cream-city
cream-city is something i've been thinking about for a long time; the liberal ideas of Milwaukee butting up against the harsh realities of segregation and racism.
Today, lots of people like to talk about burning it all down and starting again, but i don't think they really grasp what that means.
People talk about revolution like flipping the board and setting things up from the beginning. They want the game to continue, they just don’t like the outcome. Why can’t we just set the pieces down and walk away? Why can’t we find a new game to play? There are so many more exciting societies that we could be building instead of creating machines that generate wealth. Instead, we line our pockets so we can buy a little bit more time back from the system, trying to monetize everything because we are desperate to live. And in the process, we’re also snuffing out anything that isn’t profitable.
Several months ago, i read an article by Edgar Mendez about the efforts to restore the Milwaukee Domes and the larger park system. If you were raised in the Greater Milwaukee Area or have spent any significant time here, you’ve probably been to the Domes at least once. Today, the Domes are a husk of what they once were and they're light-years from living up to their potential.
But that’s not their fault; it’s the fault of a system that only cares about things that generate money. Public Services, Infrastructure, Education, Community Centers: these things are costly to maintain and difficult to monetize because the system asks us to produce tangible products in exchange for our investments. These systems, on the other hand, provide immense quality to life. They provide education. They provide opportunities to engage with other cultures. They provide chances for passions to be sparked.
And so that has me wondering about the Art Culture here and what we can do to remedy the issue. In the wealthier parts of town, you can find a sorts of arts focused businesses and museums and centers. But on the North-Side, opportunities are sparce and the ones that do exist suffer from low funding.
And so many people are frustrated by these issues and so many people want change and yet we're not doing enough.
