Hey, what's
happening?
This is a good recording, man.
I can dig it.
and welcome to the Earl Ingram Show.
Oh, welcome to a Motown Monday on the Earl Ingram Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-752-4842.
What's going on, Cardi?
How you doing, man?
Man, it's Motown Mondays, and I'm glad you're back, man, because Friday, I was like, man, where's Earl?
Hey, man,
you know
what?
So here I am, a guy who rarely, if ever, misses a day.
And, you know, the guy called me up and he said, hey man, we put out a silver alert on you.
A silver alert?
Come on, man.
Come on.
Although I am, you know, in that area, I am.
If I was missing, they certainly would put it out, but come on, man, a silver alert.
Anyway, man, it was a beautiful, beautiful weekend.
Man, I spent, I must have spent five, six hours outside, man, on my lawn and in barbecuing and the whole thing.
I took advantage because they said there was going to be snow this morning.
And, you know, I got up this morning, four o'clock and looked out to see if there was any snow and praise the Lord.
We didn't get any but anyway, that doesn't mean we're not gonna get it anyway Got a lot to talk about this morning as always as I stated before some Motown Monday, and I'm joined up by again Dr. Kristen Payne of Led Safe Schools Milwaukee also miss Kat Kaiser
of land safe schools in Milwaukee and Miss Melody Curtis and Melody Curtis is with the Metcalf Park Community Bridges.
Good morning to all of you and welcome to the Earl Ingram show.
Good morning.
Good morning.
All right.
You know, good morning, Earl.
And welcome back, Dr. Payne.
This is just a, with all the things that are going on nationally.
and all the negative news that just continues to permeate the airwaves.
And we look at those things on the national scale and you just, you know, the air is just sucked out of you, wind is sucked out of yourselves.
And so we can focus on all those national things and they're certainly worthy of being focused on.
But then here, locally, you always say,
All politics is local.
But the continued problems that MPS is facing, the families that are being impacted and affected by lead is worse than even all those other things because it's right here and it's our children.
And it's something that that we should be able to correct.
if we're mobilized, if we're organized, and Dr. Christian Payne, that's your wheelhouse.
And so tell us a little bit about why you guys created Lead Safe Schools MKE.
Yeah.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, so we created Lead Safe Schools MKE after the first school was implicated in the MPS lead crisis.
And part of the reason
we formed was to put pressure on appropriate parties to get the solutions that we need and to get accountability to figure out what went wrong, how we got here, because we want to fix the problem and we don't want to go back.
And so, you know, my thinking is that
It's usually pressure outside of these institutionalized systems that create the real change and that we needed people from the community to band together to build that kind of power.
And I think so far we've had some significant wins.
But we still have a lot of work to do.
This is a giant problem.
We've got 150 schools in MPS and we know that seven so far have been implicated, but many more are definitely in similar condition.
So if this wouldn't be a monumental task for a superintendent who's been in place for years, got a brand new superintendent.
at the same time, this is happening.
And so she's only been in office a couple weeks.
And so faced with this, and you call it exactly right, a crisis.
The district, to be quite frank, is not equipped as it is structured today to deal with the possibility that
that could be led in 25, 50, 75, 100 schools.
It realistically, it is not in a position to handle that.
And so they fired the guy who was in charge of it.
And as if firing that one man is going to somehow be the solution to this.
You say what to that?
I say, you know, this does not rest on the shoulders of one person.
I do think his oversight of the buildings and the maintenance for the past several decades means that he wasn't doing what he needed to do.
However, that being said, we also need to look a little bit further down the line to look at how our public schools have been starved of resources.
The legislature has
consistently decided to siphon off money from public schools and put them into privatization, which has meant that we've had much less resources for things like the upkeep of our buildings.
And so when decisions get made about what to cut, unfortunately, what has happened is the safety and health of our buildings have been on the chopping block.
So the legislature is is responsible for the mess that we're in with this crisis.
You know, Dr. Payne, one of the things that this listening audience, which is clearly heard all over the state of Wisconsin, needs to understand is that the same
Forces that helped create this problem in Milwaukee public schools I'm pretty sure that if people were to check those facilities in in school other schools across the state Right now Milwaukee is right there and everybody's talking slowly, but but I guarantee you in many of these other towns and and in cities across the state of Wisconsin There's lead in schools and it's led in the water.
Is it safe to say that?
I think so yes.
And I think if people are really interested in looking at their local community, what they can do is they can go to the Wisconsin Public Education Network and actually get the number, the amount of money that has been siphoned off from their public school district by privatization efforts.
And so they can see what we're missing in terms of the funds for our public schools.
And I would encourage people to do that.
Now you brought in Miss Kat Kaiser and good morning to you, young lady.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
Your thoughts on and why you're a part of LAID Safe Schools MKE.
Apparently you've probably got a childhood that's engaged in Milwaukee public schools.
Is it safe to say that?
Yeah, I've got twin first graders that go to Trowbridge Street School in Bayview and
You were just talking about how the district separated by Dr. Sean Kane.
And I think that that was a good start.
And now I feel like now the real work begins.
That was just the start.
And now we can really get down to business because it's really about putting new systems and new ways of keeping everyone accountable into place.
Ms.
Melody McCurdish, you are with Metcalf Park Community Bridges.
Welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Yes.
So I'm working at the community-based organizations where STARMS, which is one of the impacted school sits.
And we've been able to purchase lead filtration systems and distribute that to community members.
And we really wanted to do that to highlight that if
If our schools are historically being divested from, extracted from, right?
This is an interconnected problem.
There should be mayors, order folks, NPS, they should be working together to figure out a short-term solution and a long-term solution.
So if the community is able to figure out a short-term solution, why aren't they able to do
that?
Are you sure you didn't listen to my show last week because I said the exact same thing?
No, but
somebody probably gave me the cliff
note.
I said, listen, this is this is clearly big in the Milwaukee public schools.
And and it is it is shameful that we haven't heard from the mayor.
The all the elected officials, you know, I mean, you know, to think that Milwaukee public schools, these buildings don't belong to Milwaukee public schools.
First, people need to understand that.
You know, they don't own the buildings the taxpayers in the city on the buildings and so that needs to be understood That doesn't absolve MPS of the fact that MPS dropped the ball on its maintenance and What it needed to do, but then there needed to be oversight from city government To make sure That this didn't happen where was the oversight?
from from the city and so while while NPS is struggling trying to figure this out and rightfully so and We know that they can't handle this on it on their own But that needs to be pressure applied to city government state government To make sure the children are safe.
Come on.
What what's more important than that?
I don't look the street lights You know cleaning the streets
You know all the other things secondary to children being safe 8 5 5 7 5 2 48 42 You're tuned into a Motown Monday on the Erlingham show.
I'm joined by miss Melody McCurtis from Metcalf Park Community Bridges I'm joined by dr. Christian pain and cat Kaiser with lead safe schools MKE
855-752-4842 is the number on a Motown Monday on the Earl Ingram
show.
you
All right, welcome back to Motown Monday on the Earl Ingram Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4843, 855-752-4843.
You can text us at that same number.
I'm joined by Dr. Christian Payne, Cat Cesar, that I pronounced it properly.
Cesar, like
bizarre.
Cesar, okay.
Cesar, Cesar.
All right, both of Led Safe Schools and Ms.
Melody.
Wasn't it?
Melody McCritis with Metcalf Park Community Bridges.
And we're talking about again what continues to be, I think, just an unacceptable reality in this community.
And that's, you know, lead in the buildings, lead in the water.
And Tony says, I think every
One agrees that MPS is on the bottom of speaker boss's agenda and that's and that's come on I mean, that's really kind of it You know the fact that MPS is on the bottom of boss's agenda Hell man is 60,000 children You know whatever issues, you know Robin boss and conservatives have to to to do things that are detrimental
to 60,000 children is unacceptable.
I mean, yeah, we know Robin Voss has been opposed to Milwaukee public schools, but that shouldn't be something that's tongue in cheek.
That should be an assault on Robin Voss.
You know, how dare you?
You know, what kind of person are you that you would do things to harm 60,000 children because of where you are?
And what you think of the 60,000 children that live in the city of Milwaukee, that's what makes this so egregious, because the rest of the state knows what you just said, Tony, is 100% correct.
Let's go to the phone lines quickly, Al, from Milwaukee.
Good morning to you, Al.
You say what?
Good morning,
everyone.
I want to say two things.
One, the young lady earlier before your break,
said something about new.
It's too often that we look at the word new as something better.
Almost everybody that's on the common council on the school board that grew up in Milwaukee, most of them went to Milwaukee public schools.
And people on the school board, as you indicated, work for the community.
but they all want to be politicians.
But it's not about what's new.
If those who grew up in the city and got a decent education, you need to be looking back at some of the old stuff and put it back in place because it worked.
Not about the new and all of this stuff about lead didn't surface until we had all that flooding.
with that crystal spheridium outbreak.
And that's when we all got involved with dealing with lead pipes in the city and in our homes.
And there was a factory on the corner of Hampton and Daytona that was one of the biggest producers of lead pipes in the state.
And most of the homes and other buildings and bio hydrants were all made at that place.
They shut down in Milwaukee and moved to Fond du Lac.
Have a good day.
Thank you very much for the call.
You know, uh, Dr. Dr. Payne, uh, as Tony said, everybody knows, okay, that the state of Wisconsin, uh, the legislature has done everything within this power, uh, to disenfranchise the public schools.
not just in the city of Milwaukee, but across the entire state.
And to have two or three different districts that the taxpayers now have to support is kind of ridiculous, right?
So somebody has to suffer because there's X amount of dollars.
Yeah.
And with the surplus we had in our budget too, where's that money going?
Why can't we get it for what we clearly need right now, which is our public school system?
And look, this isn't just in the schools in Milwaukee, it's in the homes in Milwaukee as well.
And so I think it just begs the question, what is the solution?
We keep talking about this for the last.
several decades that lead is poisoning our community.
And at what point are politicians going to have the political will and the imagination that we can actually do something about it?
Well, they really don't because it's really incumbent upon the constituents to bring the necessary pressure on the politics.
because the power tricks this, you know, they don't like me using that Burbage.
But if you're not focused on what is going on in your communities, you know what's happening.
You know, children are struggling and suffering through this and families and you remain silent.
You're culpable.
Okay.
And at some point in time, we've got to make sure that that pressure comes down on them.
So they understand this is not something that MPS has to fix alone It it should be on the top of the list for the city of Milwaukee's elected officials 8 5 5 7 5 2 48 42 a phone lines are open You're tuned into a Motown Monday on the Earl England show
Just close.
to a Motown Monday on the Earl Ingram Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842, 855-752-4842.
I'm joined by Ms.
Kat Cesar, Christian Payne, and they are of Laird Safe Schools, Milwaukee, and Ms.
Melody McCurtis of Metcalf Park Community Bridges as we continue to talk about the continued...
ongoing problems that parents and children are facing in Milwaukee public schools.
You know, Ms.
McCurtis, you talked about community-based organizations and what they are doing.
Not only are the children faced with lead in the schools, but in many instances, lead at home.
And so in these rental properties, and even in some of the homes that they own.
And so, you know, we're facing a crisis.
in our community with behavior problems with children who, in many instances, having trouble succeeding in school, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they've been exposed to lead.
We know that now.
And then they wind up on the street with guns in their hands because they were not able to do what they needed to do in school, couldn't focus.
and they're on the street and they're killing one another and they're causing those sorts of mayhem.
Why is it that the lead issue is not number one?
We can talk about making sure that we get law enforcement in the public schools.
That's secondary.
But the state legislature made sure and they raised holy hell to get those officers in the school.
Why aren't they doing that to make sure that the lead is eliminated in the schools?
Yeah, so this issue is not being prioritized period, right?
This has been a decade long issue If all of these schools got lead paint in the 70s, then this problem is not a today problem, right?
There's not
On top of that, we know that there is lead in the homes.
There's lead in the water, right?
Because that same company that was here in the 70s
You know, our city really energized folks to switch out their pipes to lead, right?
So we really look back.
So that's why I'm saying this is a multi-level issue and people are too quiet about it.
So when we think about our kids going to an environment where we thinking that they're going to be safe and then they're not being safe, right?
They can't function properly because we know what lead does to the body.
But then we're not doing anything to correct.
It's almost like when they say, hey, we got this 10-year plan, we're gonna close or consolidate 50 schools, right?
Everything that they're coming out with is not repairing the harm, it's not getting at the problem at the root, it's saying, hey, we're just gonna do this big splash and go on about our day, right?
Because even if you tear down a building that's full of lead, now that lead is getting in the dirt, then it's getting in the air.
So these these band-aid solutions are not going to cut it, right?
And we're in a time where we should be prioritizing our next generation.
What are we leaving them with?
Are we leaving them with mental health issues?
No way to control themselves, right?
And then giving them no support and then saying, hey, we're not we're not at fault.
Everybody's passing the buck when everybody should be loud about it.
Everybody should be putting their heads together to figure out how do we fix
and course correct are part in it because everybody has a part, right?
When the city was like, hey, switch to lay of pipes, they had a part in it.
When our money, our taxes is getting raised for NPS, but then it's going to private schools, folks have a part in it, right?
But nobody wants a part in to actually create some real solutions to make our schools safe.
healthy and thriving for this next generation.
Mr. Zar?
Well, I just wanted to go back to something the previous caller said, which was about not just focusing on what's new, but looking at things that were already in place.
And MPS used to have more painters.
It used to have painting days.
It used to have more resources for people working in facilities and maintenance.
And that's just been shriveled down to
basically, you know, not much at all.
And so that's why we're here in this crisis.
You know, Dr. Payne.
You know, it would save us 1.7 billion per birth cohort and reduced violent crimes if we actually took care of the lead issue.
That's 2009.
fine money by the way so it would be much much larger now and so it really isn't fiscally responsible if we're just even looking at that metric it's not morally responsible either to ignore this but from a fiscal perspective it doesn't make sense to not do something about it and you know we're seeing the implications of
We're seeing the implications of the federal government's actions here, too.
This past Tuesday, HHS cut their entire CDC childhood lead prevention, poisoning prevention program.
And our Milwaukee Health Department had been working closely with them on this lead crisis, and now no longer has them to speak to or to use as a resource.
They're
gone.
Let me just go through the phone lines.
Ben, you're up.
You know, listening, you took the words out of my mouth, Ingram, first time long time listener, first time caller, love civic media, double advocates, Earl Ingram.
I miss outside the box.
You guys are, that's a great, you guys do a service for the community and for Wisconsin.
And I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Um, seriously, I'm, I'm kind of upset that we had the richest man in America.
and the world come to Wisconsin and what roads did he fix?
What pipes did he replace?
What buildings or any type of help did he give to anybody?
I'm sick of people asking for money for flyers to send to your house.
Where's the politicians that say, give me the money and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to fix your roads.
You already know who I am.
You already know
That I'm running for this office.
Why do I have to get a million advertisements on TV?
Wouldn't it be smarter for them to be like, thank you for all that money.
I'm going to remove the lead out of the schools, you know, if any of the end, like, where's Ron Johnson, right?
Is he busy on his private jets flying out to Florida, you know, busy having secret meetings in Russia, like.
Call him up.
Why is he even still a senator?
He's too busy giving tax cuts himself, and so he and his family can buy private jets, which they did, instead of helping the schools.
The communities are filled full of buildings with rich people's names on them, Carnegie Hall.
Where's the rich people now to come and help the poor?
They already took our money through our pay, and yet they still can't make us live a decent life.
You know, and like you said, man, they're putting instead of fixing the pipes, they're putting the police in the in the schools, you know, that seems like you're dealing with the symptoms, not the problem.
Hey, Ben,
I wish
I had
more time, but thank you very much for those kind words and keep listening, man.
And really appreciate it.
Tom Pamela, you're up.
Yeah, good morning, Earl.
Ben already hit on the one fact, money and politics was the problem.
I would ask any of your guests if they would agree upon the fact that most people in this country do not understand the difference between private and public and that's a real problem because public means that we the people collectively own it and we have a say in what happened when you privatize everything
It's that one owner and they don't have to listen to anything you say.
So when we go and privatize the commons, which is something that we all share in common, like pipes, lead pipes, then all of a sudden they don't have to do anything.
So I was wondering if one of your guests could maybe riff on this or tell us the listeners, I know most of your listeners know Earl, but most of your listeners need to tell about five other people.
about the difference between public and private.
Do your guests want to wrap up
that?
Hey, Tom, thank you very much for the call.
Anybody want to take a bite out of that apple?
Sure, I'll jump in.
That's all very true.
So what happens with.
with public services is that all of that is controlled or should be controlled by the people, the community.
And there is a level of transparency and accountability that doesn't exist within the private sphere.
So there's much less community power to affect privately held institutions or companies.
So I think it's a really important
point that when we take money that used to be for public schools and siphon it off to the private schools, then we are losing a whole heck of a lot, not just the funding.
You know Dr. Payne and Ms.
Czar and Ms.
McCurtis, the real outrage is this morning, as every morning,
Children are in buildings that we know lad is in What are we doing?
I mean what the hell is going on you we know it and Yet we haven't made it priority one Okay over the weekend There should have been no rest for elected officials
because they would be knowing that Monday children are going back to being exposed to lead.
Where's the urgency, right?
I mean, where is it at?
You know, it has to be priority one.
And outside of what I'm doing on these airways and what's, you know, get the lead out and others are doing.
It should be everywhere.
It should be in all the newspapers.
It should be on all the news outlets.
Hey, children, hey, Monday morning, children are going back into an unsafe environment for heaven's sakes, all over the world, our nation, and I'm 70 years old, as long as I can remember, there's been nonstop
Effort by the United States of America to make sure that third world nations had clean water All over the world Hey Charity starts at home and then the spread abroad, you know I mean these are things that that are paramount and that shouldn't even be negotiated
When the Common Council comes in to chambers today or when the mayor walks into his office, there should be non-stop focus and conversation on what are we going to do to address lead that our children are exposed to.
855-752-4842.
A Motown Monday on the Earl Ingram Show.
Everything must change Nothing stays the same No, no Everyone must change Nothing stays the same Young become the whole
And welcome back to Motown Monday on the Earling Room Show as always.
You can join us at 855-752-4842.
You can text us at that same number.
I am joined once again by Melody McCurtis.
She's with Metcalf Park Community Bridges Christian Payne and Cat Cesar.
And they are with... Come on, help me
out.
It's safe schools for lead.
Let's say it's schools.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Let's go through the phone lines quickly.
Robert from West Dallas.
Good morning to you, Robert.
You say what?
I say, um, this goes beyond the city of Milwaukee.
A lot of people are beating up the city for these issues.
Um, I would like to see the city bring a lawsuit against the state against Devon Lemay Hugh, Robin boss, um, you know, cause you know, they're holding on the money.
They have money to clean up.
They start the city of funds.
You know, this results in learning disabilities, health issues, and those of us that have a long memory, when Walker was in office, if you remember, these guys took about $750,000 from lead paint manufacturers, and then
they
changed the rules to release some of all liability.
I think some of their actions are criminal.
I think they need to take them to court and have the court say, release funds to fix the issue.
And not only that, if you stand in the way or block it, we're going to charge you with a crime.
I mean, this is people's health and learning and everything else.
You know, Robert,
not just the city.
Robert, you are just so on point, man.
You really are.
Thank you very much for the call.
Terry from the Northwoods.
Terry, you say what?
I want to ask the one thing you said, Earl, just five minutes ago.
Priority one, let's get the Leno.
Priority one.
That's all.
All
right.
Thank you very much for the call.
Dr. Payne, what do you want to say to people who are listening?
Because again, this is an issue across the state, across the nation.
It's really what this is.
And as you're mobilizing, people are listening.
What can they do to support
you?
Well, if you're local here in Milwaukee, or even if not, come to one of our community assemblies.
We're having our next community assembly.
this Saturday, April 12th from 2.30 to 4.30 at the East Branch Library in Milwaukee.
And there we're going to have a lot of action items for people to do, things that they can do that moment before they leave to contact their state reps and push for a budget that prioritizes our schools and led removal from our communities.
Common council actions that
they can participate in, MPS Board actions that they can participate in.
And we're going to have the kids participate in an action as well.
Kids don't want this in their schools.
They want to be able to go know that they're going to be healthy in their schools.
So we're going to have action items for them too.
If you're not local, all of those action items are on.
on our website at www.ledsafeschoolsmke.com.
You can do this right from your own home.
And I would encourage people to start organizing in their local communities and to connect with us.
We can build power across the state for this issue altogether.
People need to realize that they have more power than they think they do, especially when we come together.
Well, you've already proven that by the movement that's happening.
inside the district already.
So, Ms.
McCurdish, you wanna say what to the listeners?
Yeah, so everything Dr. Christian just said, follow all of those websites, follow the Instagram and the Facebook of lead safe schools, MKE and Metcalfe Park 2020, just to stay update on the rapid actions and join us.
This is not gonna be a...
overnight thing.
This is something that we're going to be working on for the long haul.
And we have multiple layers that we have to tap into.
So, so join us.
Uh, even if you don't got kids, everybody should care about kids being safe.
Yeah.
Because kids grow up to be adults.
You
know, I think the, um, Mrs. R, you say what?
Well, I just want to make the point that three weeks ago I was not involved with Let's Save Schools Milwaukee at all and I went to one of the community assemblies that they organized and now I'm involved and it's as easy as that.
I mean, I think really working together.
I just want to make the point that working together is really the important thing and anyone can do it.
You can just start.
Just, you know, come to an assembly, follow the pages like Melody was saying.
It's very
important.
You know, Dr. Payne, I'm with you, right?
I'm with you.
Yes.
All right.
855-752-4842.
We've got to leave it there for now, Dr. Payne, but we'll certainly have you back on again and again and again.
Thank you very much, Mrs. Zah.
Thank you very much, Ms.
McCurtis.
Up next, Reggie Jackson on a Motown Monday on the Earl Ingham Show.
See you guys later.
Bye.
Bye.
Thank you.