Boom ping ping, the truth takes wing And walkie's voice, let the city sing Boom ping ping, hear the freedom ring
is Monday, July 6th, 2026.
Let me first start off by saying it is very good to be back.
It was great to be away for a little while, but it is, of course, good to be back.
And in the amount of time that I was gone, which was only two days, but it was a good two days.
It was a proper two days, a lot transpired.
Lot of things took place obviously nationally because a lot of you celebrated the greatest country on earth the United States of America as she turned 250 years old and if you are of Any kind of minority status the 4th of July is always a very conflicting holiday because you have to look at where the lineage of your family was at the
time of independence, was it in fact a great revolution that garnered and fostered freedom, hope and opportunity for new people or were those freedoms limited in their scope?
So it's always a very introspective time.
And if you are curious about that introspection, you can just drive through any African American neighborhood in America and there are plenty of them.
count how many American flags you see as opposed to if you go to a neighborhood that lacks that kind of diversity and you will see a Larger number of American flags.
It seems that we celebrate America differently and I do want to spend a little bit of time on that because we have hit a milestone for our democracy one quarter of a millennium
Is what the United States is an age and I obviously we've come a very long way and I would say there's a long way to go But it doesn't seem like the way we are moving at least collectively is forward We are either stall temporarily or maybe just maybe we are moving backwards And so we have a YouTube poll question of the day as we always do because you know, we have inquisitive temperaments We just want to know what you think about some stuff
Couple of days ago in July 4th nation turned 250 years old and this question is very very simple And I know that there's a lot of discussion In between the responses that we have for you on the YouTube poll.
It's very simple.
Are you proud to be an American?
Yes or no now It's more nuanced than that and there's a lot of details you can feel and maybe there's some things you are proud of and you're not proud of but at the end of the day It's a fundamental question.
Are you proud?
To be an American yes or no, so if you haven't done so already join us on YouTube by searching 1017 the truth hitting subscribe You'll have a whole bunch of benefits if you do that you'll be able to view our in-studio cameras You'll be able to participate in the effervescent
Live YouTube chat which sometimes follows along and ask questions and provides commentary to the show that I am doing or sometimes the YouTube chat is its own separate program that has nothing to do with me whatsoever either way pick your poison and you'll also be able to vote on our YouTube poll as we are I suppose basking in the afterglow maybe of the
250th anniversary of the United States of America.
So before we dive into things today, I was disconnected from what was happening.
I was disconnected from local news.
I disconnected from national news every now and again if I was inside because I spent a good piece of my vacation time outside enjoying just the weather and the sun and I was in Memphis, Tennessee.
I wasn't here.
So I don't
Know what happened in Milwaukee?
I wasn't even checking my phone You know what the best part of being gone was there would be like a 12-hour span Where I just my phone was just somewhere in the house.
I didn't care where it was I wasn't checking any calls and text messages.
I didn't want to see any news updates Nothing.
It was the most glorious thing because I cannot tell you how long it has been where I could feel
Comfortable and confident just disconnecting from my phone.
It is a totally different experience ladies and gentlemen and that to me was the best part one of the best parts I really had a hell of a time just being away and being out of Milwaukee for a period of time, but I don't know if we know how consuming Our phones are and we obviously you can see people just walking around in public with their noses buried
in their phones but the emotional toll that it takes on you and you may not notice it in the moment but if you're scrolling and scrolling and then you see a fight here and a shooting here apparently a cop got run over then another cop got blown up by fireworks so when I came in this morning I was okay let's let's see what I missed I was like oh this is a doozy Milwaukee really showed its butt and then the fight at Summerfest 20 something people get arrested
Fighting at Summerfest.
I was like, well, I'm glad that I was disconnected.
I didn't know a lot of this stuff until I Well, I came back very late very very late last night side note O'Hare is the worst airport in the history of humans It's horrible.
It's it's big for no I hate O'Hare.
I don't ever want to fly out of O'Hare so quiet is kept
This past weekend was the first time I've ever done a connecting flight at O'Hare.
Awful.
It was hell on earth.
It looks like... You know how Trump is just a real bad manager of important stuff?
It's almost like Trump laid the plan for O'Hare put a bunch of gates right here and make the very long walk Make it impossible to get from one place to another just make it impossible Make people miss their flights every 35 seconds the number of people that I saw Sprinting through that airport some of you are old enough to remember that Hertz commercial where OJ was Sprinting through the airport and doing the hurdles over the seats in the airport Gate areas that is what you see
That old hair just an awful experience and it's just looks old and gross whatever side note on that Lots of place I want to try because we need to we got to have some explanation for what I'm calling social Vandalism because that is exactly what we are saying.
We've got you know entertainment districts around the city that have been around for a while
and they have very significant economic and cultural impact in the city of Milwaukee.
They welcome tourists, they offer entertainment, you know, there's bars and restaurants and all sorts of things.
I also know that those areas are not for everyone, but I want to give a better explanation as to why we are seeing some of the things that we are seeing, the fights and the violence.
And we can just, we can simplify it and say, oh, these are just a bunch of really bad people.
There's a bunch of really awful.
kids and they're just disruptive to be disruptive.
And if we gave them something to do, they would not be disrupting these entertainment districts, which are pretty sizable investments for the city of Milwaukee.
Because I think when we talk about some of the violent activities that go on on Brady Street or Water Street, we're not looking at those entertainment districts as the major investments that they are as far as our tax dollars investing into those places and its infrastructure, but also the money and the revenue that they generate.
Brady Street and Water Street are just two examples of really major investments that pay dividends because they attract people.
And when you have folks that are content on being disruptive and fighting and shooting and the overwhelming police presence, it takes away from that investment.
But I don't want anyone to think this problem is simple.
It is not.
I'm going to do my level best today to explain but not excuse some of these behaviors and then hopefully.
at the end of the show, people will have a much better understanding of if you built things that will take, assuming it's young people.
And if we built, when I say young people, I mean like under 40.
So you can't just build a bunch of roller skating rinks or whatever you think kids want to do.
You have to have other entertainment districts for younger adults that are in their 30s that are in their 20s.
But just know that if that happened, because that's a big suggestion.
Oh, if we just build something or create something for them, then they won't cause disruptions downtown and they won't interrupt the course of business and travel and tourism on Water Street and Brady Street.
Here's what I want folks to understand.
Whatever you build, they will destroy that too.
And it will be a wasted investment.
So don't think that what you are seeing, this social vandalism will stop.
if new or alternative venues and entertainment is created.
The ingredients, the people are the problem and they will destroy whatever they are not invested in and maybe here's a better example.
I've always been fascinated by like graffiti and I know it's a part of culture and there are artists who don't have access to
to studios and where they can be professional artists because you know graffiti actually is it is artwork now it's not always looked at as such especially where it pops up but if the the artist doesn't have a place or a space in which they can exhibit their art and here's the big part if they don't own the building if they're not invested in the building they don't care if they tag it they want to display their mark
on something that they don't own and have no ownership connection to.
A lot of times, if somebody tags a building or they tag a train in NYC, they don't own that train.
They didn't put their money up to invest in that transportation infrastructure of a subway train.
Somebody tags the side of a building.
They didn't build that building.
They didn't staff that building.
They're not responsible for the maintenance and the upkeep of that building, but they want to leave their mark on it.
So they can do so with no remorse because they don't own it when people don't have a real Ownership in something when it's not their butt on the line when it's not their money on the line It's not their investment on the line.
They are detached from it
And if the people that are going down to our entertainment districts and we're going to talk about some of the things that transpired over the weekend and the fighting and the shooting and the cop got ran over and then a cop got blown up by fireworks, which was kind of odd because I watched the cop firework video because there was a couple of fireworks that went off in the parking lot.
The first one was of some distance away from the officer and officer.
It's a lady cop.
Of course.
Oh, I could do a whole show on lady cops.
Sorry ladies, it's not for you.
It's not it isn't we'll do that another time But then another I don't know a firecracker or something goes off and it still is a sizable distance from the officer and then the lady Did you see it?
I'm sure somebody else thought maybe we'll play later.
She just lays on the ground She just flops like LeBron James you ever see LeBron James just take a flop like nobody touches him
Nobody filed LeBron.
He did.
Oh, he just falls to the ground and he looks around for the reps.
It's almost like what that officer did.
Like she was overwhelmed.
She was also by herself.
So we'll I suppose we'll have a conversation about that, but I just I want to explain.
Otherwise, we're just going to continue to do this like circular firing squad of how terrible and how horrible the people are and the people are horrible and terrible, but they feel an incessant need to socially vandalize spaces.
Which they have no ownership and let's just say I don't know maybe it's a group of teenagers I say teenagers because they're easy to pick on and because they don't feel any connection to Brady Street and Water Street It's someone else's and they get to go there for free There's no admission fee.
There's no cover charge.
There's no security It's like it's open to the public but because all of what they see is someone else's they can destroy it They can act in a way that is not culturally appropriate when I say culturally appropriate
The different entertainment districts we have in the city, they have a culture.
Water Street has a certain feel to it.
It's got a certain flavor to it.
Brady Street has a feel and a flavor.
And also, there's some history to some of those areas as well.
And if you are not acting in a way that is the prevailing culture of that place, you're just going to destroy it.
So I want to give some explanation because at the end of this program, I want people to be much more well informed about.
Why people are acting in the way they're acting and the solution is not building other things So they can go and have somewhere else to go they can go and play basketball stuff's not gonna work y'all know that the good kids are already doing that stuff
The good kids that want to be productive and don't want to cause trouble and mayhem, there's plenty of things for them to do.
I went through about a month or so ago.
I went through the 82-page MPS Recreation Guide.
Now, there's some fees to some of those activities, but it's like $10.
You got to spend more than that on coffee and Air Jordan tennis shoes.
So it isn't you have to build other things because the ingredients and the elements are destroying our entertainment districts now would destroy that too So I want to have an explanation Where it's not an excuse But we're gonna wonder why things are not getting better and also I'm starting to understand why the Democratic candidates for governor They don't have a solution for this because there isn't one because policy can't fix it Policy can only create more rules and more laws that are enforced
by law enforcement.
That does not fix a problem.
It is a responsibility of the community that is producing these bad ingredients.
No law, no candidate for governor, mayor, county executive, no candidate for Jesus nor any of his disciples can fix this.
This is a product.
This is a production.
These people were birthed by elements and those elements that birth these bad ingredients have to be the ones to fix it.
Nobody else can.
We're going to talk about it today.
I'm going to be a little bit smarter today.
A little bit.
Glad to be back.
Hope you guys had a good weekend.
Make sure you.
Check out our YouTube poll.
Are you proud to be in America now?
I want you to take everything into consideration now the good the bad the ugly the Progress the regression take it all in and just answer the simple yes or no question on the YouTube poll are you proud?
I'm gonna go ahead and just give you my answer right now.
I'm gonna tell you what it is.
I'm gonna tell you.
I'll tell you when I come back.
You're listening to The Truth with Sherwin Hughes exclusively on 101.7 FM.
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Oh, the chatters are chatting.
Curly Q says, we do what we want in this chat.
Yeah, you do.
I mean, I'd like for it to somewhat correspond to what we're talking about in the show, because maybe amongst the chatters via our YouTube page or YouTube channel, whatever it is, maybe some solutions will come to light.
But we're searching for solutions in the wrong place because we're looking for somebody else to fix this.
The social climate of Milwaukee is not an infrastructure project.
If there's a pothole in the street, somebody will come and fix that.
If the traffic lights aren't working, someone will come and fix that.
If there's a bunch of snow that falls in the wintertime, there's services that will come and fix that.
If your house is on fire, you can call somebody like, hey,
Send a truck my house is burning.
There's Something will come and fix that and so we tend to Look at government in a real general kind of way like oh if there's a problem It can fix that no it's not it's not supposed to if anything a core function of government is If people are trying they're very very best and they're trying really really hard and they're falling a little bit short But it's still gonna take their effort then government can come in and maybe help you out a little bit
It's not going to raise your kids for you.
It's not going to give you a pathway for success.
It's going to provide some resources and some opportunities, but you have to know how to take advantage of them.
And if you can't take advantage of them or if you don't know how, you can't blame anybody for that.
There's nobody that we can call.
There's no person that we can vote for that's going to fix what we see.
Elected officially got to be careful with this because we should have learned this 30 years ago with the 1994 crime bill.
We wanted to stop to the drive by shootings and the gang violence and the crack epidemic.
We wanted it to stop immediately and we were willing to support anything that would stop it immediately.
And so states built prisons.
They built a bunch of them.
Congress passed laws.
They passed a bunch of them.
States passed laws.
They passed a bunch of them, including three strikes laws.
And then we realized we went too far because a bunch of black people were getting locked up.
Like, oh, we went too far.
So when you ask government to do something, its solution is going to be faulty every single time.
There has to be investment from the actual people separate and apart from government.
I sometimes can relate to some of those quote unquote patriot people.
They hate the government.
Now they hate the government for different reasons than I do.
But they see how it's ineffective and inefficient on their wants needs and desires what they truly want what they truly need now some of those quote-unquote Patriots as we are still in the spirit of America turning 250 years old They hate the government because the government told them that they had to integrate They hate the government because the government said yes black people can actually live next door to you and black kids can go to your school
That's why they hate the government.
They hate the government because the government has too much control.
It's too big.
It's too powerful.
And it tells them what to do.
Have you ever stopped to think why Republicans like small government want everything?
There's no government.
We don't need all these programs.
We don't need all these departments because the federal government tells states what to do.
Some states were in fact slave states and they were willing to go to war to defend that.
Then the federal government came in and said no.
Can't do Can't do slavery anymore in the southern states were like come on We love it Abraham Lincoln was like do you need to love something else?
You need to love business and industry and wage labor because the north can't compete with chattel slavery and the south was like, oh Fine we'll let them go but We're gonna be really mean to them For a super long time and then the federal government is like, okay
Just be mean to them locally.
Southern states were like, fine.
And also the southern states were like, we're going to put a lot of monuments up.
We're going to honor all the Confederates.
And the federal government was like, oh, this is going to be ugly, but fine.
The southern states were like, we're still going to fly our flag a lot, like everywhere.
And the federal government was like, OK, but you have to let the black people, you got to let them walk around a little bit.
And that's basically the story of that.
I was in the reddest of red states over the weekend.
And I'm always fascinated by race relations in in the South and Tennessee is a different kind of South than say in Alabama or Mississippi.
I'd say rural Georgia because Atlanta is not the South.
Atlanta is a mix of like Chicago, Washington, D.C.
San Francisco and when I throw in the sprinkle of San Francisco into the mix and the matrix of Atlanta I'm putting the gay the gay the gay in San Francisco is has just there was like a haze like they crop dusted glitter over Atlanta and they imported their glitter from San Francisco so Georgia is not It's not the traditional South in fact you've got
Two Democratic senators representing Georgia, which is a total anomaly and here's one better one is a Jewish fellow and you know the Christian evangelicals they don't like to Jewish so much Unless it's Israel then that's but Israel is Zionism.
It's a whole it's not the the average Jewish person They don't like the average you because they think that the average dude like every average you murdered Jesus and they don't like that, but if you're an Israeli
Fighting the terrorists, then I guess you're a different kind of you or whatever.
I can honestly say that the pleasantries of the South, interracially, are leaps and bounds better than they are in Milwaukee.
Now I've been going to the South my entire life.
It is where the majority of my family is from.
And so over the years, as I have grown and
maturity and expertise.
I know how to pay attention to certain certain social cues and aggressions and microaggressions.
They are tangibly more severe in the north.
I don't even know if we realize it and what happens is the the sheer just hatred of black people because you got to keep in mind what we represent here.
If you go back far enough, I feel like I need to do a history lesson because I need everyone to be caught up here.
Black people in the North represent economic competition, where we weren't before.
We were not.
We just came up here and just started getting crazy jobs, factory jobs, assembly line jobs, production jobs, and we're making money.
That didn't really exist in the North.
And so there's always been an animosity.
And now if you look at where we are, and I got to fill in the blanks and explain a lot of this, there's no demand for black labor anymore.
None.
And what you are seeing.
is a couple of things all coming to a head at once to try and explain, not excuse some of the behaviors that we're seeing.
People are having less and less children.
That is an absolute fact.
As time goes on, people are having less and less children.
And we can figure out why that is.
We can talk about marriage rates declining.
But when you have people making a conscious decision to be childless or to have dramatically less children, and we see this just in populations, the black community is not exploding in population like people think.
In fact, we're either staying the same or we're slightly regressing.
There is no natalism in the black community.
Nobody is running around saying hey We need more black women to have more babies and we're gonna give black women $2,000 to have more babies Donald Trump floated that other nations have floated like there's some nations that actually have a program where they'll give you a year six months of paid maternity leave They'll give you stipends and give you all sorts of money because they want their women To have more children.
That's not happening in America people don't want to have kids and maybe because it's so expensive and kids are a major liability their time liability
And they're a financial liability.
Now they also are fun, especially when kids say swear words, I just get tickled by that.
So there's some benefits, I suppose, for some people to have children.
For the most part, they're a liability.
And what you were starting to see is the sentiment that is producing people having less children in America is the children that are here are not wanted.
They are neglected.
And when children get neglected, they go out and they become social vandals because no one wants them on top of that.
There's no demand for black labor.
Why would you teach black kids to read?
I want you to be practical now, because some of y'all think, well, they're supposed to teach our children, because it's their job.
And the police's job is to protect and serve, right?
You think that a bunch of white people that control the curriculum of MPS cares of black kids' read or not?
There's no demand for black labor.
And then you see the invents or the advent, rather,
of the content creator where people are just doing outrageous things to try and make money that way because there's no demand for black labor.
As much as we hate the institution of slavery, I think it has a relevant talking point when you talk about this country and it turning 250 years old in the Fourth of July and all of that, there was a demand for black labor in the antebellum South, especially between like 1812 and 1861 cotton exploded.
And it's very labor-intensive.
There was a demand for black labor.
Now, it was slave labor, but there was a demand for it.
Black people were needed.
We were income.
We were revenue.
We were capital.
And then after the antebellum period, we start moving into more industrialized forms of production, right, where black people were migrating out of the South, number one, to find their families, number two, to take advantage of...
industrial work opportunities that exist in the north.
In fact, some old folks will be able to tell you that they were 15, 16 years old and Union reps from the north would take the train down south to recruit African Americans to come work in the factories in Milwaukee and Chicago and Gary and in the automotive plants in Detroit.
Why do you think we came?
Some of us were recruited.
Some black folks you know how tough it is to get somebody to relocate you know bad It has to be first of all where you live to just pack up and just move and millions of black people did that But we had some help we were recruited because there was a need for black labor Then we deindustrialized when we deindustrialized
We not only destroyed the factory infrastructure because we wanted cheaper labor because American labor.
The further we were going down that path of America, producing everything, the more expensive.
Everything got and you can't have expensive production and expensive labor, especially in the seventies and a very high inflationary period.
So we shut down a lot of the factors.
I know I'm giving you like a a cliff notes version of history, but I'm trying to explain.
Nobody wants black people.
No one.
We live in a climate where nobody wants children.
And the children that are here are unloved and unwanted and abused.
And this is how they are acting.
They are socially vandalizing a society in which they are not one.
I saw some footage from one of the Carolinas.
Don't know why we need two Carolinas, but whatever.
Where there was a teen takeover and they were beating a cop.
Another woman cop.
She should have pulled out her pistol she's trying to hold on to her pistol like she couldn't defend herself from punches and hold on to her pistol because she was trying to hang on to her her firearm I don't know if they ultimately stole her firearm, but they're beating a female officer Like mercilessly and one of these teens take over some take a break come back I want to further explore the fact that there's no demand and desire for black labor.
Nobody wants Nobody wants black people.
It's a really awful thing to say, but some people just are not getting it
We are being displaced on our own society There's no no demand for our labor if there's no demand for our labor because we don't produce anything We produce a lot of entertainment the true.
We're very entertaining.
We've got music and dance Like reality shows that we produce a lot of that but even in the music the entertainment part of black of black labor and black production is mockery Our labor is not wanted we'd rather hire a Mexican
We would we rather get cheap labor from somewhere else and sell the products here So there's no demand for black labor and then the one important part of black production our creativity It has to mock black people.
So Tyler Perry is a great example.
He's a billionaire, right?
Tyler Perry plays a woman So he almost has to mock black masculinity For his production to be worth any kind of major major money.
Just give it some thought.
I'm taking a break.
Come back
Make sure you answer our YouTube poll question.
Are you proud to be an American?
I am.
I'm proud to be an American.
I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
And I am who I am because I am an American.
I am who I am because my family and my history.
So yes, I'm proud to be an American.
It doesn't mean I'm proud of America.
Sherwin is just proud to be an American.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes will be right back.
Don't touch that dial.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes will be right back.
on 1017 The Truth, The Truth App and 1017TheTruth.com.
You are listening to The Truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 The Truth, The Truth App and 1017TheTruth.com.
Our poll question via YouTube.
Are you proud to be an American?
52% of you say no.
48% say yes.
I don't think it would be this evenly split.
And I'd imagine people will look at a lot of the negative things that this country is.
And that this country stands for and they're making their judgment or maybe I'm off base I'm not sure why 48% of the people say yes, they're proud to be American and 52% which is the majority Are not proud to be an American.
Are you looking at all the other things that are done in the name of this nation?
Or are you looking at your individual set of circumstances as an American?
I will say this now.
It's not equal because nothing is equal There are opportunities that are that exist here that we take for granted
other people they'll die to get here.
There are people and I have to look at it in that context as bad as it is for us because Americans want everything.
We want everything all the time at maximum speed and we want to put as little effort into getting it as possible which is insane.
But if we're not getting everything that we want every decision that we make has got to be handed to us on a silver platter and if the silver platter ain't shiny enough then we don't want it at all.
That's us you have some people that will die to get here as bad as it is Including our leadership politically.
They still would rather be here.
That's gotta be worth something All I know is this I'm thinking myself because they know what America is they know America better than we know it They study America.
They don't speak English for God's sake.
We don't speak any other languages other than the little Leabonics Oh, they study America profusely
American history is more thoroughly taught in other Western nations than it is here.
Everybody's very curious about us.
We're not really curious about anybody.
Not really.
Americans are very ethnocentric.
But they study this nation.
They know all about it.
And they come here knowing how bad it is.
And here's what's crazy.
Some of them can come here and within the same generation they can excel because they know this country very intently.
And they would rather be here.
So I got to think to myself if people are dying to come here and are risking deportation, do you think that Donald Trump's heavy-handed immigration enforcement has stopped people from coming?
Nope.
And even the people that are here that are at risk of deportation, they're not saying, oh, I probably should pack up and leave now.
And for a while, you know, the Trump administration was giving people money to leave.
If you were here illegally and didn't have all your paperwork done, they were going to give you a little bit of money.
For you to get the hell out of here and the people like nah, I'll still take my chances So wherever it is that people are coming from all I know is I don't want to live there As bad as we think it is here it's way Way worse somewhere else.
So I suppose I'm proud of that a little itty-bitty tiny bit Linda says sure when
Women are having children later in their lives for absolutely the best reasons, but that's also High-risk pregnancy and less fertility so women are waiting to have kids if you wait to do something guess what you don't really want to do it Everybody knows that the best time is to have children early have them young have them in your teens have them in your 20s now We know economically that's not always feasible, but think about this you know much more life you have if all your kids are grown when you're 40
You're done raising kids.
You're done.
You can live the rest of your life.
You can still work for the next 10, 15, 20 years, have a nice retirement.
Don't have to worry about raising dependents.
Women having children later is an unintended or maybe intended consequence of people not wanting kids.
Look at the era in which, and I'm just going to let statistics argue this.
I'm not going to argue this subjectively.
Look at the areas in American history where populations were exploding.
Look when women and girls were getting pregnant early.
Graduate from high school, get married, start a family.
Now it's graduate from high school, go to college, go to graduate school, get your job, advance, advance, advance, promotion, promotion, promotion, all the while just like hoeing.
just still hoeing but it's waiting and waiting and oh I'm not ready to find a man and oh now I'm 42 now I think it's about time if you put having children off until you do all of that you really didn't want them because you see them as a burden you're preparing yourself for the burden that they actually are so women having children later and men too I don't know if men are what I don't know what the hell men are doing nowadays I don't even know men have been replaced by the bear and I'm okay with it
I'm fine with that.
I'm.
I know this much.
And this is not to be offensive.
Considering the circumstances, the higher rates of suicide, alcoholism, drug use, drug abuse, early death, all the things that impact man.
And it's a lot like obviously nobody cares.
I mean, we care.
I'd rather be a man.
I just.
I just would considering all of the negative social indicate and men like I guess we're lonely because we don't live as long and we get older.
We have less and less social networks.
Women tend to have bigger and more robust social networks as they get older because they get widowed.
And also when women are old, they're like, oh, we're not competing against each other anymore.
We might as well be friends in our seventies.
I hated you when I was in my 20s.
But now that.
The men are all dead and our husbands have all left us and have passed away.
Let's be friends now.
Fair enough, y'all can have that.
But yeah, I'd rather be a man.
Also, it pays a little bit more.
In some cases, no, it does not.
But I like my chances, you know?
I like that when I sit down, and this is not a strike against women, because I have been doing my level best to tell when women apply for a job, if you're qualified for the job and they want you, you're in the interview and you're talking salary.
the employer will throw okay we're gonna have good news for you Sheila and offer you fifty two thousand dollars a year Sheila jumping up and down and clapping her hands Sheila they're playing you
If they're offering you $52,000 a year, they don't want to pay you the other $35,000 that they have slated for that position because they know Sheila's gonna take the 52 and be happy about it.
And then Sheila gonna get mad when she finds out everybody else is making $80,000 a year because she jumped at the 52.
You gotta negotiate for your salary.
Hey Sherwin, we're looking forward to bringing you on and they hype it up.
Oh, you're gonna love this salary and benefits package.
Oh, you're gonna love it.
Here it is.
Boom.
This is where we're gonna offer you.
Nope.
Huh?
What?
No.
Y'all gonna have to come stronger than that.
Y'all over here coming with the 10 of spades.
I need you to come with a big joker.
We got some folks coming by from...
UW Milwaukee the roar ready program because I want to give you guys some alternatives and some options for the kids things for the young people to do get them some academic enrichment and get them meeting and associating and socializing with other kids You know for those of you that care about such things we're gonna have some couple of folks coming in from my alma mater Damn name is spelled wrong on a sheet here y'all gotta get your lives No, I'm saying it's you Xavier, but I just
We got our meeting this afternoon Who has the meeting sure when Hughes or sure when hudges hudge sure when you think Hughes, okay?
Cuz sure when hudges got shot so did Sherman Sherman Hughes got his blame brains blown out on Brady Street Say that ten times fast.
Let's take a break.
I'm back at 10 o'clock.
We're talking to Who's it does it say yeah mark young?
Who's UWM's chief recruitment and outreach officer and Andrea Page the assistant director of welcome programs?
I Don't think that I had a welcome program when I was at UWM was like welcome to this tuition boy Truth with Sherwin Hughes on one of one seven of them will be right back the truth with Sherwin
Linda says, the black diaspora is not for the weak in this country.
That is why we must change the black verbiage to human beings guaranteed the equal rights opportunities as all other human beings.
That's insane.
Nobody's listening to us because we don't produce anything that America needs to survive.
I gotta go a little step further.
Let me read some more comments here, because I don't think people are quite getting it.
Y'all think that there's something that we can do.
If there was something that black people could do to change the mindsets and attitudes of other people, unless you produce something that America needs and must purchase from us, and must get from us solely, we're not, because our labor is not needed anymore.
Our labor was needed during slavery, our labor was needed during like the industrial migrations when we came to the Upper Midwest, to Chicago, to Gary, and to...
Michigan into Milwaukee.
Our labor is not needed anymore.
They used to recruit black labor because they needed it.
They don't need it anymore.
Labor is not foreign.
And then there was another comment.
Here we go.
Not really a city girl says, our people have been castrated.
No, there was something else she said.
Here it is.
I'm glad that she said this because I think this is an attitude that a lot of people have, but we're being led astray by attitudes that are.
Fairy tales she says you have to be able to get into the mud and fight With that mindset This is why the white people dominate the government because too many of our people fear monger and can't handle the battle Let me be real honest with you not really a city girl if you get into politics, especially in the city of Milwaukee You're not fighting white people.
You're fighting black people
Who wants to be a black elected official when 99% of your waking moments are fighting the people that you are fighting for?
They hate your guts because they don't understand what the hell you do the civics education in this city is worse than our literacy and our literacy is something like like 60% of black people especially under the poverty line can even read That's not
You know, you don't change mindsets if people don't even know what government is.
And here's the other thing about government.
No, I don't think we need more black people in government.
We need more black people in business because all government can do is is regulate business and protect it.
Government doesn't create business.
So the more black people that we have in higher office, they're only regulating and protecting business.
We need black entrepreneurs that can make deals.
And here's the reason why the white folks can dominate.
Because at the end of the day, they might be on warring political sides.
Look at their stock portfolios.
They all own and invest in the same companies.
So they can own the business.
But then also, once they get elected, they can control the regulation of the businesses that they own, whether they're the actual owners or they are the major stockholders of those businesses.
Black folks are just on one side, just being on the side of regulating businesses or supporting them.
not creating them.
You'll never get independently wealthy as an elected official or a politician.
You get independently wealthy from the things that you learn and the connections that you make.
It's like you'll never get wealthy working for somebody else.
You can make money working for somebody else, but wealthy, never.
Just like if you're working on behalf of the people as an elected official, you can never become wealthy.
The black community lacks wealth.
Once you have wealth,
Your community has no more problems because then you can own the means of production once black people have wealth We can literally buy white people we can buy their labor Right now they're buying ours But for very very low rates that keep us deep in the throats of poverty and the more black people you have in poverty The less effective we are going to be at implementing social change for ourselves because nobody respects poverty poverty is managed poverty is dealt with and in most cases it's criminalized
And that's where we're at.
So no, we don't need more black elected officials.
We need more black folks that have business savvy that control the flow of money and resources.
We need to be in a position where we can tell a black or white person, no, you can't have that loan for that development.
No, we're not going to give you the money for it.
You can't do it.
No.
Because I would be leading my people into.
Not just a burning building like Dr. King thought integration was.
I'll be leading my people into an inferno.
If I say we need more black elected officials, you're going to spend more time fighting your very constituents than you will spend fighting on their behalf.
And it's just it isn't worth it.
It's not.
There's a period of time where there was a sentiment where quote unquote black lives matter.
That's gone.
That was a fad.
You guys remember hyper color t-shirts They were big in like the 80s Of course, you don't remember those most of you were too young So it was a t-shirt that was activated by body heat or just by just by touch So if you they came in pastel colors very 80s, but if someone touched your hyper color t-shirt It would change color because the heat of the handprint they were all the rage back in the day
So my mother bought me a hyper-colored t-shirt because that was a big deal when you were in seventh grade at least a brown deer if you had a hyper-colored t-shirt I couldn't wear to wear my weight to wear my hyper-colored t-shirt to school the next day But it was wrinkles So I ironed My hyper-colored t-shirt now remember this is a shirt that is something in the material it was sensitive to heat so somebody touched it
It would leave a different color of their hand print.
Well, I ironed it and I broke it because I put too much heat on it.
I said all that to say this.
Nobody wears hyper color t-shirts anymore because that fad has passed.
Wanted to promote and prop up and give opportunity to black people.
It was a fad and it took George Floyd's murder and it was only a moment of white guilt.
Only a moment and we couldn't make enough meaningful progress.
And our problem is this though.
The very community that is suffering under the weight of its ignorance is eating itself.
And how can I encourage someone who want to run for office to represent people that will also eat you as an elected official?
You will be consumed.
And that's just not, I couldn't, it's hard for me to do that in good faith.
Yeah, run for office, they say.
It'll be great, they say.
You'll get death threats.
Not to mention outside groups can come in and dupe your own constituents and make your own constituents turn against you It's just it's insane Estimated annual visitors to Brady Street between two and two million eight hundred thousand people Water Street entertainment district annual visitors four point two to five point eight million people
Brady Street has between 650 and 900,000 unique visitors.
These are people that have never been there before.
Water Street every year has between 1,200,000 and 1,800,000 unique visitors.
Annual direct spending on Brady Street is between $95 and $135 million.
Water Street between a quarter billion and $340 million.
The estimated total economic impact of just Brady Street alone is between 140 and 190 million dollars.
Water Street is right around a half of a billion dollars.
If the social vandalism continues, we will lose somewhere around three quarters of a billion dollars of tourism and travel spending on just those two entertainment districts.
And you have people, the bad ingredients.
are infiltrating those areas and they are destroying these very sizable payoffs for the city of Milwaukee.
At the very least, someone should say, you know what?
Maybe you all should stop going down there and causing all the trouble and the chaos because a lot of the money that we need to help the city and to pave the roads and plow the snow does come from the tax revenue and the profit that is generated from Brady Street and Water Street.
But if you guys keep going down there and acting a fool, then there will literally be nothing in a community that is in the negative.
Although no official count exists, several data sources allow reasonable estimates, evidence include the Brady Street Business Improvement District pedestrian studies, Brady Street Festival attendance, Harley Davidson homecoming, Summer Festival spillover.
business occupancy rates and restaurant sales.
A typical year typically includes 18,000 to 25,000 visitors on a busy summer Saturday on Brady Street, 8 to 12,000 on Friday nights, 3 to 7,000 during the weekday.
Applying seasonal variation, this produces an annual estimate of between 2 and 2.8 million visitors annually.
Only about one third represent unique people because many residents visit frequently and repeatedly.
Estimated unique visitors are between 650,000 and 900,000 a year and that's huge for the city of Milwaukee So if we lose that because of the threat of crime and violence the money that we will lose always like it's how much it costs us in policing and overtime Just like some people are not they don't want to be elected officials because they don't want to deal with a hassle on the headache People don't want to be cops in Milwaukee either.
That's a hard job to try and sell and you know that by
a certain year, it might be 20, 29 or 20, 20, 20, 30.
If the city of Milwaukee does not have a minimum number of police, we're going to lose 10%.
The shared revenue increase that we got, we're going to lose.
So the city will have even less money.
Think about how ironic this is.
If we don't have a certain number of police officers on the force in Milwaukee, and I don't know how you're going to get them because who in the hell wants to be a cop here?
You might get hit by a firework.
A cop got run over by a car.
Let me tell you what.
If there was a job where someone said, hey, Sherwin, you might get shot, fireworks, or run over by a car.
Do you want that job?
No.
Put me in a studio behind bulletproof glass.
That's where I'd be.
So if we don't have a certain number of police, we're going to lose even more money, and the crime and social problems in the city are going to get even worse.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes will be right back.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes returns after this on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm You are listening to the truth with
Erwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth.com Linda says sure when you're preaching a discouraging depressing oppressing and hopeless message that you don't want to why because
Everybody understands what's happening to black people except for black folks.
We're still looking around like, why is this happening to us?
They've been telling us from the beginning.
And we thought because we got a little bit of progress that our progress would be cumulative, it is not.
You got to start over every day.
Just because we have some rights on paper, Trump illustrated that everything that we have received, including the Voting Rights Act, can be taken away with his signature, not even an act of Congress, just him.
So the fight doesn't stop, but we got lax and we got lazy And for folks saying oh, we got to have more people to run for office Stop thinking somebody else is gonna do it if you think that we need better people to run for office Then it's got to be you and if it's not gonna be you then it won't be anybody There's a couple other Comments that I wanted to read not really a city girl says to Linda we need the ugly, but that's not the only reality it isn't
But if you are a mover and a shaker and you have aptitude and you want to be successful, those people leave Milwaukee.
What is left here are the people that are gluttonous for punishment, me and those that can't leave.
They can't.
They wish they could move away.
They wish they could go to greener pastures and have better opportunities for themselves and for their families.
They can't.
And there's not enough of us gluttonous for punishment working with those that can't leave.
To make any kind of difference and it's shown it's shown by how our community is easily duped by just any outside group coming in and say yeah Here's what they did They said we don't like this development in mid-time and nobody even asked who they were They just showed up Unshave and armpits at all Yeah, we don't we don't like this and the residents were like
A couple of us think that this could be a start.
Shut up, Blackie.
We don't like this development because it's something that it isn't.
And then some of the black people are like, well, what do you mean?
It's something that shut up, Blackie.
And the plan commission was like, yeah, we're going to side with the unshaven ones.
And we're just going to.
Sorry, Midtown.
Just suffer a slow and painful death and you're gonna eat that pick and save up and then don't come calling me sure when they're closing another grocery store I told you if you let you think of a bunch of black folks and go out in Brookfield in a pose of development Do you honestly think that try it?
I?
May not want another shopping strip mall to be built in Brookfield mean zag Not Xavier cuz that's his stomping grounds me and nitty
Jazz, Tyler, and Manon, Sabir, and Manon would have like a bag of apples.
And we went out to Brookfield and we opposed the development in Brookfield.
They would kindly escort us out of the meeting.
But I'm just trying to let folks know that as much as we talk, when you call black folks out and say, OK, we're going to come into your community and we're going to oppose something that ultimately you need as a catalytic project.
And we do nothing.
We let the other side win.
That's gutless.
And it's the absolute truth.
Because again, if we don't produce, America is very serious about a couple of things.
Money, assets, and production.
Black people produce a kind of culture that is self-destructive and almost to be popular and for it to produce money.
It's got to mock black people in all of our history and all of our progress.
But fair enough, it's entertainment.
But if that is the only thing that we are producing we're not producing something that America needs to maintain its superpower status We're not we aren't and there's no encouragement because we're also the only people That are okay with sending our children to be educated by our enemy finding a school in which white people and white parents want their kids to be educated by black people But I would argue if white people were smart they would want their children to be educated by black people because they would get a much more well-rounded perspective on you know
The other perspective on the 4th of July study this indoctrination.
Oh by the way speaking of which We're talking about the 4th of July and America turned 250 years old.
I Asked you a question via YouTube very simple question.
Are you proud to be an American?
54% of you say