This summer 15 Black Wisconsin youth marched 65 miles from Milwaukee to Madison. Shorewood students Alemitu Caldart, Hiwot Schutz, Aaliyah Lockhart, David Wilder, seniors, participated in the march, as well as SHS alumnus Christopher Washington, class of 2018.

The group had a list of demands, including: asking Governor Tony Evers to condemn the use of tear gas and rubber bullets; another special session on gun violence in addition to a special session on policing in Wisconsin; Black Lives Matter in schools; funding for violence prevention; the DOC to release people incarcerated due to COVID-19; Wisconsin elected officials to support black women and black LGBTQ+ community.

“We wanted to create a march but we also wanted to have goals,” said Washington, who was a co-organizer.

The marchers began their journey on June 30. They kicked it off by holding a press conference in front of Milwaukee City Hall and then started the walk in Waukesha. It took them a total of five days to reach Madison, and they slept in churches at night. They arrived in Madison on July 4. 

A motivation of this march was holding politicians accountable.

“You can say ‘Black Lives Matter’ all day long but our politicians and our elected officials need to lead as anti-racist …We need our politicians to be a lot more active,” Washington said. 

The organization 50 Miles More planned the march. In 2018, multiple Shorewood students, including Alemitu Caldart, created 50 Miles More when they marched from Madison to Janesville advocating for more comprehensive gun laws. As someone who has been involved with both, Caldart did notice some differences. 

“For this march, I feel like we were very, very hands on, everything we did, we had to make the decisions. It was all very much youth based,” Caldart said.

The group faced a lot of opposition and hate along the way, from steady and unwanted police presence to armed white militia groups following them.

“Within 15 minutes of us [starting] marching, every police cop car in [Waukesha] was there, in front, behind and next to us,” Caldart said. “And there’s 15 of us just dancing, listening to music with our posters and there’s just cops everywhere. It just shows the over policing that is part of the issue that we were talking about, and how that’s not necessary.”

The level of harassment and abuse the marchers faced made conditions very unsafe at times.

“We even had to end our march early at times because it was just way too unsafe for us to continue walking,” Caldart said. “And we had a lot of homophobic and sexist slurs and racist slurs called out to us while we walked. It was like … we all kind of imagined that, but it ended up being a little worse than we thought.”

Through the five whole days of marching, the group bonded more and more as time went on.

“We just got comfortable because we had to go through a lot of traumatizing things together during the march,” Lockhart said. 

Caldart agrees. 

“We all have connected trauma, because as Black people, we understand, we have this collective trauma of what we’re fighting for,” Caldart said. “…Now I have 14 more friends that I didn’t know before.”

Governor Evers did not publicly acknowledge the march, nor did he provide any sort of response.

“I think towards the end we definitely did want just for Evers to acknowledge the fact that he isn’t fully supporting the Black community, even though a lot of people think that’s what he stands for,” Caldart said. “Just something from him.”

“[Evers has] really been ignoring our march,” Washington said. “I know he hears us, I know he’s heard about us, we’re all on Twitter, we’re everywhere. It’s a 65 mile march, how are you going to ignore it? We came to his mansion, but he decided to ignore that … After what happened in Kenosha, then he decides to have a special session on gun violence. We’ve been pressing this for awhile. It’s getting pretty frustrating.”