Photo credit: Ethan Duran
Volunteers pick up trash during a community clean-up event at Tiefenthaler Park (2480 W Cherry St.) in Midtown
Fifty people picked up trash, prepared kits and signed an open letter to Mayor Tom Barrett for the afternoon at Tiefenthaler Park (2480 W Cherry St.) in Midtown on Monday, June 8. The cleanup was hosted by The Kellogg PEAK Initiative, a nonprofit organization that mentors inner city youth with after school programs and summer camps. The cleanup and the open letter came after a week of protests against institutional racism and police brutality, and demands for policymakers to change law enforcement procedure.
“We wanted to do a cleanup plus some of the other things to really show that we care about our people and our places,” said Demetria Smith, PEAK’s Senior Director of Programs. “We are expecting other people, typically the police department and our legislators, to value them as well.”
Photo credit: Ethan Duran
A volunteer picks up litter in Tiefenthaler Park (2480 W Cherry St.)
Living next to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Smith noticed a lot of protesters leaving trash in the neighborhoods they passed through. She also says that the cleanup shows that people can contribute to the protest’s cause in their own way—whether making lunches for protesters or cleaning their community spaces.
Volunteers, mostly adults and teenagers of different colors, walked around Tiefenthaler Park and surrounding streets in the sun, picking up plastic bags, bottles and bits of paper that accumulated in the grass and on the sidewalks. Trash was put into bags and disposed of at PEAK’s building or thrown into nearby dumpsters and cans.
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Megan Shepard Smith said she has been itching to do something but can’t leave home for a march without risking her family members. Instead, she spent the afternoon with other volunteers preparing protester kits, which include snacks and water, to be handed out to those on day-long marches. Volunteering outdoors also seems like a safe way to socialize during the pandemic.
Photo credit: Ethan Duran
Volunteers put together protester kits, which include snacks and water.
“People are looking to socialize, and this is a way to do so safely,” said Shepard Smith. “We’re outdoors, we can distance ourselves. That human-to-human contact is important.” Shepard Smith, a Midtown resident, said that the cleanup was a way to start healing close to home.
In the shade outside of the PEAK building, a table with open letters sat waiting to be signed. These letters would go to Mayor Tom Barrett, addressing the deaths of people of color by police and demanding five policies to be adopted by the Milwaukee Police Department: the requirement of de-escalation, a ban on chokeholds, restriction of shooting at moving vehicles, requirement for comprehensive reporting and the requirement to exhaust all other means before shooting.
Photo credit: Ethan Duran
The event at Tiefenthaler Park also included an open letter campaign
The letter also demanded movement on tactics like a red flag system, enforcement of policies against misconduct in office and a zero tolerance for racism policy. These tactics and demands similar to the Community Task Force’s demands at their press conference last week, when they called for de-escalation training, a red flag system and Good Samaritan Law to allow citizens to step in if an officer unnecessarily harms a citizen.
Participants were encouraged to print and sign their name and include their addresses on the paper, as Demetria Smith mentioned letters can be dismissed without an address.
“Being able to keep the park clean and help with the surrounding neighborhood allows us to meet and connect with our neighbors,” said Rodney Sanchez, an operations manager for PEAK. He said the example he wanted the event to set was that “when we do things together and for each other, the community’s a better place.”
For more of our coverage of the protests occurring across Milwaukee, click here.
