Opinion: Community Voices

Since the ’60s, Milwaukee has not tolerated overt racism, but systematic structural racism has prevailed. It is not only the city officials who perpetuate this racism, but it is all of us who consistently support and vote them into office.

Lately, I have been busy organizing marches and making art for them. I’ve been out marching because I’m a Black trans womxn and I want my voice to be heard loud and clear.

I am a product of the “colored are treated good here” era in Milwaukee’s history. Eight decades later, the legacy of that universally held white belief still haunts our city.

We each have a role to play. Preaching to the choir or pretending to be on the moral high ground are not the only alternatives.

Every moment I walk out the door, it is either racism or transphobia that I have to deal with. It is mere luck that I have not been among the 15 transgender people killed so far this year, simply for being ourselves.

My brother’s name is homage to my uncle Ernest Lacy, who died with a knee in his back and fear in his heart. Every day, I live in fear of history repeating itself with my little brother. Nearly 40 years later, and my brother still risks dying in police custody.

In this moment of national reckoning, abolishing the police can be the opening act to a radical reimagining of society. If we dismantle law enforcement as we know it, we will have no choice but to work together to create a more just, equitable and peaceful society.

People of color have been mourning and grieving the loss of lives to police brutality and racial injustice since the inception of this nation. We, as white Christians, are not asked to carry that burden alongside our brothers and sisters — we are commanded to. This is not an option. This is not political.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a multiracial coalition in Milwaukee came together to fight for the rights of black and brown workers, for mothers receiving welfare and for victims of police brutality. And Milwaukee police and the Wisconsin state legislature used violent methods to try to stop them.

The current historical moment — in Milwaukee and throughout the nation — is not a competition to claim the right to religious analogies. It is a demand for justice, something for which too many have already died.