The number of times the words "city" and "urban" have been said during the two presidential debates and the one vice presidential debate: 0.

This Friday!

                 Nicolas Lampert & Paul Kjelland, The Commandos and Father James Groppi, 2012

Come check out the opening of an amazing exhibition that addresses Milwaukee's place in the broader narrative of the civil rights movement in the North. Artists Nicolas Lampert and Paul Kjelland have created a series of prints - and baseball jerseys (!) - that tell the story of Father James Groppi (a white Catholic priest) and the Milwaukee Commandos (a collection of young African-American men). The Commandos and Groppi led important movements for fair and affordable housing in the city - and railed against the segregation that had earned Milwaukee the nickname of "The Selma of the North." Many of the former Commandos remain active in social justice work in the city to this day. Sadly, many of the issues that the Commandos and Groppi (who passed away in 1985) confronted are also still a part of Milwaukee's landscape. Lampert and Kjelland's work reminds us that racial segegration, for example, still plagues the Milwaukee metropolitan region. Yet their prints also show us that an inter-racial movement for social justice can happen, and indeed has happened in our city.

Here are the details:

Friday, October 5, 5-8 pm
OPENING RECEPTION:
Inova, 2155 N. Prospect Ave.
http://www4.uwm.edu/psoa/inova/nohl-fellows-2011.cfm

For more on the civil rights movement in Milwaukee, see Patrick Jones' The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)