Author: NNS

Youth Rise Magazine, a pilot online publication produced by central-city teens, profiles five young Milwaukeeans of color as part of the Urban Underground program. Payton Stovall, a Whitefish Bay High School student who lives on the North Side, feared that Urban Underground’s Earn & Learn summer project would be boring. She wasn’t interested in journalism and didn’t think she would enjoy writing. But she was surprised to learn how many different skills it takes to produce an online publication. “And it wasn’t like school writing. It was more like storytelling,” Stovall said. Stovall, 15, and 16 other young adults...

Indigenous, LGBT, black and diverse aren’t always the first concepts that come to mind when people think of Latin identity in culture or art. The co-curators of Cine Sin Fronteras, a new program of Milwaukee Film, hope to change that. Claudia Guzman and Jeanette Martín focused on diversity among Latinos when they developed the lineup to be featured during the annual Milwaukee Film Festival, which runs from September 22 to October 6. “We wanted [the film series] to be something that is not easily defined because that is our community,” said Guzman, the sociocultural program manager for student involvement...

Imagine transforming a sizable swath of unused industrial property on Milwaukee’s lakefront into beautiful public spaces for recreation and wildlife. That’s exactly what the local nonprofit Harbor District Inc. (HDI) is trying to do. The target is 85 acres of land in Milwaukee’s Harbor District, an area that thrived during the city’s industrial heyday but now sits mostly neglected. HDI partnered with SSCHC to conduct tours during the summer to show residents what the area looks like, and to spark ideas about what it should become. HDI was created by Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers (SSCHC) because it wanted...

“We were shocked. One day we had a job, and the next we didn’t.” For Donna Jones the memories are still fresh. Two years ago this week, she was one of hundreds of workers at the Cargill Inc. beef slaughterhouse in the Menomonee Valley herded into a large break room and told their services would no longer be needed. Jones worked 35-40 hours a week as a bagger on the kill floor at the slaughterhouse, at 1915 W. Canal St., for three years. Like most of the employees — some of whom had been there for decades — she...

Since Saturday night, Sherman Park has been roiled by protests that have, at times, turned violent in the wake of the police killing of Sylville K. Smith, a 23-year-old black man. Residents have expressed pain over these events but many who were present in the area following the shooting said they understand why people are angry. “Milwaukee is a powder keg that exploded,” said King Rick, a general in the Milwaukee Black Panther Party. “When you’re number one in every statistical category that’s negative towards African-Americans, you’re going to have carnage, mayhem, chaos.” Smith was shot and killed after...

Several Sherman Park residents spoke of their pain and sadness over the violence that shook the neighborhood on a recent Saturday night. Homeowner Danell Cross described it as “a serious grieving, like death,” that “sits on (me) so that my throat is choked up.” And there is fear, especially for the youth. “Those young people … could be my children, my friends’ children … and we’re just so scared … that one of them, or 10 of them, (will) lose their life or be in jail forever,” added Cross. The residents who were interviewed all pointed to frustration and...