Word: mcgee
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...nearly 500 young black men and women have enlisted in McGee's militia, 60 of them students from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has become a hero to such youths because of his reputation for standing up to the white establishment. In the early 1970s he headed the Milwaukee chapter of the original Black Panthers. In 1984 he was elected to the city's Common Council, where he frequently resorts to theatrics to make a point. In 1988, for example, he wore a bag over his head in the council's annual group photograph. He and his followers...
...however, McGee has shifted from theatrics to threats. While the earlier Panthers stressed self-defense, he vows that unless his demands for $100 million in jobs programs and city council representation to give blacks more clout in city government are met by 1995, his militia will "cripple" the city and "extract a measure of justice." He even jokes about taking hostages if the city does not respond to his satisfaction...
Despite the flamboyance of his rhetoric, officials say McGee has committed no crimes because he is not advocating "imminent lawless action." Indeed, the sidearm he packs in a leather holster is a slingshot. But Mayor John Norquist charges that McGee's firebrand behavior is "doing more to scare jobs away from his district" than to help it. "It's one thing to try to attract investment and capital," says Norquist. "It's another to use extortion...
...first, all McGee got for his efforts were calls for his resignation and threats to have him arrested. A group on the predominantly white South Side announced that it would form its own militia to protect the city from McGee's group. Other whites distributed racist literature in local factories. McGee's proposal to extend a street named for King into white areas seems doomed. He has also lost a fight in the council to transfer control of a jobs program from the county to the city. "We've got two worlds here," he said dejectedly after that defeat...
...week's end an organization of top religious leaders announced that it supported McGee's demands for a greater infusion of resources into the black community. While they condemned violence, the church leaders said, "There is also a danger that in our efforts to respond to each other's rhetoric, we will ignore the violence that already exists in our community." If the clergymen's intervention can produce a compromise, all of Milwaukee can say amen...