Elisa Wiseman
Ald. Samba Baldeh hosts a neighborhood meeting on the east side to address crime and poverty.
After the controversial arrest of Genele Laird at East Towne Mall in June, Ald. Samba Baldeh started getting a lot of phone calls from constituents concerned about homelessness and crime. So, Baldeh, who represents the far east district that includes East Towne, called a neighborhood meeting to discuss these difficult issues.
About 90 people showed up to the meeting, held Thursday night at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Baldeh called this “the first in a series” of meetings where residents can talk about touchier issues together. But some of these residents voiced a very different set of concerns: speeding, littering, panhandling and other quality of life issues.
“I pick up what I can but people just throw their junk and garbage into the streets,” said Lori Whitney, who has lived in the area for about 25 years. “It looks trashy. People wonder if this is a ghetto or a third world country or what.”
The facilitated discussion had a panel of six, including former Madison police captain Joe Balles, Ald. Sheri Carter who represents a south side district, and Joey Rosas, a social worker at Wright Middle School.
While some agreed with Whitney, others were frustrated that the conversation delved into these prosaic matters.
“There is an ocean of difference in our perceptions,” said Eric Upchurch II, a panelist and active member of the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition. “That something can look like a ghetto because there’s trash on the streets — to some, that ghetto is a home. Your issue is not panhandling, your issue is not homelessness, your issue is poverty.”
He explained, though, that he came to the meeting to offer ideas on how to work as a community against the larger, systemic issues of poverty. “I encourage you to have more intimate conversations with the people surviving these issues, the folks who are homeless or panhandling,” he told the group. “Otherwise, you end up sweeping things under the rug…. You end up allowing an issue to fester and to rot.”
Despite the different opinions about the biggest problems facing neighborhoods, it was not a tense meeting. Several left feeling that they had been heard. Baldeh, too, was pleased. Acknowledging that not everyone was interested in talking about poverty, Baldeh says “it will never be an easy conversation. But there was great attendance and engagement, and I think everyone left with the same message.”
Sue Pastor, an active member of the far east side’s Greater Sandburg Neighborhood Association, agreed that the meeting was positive.
“This meeting represents progress. We’ve never had the opportunity to come together like this, we’ve never had the opportunity to have our differences laid out like they were tonight,” Pastor said. “It gives us a lot to work with. I’m really excited about that.”