Photo credit: Virginia Small
Camille Mays stands with a mural in a new pocket park called Scholars Park (2577 N 38th St).
Once-common neighborly exchanges face significant limitations during this pandemic, as public health mandates and physical distancing keep people separate. That can pose even-greater challenges on urban blocks where ongoing connections, however brief, help foster cohesion, safety and well-being.
“Taking Back our Worlds: Conversations during Times of Social Distancing” is a publicly engaged humanities project that explores the historical and contemporary conditions of social and environmental injustice in Milwaukee. “We focus on a long history of community struggles around housing and food justice,” says project director Arijit Sen. He adds, “This public history project highlights everyday human struggles and solidarities in search of a just society in Milwaukee.” Sen was recently awarded the University of Wisconsin System’s 12th Annual Regents Diversity Award.
Photo credit: Virginia Small
Arijit Sen talks with students.
Sen created the Buildings Landscapes Cultures (BLC) field school as part of UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he is an associate professor. “To move the conversation even further, we have invited partners from Humanities Action Lab and residents of Newark, New Jersey, to participate with our local community leaders in online discussions centered around housing and food injustice,” says Sen. The webinars will focus on “community solutions that offer resilient answers to these concerns.”
The project was restructured after the pandemic, which caused the postponement of the Milwaukee installation of a national traveling exhibition titled “Climates of Inequality,” which highlights ongoing research about these issues. It had been scheduled to open here in July, along with related in-person forums.
Instead, organizers created a novel way to take the research exhibit to people’s homes and to jump-start civic conversations that had stalled due to COVID-19. The project team has arranged to safely deliver packages of fresh food from local growers and vendors, along with the creatively designed zines (limited-distribution publications) that tell these stories, to residents of Sherman Park and Washington Park. Produce providers include Alice’s Garden, MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary and Victory Garden Initiative. Students from UWM and Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) collaborated to create a series of four sets of zines. Each series focuses on different aspects of the research The first set introduces the project and highlights some of the myriad of assets in Sherman Park and Washington Park. The second set focuses on the history of housing injustice and stories of the struggle for housing freedom. The third set explores the history of food injustice and includes stories of those who are working for greater access to fresh, healthy food. The final set of zines features stories of residents taking actions in various ways: as individuals, organizations and businesses.
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Photo credit: Virginia Small
UWM SARUP students listen to community members talking about their neighborhood in a new space (on a former vacant lot) called Unity Orchard.
Series of Virtual Civic Conversations
The public is invited to join in virtual conversations about Milwaukee’s long history of community struggles around housing and food justice. Sen says, “These conversations will highlight everyday human struggles, while emphasizing the narratives of local resistance and transformations.” He adds that the innovative and creative world that exists in Milwaukee’s most marginalized neighborhoods often remains invisible to others within Metro Milwaukee—and even to nearby neighbors.
The project is engaging residents from Milwaukee’s Washington Park and Sherman Park areas. About 30 individuals identified as influencers within the neighborhoods will receive a weekly box filled with produce along with “food for thought” presented in a zine.
Other collaborators in “Taking Back Our Worlds” include scholars associated with the UWM’s Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school, and community experts from a network of 20 cities connected by the Newark-based Humanities Action Lab (HAL) organization. Other student participants are from Marquette University and colleges outside Wisconsin. A grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council provided primary funding. Project coordinator Chelsea Wait is pursuing a doctorate from UWM SARUP. Taytum Markee, co-coordinator and project editor, is working on a master’s degree in history at UWM.
Sen and his students, through the BLC field school and SARUP, have been working within these northwest side neighborhoods since 2014. A virtual exhibit presents highlights of this work, and all BLC research is archived online. For example, students “counter-mapped” the Sherman Park neighborhood, highlighting both valuable locations and potential threats.
Camille Mays, a community organizer and resident of the Center Peace area of Sherman Park, says that the ongoing research project has encouraged long-lasting positive changes in her neighborhood. “Sometimes colleges or universities come to our community and do an exhibit or a day-long clean-up and then they leave. Arijit Sen has consistently engaged here for years.” She cites the creation or enhancement of numerous small parks and green spaces in her neighborhood, following extensive neighbor outreach by herself and others. She says they are becoming safe gathering places on respective blocks. Some spaces were created in collaboration with the City of Milwaukee’s Home/GrOWN project.
Free webinars, or conversations across distance will take place every Saturday this month: August 8, 15, 22 and 29. Each week, a humanities scholar and a community member from both Milwaukee and Newark will interact on a virtual panel. The public can register for the events online through Eventbrite. Journalist Adam Carr will moderate the conversations, which will each last about an hour.
Schedule:
Saturday, Aug. 8 @ 11 a.m. CDT
“Taking Back our World” Introduction to a city, its history, and what environmental and climate injustice means for citizens.
Participants: Reggie Jackson, Camille Mays, Anthony Diaz, Neil Maher
What are the strengths of our communities? What are the issues, problems, and difficulties residents face and how do they respond to these issues? How might inter-city (Milwaukee-Newark) collaborations help? And how can such relationships be sustained?
Saturday, Aug. 15, 11 a.m. CDT
“Taking Back our Homes” What do we mean by “housing justice” in our city?
Participants: Lamont Davis, Robert Smith, 2 HAL-Newark participants
How do historical inequities show up in contemporary contexts? How is housing a contested territory in each city? What are we doing (or not doing) to address housing issues? What difficulties stymie success? What are some productive ways residents are responding/reacting to issues of injustice?
Saturday, Aug. 22, 2020, 11 a.m. CDT / noon EDT
Participants: Michael Carriere, Fidel Verdin, Caroline Carter,Tobias Fox.
What is food justice in the context of our city? How do historical inequities manifest in contemporary contexts? What are we doing (or not doing) to address food apartheid issues? What challenges stymie success? What strategies are being used to respond/react to issues of injustice. How can cross city (Milwaukee-Newark) collaboration help? And how can such relationships be sustained?
Saturday, Aug. 29, 11 a.m. CDT
Action, Now! A conversation with community leaders about best practices.
Participants: Muneer Bahauddeen, Anthony Diaz, Cheri Fuqua, Gregory Powell, Tremerell Robinson
How can we act to take back our worlds? How might we plan intersectional solidarity around justice? What can we do to connect, share, and resist? How could cross-city (Milwaukee-Newark) collaboration help? How might such relationships be sustained?
