Milwaukee is a beautiful and amazing city. There are places that remind me of a European Capitol or tourist destination. This view of one of the downtown bridges is hard to see but the bridge was being blocked by a protest. The folks serving and working and getting ready for the dinner crowd just shook their heads, some in frustration and some in agreement with the protests.
When I was up on that street and in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protest there was a particularly loud women who needed no bullhorn and who I felt was particularly obnoxious. I was wearing a suit as I just came from convention sessions and was walking to a fairly nice restaurant for supper. I must have looked a bit strange because the street was mostly filled with tourist types wearing Brewers ball caps. An elderly black gentleman came out of a shop behind me and said to me in a loud voice, “you need to call the F.B.I. on that women”. He said something to the effect that “you can’t even get around in your own neighborhood because of nonsense like this”. I told him that it was his city and community and he needed to call the F.B.I. He talked about the respect he had for the police and the need for there presence.
Mike Barnicle on “Morning Joe” talked about the dark and brooding and dystopian view of the country that was exhibited in Trumps speech and once again I am struck by the disconnect between the “media” and the folks that I hang around with. He said that he didn’t know anyone that got up in the morning and were afraid to go to work. He didn’t know anyone that had that dark vision of the country and yet when Republicans were in charge he and his ilk were as dystopian as anyone. I still remember the images of Reagan stealing out of the White House and stealing the food from the homeless. trying desperately to kill folks suffering from HIV, and the list goes on.
Barnacle of course doesn’t hang around with the likes of the gentleman in Milwaukee who makes sure there is a policeman in sight before he leaves his shop in the evening, and who gets there early “before the predators are out”. He doesn’t hang around with the folks who clean businesses at night in Ferguson MO, or who work downtown in the service industry in St. Louis. I’m sure he has never talked to a Pastor from and inner city church in L.A. or Chicago. He has never visited a housing project like Nehemiah in New York, or witnessed first hand the work done in Fort Wayne Ind. Barnicle does not hang around with policeman I assume. Barnacle is the elite who probably lives in a gated community or a condo and life is good. How do I know? Because the last time this journalistic gem was called on the carpet for “plagiarism” he had to be tracked down in Europe where he was vacationing. I’m sure he would have vacationed in Milwaukee but it might have been closed for protests that year.
