Health Commissioner: Milwaukee Must Deal with Race and Poverty Issues
If Milwaukee is to become a healthy city in both broad terms and in terms of specific issues, it must deal with issues in an honest, constructive way with poverty and race, City of Milwaukee Health Commission Bevan Baker said Thursday during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at Eckstein Hall.
“Milwaukee will not be the greatest, most relevant, healthiest city in America until we deal with our dirty linen,” Baker, health commissioner since 2004, told an audience of about 150.
“To do that,” he continued, “we have got to do what other cities have done, and that is to address race, to address poverty, to look at these issues, and say, it is tough, it is unimaginable, it makes me sick, it is ugly, but to be great we have got to do the unimaginable thing, and that is to once and for all say, and in true fashion, to take our spiritual and moral compass and say, Milwaukee will not be the healthiest, greatest, most relevant city in America until we deal with our dirty linen. That’s what New York has done and that is what Miami is trying to do and that’s what other cities in this nation I have lived in have done.”