Staff, Author at Milwaukee Independent

Anja Notanja Sieger: The subtle forces of daily minutia

Posted by Staff | Mar 10, 2017 |

As a creative free-spirit who is loathe to be categorized for her artistic talent, Anja Notanja Sieger is best known for her poetry, storytelling, and performance therapy. With a passion for typewriters, the archaic machines symbolize her drive to create messages without the safety of an undo button, and her articulate fascination with the minutia of daily life brings an unacknowledged reality to light for the Milwaukee community.

Mayor Tom Barrett: State of the City 2017

Posted by Staff | Mar 7, 2017 |

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett delivered his 2017 State of the City address on March 6 at the Harley-Davidson University to a crowd of hundreds. This is the full text of his speech as delivered, with a companion Photo Essay of the event. | Good morning, I’m Tom Barrett, Mayor of the City of Milwaukee, and one of my first jobs was right here at Harley-Davidson where I was working on the assembly line and I learned how not to drop an engine on the factory floor, not that I ever did that. In high school, I worked as an...

MATC’s Diversity Forum to focus on institutional racism

Posted by Staff | Mar 3, 2017 |

The subject of discussion at Milwaukee Area Technical College’s March “Diversity Dialogues” forum will be “Institutional Racism and Its Effects.” The March 11 public discussion will be free and open to all members of the community. Dr. Pamela Malone, sociology instructor at the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), will be the main presenter of the session, held at Washington High School of Information Technology, 2525 North Sherman Boulevard. “We hope these sessions can be used as a model for an ongoing, community-wide discussion that could be a catalyst to transform lives and our community,” said Dr. Vicki J. Martin,...

Construction of rail lines to begin for Milwaukee Streetcar

Posted by Staff | Mar 2, 2017 |

Track installation for the first phase of the Milwaukee Streetcar will begin in late March with delivery of steel rail. There will be 474 “sticks” of 80-foot rail for tracks along the Phase One route. These materials will arrive in batches over one to two weeks to five “drop” locations along the route. “It will be very similar to street construction. If you didn’t know it was a streetcar, you would think it was road construction going on until the rails appear,” said Mike Ethier, project manager with Kiewit Corp., the general contractor hired to build the streetcar.” said...

Author Tom Nichols to discuss skepticism of established knowledge

Posted by Staff | Feb 28, 2017 |

Author Tom Nichols will discuss his book, “The Dеаth of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters” in an upcoming “On the Issues with Mike Gousha,” February 28 at Marquette University Law School. Nichols, a Naval War College Professor, argues in his new book that we live in dangerous times. “Never have so many people had access to so much knowledge, and yet been so resistant to learning anything,” he writes. He cites a number of reasons for why expertise is increasingly viewed with scorn and why experts are often seen as elitists. They include the...

Voter group calls for end to partisan gridlock on gerrymandering

Posted by Staff | Feb 28, 2017 |

Instead of complying with a federal order to correct for gerrymandering, the State of Wisconsin filed a US Supreme Court appeal of Whitford v. Gill on February 24. A federal three-judge panel ruled last November that Wisconsin’s legislative maps are unconstitutional, granting victory to 12 Wisconsin Democrats who filed suit more than a year ago. This is the first time a map has been overturned by a federal court for being gerrymandered for political reasons. “The people of Wisconsin want a fair map, drawn in an open and transparent process, not more shenanigans,” said Sachin Chheda, Director of the...