City under curfew after violent night
Friday’s unrest leaves residents sweeping broken glass
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Milwaukee and Madison on Saturday decrying deaths at the hands of police, as state and local officials sought to prevent a repeat of the violence seen the night before in the state’s largest city.
The vast majority of those who protested Friday in Milwaukee did so peacefully throughout the day across the city, but when night fell, groups splintered. One crowd gathered outside
the District 5 police station in the city’s Harambee neighborhood and began looting and vandalizing nearby businesses.
“When the sun went down, things changed,” Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said. “It was another entity — that of crime, unlawfulness, distastefulness and total immaturity.”
By the time the sun rose Saturday, one police officer had been shot and injured, 16 businesses had been looted and some set on fire, officers had used tear gas on the crowd and about 50 people had been arrested.
Milwaukee officials quickly issued a 9 p.m. curfew for Saturday and the governor sent 125 members of the Wisconsin National Guard.
Earlier Saturday morning, neighbors swept glass and business owners returned to survey the damage.
By the afternoon, protests had resumed across Wisconsin and the nation with demonstrators condemning the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
More than 1,000 people rallied at the Capitol in Madison, while 90 miles away, hundreds more marched from Milwaukee’s lakefront to City Hall and Milwaukee police headquarters, chanting “I can’t breathe” and carrying signs reading “Justice 4 Floyd” and “Black Lives Matter.” Protesters blocked traffic in both cities as the marches stretched on for hours.
“This is to hear the voices that aren’t normally heard,” said Darius Smith, 29, of Milwaukee, who owns an art gallery in Bay View. “I hope everybody that’s here currently right now is here for the right reasons, understands why they’re here and understands the things that need to be changed.”
Saturday evening, protesters in Madison clashed with police, with people throwing rocks and smashing a store window and officers spraying tear gas.
In Milwaukee, protesters continued to march across the city’s neighborhoods where bystanders handed them water and pizza as they made their way to the mayor’s house while many residents and officials braced to see what the night would bring and if people would follow the city’s 9 p.m. curfew.
Neighborhood wakes to damage
Alonzo Grayson spent Saturday morning cleaning up his Milwaukee neighborhood to try, as he put it, to right the wrong from the night before.
“Nobody wants to live like this,” Grayson told a reporter as he swept up glass. “I don’t want our neighborhood to look like this.”
Grayson had been part of the group protesting Friday near the District 5 police station before people he described as opportunists arrived and began looting. “It kind of set us back instead of moving us forward,” he said.
Katherine Mahmoud’s family owns a nearby cellphone shop. She was awakened in the early hours of Saturday by a phone call from the alarm company and arrived to find the windows smashed and the merchandise all gone.
She said she is furious about Floyd’s death — but she’s also angry at those who destroyed her family’s business, which has “nothing to do” with what protesters rallied against.
“I look just like them,” she said, repeatedly asking, “Why?”
Morales, the police chief, grew emotional as he talked about the violence Saturday afternoon.
“These businesses are from our community,” he said. “These are businesses that grandma goes to get her medication. These are businesses that grandma walks to get her food. …These are family-owned businesses.”
Morales also shared more about the 38-year-old officer who was shot and injured, describing him as a lifelong Milwaukeean.
“This person that was shot, had he not been wearing a uniform, would be somebody that you would not think was a police officer,” Morales said. “This is a person, a human being that we want to represent the police department and the community.”
Roots of unrest go deep
When a drugstore down the block from his home began to burn, Donte White ran to help.
White, a 32-year-old registered nurse, grabbed cans of Pepsi and Coke and tried to douse the fire with those and any other liquids he could find. As he reflected on the night, he worried the violence distracted from the message of peaceful protesters, like him.
“Milwaukee has always been one of those cities considered to be very segregated, and that’s very apparent. So I think that those are issues that need to be discussed, however I think that there is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things,” White said. “And looting and tearing up stuff is not the way.”
The unrest that erupted in Milwaukee reflects the frustrations of a generation of black people disillusioned by the failed promise of an American Dream, and raised in an era when technology lets them witness — and mobilize against — every injustice firsthand, said the Rev. Andrew Calhoun of Grace Fellowship Church in Milwaukee.
Calhoun, who has helped broker listening circles bringing together Milwaukee teens and police officers, said many young people are suspicious of police and that the repeated killings of black people at the hand of officers has reinforced their perceptions.
“For the whole of their lives, they’ve seen this unfold . ... And that has shaped their viewpoint and narrative,” Calhoun said. “The news is coming at them 24/7. They’re putting the pieces together.”
At the same time, he said, young black men and women who have gone on to college and beyond have come to believe they’ve been duped by a false narrative that promised them an even playing field where diversity was valued and education and hard work opened doors.
“That is torn down completely when they see injustices happening every day,” Calhoun said. “Then they start asking their parents and grandparents, and they start putting it together. And they say, ‘Ain’t nothing changed.’”
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett drew a direct line from the violent unrest to longstanding inequalities in the city and country.
“I don’t want anyone to think that this is about a 10-hour period or a 20hour period or a 24-hour period,” he said. “This is a test of our nation, this is a test of who we are as human beings.”
Barrett called for a focus on addressing those problems by creating more jobs, providing more stable housing and broadening access to health care.
“So that those individuals who are African American, who have a life expectancy 10 years younger than my life expectancy even though we live two miles apart, can have a better life,” Barrett said. “That is the challenge that we face.”
‘We’re dying — it’s an epidemic’
The messages were much the same in Madison. Although the protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, some used spray paint to vandalize sidewalks, and the Capitol’s iconic Forward statue had a bag put over her head, with the message “Justice is dead” on the front.
Floyd’s death reminded many there of the death of Tony Robinson in 2015 when a police officer shot and killed the black teenager after an altercation. Robinson was unarmed. Robinson’s death rocked the capital city and spurred a number of large protests. The city ultimately settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the teen’s family for $3.4 million.
“It’s important to be here today because we’re dying — it’s an epidemic,” said Robert Robinson, 43, of McFarland (he is not related to Tony Robinson). “I’m here to show support because I have a black son and I have a black daughter and I’m afraid for their lives.”
Thousands of protesters moved from the Capitol through the city’s downtown and onto East Washington Avenue, blocking traffic on major arteries of the city. The march ended in front of the house where Tony Robinson died — a location many of the same protesters stood five years ago in the days following Robinson’s death.
“The police have been doing this wrong for years and I’m tired,” Robert Robinson said.
Ricardo Torres, Alison Dirr, Mary Spicuzza, Bill Glauber, Lawrence Andrea, Rory Linnane, Elliot Hughes, Gina Barton and JR Radcliffe of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.