Why nothing changes
Missed the westside Neighborhood Safety Conversation held the past weekend at Elver Park.
Organizer Bonnie Roe (she is a true blessing) pronounced it “A big success! About 75 of us gathered, despite iffy weather.”
Police Chief Shon Barnes and Midtown Captain Jason Freedman attended. So did Deputy Mayor Linda Vakunta, Alders Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Yannnette Figeuroa Cole, Gary Halverson, and Christian Albouras. Also Anthony Cooper and Nick Loumus from Focused Interruption.
Bonnie Roe reports that Chief Barnes said the proposed 5% cut to the police budget, as requested by the Mayor, would be devastating. “They cannot afford to lose any Officers.”
Been following the back and forth since then on the NextDoor social app. Commenter from Midtown Commons neighborhood:
Thank you, Bonnie, for trying. Several years ago we had a similar meeting at the church on McKenna with the police chief, one of the judges, Mayor Soglin and others, hosted by alder McKinney. Same concerns, went nowhere. In fact it’s much worse. I truly hope you have better luck than we did. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Blaska ventured:
Elections, people. Elections. Orchard Ridge/Nakoma/Midvale Heights elected a “Re-imagine/Defund Police” alder this past Spring (Yannette Figueroa Cole). What do you expect?
“Uncalled for comment, Mr. Blaska!” Lisa from Fitchburg thundered.
A neighbor in Parkwood Hills came to our defense. “This is about leadership or lack of it.” He was countered by a good progressive in Ald. Tag Evers’s Vilas neighborhood:
“Funny thing is nothing has changed at MPD but you keep believing that an overfunded police department is the answer.” In other words, the lady believes police are the problem!
Blaska noted that “Police did not kill the 17-yr-old boy in drive-by shooting on Lathrop Street on August 14. Nor are they stealing our cars. But you keep believing in defunding the police. May be why nothing has changed in Madison.” Your intrepid bloggeur then risked another banishment from NextDoor by suggesting:
We need people to run for local office. We need good common sense citizens to run for alder, county board, and especially school board. We need to quit teaching kids that some are victims — and therefore powerless to direct the arc of their lives. Where there are victims, there must be oppressors. We need to quit teaching you cannot succeed until we can get those oppressors to admit their guilt.
To which, a lady from the Foxridge neighborhood judged: “Wow. Your an unpleasant and judgmental person.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Maybe, but at least my grammar is correct.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
The anti-police and irrational social justice advocates continue to hold their fingers in their ears and scream at those they disagree with, they can’t hear any rational opposition to their nonsense when their ignorant mouths are moving and that is by intentional design. These things will not change until we kick the irrational leadership and teachers out of our schools, return rational common sense leadership and maintain a high level of academic standards to teach our children.
Youth are our future!
LikeLike
Why not just defund the schools, seize salaries and send in the police. Looks like it’s working very well in Florida.
LikeLike
richard lesiak wrote, “Why not just defund the schools, seize salaries and send in the police. Looks like it’s working very well in Florida.”
What the heck are you talking about?
LikeLike
Richard, how about some links supporting your statements. If teacher salaries are being siezed I’m sure someone is reporting on it… Or are you simply a liar?
My guess is you are simple and a liar.
LikeLike
I wouldn’t have missed this gathering for anything. Regarding those people who are attacking attendees, where were they?
Victims spoke. Concern citizens spoke. MPD spoke. Focused Interruption spoke. Immediate district Alders McKinney and Albouras spoke. Westside MPD defunders alder Figueroa-Cole was there and didn’t utter a peep, and Westside alder Conklin didn’t even care to show up. Why? They weren’t among their “friends” and they are thin-skinned.
Typical hard-left; no-show, run away with their tails between their legs, or begin the name-calling.
Wake up, Madison.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“Wake up, Madison.”
Some of us sounded these alarms years ago. Made some real progress, too, though we got clobbered doing it.
Supporting cops in Madison is not exactly the kind of thing that wins you a lot of friends.
LikeLike
Sounds like you faced the slings and arrows of outrageous mediocrity with admirable dignity, Squire.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“Uncalled for comment??”
Yeah, pointing out the connection between crime rates, defunded police and the politicians cutting the budget is impolite.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Next door is getting as bad as FB and Twitter. Could Dane County be any more screwed up.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I despise NextDoor. Same groupthink, bullying, and idiocy you find on Facebook.
Been like that for years.
LikeLike
I’ll be less judgmental of the criminals in my neighborhood once they stop committing crimes. I’ll be more pleasant to the drug-addled lady of the evening when she ambles by my house instead of trespassing and looking into my windows and crushing my flowers. I told her there wasn’t any crack in those bushes as I shooed her away. But seriously you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in this town. Just over the last couple days I’ve noticed some alarming trends in a lack of policing. You’ve got vagrants sleeping in the doorway of operation fresh start (irony?) and in parks all over town. You’ve got terrorized residents on N. Marquette St. after last weeks shootout, and of course the shooters are still at large. To take it a step further, I decided it was safer to ride my bike to work, but almost got smoked by plateless vehicles running red lights on the isthmus at high rates of speed. You know it’s bad when an older female with a “one less car” sticker on her bike starts grousing to me about these “dangerous idiots” that can’t follow traffic laws as I’m riding on the bike path. I don’t know what delusional alternative universe these Progressive Daners are living in but it’s not the world I’m living in. I commend local LE for their efforts, if anything the MPD needs an increase in funding just for a traffic unit to intercept these morons.
LikeLike
Do Madison schools teach grammar anymore? Your or You’re? To or Too? I doubt that the teachers of today even know the difference, and they probably don’t care.
The nuns pounded it into our heads correctly back in the fifties.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree wholeheartedly, but Richard-May-I-Calls-Ya-Dick is an exception -He defied learning ANYTHING back in the day, and is the most egregious mis-user of “your” who ever defiled a blogsite. Jes’ sayin’ -Credit where credit is due.
LikeLike
She’s wrong. You’re a very PLEASANT and judgmental person.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Having seen you via yer MMSD VID’s and a few other places, I gotta wonder if that Foxridge “Karen” has actually ever done a meet-n-greet w/ you. Ya seem w-a-y distant from an “unpleasant and judgemental man”. But that seems to little matter to Libs who live-and-die by their Lib swords (butter knives?). Anyway, this reminds me to do less on Isthmus, and get back to the f-u-n of NextDoor -lotsa OPs to seriously upset some apple-carts there. It all helps our sanity…
LikeLike
Could someone explain what an “overfunded police department” is? I’m just wondering.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What continues to amuse is your law-and-order types DO run for office. And they lose. Often badly. Maybe they’d do better without your endorsement.
LikeLike
It’s not Dave’s fault if Progressives don’t value law and order.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Liberty wrote, “It’s not Dave’s fault if Progressives don’t value law and order.”
True!!!
The progressive movement (like Nazi’s) and their thug army of social justice warriors activists (like Brown Shirts) can no longer exist without one another, they are inseparable and trying to drag the United States over a irrational social cliff straight into a dark abyss of utter totalitarianism. Social Justice Warriors: The 21st Century Scourge
LikeLike