The Milwaukee Post

August 24, 2018 • Milwaukee County Post • 9 By BOB DONOVAN While the national media have been focused on Chicago's recent skyrocketing gun violence and murder rate, the sad reali- ty is that 90 miles to the north Milwaukee is going through the same deadly crisis. According to statistics from our Legislative Reference Bureau, although we are four times smaller than Chicago, Milwaukee so far in 2018 is on par with Chicago in terms of homicides per 100,000 residents and based on 2017 population esti- mates. According to the LRB, as I write this, in Chicago there have been 318 homicides, or 11.7 per 100,000. In Milwaukee there have been 69 homicides, or 11.6 per 100,000. I'm told Milwaukee is on pace — sadly — to have the deadliest month of August in city history. As a resident of Milwaukee my entire life, this saddens me greatly. I remember a Milwaukee not all that long ago that was considered America's safest big city. What has happened to Milwaukee? This problem has been festering for years. The reality is these problems aren't going to be meaningfully addressed by words, fluff or more rhetoric. Calls by the mayor to put the guns down and stop the violence are laughable — just ask the bad guys perpetrating all of the crimes. Apparently the mayor feels making pub- lic demands to stop the violence is enough to fulfill his obligations as the leader of this city. Nor are these problems going to be addressed by adopting the Office of Violence Prevention's suggestion, urging our good citizens to intervene in conflicts in their neighborhood. The Good Samaritan citizens might just end up with a bullet themselves. In my estimation the mayor needs to take the following steps — steps he should have taken years ago: 1. The mayor needs to level with the citi- zens of Milwaukee as to how serious this issue really is. 2. The mayor needs to immediately adopt and begin implementing the 2016 Public Safety Plan put together and supported by certain members of the Common Council. 3. The mayor needs to immediately meet with the governor and establish a partner- ship between the state and the city to imme- diately address our public safety issues. 4. The mayor needs to fashion a strategy that encompasses all segments of the com- munity and one that needs to — at the very least — include the following categories: ■ Public safety ■ Economic development ■ Jobs ■ Housing ■ Youth and education ■ Community engagement ■ Health. 5. It is critical that all hands be brought on board — federal, state and local govern- ment, the private sector (businesses and individuals), and the philanthropic commu- nity. Again, these are, at the very least, the starting points. Now it's up to the mayor. The mayor needs to realize that words and rhetoric are no substitute for action and results. If the mayor proves unwilling or unable to take these very preliminary steps for the sake of our city and the future of our neigh- borhoods, he needs to step down. (Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan rep- resents the 8th District on the city's South Side.) OPINION By OWEN B. ROBINSON The political divide in our nation has become so sharp and expansive as to appear unbridgeable. Some observers describe it as tribalism. It conjures up images of the leg- endary 50-year feud between the Hatfields of Kentucky and the McCoys of West Virginia in the 1800s. Their blind-loyalty, no-compro- mise attitude and take-no-prisoners tactics resulted in nothing but sprawled bodies and misery for both clans. Truth be told, with- out communication, negotiation, and com- promise that's the way those things always end. Gandhi warned, "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind." Surely, we are smarter than the Hatfields and McCoys. Surely, we can see from their half-century feud, and others like it, that a clan-first, hard-line approach isn't the answer to today's complex problems any more than it was to the problems of the 1800s. Everyone I speak with tells me they are fed up with the current caustic, deadlocked political environment. They tell me they are sick of the hate rhetoric and the divide- and-conquer tactics. They plead for America to unite, not fight. So, what would we have to do in order to unite? Wouldn't we have to start by building on what we have in com- mon instead of exploit- ing our differences? Ronald Reagan declared, "My 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy." If we are going to build on what we have in common, we will need to communicate. There simply is no other way. And if we are going to communicate, we have to start speaking to each other with respect, not disdain. In other words, it's OK to disagree, but not to be disagreeable. Not only will we have to treat each other with respect, but we can't allow ourselves to tolerate disrespect on the part of others. If we do, we are demonstrating that we aren't sincere about bridging the divide, and therefore are part of the problem. In addition to respect, effective communi- cation is based on trust, and trust is based on truth. If we are dishonest or deceptive when communicating, we will gain a repu- tation as untrustworthy. Communication is impossible with untrustworthy people because they will leave you holding a bag of empty promises. French philosopher Voltaire warned, "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Put another way, communication is the brick through which we bridge our differ- ences and truth is the mortar that binds those bricks. So, we can't bridge our gap without communication, and we can't effec- tively communicate without truth and trust. Saying one thing in the morning and the opposite in the afternoon is the reverse of building trust. If the afternoon statement contradicts the morning declaration, cer- tainly one of the two must be untruthful. Vladimir Lenin declared, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." That isn't the case, however. The repeated lie might begin to feel like the truth but, in the end, it is still just a lie. Hard-line stands kill communication. Most of us have heard it said, "He's so bull- headed, you just can't talk to him." Hard- line stands don't lead to solutions. Solutions to problems are seldom, if ever, found at the extremes but almost exclusive- ly resides in the middle ground. Gun ownership is an example: Allowing no one to own a gun under any circum- stances hardly sounds like a reasonable policy. On the other hand, claiming that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to brandish nuclear weapons makes no sense either. Certainly, there is common ground somewhere in the middle. In communication, it's important to know the difference between facts and opin- ions. Facts are things that are verifiably true. Opinion is our belief that a thing is true. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, famously counseled that everyone is enti- tled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Good decisions are made on facts, not opinions … and certainly not on lies. So, if we are tired of the caustic rhetoric and deadlocked politics, and we truly wish to see America unite instead of fight, we will need to do our part. We will need to re- learn how to communicate with each other in order to build on our considerable com- monality. And in order to do that, we will need to condemn hate rhetoric and lies, and remind ourselves that compromise is a pil- lar of democracy. Or, like the Hatfields and the McCoys, we can continue to mindlessly destroy each other. The choice is ours. (Al Rudnitzki is a retired insurance man- ager, past educator and a Town of West Bend resident.) Finding a way to bridge the political divide Milwaukee's homicide rate on par with Chicago's Rudnitzki Start with communicating without hateful rhetoric and lies

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