Image via Bay Bridge
Whitefish Bay is a predominantly white community where issues of race haven’t been a common topic to bring up in conversation. However, Anne O'Connor, Kathy Wurzer and Jennifer Koop Olsta, co-founders of Bay Bridge, a group started in 2019 to address racial inequities in Whitefish Bay, are ready to bring these hard conversations to the forefront. “I would say that it's been bubbling up for three or four years within our community,” Wurzer says.
Bay Bridge has been working to find out how they can make Whitefish Bay a place where people of color feel heard, as well as to dismantle systems that perpetuate racial inequality. They’ve worked on a multitude of projects with the help of dozens of volunteers that are passionate about Bay Bridge’s message.
Their newest project, titled Talk Sessions, will take place on Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. via Zoom. The Talk Sessions are meant to continue to bring discussions of systemic inequality to the forefront, as well as hear concerns from within the community.
“We, as a predominantly white community, really need to do a lot of work on ourselves and educate ourselves,” O’Connor says. “So the community engagement from the Talk Sessions is to provide a platform for those learning opportunities.”
Engaging with High School Students
The first Talk Session will feature student liaisons that will speak about their experiences attending Whitefish Bay High School as people of color and the changes that they’d like to see. “Our students did lead a protest this summer in Whitefish Bay and that was driven by student leadership coming out of the high school,” O’Connor says. “So, we knew that there were students engaged in this work, and we wanted to be able to support that as fellow community members.”
All are welcome to come to the conversation, and they’ve invited the principal and school board president. “We've invited leaders within the community, both at the village level and at the school district level to be in attendance,” Wurzer says. “So, hopefully, we will get a good turnout and they'll have some voices who are in that position of power to hear what they have to say.”
Bay Bridge will hold more Talk Sessions in the future in order to continue to normalize conversations about systemic racism, especially within Whitefish Bay. “The students are a really great opportunity to highlight some of those voices that do exist in our specific community, but the broader goal is to provide opportunities for self-education and increased awareness of the broader impact,” Koop Olsta said.
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If you are interested in attending the first-ever Bay Bridge Talk Session, you can register here.
“I think what we're really asking people to do when we invite them to talk sessions is to come with an open mind, a willingness to listen and to respect other people's lived experiences, even if it doesn't match up with their own,” O’Connor says.
