Mandela Barnes Opens Up About Milwaukee

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Photo by Tom Jenz

Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes is Wisconsin’s first Black lieutenant governor and, at 33, one of the youngest. Before becoming lieutenant governor in 2018, Barnes served in the State Assembly for four years, representing District 11 on Milwaukee’s North Side. He authored legislation on juvenile justice reform, out-of-home care for youth in the foster system, early prison release, expanding victim and witness advocacy services, a community schools grant program and tuition-free enrollment for technical colleges. Off the Cuff spoke with Barnes about his background and Milwaukee.

Where did you grew up?

I was born in the city of Milwaukee, raised on 26th and Locust. My mother is a retired public school teacher. My father is a retired factory worker at a General Motors subsidiary. Both parents were very active union members throughout my life. Being a part of the middle class, my parents helped me stay in line—especially considering other difficult circumstances around me, whether with my neighbors or classmates. We weren’t rich, but we were able to have a stable foundation. My upbringing offered me the opportunity to go after the things I wanted to go after. In 2003, I graduated from John Marshall High School.

Were there other influences that helped you along on your path?

Both my parents worked full-time. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They helped shape me. I think about my grandparents’ story. They moved to Milwaukee after my grandad served in World War II, and their moving was for the opportunity. My grandad worked at A.O. Smith. My grandmother worked for MPS. Like so many other people in their generation, Milwaukee was one of the best places for Black people to live at the time. This gave my grandfather a chance to work on an assembly line. He was also a very active union member.  

You then went to college at Alabama A&M. How did that happen?

My mother’s originally from Birmingham, Ala., and she went to Alabama A&M as well. Alabama A&M is an historically Black land-grant university in Huntsville, Ala.

In college, I joined organizations like NAACP and student government. I studied broadcast journalism, TV, radio and print. In 2004, Barack Obama gave his Idea Freedom keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, and it was a very inspirational moment for me. His speech made me think about the world a little bit differently and think about politics much differently. In Barrack, I saw someone who had a unique experience, and it wasn’t like any other politician. Seeing that happen, seeing him on the stage, I knew it was something that I’d be interested in, being involved in politics in general. In 2008, after I finished school, I decided to go work on the Obama campaign as a field organizer, and I ended up in rural northwest Louisiana for about six months. After that election, I made my way back to Milwaukee, and I did an unpaid internship in Mayor Tom Barrett’s office. After a few weeks, I became the receptionist in the Mayor’s office.

You started at the bottom, but it got you going, right?

It did! After that job, I went to the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board. About a year down the line, I got laid off from my job, ironically when my job was to help people find jobs. Then, I got back into organizing. After Scott Walker took office and he dropped the bomb, I worked for MICAH, and I was able to engage in a number of issues—economic development, education, immigration reform and treatment inside of prisons. After banging our heads against the wall and not getting the responses we thought we should have, I was faced with a choice: Keep doing it this way or run for office myself if I thought it was so easy. So, I decided to run for office in 2012 for state representative.

You have direct experience with Milwaukee’s current problems: segregation, racism, unrest and the decline of the inner city, even in your old neighborhood, 26th and Locust. Do you have any ideas to help improve these volatile situations?

I think it’s important for us to provide opportunities. The decline and quality of life in those neighborhoods and those communities is directly correlated with the decline of business and job opportunities. When big factories like A.O. Smith departed, there was nothing left to replace them. Communities were left with a gaping hole. Homeownership declined, incomes declined. A lot of people left the area because what was once a hub of opportunity became much less. When you look at economic development, it hasn’t been dispersed equally or where the need has been. When you look at the revitalization of some of the other areas in Milwaukee, you’re talking about the Third Ward, Fifth Ward, Downtown, Walker’s Point and the Menomonee Valley. So, why hasn’t revitalization happened in other areas that were once hubs of opportunity like the inner city? There was the opportunity to create a strong middle class in the Black community; when that went away, I don’t think there were enough political efforts to replace what had been lost. The result? Along came all the negativity that came with loss of jobs, loss of upward mobility, and there was a lot of desperation that turned into crime, drug abuse and every other societal ill.

For several years, I’ve been walking the neighborhoods of Milwaukee’s inner city including parts of your old district. I’ve been photographing people and telling their stories. The residents are mostly Black, and most are hurting in almost every possible way. The vast majority those residents hate the criminal culture that exists in many of their neighborhoods, the shootings, murders, drug deals, car stealing and reckless driving. Yet, when I talk to the local politicians, they seem to struggle with explaining why there is the crumbling infrastructure—abandoned buildings and houses, cracked streets, garbage in the alleys—and why there are not efforts to help create new businesses. Tell me what you think.  

What resident anywhere would want to experience these sort of challenges? No one wants to be in an area or situation where someone’s been shot the night before or where a neighbor may have been murdered. How did we even get to this point? Travel a few miles outside of those depressed areas, and you’ll find a different quality of life. That’s because you are traveling to areas that have jobs and businesses.

But the unfortunate part of the inner city is that the crimes are almost always Black on Black crimes, including shootings and robberies. This is kind of tragic.

I would say a lot of it is crimes of proximity. A lot of these are familial instances, the murders, but there are also a bunch that aren’t. You may see a child that gets shot and killed way too soon. Nobody should ever lose their lives to violence. I think it’s important for us to look deeper into the factors surrounding each crime. We can go back to schools. Even if we were to use a 50% graduation rate, any school would be shut down. That 50% will be somewhat functional, but with the other 40%, there is something going on that had nothing to do with the school, whether it is poverty or living in a community that has been rocked by violence. You got children growing up with PTSD, things I never wanna see. They are carrying this condition to school, and they don’t even have an outlet, and they just reflect it in so many bad ways. I had friends who were shot and killed in high school and so many more shortly after. When violence becomes what people expect, it only gets worse with each generation.

Can anything be done?

It takes a real effort. You can’t just sit and have one strategy and have meetings with people who couldn’t be more disconnected from the issue. I think it’s important to have people who have been a part of the system, whether they’ve been to jail before, whether they’ve been associated with a violent crime in one way or another as a perpetrator or even as a witness. You gotta be able to talk to them. When we hear what people actually have to say, I think that puts us in a much better place to resolve some of this.

You did a lot with youths. How do we get strong role models?

You look at the war on drugs and a lot of Black men got placed in prison for what they hoped to make millions of dollars off of. That had a seismic impact in those communities, just like the loss of industries. And then there were other issues, like family units were discouraged because of welfare. Having a man in the house would mean that families in need would not get the benefits that they needed to live a happy and somewhat healthy life. All these things played a role in the absence of having these solid role models.

I could give you the names of six or seven Black activists I know fairly well.  I wish they would be included more in the meetings and policy making with the major politicians of Milwaukee.  How could that be accomplished, how could there be more involvement with the street leaders and the higher-up politicians of Milwaukee?

I do think there’s a way that can be done. It has to be where both sides come in neutral. A lot of times, politicians will come in with a sort of animus toward activists and vice-versa.

If the different leaders all come in on neutral ground and say “I’m gonna listen to you, and you listen to me,” does that make sense?

I think so. It’s like any sort of relationship. If you show up ready for war, it’s gonna end in war. You can go into that relationship recognizing that, if we are all gonna exist in this space together regardless, we should try to make the best of it, especially if the end game for each side is safer communities, safer streets and more opportunities. It’s not easy for people to be open-minded, especially since there are so many reasons to be upset, be frustrated or mad. But if the goal is to rectify whatever problems we're dealing with, then I think there would be more opportunities for a productive conversation.

Do you think we can ever get past this racial hatred with one another? It’s ridiculous. Social media fuels it, mainstream media fuels it. Couldn’t we have a respect for one another’s culture?

We have to. Yes, we have to. That’s one of the casualties in being in the most segregated city in America. I was able in my childhood to be around a lot of people who didn’t look like me and share similar experiences that I had. For them as well as me, there was an appreciation of who you were and knowing we were different on both sides.  I think we greatly benefitted from that. Because that is not everyone’s experience, too many folks are existing with an unfounded resentment toward one another.

To hear the Central City Stories Podcast episode on Mandela Barnes, click here.

Tom Jenz is the writer and photographer of the Shepherd Express’ Central City Stories series.