Fighting for Climate Change Justice on Milwaukee’s North Side

In a city where trees seem to line every block and many communities enjoy a public park, the north side of Milwaukee appears to have been left behind. Weeds rise through the cracks of concrete remains, and empty industrial buildings tower like ghosts over the Century City Business Park.

Heading down North Avenue through the Washington Park area, neighborhoods display clear environmental discrepancies. Turning onto Grant Boulevard reveals two rows of giant trees along the sidewalk, and bigger homes fitted with modern amenities. But 42nd Street, on the opposite side of North Avenue, features outdated homes, dilapidated buildings and litter.

“This street doesn’t look like people really live on it, and the other looks like it’s straight from a postcard,” said Dana Kelley. “Why is there such a difference? How is this possible?”

Kelley is on a mission to educate people and enact change in marginalized Milwaukee communities. She and David Sinclair are members of North Side Rising, an organization seeking to address how disparities in Milwaukee communities relate to climate change. A co-op of Citizen Action Wisconsin, North Side Rising formed in March to educate and activate the community of color.

“Milwaukee was once one of the best park cities in America,” said Sinclair. “We were ahead of the curve in green spaces and city beautification. In areas of deindustrialization, those areas now don’t have any green spaces.”

Milwaukee exemplifies a national problem of racial-ethnic disparities in exposure to environmental health threats. A 2019 study examined fine particulate matter (PM) exposure and found gaps between the environmental health damage a racial–ethnic group causes, and effects the group experiences. Whites have a “pollution advantage,” inhaling 17% less air pollution than caused by their own consumption, while Blacks and Hispanics bear a “pollution burden” of 56% and 63% excess exposure relative to their own consumption.

With its large minority population, Milwaukee’s inequality is interconnected with the disparity in climate change burden. Kelley says, until recently, it was more common to hear climate change addressed directly in White communities, often because communities of color already struggle with racism, police brutality, homelessness and unemployment.

Kelley has lived in Milwaukee for much of her life. She graduated from North Division High School in 1993 and has always been involved in her community, notably as an assistant pastor at her church. When Climate & Equity Director Raphael Smith of Citizen Action Wisconsin was founding North Side Rising, he noticed Kelley’s leadership presence in the Harambe community and asked her to lead the co-op. Just as shutdowns began during the start of the pandemic, Kelley was establishing North Side Rising.

We were constantly in survival mode and not thinking about thriving beyond each day.

Dana Kelley

Kelley seeks to educate community members about climate change problems and advocates for green industry jobs in the city. Her climate equity task force is working with government officials like Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

The City of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office does have a sustainability plan, with specific goals in areas such as buildings, energy and food systems. Some goals have seen more progress than others since the plan launched in 2013. For example, over 1,000 buildings in Milwaukee achieved improved energy efficiency, but little progress was made in increasing access to healthy food sources.

Communities want to see a more ambitious and inclusive plan, a Green New Deal. Sinclair wants the city to replace more factory industries with green industries and emphasize improving the quality of life in impoverished communities. He’d like to see school systems integrate education and training for green-sector jobs, like building water filtration systems and solar panels.

“It gives minorities an opportunity to step in a space in which they can feel invested in their own community by engaging in these types of jobs,” said Sinclair.

Nationally, there is a need to diversify green sector jobs. Less than 30% of those employed in green occupations are Black or Latino, and over 90% of management and executive positions in the economy’s energy sector are filled by Whites.

La Tesha Johnson got involved with North Side Rising through Kelley. She hopes a Green New Deal would attract major companies and higher-paying jobs to Milwaukee.

“There aren’t enough resource centers out here to help a person use their skills and use their knowledge,” said Johnson. “To me, this city doesn’t offer enough. Unless you know certain people and network with certain people, you’re really going to be stagnated.”

Kelley says the possibilities for green jobs in Milwaukee are endless: roofing, horticulture, weatherization, HVAC, solar panels and wind turbines are just a few of the industries North Side Rising wants to get involved with.

“We want to combat climate issues and economic inequality in the community of color at the same time by creating green industry jobs and prioritizing employment to people of color,” said Kelley.

According to a 2020 study, extreme heat causes more fatalities than any other hazardous weather event in the U.S. Researchers discovered that previously redlined neighborhoods in urban areas suffer significantly more from extreme heat than non-redlined neighborhoods. They often lack access to cooling resources like home air-conditioning and ventilation, or even green space outside.

Redlining occurs when businesses or government agencies refuse to offer services like loans and insurance to specific geographical areas. It historically discriminates based on race and ethnicity, thus reinforcing racial-ethnic segregation of cities. According to Sinclair, redlining isn’t just a practice of the past with implications in the present. He says it actively persists in Milwaukee, but often disguised by the term gentrification.

“It just looks different,” said Sinclair. “It’s given a different name. These are selling points to homeowners, where gentrified means that we’ve moved out all the riff-raff, homes are retrofitted, they’re ready for modern living.”

The study confirms that although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 officially banned redlining, affected areas remain dominated by communities of color earning low to moderate incomes. Sinclair says that areas like Brewers Hill, Riverwest and the Lower East Side have been fully gentrified – they didn’t start seeing new amenities like banks and grocery stores until recently.

“They’ve got new banks over there now, they’re building up commerce,” said Sinclair. “You can walk down 3rd Street and have different types of nightlife, new shopping venues. But those things didn’t happen until there was a reinvestment in the community by non-minorities.”

Redlined areas don’t receive the same basic upgrades of home insulation, air-conditioning and other retrofits that fully gentrified neighborhoods do. Researchers even found that White neighborhoods enjoy a greater abundance of green spaces (which helps reduce intra-urban heat). Study results indicated that the land surface temperature of a redlined area in the U.S is 2.6°C warmer than a non-redlined area. 

Sinclair notices Milwaukee’s lack of initiative to re-beautify the landscape of minority communities and restore environmental integrity. Abandoned factories and shipyards aren’t just eyesores, but contributors to the intra-urban heat in minority communities.

“There was never reinvestment back into making green spaces available,” said Sinclair. “There’s concrete slabs that a lot of our young people have been playing on, there’s still railroad tracks, residue leftover from these factories.”

Johnson has also experienced the adverse effects of environmental issues combined with neighborhood marginalization. She and her family lived with lead-contaminated water on the north side of Milwaukee for 20 years. Only when Johnson moved to the south side last year did the city test the water and provide her a filter.

Zip codes and aldermen make a difference.

La Tesha Johnson

Rising temperatures also increase air pollution in Milwaukee. The American Lung Association gave the city a failing grade for ozone pollution (smog). Not only do underprivileged communities often lack proper home weatherization and retrofitting against air pollutants, but residents tend to have more pre-existing health conditions that only worsen with high concentrations of particle pollution.

Kelley sees air pollution as especially threatening to minority communities during the pandemic. She contracted Covid-19 herself, experiencing first-hand how pre-existing conditions combined with a lack of home insulation strengthened the virus.

Our homes are of such poor quality that particle matter gets through our windows and our doors, it gets into our lungs. It causes COPD, emphysema, asthma and the like. That coupled with testing positive for Covid is really taking us out.

Dana Kelley

“I could feel how the effects were so adverse,” said Kelley. “You get dehydration and muscle spasms. A lot of Black people suffer from heart conditions, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Your immune system is compromised and your body automatically attacks these organs.”

Frustrated with the pollution in her city, Kelley joined the Southeast Wisconsin Clean Power Coalition. Comprised of city officials and representatives from organizations like the Sierra Club, the coalition recently celebrated its successful efforts to call for a shutdown of the We Energies power plant in Oak Creek. Just 15 miles south of Milwaukee, the coal plant has been one of the largest polluters on Lake Michigan and now plans to shut down by 2024. The coal firing releases pollution into the surrounding air and lake, and coal trains can spread up to 100 pounds of coal dust in-transit.

During a coalition press conference commemorating the Oak Creek plant’s bluff collapse in 2011, Kelley read a poem she wrote titled “Deadly PM” about harmful pollutants affecting Milwaukee.

Once she can secure funding, Kelley wants to bring more successes of environmental justice and a Green New Deal to Milwaukee’s north side. We Energies not only plans to shut down its Oak Creek plant, but replace it with natural gas, wind and solar energy production. Kelley and North Side Rising want to repurpose the abandoned industrial facilities and empty lots scattered through Milwaukee for things like green job training.

“We have people who are willing to offer volunteer training time, skilled craftspeople willing to do apprenticeships for free,” said Kelley. “As much as possible, we want the training to be free or low-cost.”

Those concrete slabs and abandoned factories have potential to address multiple issues at once – generate jobs, combat food insecurity, boost health and incorporate renewable energy. Kelley explained North Side Rising’s interest in the REEF project, renewable energy efficient farming. The project involves building a greenhouse that can operate year-round to grow organic food using renewable energy from sources like hydroelectricity, magnetic propulsion and solar panels. Kelley said that empty manufacturing buildings like A.O. Smith and Briggs & Stratton could be transformed into REEF sites.

Deindustrialized and deteriorating areas can serve a purpose, whether that’s serving new industries, or transforming into greenspace again. After all, even some of the existing greenspaces in minority communities can’t compare to those in affluent neighborhoods: litter blankets park grounds and pollutes the river in places like the Lincoln Creek Parkway. It seems as though the most basic human needs of breathable air and livable climate conditions are becoming privileges. Particle pollution and intra-urban heat may be rising in Milwaukee, but the initiative of community members like Dana Kelley suggests the north side is rising, too.