Will you help us build a movement of community-supported news?
By supporting each other, and creating deeper relationships, we can heal the wounds that divide us. Continue reading Will you help us build a movement of community-supported news?
Tag: Health
“There is nothing like watching something grow”
From growing up in one of Milwaukee’s most challenged neighborhoods to running a business of her own, Kathy Kingcaid has lived her life with no regrets. Continue reading “There is nothing like watching something grow”
Picnic offers place for “those who may not have anywhere else”
The free event, hosted by the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary, will include resources and activities. Continue reading Picnic offers place for “those who may not have anywhere else”
“They always told me not to be on the street”
Life hasn’t been kind to Mostafa Saifula lately, but he remembers what a “normal life” used to feel like. Continue reading “They always told me not to be on the street”
“If you don’t have family you don’t have anything”
Violet Young walks briskly down North Richards Street dressed almost entirely in purple, a plastic bag in each hand. Exuberant and cheerful, even the below-freezing temperatures can’t dampen her spirits.
“You should see what it looks like in summer,” she says, gesturing to a nearby corner park with fruit trees and a small shelter. “It’s beautiful.”
Continue reading ““If you don’t have family you don’t have anything””
“You adapt to your environment”
Reunitie Harmon walks down a quiet 24th Street in Park West. Harmon’s casual appearance is consistent with the quiet confidence she projects.
“I tell people: unless you hear my story, you’ll never know my struggles — that’s my thing. ‘Cause I never wear it on my face — I always wear a smile — so unless you see my struggles or you hear about it, you’ll never know about what I’m going through.”
“It’s a little bigger than us”
Leon Douglas leans on a car in the parking lot of a McDonald’s on 35th and Juneau. Douglas, who’s homeless and had been canvassing the outside of the establishment hoping for some charity, scarfs down a cheeseburger, with one still waiting in the bag; an order of fries and a large Sprite sit on the sidelines.
“You had to learn the hard way,” says Douglas, who grew up without a father near 35th and Center. “All I seen was pimps, prostitutes, whores, things of that nature; nothing productive, nothing that offered me any real insight as to what the future might bring, as far as goals.”
“This is where my roots are”
Norma Wheeler sits on the front port of her home in Williamsburg Heights. Wheeler raised all of her children in the house, located on a one-way strip of 2nd Street, where she’s lived for more than 50 years.
“I’ve been livin’ in Milwaukee all of my adult life. I raised all of my kids here, in this particular house, and I get along with my neighbors pretty good,” she says.
“We can’t have everything in life”
Evelyn Smith teeter-totters down the sidewalk of North Teutonia Avenue in Borchert Field, grocery bags in hand. She stops in a triangle-island at the corner of Burleigh Street to wait for the bus she’ll catch home.
The 70-year-old was born in Canton, Miss., but her parents came to Milwaukee in 1949 when Smith was only 5 or 6 for “the reason everybody else came up here”: better jobs.