Author: NNS

By Leticia Alavez-Lopez • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service Leticia Alavez-Lopez, an MPS student and Youth Fellow at Leaders Igniting Transformation, reflects on what she’s seen at her school in the year since the Parkland shooting in Florida. A year ago, 17 people’s lives were taken far too soon during the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In Milwaukee, young people grieved for the students and the community in Parkland, Florida. As the year went by, we saw the rage of desperate parents and terrified students grow as they watched elected officials respond by refusing to address the public’s...

By Andrea Waxman • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service When organizers invited author Richard Rothstein to Milwaukee to speak about his book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,” they hoped that the presentation would lead to action. At the conclusion of the October 2018 event, they asked attendees to vote on which of 13 proposals they would like to see implemented. The 183 attendees who responded voted overwhelmingly for creating a curriculum to teach middle and high school-age children the history that Rothstein laid out, said Kori Schneider-Peragine of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair...

By Allison Dikanovic • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service Alphonso James went to prison at age 17 for a crime he did not commit. After 32 years, he was cleared by a DNA test and returned home to Milwaukee in February 2017. Last week, he stood before about 50 people crowded into a room at the Welford Sanders Historic Lofts & Enterprise Center, 2821 N. Vel R. Phillips Avenue, and discussed his experience. “I knew truth was on my side, but the things that we were enduring in prison were enough to suffocate a human being into nothing,” he said....

By Edgar Mendez • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service By the age of 3, Rozalia Hernandez-Singh was already trailing alongside her father, well-known muralist Reynaldo Hernandez, as he worked passionately on an outdoor mural on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the Harambee neighborhood. Though the mural has since been painted over, many of her father’s other works remain, and have become landmarks in the communities in which they are located, she said. Perhaps the best example in Milwaukee of the impact of public art is one of the many projects that Hernandez-Singh and her siblings worked on with their...

By Edgar Mendez • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service Arthur Schmitz, a 95-year-old author and veteran of World War II, is filled with fond recollections of Villard Avenue in the 1920s and 1930s. “I basically lived at the Ritz theatre and Shorty’s restaurant got their share of my money,” said a smiling Schmitz, who grew up near Villard Avenue in North Milwaukee before the street and surrounding area were consolidated into the City of Milwaukee in 1929. He lived in the neighborhood until the 1940s, when he left for the war, and though some things had changed on Villard Avenue...

By Grace Connatser • Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service Voces de la Frontera is renewing its commitment to getting a law passed that would allow undocumented immigrants in Wisconsin to obtain driver’s licenses. Advocates of the bill say the law would make roads safer, keep families together by avoiding threats of deportation and improve police-community relations by taking the fear out of police interactions such as traffic stops. About 50 people attended a recent informational meeting hosted by Voces de la Frontera at Allen-Field Elementary School, 730 W. Lapham Blvd. Attendees discussed their concerns for the future of the bill...