It’s a hot June day in Metcalfe Park, and every time there’s a breeze, people clap and cheer. The neighborhood organization Metcalfe Park Community Bridges is throwing a barbecue. The skin-prickling heat has slowed folks down a bit, but it’s joyful. Music booms from the speakers and towels chill in an ice cooler. Whenever someone walks up to join the party, they’re told to grab one and throw it around their neck.
When it gets hot in Milwaukee, Metcalfe Park is one of the places that really feels the heat. The historic industrial corridor runs through here, where there are few trees and plenty of pavement. The neighborhood is home to shuttered factories, like the old Master Lock. All of that adds up to the urban heat island effect, meaning the heat in the neighborhood is amplified.
“Even if it’s 70 degrees, it feels like it’s 90, especially on the east side of Metcalfe Park,” said Melody McCurtis, deputy director of the neighborhood organization Metcalfe Park Community Bridges. “It’s always been hotter.”
McCurtis says the organization has been leading education around heat, from explaining the neighborhood’s heat burden itself to strategies to staying safe and keeping cool.
Climate change is already causing more frequent and intense heat waves in Milwaukee. According to the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, in the next half-century, the state could see 20-30 more days where the temperature spikes over 90.
But the city doesn’t experience that heat evenly across the board: Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color often experience higher temperatures, a legacy of historic redlining. To adapt, many community-led groups are coming up with their own solutions, such as education, resource-sharing and checking on elders when temperatures rise.
That’s what’s happening in this heat island on Milwaukee’s northwest side, where Metcalfe Park Community Bridges is helping its community prepare for extreme heat.
A barbecue earlier this summer offered a picture of what that looks like: Education and strategy, but also joy and connection.
Danell Cross, the executive director of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, strategizes the entire picnic, even as she’s enjoying the afternoon with friends and neighbors, whom she reminds to make lists of family members to encourage to vote.
Cross points down the street to the sprawl of pavement, to the shuttered Master Lock factory, to the affordable housing apartments where residents were evacuated last year, because of lingering industrial contamination. She wants to empower her community to advocate for themselves and come up with the solutions they want to see in their own neighborhood.
What does it look like to help your community keep themselves safe from heat?
First, it’s education, and then it's bringing the community together to start thinking about some solutions that we can do. Because what we do know is that this community is not thought about first, second or third. Most of the time, we have to do it for ourselves.
So helping people figure out things that they can do for themselves right now. Staying hydrated — I forget that myself, and I'm outside working and then I'm dizzy about to pass out. Helping people to know that they gotta stay hydrated in this type of weather, that they gotta be even more concerned about the elderly, that they gotta look at how that impacts young people with asthma and breathing conditions. Once you talk to people about things that they haven't thought about before, that's the beginning of the process.
Why is it important to talk about heat and staying safe in these events? Why use this opportunity to teach people?
We don't do things to the community, we do it with the community. So today, we're going to be asking people: Do they want to be involved in this project? Do they want to help design it? Do they want to be the decision makers in it? Because we really lean towards their expertise, they know what they know what they are dealing with. And most of the time, they know how to fix it.
So when we come out into the community, it’s because we need them, we can't do it without them. And we are definitely not going to do it to them. That's why we are here today. And then the environment creates that mood and vibe. We like our oldies. We like food. So we're gonna be out here barbecuing, we're gonna be listening to this good music and we're gonna be talking to people and signing them up to be a part of the climate justice team that we're going to build out.
Antoine Carter is flipping burgers and brats on the grill. And while it's hot, being outside on a day like this makes him think of when he was a kid, growing up not too far from here. Summer stretched out before him, infinite with possibility.
What did summer mean to you as a kid?
It would just be me going outside and never coming back in. For any reason at all. Because that would be the time where your mom would say, "Oh, you want to come back in? Here’s some chores you gotta do." Shout out to my mom, Cynthia. But I would be playing football with my friends on the street or in the grass. Basketball leagues. You would wonder what team you’d be on this year and where you would play. Figuring out when people are going to the pool, when people are going to the mall. It was just riding your bike all day and never coming back into the house. On the prowl. On a never-ending Nicolas Cage-like quest for fun.
What does it look like for the community to take care of each other when it gets hot?
It’s just little things. It may not be a giant gesture. But just people caring that you are hydrated. People being more mindful that you should get out of the sun and get into some shade. I think those little things show they care. And it's not necessarily a big grandiose [gesture] like “free waters here!” It’s just “make sure you get you some water. Make sure you rest. You've been doing a lot now, go sit down somewhere.” Little stuff like that.
Bianca Dotts grew up in the neighborhood and lives in Arizona, where she attends nursing school. Her grandmother, who has breathing problems and uses supplemental oxygen, still lives in Metcalfe Park.
Last summer, when smoke from Canadian wildfires filled the sky, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges used rapid-response funding to buy 100 air purifiers. They gave them away to elderly neighbors and people with asthma, including Bianca’s grandmother.
Do you worry about the heat in the neighborhood and your grandmother? How do you think about that?
Yes, absolutely. A lot of the houses around here are not as up-to-date with central air and everything they could be, or probably even should be. So there's that issue. And [my grandmother] is on oxygen. It's something that before she didn't need. But she's also stern on this is her neighborhood. This is where she wants to stay and keep her independence and everything going. So I'm going to support her however I can. I'm glad that they've been providing the purifiers and helping her with cleaning it out, changing it. Anything she needs, they go by, and they check on her for me.
No matter what, there's still love here. It’s a community. It might not be as big as everybody else's community, but it's a community. And she knows that there are people here who look out for her and have her back if she needs it. Especially me being so far, I [say], "OK, we can let you stay here. I'm not gonna fight you on that."
She can go on her porch, call neighbors down, and talk to them. They plant flowers, they have the flower event. She always gets something. And if she doesn't get a flower, then she's calling me, “Hey, where's everybody at? They were supposed to bring me some flowers this year.” She loves to watch them grow.
