3rd and State — 12th and Walker: Worlds Apart

Yesterday, on the way to El Rey, my husband and I drove down Washington Street.  As we passed 12th, I looked up the street and could see, a block away, the flowers and memorials in front of what had to be the home of Rachel Thompson and her two sons. I looked at the house, amazed that what had happened to this young family had occurred in this neighborhood, with people going about their business, kids on the street, life happening.  How is it even possible, I thought, that three people could massacre a family?  What kind of person could put garbage bags over toddlers’ heads and watch them suffocate?  I use the word unfathomable.  Not because it can’t be understood by anyone — it just can’t be understood by me. 

Shift gears.  Last week I went with Joe Volk and Steve Falek to meet with members of the Milwaukee Journal Editorial Board to convince them to support the Continuum of Care’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.  We went up the elevator, past a sprawling newsroom, and into a paneled conference room complete with a portrait of Solomon Juneau and there we made our pitch for their support.  It wasn’t hard — it’s not easy to be against ending homelessness.  The meeting, along with a terrific plan generated by a tireless group of CoC members, resulted in a great editorial two days later complete with a picture of a homeless man straight from central casting.  

So this is the high and low – the up and down – the good and the bad.  Certainly the exhileration I felt at the Editorial Board dissipated when I learned the details of the Thompson family murders. But standing back, I’m seeing circles – overlapping circles with the family in the middle, various systems, neighbors, teachers, and social workers touching their circle, but maybe the Editorial Board experience and what it represents in terms of Milwaukee’s opinion leadership and power structure just ever so faintly touching the Thompson’s world.

If I don’t get it, the Editorial Board probably doesn’t either.  And although they are closer to the ground, I bet the social workers and parole officers and the teachers know about the day to day, they are still at a loss as to what to do to prevent this in the future.

We don’t know why those young people would murder Rachel and her kids any more than we really know why people are homeless in a country with so much wealth.  It’s going to make my head ache extra hard to hear Charlie Sykes and his ilk jump up with the ’she should’ve known better’ or he should’ve worked harder’ insta-analysis.  And the inevitable, ‘this organization or this system failed.’

The fact of the matter – and I see this every day – is that the people who run homeless shelters, police officers, juvenile court workers, social workers – they’re all doing the best they can and trying to make things better.  They might not know the answers but they keep at it. And I guess that’s what we do at a time like this.  We just keep at it.