Over 10,000 march in Milwaukee against draconian immigration laws. Quite a day in our city where the local paper and radio ignore the most vibrant ethnic community since the Polish. Not an integrated happening however, maybe 50 white folks and 20 African-Americans. Take a look at pictures of the largest demonstration in Milwaukee since the open housing marches of the 1970's.
The BBC picks up the story.
3 comments:
I'm sure you can make a strong case that the J/S doesn't do enough coverage of the hispanic community in Mke. One can always argue that a paper doesn't do enough of this or too much of that.
I just find it very ironic that following your statement of how the paper ignores the hispanic community, you LINK TO THE PAPER'S SLIDESHOW. And of course the march is front and top on the J/S web site.
But you don't have to convince me. I know the J/S caters more to the white community, esp. suburbs. I just think you've somewhat undercut your case for saying it "ignores" other communities.
Curious, also that you mention radio. I would think local TV would be a better example of how the media is not serving this community well. At least with radio there are hispanic stations on the dial... aren't there? But I would argue that commercial radio in general doesn't serve local communities well, regardless of ethnicity.
It's hard to ignore 30,000 people in the streets! The coverage of the march was good. My larger point, I will write more on this soon, is that there is 1! large (the Russian Jewish communty has actually done fairly well in the city of late but they are much smaller) ethnic community that has thrived in this city in the last 20 years and they have largely been invisble in the dominant media. More to come. Maybe an article?
As I said, you can certainly make that case. I haven't been in Milwaukee enough lately to really have a feel for it, but I did live on Mke's south side for a long time and it was very ethnically diverse, and you're right, overlooked most of the time by the dominant media, however that is defined.
I really love that the hispanic community there is taking a stand on the immigration issue. I wonder if anything like that is happening here! And the fact that I don't know says something.
In the Twin Cities, there are significant Hmong and Somali populations, who mostly get mentioned in the context of crime. However, I do hear about those communties in other contexts, possibly because I work with health care issues, and the health care community here has had much discussion of health disparities, etc.
Lake street in Mpls is really where it's at. It touches affluent white communities; hispanic, somali, african american neighborhoods, and then goes into Uptown, the young professional/alternative tattoo coffee shop scene.
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