Blame Anyone and Avoid the Truth

I found it very interesting that Robin Voss has a huge editorial in the Milwaukee Journal this morning about how the violence in the City of Milwaukee is attributable to poor policing.

Uh.... not really, Mr. Voss.

Mr. Voss, and other like-minded republicans, enjoy blaming the police department for the high number of violent crimes occurring in the city.  They decry paying police overtime as a method for curbing the violence.  They criticize police operations and methodology.  They blame the Chief of Police and the Mayor.  They point the fingers at everyone, except themselves.  And they are the true fan that flames the fire of inner city violence.

Milwaukee has lost jobs, manufacturing jobs, mostly.  Those jobs provided a source of income to many inner city residents, who are now forced to take minimum wage jobs, if they can find them.  It is impossible to support a family on a minimum wage salary.  So we have a loss of jobs.  Then comes a republican administration, which basically gutted any social safety net available to people who could not earn enough money to support their families and survive. 

What is happening in Milwaukee is reflective of what happened in Detroit.  People are desperate.  Most republicans have never been desperate, unless you want to include in that description desperately apathetic.  So let me educate republicans about what desperation looks like.  It looks like Detroit.  It is starting to look like Milwaukee.

People will do what they have to do to survive.  That is, they will take jobs that are horrible, for pay that is inadequate.  When even those low level jobs are no longer available, their lives are devalued and they have nothing more to lose.  This is when desperation sets in.  Since non-inner city folk, mostly white, have no idea how it feels to desperately need money, food, bus fare, new shoes, medication, etc., they have no clue what kind of corner the desperate folks have been backed into.

But they're going to find out.  Violence will continue to escalate here in the city.  The Robin Voss' of the world will continue to blame the police instead of the real culprit, a totally dysfunctional and apathetic society of haves not giving a rat's a$$ about the have-nots.  These people will continue to spout off their ignorant rants that if you work hard, anyone can make it, and inner city folk are just lazy.   You can't work hard if there are no f*cking jobs.  You can't "make it" on $8.00 per hour.  Period.  End of story.

I am leaving Milwaukee and moving to a very economically viable city in the south.  I don't want to watch the devastation that has fallen over this city, and I don't want to witness first hand the suffering that the republican party has inflicted on an entire race of people here in this city, with their narrow-minded and cruel economic plans and policies. 

Most importantly, I don't want to watch the desperately violent stories that pour out of my television during the six o'clock news.  I think, though, it will be harder to watch what happens when desperation brings about the end of the world as we know it, though.  Hitler rounded up the Jews and other "undesirables", herded them into concentration camps and methodically murdered them.  Is what we're doing that much different?  Starving people?  Killing them by providing no access to health care or medication?  Insuring that the cycle of poverty continues by gutting educational funding to public schools? 

Trust me, Mr. Voss, these desperate people will take matters into their own hands and there will be violent and bloody clashes between the haves and the have-nots in the near future.  Think you live in a safe neighborhood, immune to the violence of the inner city?  Think again.