I woke up this morning to the news that Jerica Banks and her two daughters, 5-year-old Zaniya and 4-year-old Camaria, are dead in an apparent homicide. Banks’ boyfriend, Arzel Ivery, has been arrested in Tennessee in connection to their deaths.
Their bodies were found in a garage five blocks from my house.
I read up on a couple articles about the Amber Alert that had been issued for Jerica and the girls. From what I’ve read, it’s likely a domestic violence situation.
As I got up to begin my day, I thought about how much anguish and deep grief this causes for the families, but how it also wounds the community as a whole--how the hands of despair can wrap itself around your neck and choke you.
Think about the people who live on the block near the crime scene: they’re up and getting ready for their day right now. The kids in the house are looking out the window to see the yellow caution tape, the detectives, the coroner, the officers and a grieving family. The younger kids are asking questions about what happened; the older kids don't ask as many questions--they already know. The adults in the house are choosing which words to explain to their children what happened. They keep an eye on what’s happening outside their window, or maybe they go outside to hear more of the details and to join their neighbors and the grieving family.
Think about the woman who lives at the home where they were found. She's not connected to the crime, but Jerica and the girls were found in her garage, and her car is burned. What is she feeling this morning, what will it be like for her to live there going forward?
But by tomorrow, the community is mostly expected to move on—until the next time.
...
I can only write this essay from the perspective of a white person because that’s who I am. But I've also been living and raising children in Sherman Park for 13 years. I am part of this community, and yet I’m other. I have permission to write about this, yet not quite. But this is what I want to say: the amount of grief and violence experienced by people in neighborhoods like this is overwhelming. And not just because kids have seen a body in the street, but because they're expected to just keep going--they need to get to school and have to finish their laps for football practice next to a homocide.
This sounds like an obvious observation, but let me tell you some details—a collection of stories, really, but I want to paint a picture for those of you who don't feel connected to situations like these.
Two Halloweens ago, it was a beautiful day. The golden leaves from the honey locust trees were slowly fluttering to the ground—they’re always beautiful in the fall. A woman was walking her granddaughter’s small therapy dog on my block. Three boys were out with their dog, who did not have a leash. The boys’ dog attacked the small terrier, and the small dog was in its mouth. The grandmother cried out and tried pulling the terrier back from its jaws, but the larger dog shook it and bit down, killing it. The boys and the dog ran away, leaving the woman and her granddaughter’s dead dog behind.
Last summer, there was a triple shooting on Center Street. One of the shooting victims ran to my neighbor’s house and they woke up that morning to find a large bloodstain on their sidewalk. They didn’t want their children see it, so they sent a text to several of us: “How do you get bloodstains off a sidewalk?” I googled it and suggested bleach or a power washer. My neighbor later commented that he never thought he’d be sweeping blood off the sidewalk in front of his home.
Two years ago, there was a shooting in front of my house. I’m not certain what led to it, but a woman pulled her car over in front of my house and the man in the car behind her pulled over and parked in front of her, got out of his car and started shooting at her. My neighbor’s tires were shot up, and our daughter who sleeps in the bedroom facing the street heard the gunshots and came into our room because she saw “sparks”. We had detectives in our house that night, looking for points of penetration. My neighbor across the street took photos of the windows of our house and printed enlarged copies so that we could pore over them to look for bullet holes. Our daughter slept in our room for days afterward. The following week, 13-year old Sandra Parks was killed by a stray bullet inside of her home.
A couple years ago, there was a fire two blocks away. The parents were able to rescue the children from the house--but in the confusion of the fire, they realized one-year old Marshaun was still in the house. A group of their neighbors kicked in the door to rescue him but the smoke was too much and MJ perished. There were no smoke detectors in the house, and the fire department went door to door afterwards to give away free smoke detectors.
And everyone is expected to just keep going--until next time.
...
Home is supposed to be a place where we celebrate and where we grieve; it’s where we can be made whole again. But how can we be whole again when there's compounded traumas at our doorstep? Children grow up and start to believe that violence and trauma is the only way the world works and that they're expected to just keep going because, really, there's no other choice.
Perhaps you're reading this and feel disconnected from these stories because you've never experienced situations like this--maybe you've never even thought about it. But if you can picture yourself, for a moment, in one of these situations, what would you do? How would you heal?
There's a huge disconnect because the experience of urban and suburban Milwaukee are so different. Historically, there's reasons for this, but that's a topic for another day. How can people in the Milwaukee metro area see themselves in the story of people in the central city? Are people who live in the central city so different from people in the suburbs that they can't identify with them? Or are urban neighborhoods so removed from suburban consciousness that we don't ever consider what this feels like for the people on the block of 47th and Burleigh this morning?
If you're in that camp, consider the mental exercise of waking up this morning to a crime scene across the street. Imagine your kids watching their morning cartoons and noticing the caution tape outside and grieving family members. See yourself making coffee and walking over to the window wondering what happened and then seeing the headlines about the Amber Alert. What does that feel like? Would you go outside to be with the families? How would you explain it to your kids?
And after picturing yourself in that situation, how does it feel? Because the anxieties and feelings that you've imagined are likely the same as the neighbors on 47th and Burleigh this morning.
We're not as different as we think.
I read once that the best societies share the birth pangs of a society struggling to be born. We're not able to share the birth pangs unless we, in some small way, experience the sufferings and joy of these communities, even if it's only in our imagination. Imagine yourself at 47th and Burleigh and ask yourself what you're going to do about it from where you are.
We love the classic stories of the underdog. We love to root for the underdog, because the underdog arouses our sense of justice and fairness. The win of the underdog is a win for all of us—it balances the scale of injustice. It makes the world a little more right. Root for Sherman Park. Support the family of Jerica, Zaniya and Camaria. See yourself in the people you don't even know at 47th and Burleigh.
Identify yourself with the joy and sufferings of others so that you can share in the birth pangs of a new society struggling to be born.
