Author: Reggie Jackson

Editor’s Note: Reggie Jackson was a panelist at a public meeting hosted by the Wisconsin Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights on August 29, to discuss the issue of under-reported hate crimes and civil rights violations. This is the testimony he presented at the hearing. | Wisconsin’s Hate Crime statute (939.645) is highly ineffective due to three key factors. The first factor is that hate crimes are very underreported in Wisconsin just as they are nationally. Secondly, the law was written as a penalty enhancer instead of as a sentencing aggravator. As a result the prosecutor...

| Just two brief weeks ago the world began to see you for the first time in your lives. People came from far and wide to learn the reasons behind what you had been accused of doing. They asked many people why you did the things you were accused of doing. They assumed that these people, who were brave enough to talk with, had the answers. I was one of those people they asked. I had an answer. It was not your answer. Only you could have given an accurate answer. Only you knew the real reasons. No one...

Late on the night of Saturday, August 13 as I was driving home from Chicago, I changed the dial on my radio to discover that my neighborhood, Sherman Park, was on fire. It is ironic that at that moment I was passing by the amusement park known by many as simply “Great America.” A young man had been shot and killed by another young man who was a police officer in Milwaukee earlier that same day just around the corner from my house. I saw the police tape and groups of residents “gawking” as our mayor described it in the early...

After a summer of civil unrest around the nation on July 28, 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, typically known as the Kerner Commission. Their orders were simple. Answer these three simple questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again? In light of the events of Saturday August 13, 2016 Milwaukeeans are asking these same three questions. During the past twenty-four hours we have heard from local, state and nationally elected officials. Social justice activists have spoken out. The chief of police and...