African American Roundtable Asks Residents How to Build a Better Northwest Side

By Meredith Melland

This story was originally published by Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, where you can find other stories reporting on fifteen city neighborhoods in Milwaukee. Visit milwaukeenns.org.

At the African American Roundtable’s second visioning session for the Northwest Side, community members shared their desires for the area, focusing on better access to fresh produce, affordable housing and more Black therapists.

The residents cut images out of magazines and wrote notes on paper to create a collage in the shape of a fist as a visual depiction of their hopes and dreams for the Northwest Side.

“Some of them are talking about the kids being outside more or parks to be in, so they can put all of those ideas into this iconic painting and movement, too,” said Akira Mabon, a community artist and canvasser with the Roundtable.

At the Oct. 26 event at Brentwood Church of Christ, 6425 N. 60th St., the African American Roundtable, or AART, used the collage, a localized game of bingo and discussion to find out how community members want to build a better version of the Northwest Side.

Shaping the vision

In the first session in August, residents brainstormed a vision of the Northwest Side with a community spirit, access to quality food and transportation and more green spaces, among other things.

The fall session followed up on how to make it happen.

“These sessions are all in service of us building a Northwest Side community safety campaign, so we’re just doing input sessions with the community to help build out what that vision is, what’s that work, what are we going to do?” said Ryeshia Farmer, AART’s community program manager.

AART is a nonprofit organization focused on serving Milwaukee’s Black community and centers its work around the theme of Black liberation.

Through its past LiberateMKE campaign, the Roundtable focused on the City of Milwaukee’s budgeting process and advocated for the city to put money into community programs instead of policing.

“I really dig the direct approach,” said Steven Hunter, who attended the visioning session and works for the Community Advisory Committee. “There’s no talking about how can we get MPD involved?”

Theme ideas discussed

Participants talked in small groups about solutions to improve the Northwest Side within themes developed from the previous session, including food access, green spaces, travel access, nostalgic feel and a people-affirming economy.

The transportation group said the city needed to be more proactive rather than reactive to address reckless driving and offer more transportation options on the Northwest Side.

“We need to pay closer attention to what things are going on in here, especially on the North Side of town,” said Elaine Sallis, a resident.

The green spaces group discussed the importance of more natural spaces on the Northwest Side and how to get more community members to help care for them, Hunter said.

Participants also discussed ways to improve food access, such as more education and training, developing relationships with existing farmers’ markets and businesses and inviting nutritionists to speak to local groups.

Focusing on the Northwest Side

Not many activist groups have focused on improving the quality of life on the Northwest Side, which is why the African American Roundtable decided to open an office in the area in 2021.

“Even as we talked to some other community organizations who had started to do some work over here, they have found it really difficult,” Farmer said. “So we just decided to anchor and commit to the deep work to build the relationships, to do the community engagement and get this community organized.”

AART worked with UBUNTU Research & Evaluation to survey residents and develop a Northwest Side asset map and create a social media campaign of Northwest Side Stories.

Last year, the Roundtable asked Northwest Side residents to pick out four local community-led projects to each receive $10,000 from AART’s budget as an example of participatory budgeting. One of the projects that received funding was an update to the kitchen at Brentwood Church of Christ, which hosted the visioning session.

Next steps

AART plans to use the ideas from the first two visioning sessions to develop a plan for a community safety campaign for the Northwest Side, which resident leaders will present and get feedback on at a final session on March 12, Farmer said.

Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.