Uprising in Sherman Park:
10 years later

Ten years ago this month, the eyes of the nation turned toward Sherman Park. Outside news outlets dropped in to capture the smoke, the chaos and the quick headlines, only to pack up their cameras when the immediate unrest subsided.

Last week marked a milestone decade since those events forever changed our city. Yet, if you looked around at the local or national media landscape, you would have seen a troubling silence. Very few outlets commemorated this critical milestone, and even fewer stayed to ask the hard questions about what has actually changed in the 10 years since.

At the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, we didn’t look away. 

We chose to dedicate our newsroom to a massive, in-depth retrospective because we believe our neighbors deserve more than selective memory. We did this work because independent local journalism means staying long after the national satellite trucks leave. It means tracking where the millions in promised investment funding actually went; analyzing systemic housing and economic data; and sitting down with neighborhood elders to document the true, lived history of our streets.

An urgent call to action: Help us keep telling Milwaukee’s truth

Investigating these deep, systemic realities takes immense time, trust and resources. NNS is fiercely committed to providing this comprehensive, vital coverage entirely free of charge so that every single Milwaukeean has access to the truth. But we cannot do it alone. We rely entirely on neighbors supporting neighbors.

To keep these resident-driven narratives alive, we need your immediate support on two fronts this weekend:

1. Invest in NNS right now: High-quality local accountability journalism requires financial backing. Every dollar you give goes directly toward keeping our reporters on the ground. 
2. Get your neighbors subscribed: We need to multiply our reach. Please share this newsletter with your friends, family, and neighbors, and urge them to subscribe so our community’s voice remains loud and clear.

Supporting community-centered journalism means protecting the history of our city and investing in its future growth. Please advocate for your neighborhood, share our mission, and, most importantly, donate today. Let’s give Milwaukee the newsroom it truly deserves!

Always proceeding until apprehended,

Ron “Ronshine” Smith

Executive Director, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service

Check out the project

Close window

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Scroll down to copy and paste the code of our article into your CMS. The codes for images, graphics and other embeddable elements may not transfer exactly as they appear on our site.

*** Also, the code below will NOT copy the featured image on the page. You are welcome to download the main image as a separate element for publication with this story. ***

You are welcome to republish our articles for free using the following ground rules.

• Credit should be given, in this format: “By Ron Smith, Wisconsin Watch”
• Editing material is prohibited, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and in-house style (for example, using “Milwaukee, Wis.” instead of “Milwaukee” or changing “yesterday” to “last week”)
• Other than minor cosmetic and font changes, you may not change the structural appearance or visual format of a story.
• If published online, you must include the links and link to milwaukeenns.org
• If you share the story on social media, please mention @milwaukeenns (Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky), and ensure that the original featured image associated with the story is visible on the social media post.
• Don’t sell the story or any part of it — it may not be marketed as a product.
• Don’t extract, store or resell Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service content as a database.
• Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
• Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
• Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
• Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use. 
• If we send you a request to change or remove Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.

For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Jeff Bauer, digital editor and producer, at jbauer@wisconsinwatch.org. 

Inside the NNS Newsroom: Why we remember when others move on

by Ron Smith, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
August 21, 2026

<h1>Inside the NNS Newsroom: Why we remember when others move on</h1> <p class="byline">by Ron Smith, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service <br />August 21, 2026</p> <p>Ten years ago this month, the eyes of the nation turned toward Sherman Park. Outside news outlets dropped in to capture the smoke, the chaos and the quick headlines, only to pack up their cameras when the immediate unrest subsided.</p> <p class="has-text-align-left">Last week marked a milestone decade since those events forever changed our city. Yet, if you looked around at the local or national media landscape, you would have seen a troubling silence. Very few outlets commemorated this critical milestone, and even fewer stayed to ask the hard questions about what has actually changed in the 10 years since.</p> <p><strong>At the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, we didn't look away. </strong></p> <p>We chose to dedicate our newsroom to a massive, in-depth retrospective because we believe our neighbors deserve more than selective memory. We did this work because independent local journalism means staying long after the national satellite trucks leave. It means tracking where the millions in promised investment funding actually went; analyzing systemic housing and economic data; and sitting down with neighborhood elders to document the true, lived history of our streets.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>An urgent call to action: Help us keep telling Milwaukee's truth</strong></h2> <p>Investigating these deep, systemic realities takes immense time, trust and resources. NNS is fiercely committed to providing this comprehensive, vital coverage entirely <strong>free of charge</strong> so that every single Milwaukeean has access to the truth. But we cannot do it alone. We rely entirely on neighbors supporting neighbors.</p> <p>To keep these resident-driven narratives alive, we need your immediate support on two fronts this weekend:</p> <ol class="wp-block-list"> <li><strong><a href="https://milwaukeenns.org/support-milwaukee-nns/">Invest in NNS right now:</a> </strong>High-quality local accountability journalism requires financial backing. Every dollar you give goes directly toward keeping our reporters on the ground. </li> <li><a href="https://milwaukeenns.org/subscribe/"><strong>Get your neighbors subscribed:</strong></a> We need to multiply our reach. Please share this newsletter with your friends, family, and neighbors, and urge them to subscribe so our community's voice remains loud and clear.</li> </ol> <p>Supporting community-centered journalism means protecting the history of our city and investing in its future growth. Please advocate for your neighborhood, share our mission, and, most importantly, donate today. <strong>Let’s give Milwaukee the newsroom it truly deserves!</strong></p> <p>Always proceeding until apprehended,</p> <h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Ron “Ronshine” Smith</strong></h4> <p>Executive Director, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-background" style="background-color:#ebebeb"><a href="https://milwaukeenns.org/the-uprising-in-sherman-park-10-years-later/" data-type="link" data-id="https://milwaukeenns.org/the-uprising-in-sherman-park-10-years-later/">Check out the project</a></h3></p> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://milwaukeenns.org/2026/08/21/inside-the-nns-newsroom-why-we-remember-when-others-move-on/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://milwaukeenns.org&quot;&gt;Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/milwaukeenns.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/cropped-NNS-Favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://milwaukeenns.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=174654&amp;amp;ga4=G-HGM4XK3QCM&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://milwaukeenns.org/2026/08/21/inside-the-nns-newsroom-why-we-remember-when-others-move-on/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/milwaukeenns.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

Copy to Clipboard