Milwaukee
I once did a two week long political organizing trip to Milwaukee when I worked for Infact, home of the GE Boycott. I stayed at a place called Lavender House in a rough neighborhood near Marquette University. I have lived in some pretty colorful neighborhoods in Boston, Minneapolis and St. Paul. The only place I have ever been that compares to Milwaukee is West Oakland. The commune people never walked in the neighborhood nor dared go outside at night. From my car window I saw young men beating the living shit out of each other. Every morning the newspaper had new mayhem to report: a man found tied to a chair in a basement and shot to death. A body found in the street, a drive by shooting, all of it within a few block radius of the commune. Then, one morning, the headlines screamed, "Body Parts Found In Apartment". It pretty much seemed like any other day in Milwaukee. Again, the address was very close to Lavender House. Turns out I was staying 4 blocks from Jeffrey Dahmer when he got caught dissolving his house guests in vats of acid in his apartment. Needless to say, it was hard to get the Milwaukee press to cover my feeble organizing events.
I spoke at several gatherings organized by volunteers that were to lead up to a premier of our new video, Deadly Deception. One such gathering was held in the University of Wisconsin district with a bunch of teenagers. I found out later that everyone there had taken LSD about an hour before I arrived. So I start telling my rap, with stories about people's hair falling out and babies born with no eyes and people dying of radiation poisoning and all the money going into fighters and bombers while our schools were sucking ass. Eyes grew wider and wider. One girl started crying. I pled for help. Can you give money? A few crumpled dollars were passed forward. Can you participate in the actions I am planning? Sure! In fact, why wait until Saturday? Lets go now! It was 9:30 PM. "Lets go to the lake!" someone said. So we ushered ourselves out of the apartment and spilled out into the streets. One dude had two broken legs from jumping off a wall and sported a tattoo of jesus on his arm with a big ghostbusters slash through it. So we are pushing this kid in a wheelchair towards the lake and talking about the revolution. I remember that it was hot as hell that week. We all swam in Lake Michigan (except for the guy with two broken legs) and talked about the local music scene.
The next night I spoke at a gathering in a very ritzy section of Milwaukee filled with fabulous old houses. These were a group of women who were lace curtain Irish. Being from two-toilet Irish heritage myself, we got along swimmingly, had tea and biscuits, and I raised a tremendous amount of money.
There was a middle aged man living at Lavender House who also helped me out with the organizing effort, but he was a porn addict and all day every day he would sit in his room and watch porn movies. I don't know if my presence precipitated this, but he was on some kind of binge for the weeks I was there and sometimes he would leave his door open and there would be giant genitalia on his t.v. screen when I walked by. Always heard a lot of moaning and groaning coming out of his room.
The premier was held on a Saturday afternoon at the end of my two week stay. It was the hottest day of the year. I had reserved a spot at an organization called Milwaukee Mobilization for Survival, or Milwaukee Mobe. I think 5 people showed up. Even my pal, the porn addict, had to bail out at the last minute.
12:16:46 AM 
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