Lake Effect

There are many revered Black authors in American literature – Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes to name a few. Their work is often centered on the Black American experience, which can often be defined by oppression.

Even before President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 election, President Donald Trump began claiming there was fraud. These claims haven't been backed up by any evidence, but that hasn’t stopped other Republicans from siding with these claims and announcing investigations.

A new book of poems from DeWitt Clinton takes inspiration from a translation of Chinese poems, placing them in a contemporary landscape of Milwaukee. In his new book called By A Lake Near A Moon, Fishing With The Chinese Masters he explores loss and his time as a soldier in Vietnam. 

In September, Joan Johnson was confirmed as Milwaukee Public Library (MPL) director and city librarian by Mayor Tom Barrett and the Milwaukee Common Council. Johnson served as the deputy director of the MPL since March of 2009 and has been with the system since 2006.

Johnson is the 12th director in MPL’s 142-year-history, the fourth woman to serve in this position and the first Black person to lead MPL. She's taken on her new role during the coronavirus pandemic, which has presented many new challenges to the library system.

Interactions with strangers are few and far between in the time of COVID-19. Following social distancing guidelines and wearing a mask aren’t exactly conducive to positive interactions at the grocery store or the post office.

But essayist Mary Steinert-Ng had one of those interactions recently while trying to send mail to her daughter. She talks about it and her gratitude for those working through the pandemic in her essay “Care Package.”

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to reach new heights in Wisconsin. For the first time, the seven-day average of infections has reached 5,000 people. That’s more than a 500% increase from just a couple of months ago. Hospitalizations have soared as community spread has allowed the disease to infect and kill vulnerable people.

Starting college is a time when new connections and friendships are forged. For many freshmen, it’s also their first time living alone and navigating the world independently. But this fall semester looks a bit different for college freshmen in Wisconsin and throughout the country.

Four southeast Wisconsin colleges have made an ambitious pledge: to close racial and income-based graduation gaps within the next 10 years.

While official election results are still being tabulated, we do know a little more about voter turnout. Milwaukeeans and Wisconsinites alike showed up at the polls in droves — by mail, through early voting and on Election Day.

As election night stretched into the early morning of Nov. 4, the election results in Wisconsin began to shift. It was something that many election observers expected: in-person voting, generally counted first, would favor President Donald Trump. Mail-in voting, counted later, would favor former Vice President Joe Biden. 

But as the tide began to turn in favor of Biden, prominent Republicans, including Trump, began making claims of fraud. These claims run the gamut from basic misunderstandings of how elections are conducted in Wisconsin to outright conspiracy theories. 

While many Americans are focused on election results, the coronavirus continues to infect people at an alarming rate. Wisconsin has seen one of the largest increases of cases in the country, breaking infection and death records on a near-daily basis.

On Wednesday, Joe Biden won Wisconsin, gaining its 10 electoral votes. But once again, the race was very close, with the unofficial results giving Biden the lead by about 20,000 votes. This is a familiar scenario to what we saw in the 2016 election when President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by roughly the same margin. 

In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House surprised many Americans. Many people were positively sure that Hillary Clinton would win the election and one of the major reasons was polling.

Polls showed Clinton up by comfortable margins in many states and showed her handily winning the election. Although she secured the popular vote, she failed to win the electoral college, leading many pollsters to re-analyze how they do their work.

This year’s election was unprecedented in the way people voted and how long anxious voters have had to wait for election results. Wisconsin went blue for Vice President Joe Biden by a narrow margin. But, before the call was even made, President Donald Trump’s campaign requested a recount of the votes cast. 

Wisconsin followed the nationwide trend this year with record mail-in and early voting. But will those voter trends continue into future election years or is this a fluke in the time of COVID-19?

If there is a shift in voter trends, is now the time for lawmakers and election officials to look at policies and laws in place around early and mail-in voting?