Putting a Face to the Harm—Commemorating Lives

Andrew Center LogoMy previous blog post, Memory Matters—Recalling Rwanda, introduced the unforgettable experience I had at a 2024 summer conference in that country, which was held in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Genocide Against the Tutsi. What I saw, what I heard, what I felt furthered my foundational belief and commitment directing the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice at Marquette University Law School.

To begin basically: Memory, through storytelling, is essential to moving beyond violence and harm—the first step toward cultivating healing and safety for those harmed and accountability and compassion for those who harmed. In Rwanda, where more than one million children, women, and men were slaughtered over three months, any hope for peace requires remembering to commemorate those innocents who died because of ethnic hatred propagated in the name of revenge. In a country where genocide survivors and perpetrators are neighbors, co-workers, and even family members living side-by-side, that means putting a face to those behind the staggering statistics, which alone cannot truly speak to the senseless brutality.

Last July, I saw some of the faces during visits to two of nearly ten genocide memorials the Rwandan government created a decade after the unspeakable happened in summer 1994. This blog post is harder to write than the previous one because each of those faces—captured in time by photographs or symbolically present through stark physical remnants of the victims as well as perpetrators—represents a life story. Maurice, a guide at one of the memorials and genocide survivor, explained simply, “Sharing stories brings the humanity back to us.” That struck me. Who is remembered readily by loved ones left behind is why we all must not look away but rather remember through respectful commemoration. I write this perhaps-painful-to-read blog in that spirit.

Kigali Genocide Memorial

As the largest in the nation, the genocide memorial in the city of Kigali is the final resting place of more than 250,000 Tutsi murdered in the area. Funded in part by the city and organizations such as Aegis Trust, which facilitated the summer conference I attended, the memorial opened in 2004. It consists of the Exhibit Building, Burial Place, and Gardens of Reflection, all designed to serve as the starting point for education in peace and values, which is now built into Rwanda’s national school curriculum to strengthen community resilience against division. The site does so in many ways:

  • Providing a dignified place of burial for Tutsi victims
  • Educating visitors about the causes of the Genocide Against the Tutsi and other genocides throughout history and the world
  • Teaching how to prevent future genocides
  • Documenting evidence of the Genocide Against the Tutsi, testimonials of survivors, and stories of the victims
  • Supporting survivors, especially widows and orphans.

A man speaking Accompanied by our guide, Maurice (pictured with permission), we first toured three permanent exhibitions at the Kigali memorial.

“The 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi”

Detailing colonial roots of the ethnic hatred behind the genocide and the failure of the international community to intervene, this exhibit depicts the horrors and atrocities of 1994. That includes attempting to explain how friends, neighbors, and family members committed violent crimes against the Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers—including brutality against women and children who, if not killed, were raped and mutilated in an effort to prevent a new generation of Tutsi from emerging.

“Wasted Lives”

Describing similar horrors including the Holocaust and Srebenica, this exhibit demonstrates that Rwanda is among too many instances of lives senselessly wasted through genocide.

“The Children’s Room”

A memorial to the murdered Tutsi children, this was the most painful exhibit for me and clearly the most real to Maurice, himself a child in 1994 who lost many in his family. Large pictures of boys and girls, each depicting the personal story behind the once-smiling face and including age and favorite foods, concluded with his/her last words, memories, and details of death. Some of those like Maurice who survived are also pictured, including quotes about watching their mothers chopped to death and witnessing babies slammed against walls. The inhumane acts I read about were so unthinkable that I don’t have the luxury to forget. Rather, I have the duty to relay, in order to commemorate the victims.

Two LizardsIn stark contrast to the exhibitions’ vivid depictions and descriptions, two other parts of the memorial—the Burial Place and Gardens of Reflection—completed my visit. The sanctity of the underground tombs and concrete-covered mass graves filled with caskets and bones of unidentified victims forbids any photography inside. None is needed to feel the depth of such loss—compounded by the reality that remains continue to be found and placed in the tombs. The day I visited, two lone roses on the ground stood as sentinels to the quarter-million lives lost in this vicinity alone.

Nyamata Genocide Memorial

Another 10,000 lives are commemorated at the memorial located around the grounds of the former Nyamata Church. What remains of the church—where Tutsi sought refuge, only to be massacred over two weeks in April 1994—is a chilling site of remembrance, especially for women survivors who were systematically raped and abused in that once-hallowed space.

Led by a survivor-guide, I saw the tin roof riddled with bullet holes. A white altar cloth red from blood. Benches for prayer repurposed to display the clothing of the once prayerful. The basement that resembles catacombs, with coffins and racks of skulls and bones, including those of many infants. Haunting and profound words of survivors appear on plaques throughout the church, now sacred for a reason much different that the structure’s original intent. Two examples only:

“I remember the sound of blood flowing on the floor.”

“If you had known me, and you had really known yourself, you would not have killed me.”

The memorials I experienced are vital reminders of the human capacity for evil and destruction. But if we allow the story to end there, we fail those who perished. In my next blog post, I will plumb the better side of humankind as I share my visit to the Rweru Reconciliation Village—a model of hope rooted in the human capacity to forgive and build peace.

Thank you for being on this journey with me.

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New research investigates the cost of housing in the Milwaukee metro

The Lubar Center’s latest research project takes a careful look at how housing affordability has changed in the Milwaukee metro in the early 2020s.

Our article, “Can a typical worker still buy a house in the Milwaukee metro? Increasingly, no,” was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on October 9, 2024. Journal Sentinel business reporter Genevieve Redsten also contributed an article to the series, “Homeownership is less attainable in the Milwaukee area. Why new construction hasn’t been part of the solution.“

Our research uncovered much more than could fit in a single story. We have shared additional resources in this web report. It includes more methodological details about our calculations and statistics for individual municipalities in the four-county Milwaukee area.

Previously, we’ve written about how the subprime mortgage crisis and the end of the residency requirement contributed to plummeting owner-occupancy rates in the City of Milwaukee. Home values fell to very low levels in Milwaukee, while rents remained relatively elevated. Consequently, home-ownership was far more cost effective than renting for many families. Meanwhile, rents–particularly in poor neighborhoods–were quite profitable. This profitable potential eventually brought Milwaukee (and similar rust belt cities) to the attention of private equity-backed corporate landlords in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Those same years saw owner occupancy finally begin to recover in Milwaukee. Owner-occupancy grew slightly in 2019, the first year-over-year increase since 2005. These circumstances combined to foster fierce competition between would-be homeowners and out-of-state investors, particularly in majority Black neighborhoods on the city’s north side.

scatterplot showing the change in owner-occupied houses and out-of-state owned houses in Milwaukee aldermanic districts from 2018 to 2022

Since 2022, the market has cooled off. Home prices are still sky high, and increased interest rates have driven the monthly cost required to buy a house even higher. But high interest rates have also changes the calculus of corporate investors. All three of the large private equity backed firms operating in Milwaukee’s rental market have stopped buying and started selling in the past two years. For the first time since the subprime mortgage crisis began, the net number of homes owned by an out-of-state landlord actually declined in the City of Milwaukee during 2023, and that slight decline continued into the beginning of 2024 as well.

Net levels of owner-occupancy continued to grow in 2023 and 2024, albeit at a much slower pace than the preceding several years. It’s no wonder why the market has cooled. Owner-occupancy is far less attainable for many workers, as our latest article discusses in detail. Also, the cost-benefit analysis of owning a home versus renting has shifted. In 2020, we calculated that a typical single family home was cheaper to own than rent, even when factoring in the same kinds of maintenance cost assumptions used by professional property managers. That is no longer true in 2024.

Here is an even simpler comparison. This graph shows the average monthly rent in Milwaukee in blue and the monthly payment needed to buy the average house in red. Before 2018, the PITI (principal, interest, taxes, and insurance) needed to buy the average Milwaukee house was cheaper than the monthly rent for the average apartment (of any size). The two costs were about tied from 2018 through 2020. Since then, the relative cost of owning has skyrocketed, while rents have grown more modestly. “From 2019 to 2024, the monthly costs needed to buy an average home in the city of Milwaukee grew by $854 or an increase of 83%. The average monthly rent grew by $316, or 31%.”

line plot showing the monthly cost of buying a house vs renting an apartment in Milwaukee

These comparisons of monthly cost ignore the equity accrued by homeowners. This equity is substantial for homeowners who bought during the 2010s, and those owners also benefit from the low interest rates they either initially received or refinanced into. While increased home values exclude a growing number of workers from the home-buying market, they are a windfall for incumbent owners. We estimate that someone who bought the average house in Milwaukee in 2019, paying 5% down, has accrued an average of $78,000 in equity.

Milwaukee remains more affordable than the great majority of major American cities, but home-buying has become far more difficult, even impossible, for many workers. And the financial benefit to buying a house instead of renting one is no longer as straightforward as during the late 2010s.

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Will Wisconsin Chart Its Own Course on Environmental Issues?

The exterior of the U.S. Supreme Court building with white stone columns and a white facade.

In a series of recent cases, the United States Supreme Court has sharply restricted the power of the United States Environmental Protection Agency to effectively exercise jurisdiction over natural resources within the states. These include West Virginia v. EPA (endorsing the “major questions doctrine” and restricting EPA’s power to require cleaner energy generation without clear congressional authorization); Sackett v. EPA (limiting the scope of EPA’s authority over “waters of the United States,” and eliminating federal authority over many wetlands); Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (overruling the Chevron doctrine of deferring to agency interpretations of law in most circumstances); SEC v. Jarkesy (holding that agencies may not employ in-house tribunals, in lieu of jury trials, when seeking civil penalties); and Corner Post v. Board of Governors, FRS (pausing the statute of limitations to challenge agency regulations until the plaintiff suffers injury).

The shift away from federal power elevates the role states can play in charting a course on environmental issues. The Sackett Court emphasized that states, not the EPA, hold the “primary responsibilities and rights . . . to prevent, reduce, and eliminate pollution” and “to plan the development and use . . . of land and water resources.” Some evidence supports the idea that states will be eager to fill gaps in federal regulation of the environment and corresponding enforcement activities. Wisconsin, for example, has a rich history of water law. All the way back in 1853, the Wisconsin Supreme Court endorsed the principle that “if [a] stream is navigable in fact, the public have the right to use it for the purposes of navigation, and the right of the owner [of abutting land] is subject to the public easement.” Jones v. Pettibone, 2 Wis. 308 (1853). In the 20th century, the state became a national leader in conservation and was at the vanguard of the development of the public trust doctrine.

Even in the 21st century, Wisconsin authorities have sometimes stepped in to protect the state’s natural resources when federal jurisdiction receded. In 2001, for example, the Supreme Court invalidated the “migratory bird rule,” under which federal agencies had exercised jurisdiction over pollutant discharges into certain isolated intrastate waters. The decision, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, removed a sizeable percentage of wetlands from federal protection. The Wisconsin Legislature acted almost instantly, taking only a few months to enable state control over such discharges by creating a new category of “nonfederal wetlands.” The state law expressly addressed the Supreme Court’s decision. By its terms, it applies when discharges into wetlands are determined “not to be subject to regulation under [the federal Clean Water Act] due to the decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers . . . or any subsequent interpretations of that decision by a federal agency or by a federal district or federal appellate court that applies to wetlands located in this state.” Wis. Stat. 281.36(1m)(a)1 (as created by 2001 Wisconsin Act 6). The act effectively restored protection of wetlands that the Supreme Court removed from federal jurisdiction in SWANCC, albeit under state authority. Later, the state implemented an innovative water quality trading program to help curb nonpoint source pollution and meet the state’s aggressive water quality limits for phosphorous pollution. Wisconsin citizens can be proud of the state’s progress in those areas and many others.

But more recent developments are less promising. The ballyhooed “Year of Clean Drinking Water in Wisconsin” was less successful than Governor Evers probably hoped. Similarly, after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos created a “Water Quality Task Force” in 2019, all thirteen of the bills it proposed died in the state Senate. In 2017, the Legislature removed some smaller wetlands from protection under state law, backtracking from the 2001 enactment. And the past few years have been marked by political skirmishes over the power of state agencies to enact groundwater standards for PFAS and other chemicals, disputes over the Department of Natural Resources’ power to require environmental cleanups, and the delayed release of state funds earmarked for remediation activities.

Wisconsin’s uneven record on environmental protection is certainly not unique. But the state–or rather, all the states–are being thrust to the forefront in such matters. Of course, a state will not necessarily regulate anew, or step up enforcement, just because it has the opportunity to do so. And any reckoning with environmental issues will no doubt have to wait until after the November elections currently dominating politics. Whenever the dust settles, it will be interesting to see how states respond in the new era of a somewhat-diminished EPA.

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