Brenda Coley says when she applied to join the Milwaukee Water Commons team, she didn’t think she’d get the job. “I turned in my application late. I was really nonchalant about it,” she says.
At the time, Coley didn’t feel connected to the environmental movement. “I remember they asked me, ‘What was my water story,’ which is a really middle class white kind of statement to ask because most people of color don’t have a water story because they’re on top of the water, not in the water. And that’s what you all are asking about when you say what did you do in the water, right,” Coley says. “I said I drink it.”
She may not have had a water story, but Coley brought rich experience to Milwaukee Water Commons. Her resume includes working at the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR) and the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.
Under Coley’s leadership, environmental justice has become central to Milwaukee Water Commons’ work.
She’s proud of MWC’s signature event along the Lake Michigan shoreline. We Are Water fuses art, music and dance to demonstrate every culture has a connection, reverence and a right to water.
“It was modeling what we could do, what we can do. We had one event where we had people speaking in different languages and not doing interpretation. So that we de-centered English and other people were speaking their language and talking their water story. And that was an amazing situation; good for us to see what that feels like, what immigrants go through,” she says.
READ: We Are Water: 10th annual celebration highlights need to respect & share Milwaukee's shared waters
Over her tenure, Coley helped bring awareness to Milwaukee's lead in water contamination issue. She's lead negotiations to bring water-related jobs to people of color.
“That was not talked about until we started insisting that the institutions that provide water services also provide water also provide jobs to people of color in the city. And we’ve been working with the institutions around that issue for the past eight or nine years. And it’s not easy,” Coley says.
Coley says without power, policy is meaningless. “How will it be instituted. How will we make sure it’s happening. Are you going to measure what you’re doing. And institutions today don’t want to do that because then you’re accountable,“ she says.
Co-executive director Kirsten Shead says MWC will carry on the work Coley has advanced.
“We can’t just have good feelings or good intentions. We need just policy. And we know the pressure from the federal administration is to pull back any policy that seems like it is giving any equitable treatment to anyone besides white men,” Shead says.
Brenda Coley says she’s leaving the work in good hands. “I’m proud that we have a group of people of color who are leading in this way and with their white allies. I think that was important for the community to see. There’s this ‘thing’ that people of color are too busy with other oppressions and they don’t have time for the environment, which is totally [incomplete thought]. We know that now. I think the city knows that now, but at that time, they didn’t know that was true,” she says.
Today, Coley has a personal connection to water. She calls it reverence.
“It’s in many ways the place where I go to get respite. We all know, you put us in front of water, we all know what it can do for us. Water has enhanced my feeling of justice in that water serves us, wants to serve us; is our friend and knows what it’s doing. It has a life and that it wants to serve us regardless of who we are. So that is what water has taught me,” Coley says.
Milwaukee Water Commons will be announcing Coley’s replacement on Jan. 20.
