Editor’s note: At the end of the first installment of an ongoing series outlining the solutions to the Cultures of Poverty and Death, the MCJ indicated it would continue part one in the WKND edition. Due to space limitations, we could not print the second part of the initial installment. In this week’s MCJ, we are running the second part. We apologize to our readers for any inconvenience.

by Kevin J. Walker
(Continued from the February 14 "Community Journal")

Our city has unfortunately been an item on the national and even international news cycles, primarily for all the wrong reasons, for a decade and a half. It is Ground Zero for several notable and national stories of notoriety, infamy and continuing import:

o The hunting ground for serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer in the early 1990s

o The Urban Psychosis Legal Defense first used regarding murderous minors

o The Charlie Young Jr. 2002 Mob Beating Death by a group of mostly teen males

o Site of the afternoon-long gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by a house full of teens and men, directed by a teenage girl

o Frank Jude, Jr. Police Brutality case and the disturbing hospital pictures of his face

o Labor Day weekend rash of violence where a score of people were wounded in eight incidents all over the city

o The first large city where national welfare reform was widely applied so the effects on an urban population could be seen before the national rollout based on Wisconsin’s W-2 reforms

Any one of these national/international stories would be reason enough, but the continuing presence of Milwaukee in all these and more matters of urban dysfunction would be more than enough to alert any reasonable person that something is going on in the city, and it ain’t the Cryptosporidium bacteria in the water system.

I wrote the Solutions series because I wanted the debate to take place on genuine things and not the same tired platitudes by the same ineffective groups who let this disaster happen on their watch in the first place.

Beliefs of Cop A World Apart In Lifestyle from Normal

The presence of the Negative Forces has to be addressed. We must adopt the frame of mind that they are not welcome among us with their murderous ways, contempt for authority and disdain for society’s mores and customs.

These are not "Brothers and Sisters of The Struggle," they are hobbling anchors around our ankles preventing us from advancing and drowning us, and it’s time to shake them loose once and for all.

There must be a concerted effort to drive out, chase out these ne’er do-wells until they have no place else to go, nor should they.

After that, they’ll be scooped up and either incarcerated or killed by the police.

The only option these individuals have is to rejoin civil society, be treated and educated by the social service networks that will flood the four block grid neighborhoods as we begin to address the multi-year resurgence of our beleaguered communities.

The members of the Culture of Poverty have a dysfunctional life philosophy that exemplifies: Short term pleasure, fatalistic worldview, propensity to violence for seemingly little things deemed as "disrespectful," lack of respect for higher education as a means of upward mobility, no operational respect for the traditional nuclear family, out of wedlock childbirth is acceptable, even when legally statutory rape, girls and young women continually accept violent and unstable males in their lives and households.

Now, we have a community which has devolved to the point of the public lynchings and summary execution of Black men at the hands of their own as seen in the growing phenomenon of wolf packs of young Black men seeking solitary victims to beat to death.

Both the old and the young are in danger. Once off limits, even families and womenfolk are targeted for retaliation of the young men of the community, and you don’t even have to leave the house to be involved.

The gunfire will follow you inside, past the drapes, upstairs and even lying in bed, like a parody of the "Smart Bombs" on the old Saturday morning cartoons.

Children, Women in Danger from Unsocialized Males

Brutality from males in their lives stem from the erroneous belief of some COP females that such an expressive and volatile man is obviously showing them that he really, really loves them. Otherwise, why would he act like he has no sense, and be so extremely jealous and controlling of their time?

These women of the Culture of Poverty continue to have the children of worthless men, and or continually try and make themselves loved by someone who has rejected them, and in so doing may expose their own existing children to violence from unrelated males.

The city of Detroit (nicknamed "Destroyt") petitioned the federal government to declare a large tract of land as a sort of a Reverse Nature Preserve and fence it up so they could withdraw strapped city services from the lawless enclave and let the weeds grow over it and take it back.

Black voters in Gary, Indiana weary and disgusted at their crime-ridden neighborhoods and inaction by elected officials and the bureaucracy, elected a White Conservative businessman as their mayor.

We must reject the idea that, as a natural course, things must get worse, and we must allow the incursion of negative-minded people steeped in the destructive Cultures of Poverty and Death who have no intention of living well amongst others.

They won’t control their wilding children who are strangers to discipline; they give full indulgence to their desires without the needs of others for comfort, peace and quiet, and safety in their own neighborhoods, and now are traveling outside to infest other stable communities with their toxic lifestyle dysfunctions.

They won’t change their ways on their own, and so active measures must be employed against them if we are to preserve what’s left of the city’s quality of life.

If this deadly downward trend is to be turned back, some issues have to be faced head-on, and we have to recognize there is a constituency for every depravity and social shortcoming out there.

A Scientific and Military Approach to the City Ills

The usual means have not sufficed to deliver us from this evil that is growing every day, but it seems to take on a particular vehemence whenever it gets warm outside and larger populations come out of their houses.

People have expected that cruising and the takeover of selected neighborhoods would take place at night, but now the streets aren’t safe for children even in the daytime.

New means and new thinking have to be applied to vexing problems, and by trying out some new thoughts I developed the Walker Grid+4 Plan.

I can’t really take full credit for it, since I basically cribbed the idea originally from an Electrical Engineer named Ken, a local author and Africentric who was a member of the Milwaukee chapter of the 100 Black Men.

It was Ken who sketched out his basic plan for me before a meeting of the Milwaukee chapter of the 100 Black Men five years ago, which I further embellished. As an engineer, Ken thinks in such mechanistic terms, which I combined with my scientific and journalistic worldview and my observations on the city’s Cultures of Poverty and Death.

Under the Walker Grid+4 Solutions Plan, a four-block area would be selected for intensive treatment. It could be in an area such as Metcalfe Park, Mitchell Street area, or Northcott to take advantage of community groups with established block club networks, an involved citizenry with Middle Class Values, or a higher degree of home ownership and business development.

There are a few physical changes called for in the plan, to prevent easy access into neighborhoods and alleyways by people up to no good who have no business being there. There is no need to have gated communities, which was a suggestion recently, if these suggestions are followed.

There is a measure of triage in this operation; some areas are too far gone and they have to be cut loose and cut out like a cancer. Starting out with them would be a lost cause that may demoralize and thus imperil the entire enterprise, because this city doesn’t take a lot to become dispirited.

The Solutions Plan has some semblance to the East Coast "Weed and Seed" operations in federal project housing, but is more concentrated and tailored.

I suggest that a four-block section be selected that has such promise, because nothing succeeds like success. Below is the minimum for each four-block area, which could be replicated with each adjacent four- block addition to create a critical mass of positive change.

Implementing the Walker Grid+4 Plan

Once the initial 4 block Seed Area has been selected:

o Home Rehabilitation Specialists will hyper-insulate rental units so as to save the inhabitants from spending so much of their income for fuel costs in the winter, or having hot houses in the summer that has the effect of having scores of people down the block hanging out on their porches for relief. They can also make use of a federally funded program to wire households for High-Speed Internet capacity so they can have access to information, news, and educational support for schooling.

o Health Care Operatives will provide screenings, consultation, nutrition, and physical activity guides to engage in preventative measures for such diseases as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes to uphold the health of the inhabitants who would receive contraception and/or Well-Baby and WIC services;

o Police and Other Law Enforcement authorities such as the DEA, FBI, ICE/INS, MPD and US Marshall Service will excise the criminals from the target area so they can no longer terrorize it, or use it for refuge.

They will not be allowed to get a pass by snitching or turning in each other, thereby eliminating their criminal competition. There will be no immunity for them just to bag a few higher ups while the street soldiers continue their illegal trade.

However, simple warrants of a noncriminal, nonviolent nature will not be under this drive;

o ATODA Teams Address Drug Dependencies of adults and expedite their enrollment in drug treatment programs, to alleviate persistent personal problems that add to community strife;

o Psychological and Mental Health Care professionals will flood the area and teach the pre-screened and referred inhabitants how to manage their negative impulses such as anger management; learning how to realize what is and is not a positive and nurturing relationship; how to stay on good terms with the other parent of their child and so forth;

o Financial and Banking Personnel will teach financial literacy to targeted areas how to budget their money and deal with credit issues, and help open banking, Roth IRAs, home mortgages, college funds, mutual funds and other accounts so they won’t fall prey to predatory lenders and other schemes, and so start to build their personal credit and home equity and make their money work for them. Citizens with promising commercial ideas could be encouraged to become businesspersons themselves who in turn could become community-based employers;

o Community Based and Faith-Based Institutions will engage in demonstrating how to raise their children properly and with discipline so as to avoid problems later in life; a network of block clubs and block captains would be established to make sure the area doesn’t backslide;

o Educational Experts for Schooling Needs will address truancy, GED certification and continuing education, English as a second language, and collegiate possibilities;

o Legal Professionals will help the inhabitants navigate through problems with the court systems such as legal residency, alimony and child support enforcement; and help lessen outstanding fines and warrants of a noncriminal, nonviolent nature.

Removing Stress from Noise, Personal Conflict

The stress level of the community is exacerbated by the constant din of music, talking, cars, and interpersonal conflict. Not only does this wear on the nerves of the inhabitants, but it prevents the attainment or even the ambitions toward educational mediocrity, let alone scholastic excellence. The hyper insulation of homes called for in the Walker Grid+4 Block By Block Plan also would insulate households from sounds.

Since many of those in the Culture of Poverty were based in the rural South with its wide expanses, their sense of the personal space and hence the privacy rights of others is different. Indeed, stereo speakers in the windows of homes are often turned toward the street, and in some neighborhoods it’s like a summer-long block party in which they think they are doing people a favor.

In the countryside where many in the Culture of Poverty were originally from, loud noises aren’t a problem; there is plenty of land and people are spread out. Loud talking in those situations is not only not rude, it is absolutely necessary if you are to be heard from the fields, or out in the barn, or calling into the house.

But in modern cities where people spend more time indoors and in closer quarters with others this would be a problem. They were never told they had to have an "inside voice."

Booming cars cruise the streets and people park their cars outside their friends’ homes with the sidewalk-facing passenger doors thrown open with the car speakers blaring the latest rap music.

A former neighbor in the increasingly toney area of Milwaukee near the river and renamed Brewer’s Hill, said that they call a car horn a "Ghetto Doorbell" as drivers repeatedly honk instead of getting out and knocking on a door.

(To show the contrast, those with taste and class simply call on their cellular phones and courteously use a minute to say, "I’m here outside, look out of your front window.")

The sound from a big car can easily be heard for almost two city blocks in all directions, disrupting the peace of all in hearing range.

Policymakers must begin to use real world knowledge of today instead of the romantic notions of what constitutes poverty in generations past, when those on the lower economic strata actually yearned for a better life under much different circumstances, and were willing to work for it with an appreciation for the values and mores of the larger society, which we all shared in common.

Neighborhoods are Affected by the Cop; Dangerous Minds And ‘Tennis Shoe Terrorists’ in White Tees

All the talk of "New Urbanism" sounds a lot like the 1960s-70s talk of Urban Renewal, which some cynical wags declared, was simply "Negro Removal."

The practice of dumping back into the community recidivist criminals where they can rape, murder and rob again is starting to get more attention. Protesting about police brutality and killings is being de-emphasized to look instead at the effect of community criminals on the quality of life and the successful development of the next generation as more realization of the process whereby crime causes poverty and prevents an area from rising.

The "usual suspects" and excuse-makers have weighed in, pooh-poohing the notion of any negative influence via culture. The naysayers and "Head-In-The-Sanders" maintain that there’s no connection between the music that people listen to and the way they act. But recent headlines, let alone common sense and everyday experience raising children or educating them, belie that fallacious argument. No matter what the statisticians with their cooked data spout about crime rates being down, we live in these communities, and we know better.

The murder rates belie the statistical legerdemain because they can’t be fudged; there is a chalk outline, and a body bag is in the morgue. The police can’t not show up and not take a statement, dismissing the call so it never makes the stats as they have been said to do with burglaries, so those property crimes don’t make the statistics. Officers have said that if a citizen calls about a crime such as about one of the hundreds of "Known Drug Houses" but doesn’t give her name it isn’t logged in. This allows the department to further fudge their cooked-up crime stats.

They don’t have that option when a murder has been committed, hence the glaring discrepancy in the statistics. How can "crime" be down yet murder, the most serious crime of all, be up?

Having an expanding and/or intractable multigenerational poverty class connected to the underground economy results in a segment that feels no connection to proper society, its mores, nor its established polite rules that govern relations between people. The youths of the hard-core COP don’t endorse the Social Contract, and those in the Culture of Death see their young lives as being just a delayed death sentence.

Their respect for their elders is another thing that is lacking in the Culture of Poverty, and does not bode well for the future when combined with things such as the cruising phenomenon.

Charlie Young Jr. Mob Lynching Was an Omen

Charlie Young, Jr. was chased to a house after hitting a youngster who was part of a group where one of its members threw an egg at him. He was being beaten on the porch of the house where he sought refuge when he entered trying to escape the deadly beat down.

The lynch mob of young males--and a couple of older ones in their 30s--broke inside the house, and commenced to gleefully beating Young into a coma with shovels, broom handles, plastic crates, sticks, tree branches, room furniture and whatever else they could lay their hands on. He died the next day after being declared brain dead.

Much is also being made of the observation that a few of these youngsters involved in the mob beatings were not enrolled in school or barely went. One didn’t even know his school’s name, and a mother of another, frustrated by bureaucratic red tape, just gave up on trying to register her son for school. Another chilling thought is these "Tennis Shoe Terrorists" as then, MCJ Editor Mikel Holt termed them, are not unique.

We now know it wasn’t Charlie Young Jr.’s misfortune to run into the only group of males with murderous intent and a blood thirst. We have to face the reality that there are many thousands of like-minded murderous "Dangerous Minds" and "Menaces to Society" on many of our blocks. How they are generated and what to do with them is now in debate.

Cruising Zones an Indicator of Next Generation Mis-Leadership ‘It’s Time for People to Take a Stand’

Two women were discussing the cruising episodes that have been a continuing, weekly story especially on the weekends with good weather.

"It’s time for people to take a stand" opined the lady bus driver along Martin Luther King Drive.

"These kids don’t have no respect for anyone. The man just came out of his house and asked them to please get off his lawn, and they jumped on him and beat him down.

"They better know that those people along Sherman are not gonna be takin’ all that," she predicted.

Indeed, if there are any African Americans in Milwaukee who are likely to know how to put a stop to something they don’t like, it would be the politically empowered "Haves" of the city’s West side in the Sherman Park area. Middle-class property owners and voters usually get what they want from society, which isn’t something that can be said by those on the lower economic rungs, especially in the Culture of Poverty.

The Cruising problem presented by so-called "young people" is just another indication of a rough two decades ahead for the city as an entire generation raised in the Culture of Poverty starts to feel its oats, and flex its muscles before they are able to be put down and back in their place.

There are various entities who have been wracking their brains about what to do concerning the cruising problem, but if they don’t realize the Culture Of Poverty and its part all their plans will come to naught and more neighborhoods will continue to fall.

The cruising after the police and gas station owners acted by enforcing a curfew and early closures of some gas stations--as well as employing temporary barricades (even turning on the median sprinklers)--chased the young people off many of the main arteries.

However, the measures only chased the cruisers into quiet stable middle-class neighborhoods such as Milwaukee’s Sherman Park.

Public gatherings at outdoor festivals and fairs like Greek Fest and Sherman Fest were being disrupted with regularity, with gangs of Black youth now attacking White festivalgoers outside the gates of Maier Festival Park at the closing of Summerfest, whose organizers made it a point to not have any attractions or acts that would bring Black youth down to the 11-day festival.

Middle-class African American homeowners in the affected areas have been petitioning the police to crack down hard on the late-night parkers, partiers and cruisers.

Their efforts have been countered by critics who say that civil rights are being trampled, and police profiling would be the result.

Although many of the disrespectful young cruisers come from families with comfortable money--after all, many of those big SUVs are their parents’ second or third cars, not exactly the autos low-income kids would have access to--the mob foot soldiers are largely from the lower echelons of the Black population in the most egregious examples of violence and lawbreaking.

Foul times call for foul measures, and to take no action is an action. We have to choose now who should have the right to live in our communities.

Should we continue to allow our streets to become shooting galleries for the thugs, drug dealers, habitual criminals and gang bangers; or should we drive them away from us, and put them out of our misery so we can enjoy the homes we have worked for, live rightly with our loved ones, and raise our families in comfort and safety?

The choice should be an easy one for a logical people and community.

Unfortunately as bad as they are they will also become by comparison the Good Ol’ Days of which we will speak wistfully, if the worst aspects of my predictions come to pass.

Milwaukee has long ago stopped being considered a place that was good to raise a family, where a man could raise a family with a high school education at one of the many factory and light/heavy industrial blue collar concerns that at one time made the Milwaukee area the ninth largest industrial combine on the planet.

Next: Taking The Thugs Out Of Our Misery, Crime And Punishment; the Poverty Prison Industrial Complex feeds a steady stream of ex-convicts back into neighborhoods with their jailhouse ways which further drags down the community.