AART will occasionally highlight assets from our Northwest Side Asset Map, and this time, we’re highlighting the Nigerian Community Conference Center in Milwaukee, a large event space that welcomes many other African communities across the diaspora, including Black Americans!

Juneteenth has been the relaunch of our LiberateMKE campaign for the past six years. But this year will be different. In 2024, we announced that we would be sunsetting LiberateMKE at the end of 2025, to run the LiberateMKE campaign one more time during the upcoming budget cycle. However, conditions change, and new opportunities emerge, so we will not be relaunching LiberateMKE this year.

For generations, Black people have been taught—implicitly and explicitly—that rest must be earned. That productivity is proof of worth. That exhaustion is a badge of honor. But we are unlearning these lies. We are remembering what our ancestors knew in their bones: rest is not laziness. Rest is a portal. Rest is resistance.

As DEI initiatives across the country retreat from their “long walk through the institutions,” we have decided not to mourn.

In 2023, The African American Roundtable (AART) collaborated with UBUNTU Research and Evaluation to apply abundant mindsets and our visions for a thriving Northwest Side to identify businesses, groups, and service providers, whose work residents believed kept them safe.

For youth programming, 2024 was a year of growth, intentionality, and deepening our commitment to empowering young people in Milwaukee.

Many of us are still processing the results of the 2024 presidential election. We’ve seen an attack on justice, truth, diversity and the very ideals that many of us hold sacred.

We want to make it clear that we never believed elections alone would fully change things.

AART’s Liberation Roadmap continued leading our Milwaukee community along a transformative journey and this time, to resilience.

Following a collective three plus years I've worked on electoral and democracy campaigns, I knew this year’s elections would be as high-impact as they were high-stakes. The most important roles I felt to play were holding my community in compassion and supporting folks’ analysis around multi-tactical strategies toward change. Now that November 5 is behind us, I'd like to offer reflections and a path forward.

This is the third of a three-part blog series intended to depict how we got here and the world we want to see.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson released his budget this past Tuesday. This budget represents more of the same, even though he's telling us it's significantly different from last year's. Although Milwaukee has received nearly $193 million through sales tax collection, the city still faces a $87 million deficit. How is that possible?

My familiarity with Black August blossomed a year ago in Cuba. I was a part of a delegation to Cuba to learn about the country’s socialist project, her resilience in spite of the 60+ year blockade imposed by the US imperialist war machine, and strategies to end the blockade.

At the African American Roundtable (AART), we define organizing as "the intentional process of building authentic relationships and nurturing Black leaders to collectively build power for Black liberation."

We launched LiberateMKE, a campaign that demanded that we divest from the Milwaukee Police Department and invest in community programs like jobs for young people, housing, and mental health, five years ago on Juneteenth with close to 50 other comrades and partners. I remember that day vividly.

Many residents assert that “there’s nothing over here” and refer to the area as “divested,” “dilapidated,” desolate,” “barren,” and/or “neglected.”

As another busy election year is upon us, I want to challenge us not to bury ourselves eyeballs deep in the vicious electoral cycle. I want to challenge us to shift our mindset to fight–and rest. Fighting with no rest can leave us weary and cause us to possibly miss liberation altogether. I want to take you all on a journey of me saying yes to rest while I fought. 

AART launched a monthly donor program and could use your support! Your donation will help our vision become a reality–and our work in Milwaukee more impactful.

The United States’ dependence on capital accumulation has always managed to be at the expense of Black people, especially our most marginalized.

The African American Roundtable exists to organize, nurture and transform Black leaders to build power in service of Black liberation. Our vision is to be a joyful, political home for Black people to thrive in liberated, interconnected communities.

As we near the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, I want to thank you for coming along on this journey with the African American Roundtable.

When we set out to nurture Black leaders and build power in service of Black liberation, we knew that the task ahead wouldn’t be easy.