Black Nouveau

(soft chimes) (upbeat music) Welcome to "Black Nouveau". This is our edition for March, I'm Joanne Williams. You may know Milwaukee community public artist, Muneer Bahauddeen through his peace posts, put up around the city. But there's so much more to him than that as our Everett Marshburn found out. We'll tel you why it's important that you be counted in the census. And James Causy will talk with one of the architects who will oversee the changes to Fiserv Forum, for the Democratic National Convention in July. As we celebrate Women's History Month we want to recognize the first African American woman to attain the rank of major general in the U.S. Army. Alexandria Mason profiles Wisconsin own, Marcia Anderson. (somber music) When I first came into the Army I was very aware that it was largely a white male organization. And I didn't look around and see a lot of people who looked like me, certainly not at the officer ranks. My name is Major General Marcia Anderson, and I'm retired from the United States Army. I was in the military for about 37 years. -

Alexandria

Imagine accidentally changing the course of history. It was very accidental, it was very serendipitous. I really signed up for one reason and that was because I needed some college credits. And at registration, back in those days you registered standing in giant gyms and stood in line and hoped not to get cut out of class. And there was one line that had no people in it. And it said military science department and that's how I got into ROTC. -

Alexandria

Anderson may have stumbled her way into serving her country, but she now considers it the best mistake she's ever made. After completing ROTC, the Army Reserves commissioned Anderson as a second lieutenant, where she'd spent nearly 40 years climbing the ranks. -

Marcia

When I was promoted to major general, in 2011, I was the first African American woman to achieve that rank in the history of the army and I achieved federally recognized rank. When I was leaving Fort Knox, a group of young African American female officers who worked there, they couldn't give me anything of real value 'cause there's a prohibition against accepting things like that from subordinates, but they put this together and game me this hammer just to signify that I had broken the glass ceiling and become a major general and they were very proud of me. -

Alexandria

Anderson's new role parachuted her into the center of the United States Department of Defense, The Pentagon. In many cases those positions put you in charge of thousands of people, 10's of thousands of people. It was really very humbling and a little scary because I felt a great sense of responsibility that I needed to get this right. Because if I messed it up, if I was, there was some investigation, if I did something wrong, it was gonna be super amplified and it would make it that much harder for that next person, or persons, to try and achieve that rank. And someone told me once, who looked at my photo she says, "You're always smiling in your pictures." Most people aren't, they look like their taking their diver license picture, or they just came from the dentist and they're not happy. (background chatter) I feel lucky to be in this room with you I'll just put it that way, 'cause I know you smart. From some of the things you've said you don't even realize it. Your friends may act like they have all the answers, but when you see some of the decisions they make we know they don't really have all the answers. I retired from the military in 2016. Does everybody in here get eight hours of sleep a night? (student giggle) Yeah I knew the answer to that, that was no. I got involved with the students at Badger Ridge Middle School in Verona 'cause my husband's a member of The 100 Black Men of Madison and he was working with some of the black males at the middle school as part of the SOAR project. And apparently someone on the, someone asked him, "Well, what about our girls?" Today I wanna talk about being assertive, standing up for yourself, things you can do in, in certain situations to just assert yourself. So we're gonna go through a couple of examples of that. I thought I need to start talking to them right now about being assertive, 'cause I didn't figure that out until I was out of college. And I think I missed a lot of opportunities to stand up for myself or to ask for things that I need and that's what I wanted them to understand. Your teacher's confusing you in class, and how do you feel about trying to raise your hand and say, "I don't understand what's going on." I think sometimes the problem is, like also, that like before you can't raise your hand 'cause you feel like (student coughs) you'll be like dumb, while everybody else gets it and you're like the only one who doesn't. And it's okay to ask for what you need. If you need people to listen to you, somebody to work with you, people to respect you, people to appreciate you. It's perfectly okay, that's being assertive but that's getting what you personally need and there's nothing wrong with that. It dawned on me that some of them in the room were very smart but they would never speak up, I had to pull things out of them and that reminded me of me when I was them and I was that age. -

Alexandria

Born in Beloit, Wisconsin, she spent the bulk of childhood in East St. Louis, Illinois. An area she describes as high-poverty with little opportunity. Not a lot of people coming out of there with degrees and educations. So all of those things could've meant that I could've just accepted the labels, or the low expectations that I think people probably would have had for me. But I was just really was pretty stubborn and determined and had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I had given a speech at Spellman and that was the title of that speech was, if you're not at the table, then you're on the menu. -

Alexandria

What does that mean? If you are excluded from those discussions, or people making major decisions about what happens to you, how resources are used, you're on the menu. And so you need to be in the room, you need to be at the table, and you need to be a part of that conversation. So I was trying to encourage them to stretch, lead, and take risks. -

Alexandria

The retired major general echoed this message at a mural unveiling at Milwaukee's War Memorial Center. The mural is dedicated to Wisconsin's black veterans that have served our country since as early as The American Revolution. As we know, the winners get to write the history. And I made sure that not only was I at the table, I made sure that when I was there I did what I could to shape the agenda and the conversation that followed. -

Women

There you go. That was the least that I owed those who's sacrifices made a way for me. -

Alexandria

Among the commemorated veterans is Anderson. -

Marcia

I thanked and then recognized the sacrifices made by people like the Tuskegee Airmen, to let people know that in our community there are people who are talented, who are worthy, and who merit these kinds of opportunities. And that I stood on their shoulders. -

Alexandria

The hope is that people can be inspired to serve by seeing those that blaze the trail before them. The main thing that you wanna do when you're a senior person in the military is take care of the people who work for you. Keep them safe, take care of them personally and professionally, and treat them as people. They're not assets, they're people. I never forgot that so I tried to make that a focus for the things that I did. Why should I care about the 2020 Census? Every 10 years the census counts everyone living in the U.S. Count everyone living with you. Even kids. Our numbers help shape funding and services. -

Both

For all these things. That's a lot of stuff. You're responses are safe and secure. No matter who you are or where you're from. We have reasons to care. -

Narrator

Shape your future. Start here at 2020census.gov. So why is it important that we should all be counted in the 2020 Census? Sharon Robinson from the city of Milwaukee's Complete Count Committee has the answer, welcome. Thank you. So everybody's gonna get counted in 2020. How many people do you figure that's gonna be? I'm estimating that's it's gonna be close to 600,000. Essentially, and I'm basing some of that on just increases in households. Essentially, the city actually gets involved in a couple of programs, one is called The Local Update of Census Addresses, and another program is called The New Housing Construction Program. And those programs have shown a net gain in almost 5,000 residents, I mean households I should say. Do most people understand what the census is and why it's important? We actually do have to do a lot of public education just to increase census awareness. So in my role as chair of the Complete Count Committee, I'm tasked with mobilizing the community to really spread the word about the importance of the census and we really try to a good job in terms of reaching historically undercounted populations, because we do know based on past census counts that there are certain populations that have gone uncounted. And if we don't do our job in this census, we could lose $1,600 per year, each year, over the next 10 years if we don't achieve an accurate count. So what does it mean to me as a citizen, why should I care that if I get counted or don't get counted it'll make a difference? Okay, first of all, the census is your right. It's a fundamental human right of The Constitution of the United States says that every single resident that resides in the United States has a right be counted in the census. But the ramifications of an incomplete count are much more serious than just leaving residents uncounted. For instance, there's two primary reasons that every single resident in this country should wanna be counted. And the first reason I'll highlight is that almost $700 billion is distributed each year based on census data. And in Wisconsin, we actually receive 12.6 billion alone based on census data. So that money goes to fund all kinds of programs. For instance, housing programs, education programs, so money that comes to schools, libraries, healthcare, programs like Medicaid are funded based on census data. So if we don't count every resident in the census we short change residents. So it's important to not only residents but the community as a whole. Sometimes, some folks don't don't get counted. Sometimes it's hard to convince various ethnic groups to participate in the census, but it is important. How do you convince them to be in the count? And you're correct. There are certain populations where we know that we have to breakdown barriers to ensure that they participate in the census. And for instance, there's certain populations in Milwaukee that frankly don't trust government. And one population of course, or two populations I'll say are African Americans and Latinos, I'll even say Mung. So largely populations of color sometimes distrust government and they're wondering like, "What are they gonna do with this data?" But it's important to point out that all census data is safe, it's private, it's confidential. And that no one in the Census Bureau can actually share this information with any other federal agencies. So that means that it doesn't affect benefits that may be coming to an individual or their family. Also, for instance, some of the immigrant population is worried about will that information be shared with ICE, or will it impact me if I'm not a resident of the United States. So we have to break down those barriers and let them know that the census means that every single person should be counted and it has nothing to do with any personal information. Again, it's strictly used for statistical purposes to make sure that you distribute federal money fairly, as well as ensure that each state gets their fair amount of congress seats in the United States Congress. How do people actually get counted? Do they, do you send in a sheet or something, or does somebody knock on your door, or, how does that work? Okay, starting in March, it'll actually be March 12th, the Census Bureau will be mailing letters to every single household in the United States. Basically telling them that the census has arrived and it's time to be counted. And so for the first time in history residents will actually have the opportunity to participate online or by telephone. But if a person is not comfortable with that they can still mail in their form. So they'll be able to mail, request a form, and then the form they can mail it in, and the form is actually available in many, many languages. I know its available in over a dozen languages. So they're trying to make it as easy as possible by offering so many options. If someone wants to know more about the census how do they find out, where do they go? Well, residents, if you're interested in obtaining more information about the census you can visit the city's website, which is Milwaukee.gov/2020census, so you can download all kinds of FAQs, you could also access information about jobs because they're recruiting heavily for jobs right now. And those jobs actually pay up to $24 an hour. Oh, okay. - Yes they adjusted the rate for Milwaukee. - Yeah, well thank you very much, Sharon Robinson from Milwaukee's Complete Count Committee, on the 2020 Census. Thank you - Everybody needs to be counted. - Yes. Thanks. - Thank you. (soft jazz music) This up here is a symbol from Ghana. And this is right here is a symbol from Ghana, they're called Adinkra symbols. And each of them have their own meaning. This one deals with the twists and turns in life and persevering through the twist and turns in life. This particular symbol deals with setting a standard within your family, within your community, and trying to adhere to that. -

Everett

Muneer Bahauddeen is an internationally known mixed media artist, muralist, and ceramicist Who's attracted to working in clay as a child. There was a gas station being put in at the end of our block when I was a kid. And of course they had to dig down to set the tanks. Of course they dug up a lot of clay and I started playing with clay then. That was in the late 50's but, it is a forgiving medium, clay always says yes. So you push it in here it says, "Okay we'll do that," and you take it a bend it and clay says, "Okay, we'll do that." And that's kind of metaphor for me in life, you know, just taking the punches or going with the bend or flow. -

Everett

He was born in Chicago, but he fell in love with art in an elementary school in Michigan. I always believe art is a healing process and I can't think of a community who needs healing more than ours. So art is important for that reason, you know. Art's very therapeutic. I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's movement or dance, whether there is spoken word, whether it's actually painting, theater, singing is art. I think it just feeds our spirituality. I'm pretty much a symbolist, I like looking at symbols and understanding them, especially symbols that lend themselves to the higher, inspiring human beings to move to a higher level of thinking and consciousness. I knew I was gonna be an artist. But it wasn't until, actually I moved here to Milwaukee in the 90's that I saw myself being a community-based public artist. -

Everett

As a community-based public artist he's a teacher and facilitator. On the lot next to his studio you can see some of his student's work. The panels you see out here now, they've been out here, not quite a year yet, but the panels prior to that had been there like eight years. So we've refreshed them only by way of the city who provided us with a Love Your Blocks grant. I heard a kid walking by one day saying, "That's mine, I did that one." So that's kinda like how I see community buying in and that's what I think is important. And one thing else I've noticed is that when the community does public art you don't see it tagged. You know, I've never see public art done by community tag by anybody else. -

Everett

For a number of years he's helped Milwaukee's youth to discover the beauty of art. I think two organizations that really kind of inspired me to move toward community-based art, one was Express Yourself Milwaukee, which was an art therapeutic agency that went in and provided an art activity for institutional youth and others and children at risk. The other was Arts @ Large, and this is a agency that provided quite a bit of art for inner-city schools and came in at a timely period when art was just gradually and systemically being eliminated from the school system. His current project is on display at Arts @ Large. Muneer, tell me about this exhibit, "The Diviner's Eyes". Well, I'm looking at three cultures. I'm looking at the Scandinavian Norse runes culture, the Vikings. I'm looking at the Mayan Oracles out of Mexico. I'm looking at the Nigerian Ifa community that write the Odu. And looking at the similarities, not in the design, but in their spiritual meaning. What do you want people to take away from your art? Well pretty much what they want, you know, I can't dictate that but, what I like thinking about is if they can stop and look at this piece for maybe one or two seconds, they ain't thinking about bills, or they ain't think about pressure or things like that. So my whole thing is take away joy, just take away sense of relief, or sense of options that they can look at for themselves. Looking at this material and thinking about being inspired to do stuff for themselves or, even to make art, yeah. -

Everett

There will be a community celebration with the artist on March 19th at Arts @ Large. (upbeat music) When people think of JCP we want them to think of quality, high level of service and excellence. And if with pay attention to that and make sure that their dream, or their vision comes true then it's a win-win situation. (imitates booming sound) And we are joined now by James Phelps, President of JCP Construction. Who's firm will help Fiserv Forum welcome the Democratic National Committee to Milwaukee. Thanks for joining us. Glad to be here. So how and why did your brothers go into construction? Most of us had a background in construction, as day jobs, but in addition to that we worked together at night moonlighting doing residential rehabs as an investment property. One night we just had the idea of it'd be nice working for ourselves and not necessarily having to go to work that following morning. Little naive about how much actually goes into owning your own business, but that's where it all started. When did you form your company? 2018. 2018. - Excuse me, 2008. Oh wow, okay - Yeah, about 11 years now. So you guys, saw in a clip that you worked on Fiserv Forum previous. Correct. - Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so we were part of the construction management team and our scope of work included some carpentry, the side perimeter of concrete, and the bailor work that goes around the perimeter of the arena, as well as some of the drywall work as well. And how difficult was that? It wasn't too difficult, it's well within our skillset. The most challenging part about that project was pouring the concrete in the winter time. And two years ago it was a pretty, pretty frigid winter so we had be pretty creative about being able to pour the concrete and have it still look the way it does now. So that was a little challenging. Talk about some of the other major projects you worked on. We been fortune enough to be apart of other cool projects including, one of our first ones was Century City. Oh - When TALGO came to town. And also Moderne, soon there after we worked on as trade partners, North End, Northwestern Mutual, we were, I think, were one of the ones we were actually able to show a lot of our capacity and being able to do multiple trade packages including all the waterproofing, all the woodwork throughout, as well as a lot of the drywall throughout as well. So what goes into converting a basketball arena into like a space for DNC, what do you have to do for that? It's transforming it, right now to essentially accommodate a lot of media. In that there's not a lot of spaces for the different media outlets to actually do what they do well. So the term that they're using are media condos. So we're still getting folded in to understand exactly what that looks like and the extent of it, but that's the main transformation is removing a lot of what's there existing, putting in temporary media condos and what not and then transforming it back in August. So is the goal to make it look like it's there permanently, or is to make it look like it's just there to rip down right after this is over in-- It's there not to look like it's there, I mean permanent, but it's there to still be aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Okay, so when the construction is over you will be converting it back? Right back to how it was originally. How long will that take? We're thinking about three weeks, I believe, early August is what we have before, I believe, the next event happens. Can you talk a little bit about the role as a minority contractor? You know, you're a little bit different because it's the three brothers, is it any other family member involved in this? My sister also works alongside of us doing some work for JCP, as well as our sister company Equity Supply as well. So, what's your role, I mean, it's construction, how do you carve your niche into something like as a minority contractor? Great question, my role as a president is essentially to see over operations of the business and make sure all the different aspects are going well, customer relations with, and then client relations as well. My other brother Jalin, essentially is in charge of the field. So anything related to the quality, what we're doing, the man power itself, and schedule what not, he pretty much manages that aspect. And Cliff role is business development, for looking and understanding opportunities that are out there, maintaining an forming new relationships with clients. Tell me a little bit about your background, what school did you go to? Milwaukee, UW Milwaukee. And you went to high school where? In Milwaukee Tech. It's-- - So, at Tech I was I had a shop certificate in pre-engineering, took a few years off before actually going to college. Once I did I went for finance at UWM. Now, real quick, when we talk about minority contractors we don't, there's not a lot of them so, how can a person start to go into that field, like for a young person, what would you encourage them to do? There's different aspects depending on, so my journey took me through working through the vocational trades, originally. Where I was actually a painter, right? And through a program, which a lot of people heard of called the ACRE Program at UW, excuse me at Marquette, allowed me to get into the commercial side of the business as well. So that along with my degree in finance I guess is what gave me a pretty, I think, a pretty well, a pretty good skillset for the role that I'm in at this time. So there's many paths there, whether it's through the trades, or whether it's through going to MSOE, or Marquette, another school for construction management to get into construction as well. Okay, well thanks for joining us. My pleasure, thanks for having me. (upbeat music) Join us for our next edition of "Black Nouveau"

on April 2nd at 7

30 pm, here on Channel 10. You can also catch our new "Black Nouveau" web exclusives online. Interviews with Dr. Gary Williams about the seventh annual Summit on Black Male Youth, and Nigerian-born actress Sola Thompson, currently on stage in "Eclipsed", at the Milwaukee Rep. Before we close tonight this reminder, Milwaukee PBS is having one of it's membership drives. If you appreciate "Black Nouveau" and feel it is important, won't you become a member to support the work that we do. We can't do it without you. And that's our program for this month, for "Black Nouveau" I'm Joanne Williams, thanks for watching.