A reflection on two trips home
Very different endings to two very different days in Milwaukee for the RNC.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here.
Getting around the Republican National Convention and its security perimeter can be challenging. Entrances are not always exits. Vehicle checkpoints can be different from pedestrian checkpoints. Some points are far busier than others. Navigating all of this on foot can make for some longer-than-expected detours.
This has been mildly frustrating at times, but mostly it’s been fine. Given what happened in Pennsylvania on Saturday, no one is surprised to see a greater level of security than the already-high level that was expected for the four-day convention. A few extra steps are no big deal. Volunteers stationed around the grounds have been helpful.
The process of leaving the RNC grounds, both on Monday and Tuesday, was not exactly straightforward. Talking to organizers before the convention, that’s kind of what some were expecting. That there would be kinks to iron out after the first few days, and by the time the process was better understood and running more smoothly, it would be time for the convention to end.
On both days, I arrived at the convention by bus. The usual route from my neighborhood on the west side of Milwaukee to downtown is usually a straight-line drive down Vliet Street that stops right across the street from the northwest entrance of Fiserv Forum, and eventually loops through downtown east of the river. This week, like many routes, it was adjusted to go around the RNC’s security perimeter. Despite this, routes have been on time and efficient. The closest this route would get to any security entrances west of the arena would be at the corner of 12th and Vliet, just west of I-43, which is where I got off the bus on Tuesday morning to walk several more blocks to the convention.
Convention leaders gaveled-out of the program at about 10 p.m. on Monday. This followed the dramatic moment where former president Donald Trump made his way to the convention floor to rapturous cheers, just two days after surviving an assassination attempt. Lee Greenwood performed “God Bless the U.S.A.” Trump gestured to the crowd, but did not make a speech. He made his way to his seat for the final speeches of the evening — Amber Rose and Sean O’Brien — alongside his newly minted vice presidential candidate, JD Vance. Chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and “U-S-A! U-S-A!” rang out through the arena as the former president, with his right ear bandaged, looked out at his supporters gathered in Milwaukee for the convention. It was a moment people were talking about throughout the following day.
It was raining outside when the event ended, so I lingered around the building for a bit waiting for it to calm down, talking to attendees and other journalists on the way out. When the rain died down I thought I could walk through the drizzle to my bus route west of the arena. That didn’t happen. I was redirected to several different exits, at one point ending up in the absolutely packed tents where attendees waited for private buses to take them back to their hotels for the rest of the night, and eventually had to go back through security into the grounds to go to a different exit in a different direction, walked several blocks east into downtown, eventually finding my bus route.
Another convention attendee was doing the same, and we got on the bus at the same stop. I helped him find his way, but he was already on the right track. I’d soon learn that he was a delegate from Texas who had driven his RV to the convention, where he parked and stayed at State Fair Park instead of joining his fellow delegates at their hotel in Madison. He talked about the convention and his experience in Milwaukee. He’d been riding the bus all over town and enjoying it, making his way to different events for the convention, planning to do the same the next day. We talked about how different it was to have speakers like Rose and O’Brien at a Republican convention, and how that never would have been the case for the pre-Trump GOP. We talked about our families. It was a great conversation.
The next night ended much differently. Earlier that day, five police officers from Columbus, Ohio, there for the convention had reportedly shot and killed an unhoused man, later identified as Samuel Sharpe Jr., who was armed with two knives, who was involved in a confrontation in the neighborhood near King Park on Vliet Street. There are going to be a lot of questions about this incident, the details of what occurred, and the response. Some body camera footage of the incident has been released to the public. There’s been a lot of good reporting on what happened from local sources (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Urban Milwaukee, CBS 58, WISN 12, TMJ4, WPR, Wisconsin Examiner, surely more), and others in town covering the convention (Robert Evans, Christopher Mathias).
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman told the press, “This was a situation where somebody’s life was in immediate danger — again, two knives were recovered from this particular situation. Someone’s life was in danger. These officers, who are not from this area, took upon themselves to act to save someone’s life today.”
The Coalition to March on the RNC released a statement after the incident, saying, “The incident today is something that was predicted by Black and brown communities since the RNC was announced for Milwaukee, it is painful to say that these predictions came true.” A vigil was held at roughly 8 p.m.
According to Wisconsin Public Radio, Eva Welch, co-director of the homeless outreach group Street Angels, said the man was someone they were familiar with, and she expressed concern about the shooting in that it involved officers from outside of Milwaukee, saying, “I just feel like our police (Milwaukee police) know these folks, they know what’s going on over here, they know people are suffering.” Several people live in a nearby tent encampment, and Repairers of the Breach, “Milwaukee’s only daytime refuge and resource center for homeless adults,” is on the same block.
After the I’d left the RNC shortly after 9 p.m., I walked from the convention grounds, north on Water Street, west along a pedestrian-only access point on McKinley where dozens and dozens of buses were lining up to pick up attendees, and on a pedestrian bridge over the highway up toward the spot where Winnebago turns to Vliet. This is a location that’s not all that far from the convention grounds, all things considered.
By the time I had arrived, police were gone, and people there were mourning. There, at the corner of 14th and Vliet, a prayer vigil was held, and the Black String Triage Ensemble, a group that “is committed to using music as the healing force for the soul in the immediate aftermath of community violence,” performed on the Vliet Street sidewalk. It was powerful.
Following the performance, there was a an outpouring of emotion among the dozens still there. After talking to people for a short while, I left to give space to the community to grieve in peace. It was a somber, heavy moment. Regardless of the details of what happened, people had lost someone close to them and were mourning.
As this was all unfolding throughout the day in Milwaukee, the RNC’s Day Two theme was “Make America Safe Again.” It was a lot to process. It’s hard not to wonder if things would have gone differently had the RNC not been there, had police more familiar with the location been there instead. Because the day ended with a funeral. Sometimes words can’t capture the sense of such a moment.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He’s also written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 18 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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It's hard not to be bitter about what feels like an unnecessary death due to a massive influx of unfamiliar police officers present for the protection of people whose political careers are built on making the lives of Black and Brown Milwaukeeans worse. It's hard not to feel bitter about the first example of violence is by outside law enforcement despite so much attention and scrutiny paid to anti RNC protestors who remained peaceful. It's hard not to feel bitter when the horrible attempted Trump assassination leads to the political class to call for nonviolence but this latest shooting is emblematic of the kind of state violence that poor folks and nonwhite folks endure in this country regularly, with no acknowledgement that it could also be viewed as political violence to wreck people's lives with inadequate support, police repression, and deprivation of economic opportunities.
I wouldn’t refer to the Orange Shitler’s covering as a bandage. He himself said it was just a skeeter bite. Besides Mike Lindell gave him that thing, it’s an ear pillow