Here & Now

Here & Now for June 19, 2020

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” a look at Juneteenth, the day 155 years ago the last slaves were freed. We’ll also speak with Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Joseph Donald about the lack of diversity on the bench and systemic racism in the courts. Plus U.S. Representative Mark Pocan on the historic Supreme Court decision for the LGBTQ community. And an update on the COVID-19 pandemic, as two new hot spots emerge. It’s “Here & Now” for June 19.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

At this hour, the Juneteenth flag is flying over the east entrance to the Wisconsin State Capitol, just below the U.S. and Wisconsin flags. Today is Juneteenth, a day that marks 155 years since the last enslaved people in the United States learned that they were free. It’s the first time in Wisconsin history the Juneteenth flag has flown at the Capitol. On this Juneteenth day, and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and demonstrations, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes today announced a package of police reform legislation. They call for bipartisan cooperation saying the governor should not have to call a special session when “people across our state are demanding we take action.” This week, we turn to an award-winning columnist who covers a range of African-American issues to discuss Juneteenth. It comes at a time when racial justice is front and center. Reggie Jackson is a senior columnist for the Milwaukee Independent and he joined us earlier this week with his insights. Mr. Jackson, thank you so much for being here.

Reggie Jackson:

It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Juneteenth is a celebration of the end of official slavery. This year, of course, COVID-19 stifles the celebratory nature of it, along with global demonstrations against racism and police brutality. As to the protests, you have said, “We have not suddenly reached the breaking point. Each day is a breaking point for us.” How so?

Reggie Jackson:

Well, you know, when we talk about the things that are currently occurring that the world is paying attention to, these are things that those of us in the communities of color, particularly African-Americans, these are things that we’ve experienced for many, many years. These are things that we talked about openly, complained about, asked for reform about. And so for us, this is nothing new. You know, the death of George Floyd, which has kind of galvanized people around the world to protest, these are not new occurrences for us. This is, you know, every-day-lived experiences for people of color, particularly blacks.

Frederica Freyberg:

You’ve also said this, “We want change. We are tired of being treated like our lives are inconsequential.” Describe the change that you want.

Reggie Jackson:

Well, you know, we simply want what every other American has. We want our lives to be valued in the same way as the majority community has been valued. You know, I did a presentation a number of years ago, and it was titled “Do Black Lives Matter: The Historic Devaluation of Black Lives in American History,” and there are countless ways to explain how our lives have not been valued in the same way. The idea of race, the concept of race, was created a couple hundred years ago and there was this hierarchy that put people based on their skin color at different levels of value. For the most part, black people have always been at the bottom of that hierarchy. We’re simply asking that you don’t do that any longer, that we be treated the same as everyone else, that we be treated fairly, equitably. And it’s not a difficult ask, I don’t think.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your hope and expectation about seeing consequential change or that change even by the next Juneteenth day or even in our lifetimes?

Reggie Jackson:

Well, you know, the difficult thing is that change occurs very slowly. In many cases, it occurs at a pace that we don’t even notice. And so it appears that no change is occurring, no progress is being made, but ultimately I think the answer to your question is when we revisit this year, this Juneteenth a year from now, we look back and we’ll ask what has really changed in a consequential way. You know, we know the protests will be over. We know that we’ll go back to business as usual as a nation. But what will people do? Once they stop protesting, what will they do in their institutions they work in? What will our elected officials do to change the patterns and practices of institutional racism in our country? Those are the things that we’re going to be paying very close attention to. Not just the talk. A lot of people can talk the talk, but will they be willing to walk the walk?

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you feel as though at this moment in time, that finally the voices that have so long been decrying white supremacy are being heard?

Reggie Jackson:

Yeah. I think those voices which have been silenced for so long are being heard in a way that they’ve never been heard before. I think one of the incredible things about it is there are other voices joining the conversation saying the same things. As I’ve been doing work, traveling around the nation, the last several years in particular, I have noticed a shift in the way white people talk about racism. There’s been a shift in what white people want to learn about the history. And they have willingly admitted to me in many places, small rural towns throughout Wisconsin that I’ve traveled to, that racism is a serious problem. We’ve been afraid to talk about it. But we want to talk about it now. We want to learn how we got to where we are so we can fix things. These are things that communities of colors have been asking whites to join us in that fight for many, many years. And we’re beginning to see that at a level we’ve never seen before.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thank you. Thank you. We’re all glad to hear that and may we keep moving forward. Reggie Jackson, thank you so much for joining us.

Reggie Jackson:

Yeah. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

Last year Governor Evers appointed Judge Joseph Donald to the State Court of Appeals. At that time, Donald was only the second African-American to serve at that level. This week, he joined liberals on the state Supreme Court and other Wisconsin appeals court judges in calling for making the bench more diverse and acknowledging racial bias within the legal system. We asked Judge Donald to join us earlier this week and we thank you very much for being here, judge.

Joseph Donald:

I am delighted to be here and thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the open letter that you signed on to says, “We need to recognize the ongoing injustices in our legal system and the barriers that stand in the way of justice.” What are the ongoing injustices?

Joseph Donald:

Well, first let me say this, with respect to the other cosigners of that letter. I am just delighted and very proud of their willingness to step forward and to recognize that we do have a problem in our justice system. The main issue is to ensure that we treat people with fairness and equality. And anyone that has spent any time in the system understands that there are areas that really need improvement. You know, it’s my belief that we have way too many people locked up and locked up for way too long. But we have to try and figure out what are those sort of systemic barriers and processes that are creating this inequity.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what are some examples of the barriers?

Joseph Donald:

Well, I would say the biggest barrier, if I had to put them in sort of broad terms, ignorance is a barrier, denial, and silence. You know, I think there is a need for those who work or who are leaders within the criminal justice system and justice system to speak out. And I think that this letter goes a long way to at least engage and start the conversation. There was a time when judges typically sort of just laid back in the background and never really asserted themselves into the public discourse. But I think that we are now in a new environment, particularly given all of the anger and grief and frustration that the people feel. And so I think there is a need for judges to step forward and to speak to these issues.

Frederica Freyberg:

You talk about ignorance and denial. On whose part?

Joseph Donald:

Well, sort of those who just say that there isn’t a problem. You know, oftentimes people will take the position, well, I didn’t create this problem. I don’t go out and arrest people and bring them to court. You know, they’re brought to my court. But to say that you’re not part of the system and to not ask questions as to how someone comes into the system, why they come into the system. You know, I have to say that as — when I was a trial court judge, I would sit there and routinely see, you know, black defendant after black defendant, and the question ultimately comes, why are we doing this and what is going to be done about it? It isn’t enough to just say, well, you know, if people just stopped committing crimes, they wouldn’t end up in the criminal justice system. But if you look at sort of what are the root causes, trauma, mental health, economic. You know, so those are the things that sort of bring people — the root causes that bring people into the system. I recognized that as a trial court judge when I created the drug treatment court to try and figure out ways to divert people from the criminal justice system. It isn’t all about retribution and punishment. And so I think that there is — there is — we are in a new environment now, and I think people are demanding that we take a more active role in ensuring that there is fairness.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. There’s so much more to talk about, and we appreciate you joining on this. Judge Donald, thanks.

Joseph Donald:

Well, thank you, Frederica. I’m delighted to be on and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Frederica Freyberg:

Police reform is just one of the policy points Wisconsin U.S. Representative Mark Pocan has been pushing this week. Pocan also praises the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act does protect gay, lesbian and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex, while saying there is more to be done. Representative Mark Pocan joined us earlier this week to talk about those issues and thanks very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:

Yeah. Thank you, Frederica. Glad to.

Frederica Freyberg:

First of all, I wanted to get your reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling blocking the Trump administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Mark Pocan:

Yeah. It’s been a good week for the Supreme Court on a few fronts and this is one of those where the president unfortunately was using a group of people to be political leverage in his demand for a wall. And you never can use people like that. And the president of course did. And the Supreme Court overruled that ability for him to try to make people who have been here maybe since they were two weeks old, two months old, two years old, they may not speak the language of the country that they originally came from, and they were brought here at no fault of their own. To say you’re going to deport people like that made no sense. I think now the Supreme Court made sure that Donald Trump also understands that.

Frederica Freyberg:

What does it mean for people in Wisconsin?

Mark Pocan:

Well, it means I think that anyone who’s a DACA recipient of which there are many. I’ve had interns in my office. I’ve had people we’ve brought to the state of the union who are DACA recipients. We’ve had others that are very active as frontline essential workers who are DACA recipients. It tells them that they don’t have to worry about some politician using their lives as political fodder. So I think it provides a sense of relief. But the real relief will happen when there’s a new administration and a new approach toward immigration. Joe Biden, for example, has said on his first week in office, we’ll make sure DACA recipients aren’t used as political leverage. I think that’s an important signal to people so they can live their lives.

Frederica Freyberg:

On police reform, both the House and Senate have versions of bills that are expected to head to the floor next week. What’s your expectation that common ground on these can be found?

Mark Pocan:

Well, I would hope so. I mean I’ve seen some polling this week that was really amazing and very heartening that the public get it. They understand that we’ve had racism that hasn’t gone away. All the rallies and the fights from the ’60s, we should be much farther than we are and here we are decades later and people really aren’t created or treated as equal under the law in too many cases. But I think it’s really important that we have legislation that addresses things like chokeholds and no-knock warrants for drug cases, that keeps track of the police officers who are causing problems, that does all the things that we need to. That’s in the House bill that we’re going to be taking up next Thursday. But some of those I think are going to be in the Senate bill. At the end of the day, we’ll have to compromise to a final bill. But public support is certainly there and I think we need to rise to that.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s your reaction to the historic Supreme Court ruling this week that protects gay and transgender workers?

Mark Pocan:

You know, it’s another issue that I was very heartened to see. You know, you shouldn’t be fired from your job simply for who you are or who you love. And that’s what the Supreme Court said. The problem is in a majority of states, you could be fired for who you love. You could lose your housing for who you love. And there’s a lot of other ramifications when you don’t have a law like Wisconsin had. We were the first state in the nation in 1982 to have a law protecting gays and lesbians but not transgender at the time. It took seven years for another state to have a law like that. But we still have a majority of states that don’t have that in place. So them saying that in the Supreme Court protects people on employment, but we have so much more too still do and that’s why we have the Equality Act in Congress. It passed the House with bipartisan support. Mitch McConnell apparently has put it in the back of a truck and driven it to Kentucky and buried it and someone’s backyard. It’s not coming up. But we can get that done I think with a different Senate and a different president.

Frederica Freyberg:

What would the Equality Act do?

Mark Pocan:

The Equality Act basically is a catch-all of everything that’s not covered by marriage equality under the law so that no matter where you live, what state in this nation, you’d be treated the same. Includes discrimination in housing, employment, whole bunch of areas. It’s a very comprehensive bill. Again, when we passed it in the House, we had bipartisan support. So the public is with us on the bill. It’s just unfortunately some political leaders still use this as a political leverage point. Again, I don’t think you should ever use people as leverage.

Frederica Freyberg:

On COVID, you’re blasting President Trump for holding this rally Saturday in Tulsa, but also for having people who attend it sign liability waivers. But the question might be why shouldn’t people get to make the choice whether to attend, first of all. And, second of all, whether they’re okay with signing this waiver.

Mark Pocan:

Well, I think it’s irresponsible for anyone, especially the president, who knows — should know better when it comes to COVID-19 that you can’t have a rally in an area with increasing cases in an indoor arena with 1,000 or more people. He’s talking 10,000 people. And you know it’s so bad that you’re asking them to sign a waiver so you can’t sue you. Everything about it stinks. And, you know, he should have better sense. But by now we’ve seen Donald Trump doesn’t have a lot of sense. So therefore I’m saying through the rallies act that if you try to do that in a condition in a community with 14 days or more of increasing cases, which is how we measure this, in an indoor facility with 1,000 or more people that you’re not allowed to have some liability waiver to protect yourself because you’re doing an event because you should have known better than to have that event in the beginning. I think a lot of local officials around the country where people are talking about these types of rallies don’t want them because it’s not in the best interest for the public in those communities. The president can fly in and out. Any politician can do that but the people in Tulsa or wherever else a rally is being held are going to live there with the consequences of those actions.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there. Representative Mark Pocan, thanks very much.

Mark Pocan:

Sure. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Vice-President Mike Pence will make a visit to Wisconsin next Tuesday for a campaign rally in Pewaukee. PBS Wisconsin’s Zac Schultz will be covering that story for next week on “Here & Now.”

The other big story this week continues to be the coronavirus pandemic in Wisconsin. More than 700 people across the state have now died due to COVID-19. Health officials remind the public that frequent hand washing, social distancing and other precautions have not gone away.

Ryan Westergaard:

We can communicate and coalesce around the idea that adopting these infection prevention strategies, like wearing masks in public and maintaining physical distancing in public, I think there’s a lot of good that can be done. So it’s not a foregone conclusion that we are going to have a wave. There’s a lot we can do to prevent new cases going into the late summer and fall.

Frederica Freyberg:

La Crosse County is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases at a rate of 40% higher than the state average. As a result, a severe risk red alert has been issued. This week, the public was notified of possible exposure if they visited any of seven bars and restaurants in the downtown La Crosse area. Residents are being advised to stay at home and reduce gatherings to no more than ten people.

Jennifer Rombalski:

I know we can do this. I know we can do better. I know that we can make choices to always wear fabric face coverings and always physical distance. And we can change this outcome that we are currently seeing. So don’t be — don’t be discouraged that we are in red. If we take this seriously as a community, all together, not just individuals, then we will see these numbers go down.

Frederica Freyberg:

In the city of Milwaukee, Hispanics and Latinos are now showing the largest increase in COVID-19 cases. That marks a turning point from when the disease was disproportionately affecting the city’s African-American community. The surge of cases is concentrated on Milwaukee’s south side. Jeanette Kowalik is Milwaukee’s commissioner of health and she joined us with her insights and thanks so much for being here.

Jeanette Kowalik:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how disproportionate are the number of positive cases in the Hispanic community?

Jeanette Kowalik:

So as of this week now, the Hispanic or Latinx population is the majority of the cases in our city and our county. At the city level, the Latinx population accounts for about 40% of cases. At one point in time earlier in our response, African-American were basically like 70% of the cases. So we definitely are concerned about this flip here, and we started to see the first hot spot on the south side or predominantly Latinx community in Milwaukee in mid-April. So we were working on increasing outreach and resources, making things are not just translated, but culturally appropriate, working with 16th Street Community Health Center, which is a solid partner of the Milwaukee Health Department’s and one of our board of health members also works for that organization. So leveraging that relationship to really help get the word out. And then we received some funding to assist with some of the outreach efforts. So that was used through the Advancing Healthier Wisconsin money, which we still have and we’re still working on a variety of outreach activities and resources. And then also this Stronger Together Collaborative, which received funding from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation to create a “You Matter” campaign, so altering the message from “stay home, save lives” or “safer at home” to valuing people of color in our community and equipping our community with knowledge and resources so that they can be resilient and survive COVID-19.

Frederica Freyberg:

So had you determined then that the messaging was not culturally appropriate for the Latinx community and that’s what you went to work on? Or why did you determine this was happening in that community in particular?

Jeanette Kowalik:

Well, initially we were concerned about some of those sources of those initial outbreaks, that they were related to employers or folks being considered essential and still having to go to work and still being exposed to COVID-19 by just going to work, whether they were taking public transportation or people are ride-sharing or whatever the case may be, and then working in settings that really didn’t support social or physical distancing, as well as enhanced cleaning and hygiene, which created more opportunities for exposure for some people in our Latinx population. So we started to see that play out, and we were very concerned early on in getting the message out, working with employers to make sure people had access to testing and then making sure people also are aware that there is federal protections and resources for sick time if you are infected with COVID-19, how you access those things. We also know that there’s been some barriers that have been pretty much put up coming from the national level all the way down looking at immigration, this anti-immigration sentiment, working with ICE to detain people and just there’s a lot of fear and has been a lot of fear and the trust has been eroded in government. And our experience at the Milwaukee Health Department has been we’ve been seeing a decline in service utilization amongst some of our Latinx clients over the last year, year and a half. So using other community partners and letting them lead is really important now more than ever because of that trust. Just by way of nature, the health department is a government entity, so how do we let others lead and get the message out, help with the contact tracing and other resources that are needed. We also know that a number of people in our Latinx community did not qualify for the stimulus payments, which is really unfortunate. We also know that there was some of this public will, you know, if you receive social services that you’re not going to– that will compromise your citizenship. You know, there’s all of these political or policy level threats to being able to provide a more comprehensive COVID response. So what are some ways for us to still impact the Latinx community in a positive way but work around some of those barriers that have been set up to cause more discrimination and racism among our Latinx population.

Frederica Freyberg:

There’s much more to talk about around this, but we need to leave it there. Dr. Kowalik, thank you so much and thanks for your work.

Jeanette Kowalik:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Despite the pandemic, the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to begin in-person fall classes as scheduled on September 2. The in-person classes will switch to virtual classes after Thanksgiving for the final nine days of instruction plus exams. That decision is based on the likelihood that students leaving Madison over Thanksgiving and then returning would increase the risk for COVID-19 infections on campus.

Rebecca Blank:

We’ve got to strike the balance here between the safety that we need to provide to faculty, staff, students across the board, with the real desire by many, many people to have at least some in-person discussions, small class experience, the sort of experiences you have on a college campus. And the hybrid model that we’re proposing we think strikes that balance in about the same way.

Frederica Freyberg:

And this news today. Former Governor Tommy Thompson will be the new UW System interim president. An appointment drawing praise from both sides of the aisle. Go to PBSwisconsin.org for more information. We have requested an interview with the former governor.

Thank you for watching “Here & Now.” Stay well Wisconsin, and we will see you next week. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.