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Year In Review 2019: Where art and entertainment fill the gaps of speaking truth to power

The news features presented here for this shared topic were published as original editorial content, and all were reported by the staff of Milwaukee Independent in 2019. The Year In Review (YIR) series has evolved from simple annual highlights that recap the year to a more summarized presentation of important themes, packaged together for readers. This collection of content presents our work again, in a way that helps educate and inform the public who may have missed the stories originally, or want to see how the past 12 months connected the dots on related subjects. This 2019 compilation also...

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Steve Michaels: Family history and the unexpected discovery of a genealogy link to the Mayflower

The digitalization of historical records and easy access to new DNA technologies has helped fuel the hunger for many families to trace their genealogy. For Steve Michaels, it was a family obligation but also inspired by a natural curiosity. As a city of immigrants, Milwauke has a unique foundation story but one not unlike the nation itself. With the current perception of a homogeneous identity, many people easily forget that America is a nation of immigrants. Memories of those ancestors usually ended with grandparents, who felt the pressure to assimilate into the early 20th Century culture and leave the...

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Reggie Jackson: On the Horror of America’s History of Racial Violence

“Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech one at Little Rock, Arkansas, last Saturday morning where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket – the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.” – Memphis Free Speech May 21, 1892 None of us who were around will forget the...

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Mount Pleasant officials conspired to seize family homes in tax-payer funded land grab for Foxconn

Homeowners near the Foxconn facility say they sold their homes for road widenings that were either abandoned, embellished — or never planned. In late summer 2017, Cathy and Rodney Jensen started hearing rumors that their Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, neighborhood could be changing. Plans for a massive Foxconn flat-screen manufacturing plant had just been announced in July of that year. The Taiwanese company was planning a 20-million-square-foot complex and promised 13,000 jobs for the state. The Jensens had owned a home on nearly 3 acres along Southeast Frontage Road for more than 20 years, close to the planned Foxconn development....

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Public transit plans for Milwaukee and cities nationwide at risk from Koch-funded activists

A political battle over transit plans in other cities by Koch-funded interests offers insight into methods used by critics of Milwaukee’s streetcar, and foreshadows the methods to hinder its planned expansions. The city of Phoenix dealt a decisive blow to a Koch Brothers-backed measure on August 27 when voters rejected a proposition that would have banned any expansion of the city’s light rail system. For years, Phoenix’s public transportation plans have included a network of light rail lines connecting downtown to the suburbs, cutting air pollution and carbon emissions in a city dubbed the least sustainable in the United...

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The State of American Values: A Border Patrol Agent shares experience of guarding migrant children

With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it is like to do his job. “Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.” The Border Patrol agent, a veteran with 13 years on the job, had been assigned to the agency’s detention center in McAllen, Texas, for close to a month when the team of court-appointed lawyers and doctors showed up one day at the end of June. Taking in the squalor, the stench of unwashed bodies, and the poor...

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