"The Neighborhood Project": Walker's Point | Coming Together

Listen: Last summer, while we were in the midst of our summer series entitled " The First Summer of the Rest of Your Life," I was biking to the East Side after an interview in the Lincoln Village neighborhood when I heard the loudest cacophony of police sirens I'd ever heard. I was biking on 1st Street and the commotion was on 2nd Street, so I continued on my way, checking the news as soon as I got home. The news was grave and sobering -- two policeman had been shot. In the following days and weeks, details came forward, but the lesson to be learned from the incident was still hard to grasp. The focusing idea of this year's Neighborhood Project is "love where you live." So, putting together this piece, and even the decision to go after it, required a good deal of deliberation. The potential for indelicacy and oversimplification was clear, but in the end, the story of the neighborhood was so present in the response to the shooting, it could not be ignored. Listen to Bill Wardlow as he recounts the moments following the incident and lessons that he's drawn from the experience: Of course, the incident itself is a deeply complex issue that cannot be reduced to a 3 minute audio piece (you can read more in this thoughtful Urban Milwaukee piece). However, the statement made by the reaction of the neighborhood, in the moments following the shooting and in the past year, really resonate. As I said in the piece, the lesson to be learned about Walker's Point does not come from the presence of adversity, but rather, in the neighborhood's response. A special thanks goes to Betsy Boenning for participating in the interview and sharing a wealth of information about the incident.

Want to learn more about the Walker's Point? You can start at the Historic Walker’s Point Association website . And of course, you can always get down to the neighborhood yourself and explore .

Produced by: Adam Carr

Bill and Betsy at Fluid