New Orleans    For quite a while in these times of inequity and polarization around income, class, race, and so many other issues, there has seemed – at least to me – a fuse steadily and slowly burning towards an explosion in our cities. We are definitely seeing it now in Milwaukee, as the community rioted in destructive anger in reaction to a black policeman 24-years old killing a fleeing black man 23-years old, who was also armed.

The anger is erupting because it comes from an unrequited rage. Elements of the community are saying, essentially, “We don’t care about whether police say the killing was justified or not; the killing has to stop!” We can quibble and disagree about the facts, the tactics, and the collateral damage, but it is hard to argue that police occupation of lower income, largely minority communities is working to either stop crime or, even more importantly, to protect and secure the communities themselves or integrate them fully into the overall life of the city. People are drowning without lifelines or lifeboats in sight. No one could have read the book, Evicted¸ and its close, hard look at conditions in Milwaukee’s lower income neighborhoods around housing, which are little different than scores of other cities, without understanding that all of these situations are powder kegs waiting for matches.

But, as Milwaukee is demonstrating, to see the crisis as a simple matter of police-community relationships where strategy and tactics have gone terribly awry, is also a mistake. These issues and estrangements are bigger than that, and they are more comprehensive. The police are simply at the front of the line, but everyone else is still in the queue, equally responsible. There are few better examples that the surprise the press is finding in Milwaukee that they are also a target of protest and rage.

The police are the close-at-hand occupiers, while the press is now increasingly the far removed observers. As newspapers and other media outlets have drastically cut the staffing of their newsrooms in the technological crisis within their industry, the coverage of communities of class and color, which were never robust, are now even more drastically depleted. Any casual conversation with community organizers will quickly reveal how invisible the work has become and how increasingly shrouded their communities have become. Large protests and similar events go unreported. When covered, it’s often now a student intern or stringer or a photographer sent just to get a picture. We’re back in the 50’s again where the mainstream media largely depends on self-appointed or downtown-vetted community leaders rather than facts and forces on the ground, so who is surprised that when they show up in the community there’s something less than applause.

The New York Times quoted a community advocate in Milwaukee with a radio show saying, “Our stories get mixed.” At first I thought this might be a misquote and that he really said, “nixed,” but he was more likely saying that the stories suffer from too much two-handed coverage, where the voices of the community are muted and the issues, no matter how stark, are diluted.

Not to keep being the Cassandra here, but attention must be paid. As I keep arguing, for all the noise out there, this all seems like the fire this time, and there will be no excuse for policy makers, politicians, and other institutions, large and small, to act even remotely surprised when it breaks out everywhere.

Nothing is being done to solve these problems, so who would be surprised that people start expressing their anger in whatever ways are still available to them.

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Please enjoy this version of The Midnight Special by Billy Bragg & Joe Henry. Thanks to KABF.