Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Project SOAR Kickoff

Recently I joined 100 Black Men of Madison President, Dr. Floyd Rose; Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent, Dr. Jennifer Cheatham; United Way of Dane County President and CEO, Renee Moe; Police Chief Mike Koval; County Executive Joe Parisi; Journey Mental Health Executive Director, Bill Greer; and CUNA Mutual Executive Director, Steve Goldberg, to kick off the 100 Black Men's new initiative, Student Opportunities, Access and Readiness or Project SOAR.

Photo Credit: Paul McMahon

Under Project SOAR, 100 Black Men and community partners will mentor 300 African American male students, ages 12-17, who are currently enrolled in the Madison Public School District. The Project SOAR mentoring program will pay particular attention to those students who are economically disadvantaged, from single parent homes, homeless, in foster care, or in the juvenile justice system.

When conducting the youth and young adult surveys and interviews for President Barack Obama's My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Madison initiative, our boys and young men of color frequently mentioned a desire to see increased opportunities for mentorship. I am pleased to support Project SOAR as it aligns with our MBK Madison goals and seeks to address a critical need within our Madison community.

Civil Rights Reboot

The City of Madison Department of Civil Rights (DCR),through their AASPIRE intern Kate Michalski, brought the majority of Madison Alders together recently to demonstrate the idea that we must all work together to fight discrimination.  The alders painted their hands and were then asked to attempt to push over a wall, first individually, and then collectively.

On their own, the wall did not budge, but as a group, it easily tipped over. The wall stands for persistent discrimination and each hand print represents a point of progress.

This exercise was first done with Alders Carter, Phair and McKinney and neighborhood residents at the Theresa Terrace Neighborhood Center to take the message of the importance of civil rights into the community and create a public service announcement to be shared with all Madisonians.

 

Aside from refocusing attention on civil rights, City of Madison DCR hopes the demonstration will help eliminate uncertainty involved in reporting discrimination to DCR investigators and remind residents that every incident reported is a step towards equality.

My Brother's Keeper Madison Community Pledge

Recently I was joined by MMSD Superintendent Cheatham, Judge Koval, Chief Koval, District Attorney Ozanne, Sheriff Mahoney, Alder Bidar-Sielaff, Dr. Ruben Anthony, Dr. Jerlando Jackson, Dr. John Odom, and Mr. Everett Mitchell on behalf of UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank to release the My Brother's Keeper Madison Report and Recommendations for Action and unveil the MBK Madison Community Pledge. I am grateful for the partnership of these individuals, the organizations they represent, and many more who have made MBK a priority.

While the City of Madison and our MBK partners are committed to fulfilling the two goals selected by our boys and young men of color (ensure all youth graduate from high school and ensure all youth stay safe from violent crime and receive second chances) progress cannot happen alone. We are asking that Madisonians sign onto the MBK challenge via the pledge.

The pledge is simple; we are asking community members to take action and join in on the MBK initiative.  From taking time to volunteer and mentor youth of color, to simply working to change one's thought processes, there is something for everyone. Take the pledge by clicking here and encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same.

Check out the full news conference by clicking on the image below:

My Brother's Keeper Focus Areas

Thank you to all of you who encouraged others to participate or participated directly in the My Brother's Keeper Youth Survey. As you may recall from blog posts in November ( http://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/blog/?Id=6180 ) ( http://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/blog/?Id=6222 ) the My Brother's Keeper Community Challenge (MBK) is a White House issued challenge accepted by the City of Madison to implement programs and policies to improve life chances for boys and young men of color. The youth survey was conducted as part of the "policy review and recommendations for action" stage of the MBK challenge.

Since the MBK challenge directs involved cities to focus on two goals, the action team and I needed to determine which areas are most in need of our attention and resources. We wanted boys and young men of color to have the opportunity to choose the focus areas themselves.

Over 200 youth took the survey and shared their ideas and opinions. I cannot emphasize enough the value of the information survey participants provided. Although we asked broad questions on how we can solve complicated social problems and remove barriers to opportunities for our boys and young men of color, our youth exceeded our expectations, sharing thought provoking ideas, personal experiences, and even making some policy recommendations of their own!

Through the surveys, we have gained great insight into places where our Madison community could use improvement and identified our two My Brother's Keeper focus areas: ensure all students graduate from high school and ensure all children and young people remain safe from violent crime and receive second chances.

In the coming days and weeks, we will produce a report detailing our plan of action and policy recommendations to achieve these two goals. We will also determine a method to track our progress and share our data with the community.

Stay tuned for updates as the City of Madison enters the next stage of this challenge!

My Brother's Keeper Local Action Summit

I was pleased with the progress we made at the My Brother's Keeper Local Action Summit, held recently at the United Way of Dane County. As you may know, the My Brother's Keeper project is a challenge issued to municipalities by President Barack Obama focused on opening opportunities and eliminating barriers to achievement for boys and young men of color. The summit brought together a diverse group of community leaders from areas including law enforcement, the school district, businesses, and faith organizations.

The leaders divided into six different groups, matching their community work with one of the six focus areas of the My Brother's Keeper project. The six focus areas are: entering school ready to learn, reading at grade level by third grade, graduating from high school ready for college and career, completing post-secondary education or training, successfully entering the workforce, and reducing violence and providing a second chance. In their groups, the leaders were challenged to identify the barriers to achievement in each of these areas and to come up with workable strategies to eliminate them.

I participated in the group focused on reading at grade level by third grade. The discussions on these sensitive subjects were honest, stimulating, and thought-provoking. By the end, each group selected two barriers as the most problematic and developed additional strategies with these specific barriers in mind.

With the completion of the Local Action Summit we move into stage three of the initiative. Stage three includes the development of a plan of action tailored to eliminate the two selected barriers as well as the creation of a data collection system to track our progress. Stay tuned!

 

 

My Brother's Keeper

A recent White House report identified significant challenges that boys and young men of color continue to face. Among several other findings, the White House report states that Black, American Indian, and Hispanic children are between six and nine times more likely than white children to live in areas of concentrated poverty. Additionally, black males accounted for 43% of murder victims in 2011, despite accounting for only 6% of the overall population, making homicide the leading cause of death for black males. These are only two of the concerning statistics that were discovered.

In response, President Obama launched the "My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Community Challenge", an initiative focusing on these issues. The six focus area of the project are entering school ready to learn; reading at grade level by third grade; graduating from high school ready for college and career; completing post secondary education or training; successfully entering the workforce, and reducing violence as we provide a second chance.

I am proud to say that I accepted the challenge this September. We have formed a planning team consisting of community partners including the City of Madison Common Council, United Way of Dane County, African American Council of Churches, 100 Black Men, The African American Communication and Collaboration Council, and the Latino Support Network. I am really pleased that we have such a dedicated team committed to collaborating on this crucial issue. The team has planned an initial community action summit to be held this November. The purpose of the summit will be to determine which of our six areas of focus each community stakeholder is best suited to address.

I encourage Madison residents to keep an eye out for updates on this project as we progress and work to make lasting changes in our community

For the Record, My Conversation with Neil Heinen

I was recently able to join WISC TV's Neil Heinen as he continues a series on Racial Disparity.  We talked about our city's need to create choices in education and employment among other topics.

http://video.channel3000.com/search/?mode=show&channel_id=5

This is a conversation we all need to continue.