where visibility can translate into status. For some young people, the performance of risk becomes a pathway to recognition. The clout associated with captured behavior, especially behavior tied to violence or defiance, has reshaped the social incentives.
‘Investing in joy’
We are asking young people to make wise decisions in environments that reward the opposite.
A colleague whom I respect sincerely, recently said, “The strategy needs to be investing in joy.” I agree. Deeply. Joy is not trivial. It is protective. It is stabilizing. It is a counterbalance to trauma.
But joy cannot be abstract.
Joy requires infrastructure. It requires places to gather, to create, to move, to be seen without being surveilled or judged. It requires adults who are present, consistent, and culturally aligned. It requires systems that do not just intervene at the point of crisis, but cultivate conditions where crisis is less likely to emerge.
We cannot ask young people to access joy when both their physical environments and their internal landscapes have been constrained.
Milwaukee’s history matters here. This is a city shaped by redlining, by some of the most entrenched racial segregation in the country, by disinvestment that was not accidental but engineered. The same neighborhoods experiencing elevated violence today are often the same neighborhoods that were denied access to capital, to quality housing, to educational equity, and to economic mobility for generations.
We are not dealing with isolated incidents. We are dealing with accumulated outcomes.
And yet, within this reality, there is also profound resilience. There are young people organizing, creating, leading. There are community-based organizations doing the work, often with limited resources but deep commitment. There are models, right here in Milwaukee, that demonstrate what is possible when investment meets intention.
The question is not whether we know what to do. The question is whether we are willing to do it at the scale required.
This means investing in youth spaces that are open, accessible, and designed with young people, not just for them. It means rethinking education to center literacy as a tool for empowerment and emotional development, not just academic performance. It means continuing to address environmental injustices like lead exposure with urgency and accountability. It means engaging the digital landscape, not ignoring it, and equipping young people to navigate it critically.
This is a public health emergency
It also means shifting our posture.
Too often, the response to youth violence is reactive and punitive. But punishment without pathways does not produce transformation. If anything, it reinforces the very conditions we claim to be addressing.
What would it look like to treat this moment as a public health emergency, not just a public safety issue?
What would it look like to invest upstream with the same urgency that we deploy downstream?
Seven young people in one day.
We cannot afford to normalize that.
We cannot afford to explain it away.
And we certainly cannot afford to continue responding as if this is new.
My heart goes out to all those impacted directly and indirectly in the incidents that took place over the weekend. But Milwaukee’s young people are not the problem. They are responding to problems. The responsibility, then, is ours.
To listen more deeply. To invest more boldly.
And to build a city where the conditions that produced the weekend’s events no longer exist.
Aziz Abdullah is the co-founder of INPOWER, a marketing agency in Milwaukee.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
