“Black Lives Matter shouldn’t be a statement of any sort of controversy. It’s just sad,” said Jasmine Fields, who now lives in Sturtevant, Wisconsin. “I’m just hoping that this is an opportunity for people to realize that for Kenosha and the state of Wisconsin, the worst place for black people in the country, needs change.”
Victoria Fields, a college student who still lives here, said she wasn’t surprised by the shooting of Blake.
“It has been happening for generations,” she said. “I just hope that more people, now that it’s happening in my community, will see that this is a problem. All I ask is for change and to just be treated like you’d want to be treated. Like equals. That’s all we ask.”
In this summer of protest, Kenosha resident Xavier Wallace said he has marched against police brutality in Milwaukee and Chicago.
“It ain’t real until it hits home for some people,” he said.
Wallace said Kenosha residents who are frustrated with Blake’s shooting are feeling “extended pain” from their own negative interactions with law enforcement.
“This ain’t nothing new, they just have cameras now,” Wallace said of people filming alleged acts of police brutality.
Robin Spangler, who works for a management company that owns a string of properties damaged in the Uptown neighborhood, was out the other day screwing in a piece of plywood over a door of the damaged Furniture Warehouse store.
“People are looking forward to moving forward,” he said. “It happened, now what do you do? People I talk to are surprisingly upbeat. The grocery store is about four doors down. He’s such a nice guy. He said, ‘It’s happened, we just have to find another place to open.’ His place is destroyed.”
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