Photo credit: Erin Bloodgood
Devin Anderson is the lead organizer for Wisconsin Voices.
In March of last year, Devin Anderson joined Wisconsin Voices as the Lead Organizer. In that role, he has motivated underrepresented Milwaukee residents to participate in the political system. Wisconsin Voices is an organization dedicated to harnessing the collective voices of citizens by helping them engage in their democracy. When Anderson joined the team, he fit right into a group of strong outspoken individuals. And now Anderson and the team are demanding reform for George Floyd and black lives through their campaign called Liberate MKE.
Anderson wasn’t always the one leading the crowd. He was a good student in AP classes and as he describes, “a status-quo kid.” He was never really involved in organized protests or anything like it until he got to college. Before college, he realized that he was always one of the few black students in his honors classes but he “didn’t have the language yet to describe all the systems that were interlocking,” he says. He never understood the systemic reasons that hindered many other black students from making it into his honors classes.
Then something happened. While playing football at Beloit College, a parent of one of his teammates attacked him with demeaning language for wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. That experience showed him the realities of racism and fueled him to get involved in political issues.
A few years later, Anderson has found his calling as a community organizer, advocating for African Americans to live in a liberated Milwaukee. The Liberate MKE campaign was formed by the African American Roundtable (AART), which is a coalition of African American leaders from around Milwaukee that is supported by Wisconsin Voices. It all started as a conversation with the community, asking them how they wanted the city’s dollars invested into their neighborhoods. Anderson and other members of the AART spent most of 2019 at neighborhood events and knocking on doors. In September of last year, they published their survey results, showing that 47% of Milwaukee’s general spending bill went to police while only 3% went to neighborhood services.
“We live in a world where policing is just so engrained into us, so much infrastructure. It’s going to take time to strip that away,” says Anderson.
Reallocating Funds
Based on these results, the people leading the Liberate MKE campaign are asking for a $75 million-dollar divestment from the Milwaukee Police Department and a reallocation of that money to public health and housing cooperatives. Anderson and his team members have already been hard at work to bring about these changes and the current protests are now bringing their efforts to the center of attention.
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When asked how the Black Lives Matter movement is different this time around, Anderson said that more people are listening and asking questions. “What we hope to build is having the people and residents around us, helping us shape a vision together,” he says. “Our collective energy, our collective brains are much more powerful.”
Anderson understands that to people outside these communities, a $75 million-dollar divestment from the police—representing approximately 25% of the Milwaukee Police Department’s budget—may seem like a big ask, but to African Americans in Milwaukee, it’s not. Their neighborhoods have always been over-policed, underfunded and neglected. It’s their turn to speak up for their needs and it’s our turn as a city to listen and have empathy.
Learn about the Liberate MKE cause at www.liberatemke.com
Erin Bloodgood is a Milwaukee photographer and storyteller. Click the link to see more of her work.
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