'This was just day one': Kenosha listening session shows uneasy relations between residents, police after Blake shooting, protests
Ricardo Torres
Journey Church in Kenosha on Sunday turned from a place of worship to a metaphorical hospital, a place to begin healing in the community after a summer of unrest.
Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian sat onstage with a representative of the Kenosha Police Department and listened as residents talked about how they felt about the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August, the protests that followed and the clashes with police and other armed individuals.
The listening session was the first of four scheduled events with the purpose of informing elected officials and law enforcement about how Kenosha residents feel on various issues and possible solutions to them.
“It’s not just a listening session,” Antaramian said. “It’s the beginning of healing and it’s the beginning of change.”
Diamond Hartwell was first at the microphone and stood with the aid of crutches because of a broken leg suffered during the first few days of the protests.
Hartwell talked about the need for better mental health resources in the community.
“It’s not just the people who you can see it and hear it in their voices, see it on their faces that need help,” Hartwell said. “It’s people all in our community, all throughout Kenosha who need these mental health resources but especially our Black and brown people.”
Although the church was built to fit hundreds of people, fewer than 50 residents attended and spoke at the session.
Brian Little said he felt “ashamed of our city” and the violent protests “peeled back a layer of Kenosha that’s been bubbling for a while now.”
“We have to be open to having conversations, tough conversations, that really do plague the city,” Little said.
Rochelle Anderson-Moore said that in the past, Antaramian said he wanted Kenosha to be a “bigger Lake Geneva.”
“We have a lot of Chicago people who have come to Kenosha and it’s kind of pushing Kenosha people who can’t afford — or don’t have the jobs to afford — our rent and mortgages these days,” Anderson-Moore said. “There’s no affordable housing in Kenosha ... where I live, my rent goes up every year to a point where I’m on social security and I’m getting a pension and I can barely afford it.”
Anderson-Moore said she wasn’t bothered by the protests but was bothered by the response from law enforcement.
“It bothered me that our police were there in military gear, like they were going to some fight,” Anderson-Moore said. “All we were there for was to let our voices be heard and be around each other and protest peacefully.”
Law enforcement was a major focus of many comments at the listening session.
Kyle Flood said he was involved in the protests every night and was “traumatized” by the law enforcement response.
“I was tear gassed four times,” Flood said. “I have to trust the officers that threw tear gas canisters at me now, how?”
Flood suggested public funding for social services and the decriminalization of marijuana.
“We also need to decriminalize all drugs and push people to treatment, not jail,” Flood said. “It’s just decriminalization, it’s not legalization.”
Pleasant Prairie resident Paul Taulu brought a different perspective.
He mentioned Blake’s criminal history and that when police attempted to arrest him while he was holding “a fighting knife.”
Wisconsin District Attorney Josh Kaul has said a knife was found in Blake’s car but there has not been any confirmation that Blake was armed at the time of the incident.
“They feel that they should prosecute this person for his crimes and get a judgment, for the simple reason is, this will put notice into all the people doing crime, to stop the crime.”
After Taulu's comments, someone shouted, “no one in this crime is judge, jury and executioner” and a few people clapped.
Antaramian concluded the event by saying there are several different areas he would like to work on, specifically mentioning mental health and getting help from the county and area hospitals to find resources.
“We as a community have to change,” Antaramian said. “I heard what you had to say and I plan to move on a number of issues as quickly as we are able to move on them.”
Activist Porche Bennett gave Antaramian a copy of legislation being debated in Madison that she would like him to advocate for.
“We can only hope that all four of these listening sessions come out to something,” Bennett said. “This was just day one.”
After the session, Antaramian spoke with individual residents, including Little and Hartwell.
“It sounds like he is trying to do a little bit more,” Little said. “He’s making an effort, finally. That’s all we can do is ask for that at this point in time right now.”
Hartwell and Little belong to a group called Kenosha Accountability Coalition that formed after the May death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Little said their group has tried to get meetings before the Blake shooting with little success.
“We’ve been trying to prevent the issues that have been happening right now all summer long,” Little said. “This is something that should have already happened.”
Hartwell said she is always willing to talk with public officials but said issues of racism have been around longer than this summer.
“Don’t let them fool you, these issues did not just start coming up and being brought before them after George Floyd, this has been going on since Mike Brown,” Hartwell said.
Brown, an unarmed teenager, was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. “They knew exactly what direction we were heading in ... people in leadership, in their own leadership, tried to prevent this from happening. But this is what happens when cries fall on deaf ears.”
Little and Hartwell said they were also approached by a Kenosha police officer and union representative who was interested in meeting with them and other community members to have a better relationship.
It's overdue, Little said, but that "doesn’t mean that we can’t start now.”
Still, they both felt that relations between police and residents is strained because of clashes during the protests.
“It’s like if a bully came and whooped your ass and then a couple weeks later came up to you and was like, ‘Hey man, let’s go out to lunch sometime. I don’t want to bully you anymore,’” Little said.
Hartwell said she felt “super uncomfortable” speaking to the officer.
“These are the same people that were literally violent with us ... and now they want to have conversations with us and bridge these gaps, and that’s great, but those are things that should have been done before we got to this point,” Hartwell said.