I used to live in uptown #kenosha. I'm not surprised by the #KenoshaRiots. The homeless population was being helped for years by a group in the area called First Steps. Some of yall might remember seeing all the homeless folks in the area sleeping in tents outside there (1/?)

for a while, up until the city gov decided to shut First Steps down because 1 Alderman didn't want to see homeless people in their district. It was more important for them to put the homeless population out of sight than it was to help them. (2/?)

If an officer is called to a situation where a homeless individual is involved they now are instructed to bring that homeless individual to the outskirts of town to the job center (which has no resources for the homeless population) instead of bringing them to First Steps (3/?)

The last grocery store in Uptown PicknSave shuts down. The people in the area couldn't afford to buy groceries frequently enough to keep their last grocery store open. Now everyone in Uptown is forced to buy food at gas stations and other convenience stores. Fast forward (4/?)

Bed bugs become a rampant issue in dwellings in Uptown. Landlords refuse to pay for the costs of extermination or completely ignore the existence of the pests leading to further spread of the problem. Around the same time Andrew's Staffing the closest temp agency to Uptown (5/?)

Moves to a new location out of reach for the residents of the area looking for work who don't have a car. Those who make the long walk to the staffing agency now are told that Andrew's staffing doesn't provide transportation to/from work leaving individuals stranded with (6/?)

No money, no transportation, no valid housing options, no programs to help those in need, no groceries, and no clean water as there are often led pipes here. Fire fighters in this area even state that the pipes are old and pressure is spotty when they try to put fires out (7/?)

I lived in Uptown. This was my home, and to me it still feels like home despite how horrible it was, the people cared about eachother and did their best to help eachother out no matter what. We shared what we had to keep eachother surviving because you had to come together (8/?)

As a community or you were going to be the next nameless dead body some kid is poking at. Thats not even a metaphor. I found a dead man leaned up against the Subway next to Chens Bistro. If Y'all were living there you know what I'm saying. (9/?)

Point I'm getting to is if you don't get why #KenoshaRiots have set the city on fire its because you don't know what the fuck the people in Uptown have been living through. Everyone was treated like criminals, no one had a way out unless they found a good hustle and those (11/?)

who are left have nothing left to lose.

Try sleeping on your floor with no ac in the hottest part of summer, no hope of a job, and the knowledge that the only place you can go for food will give you a loaf of bread a day and a weeks worth of food once a month and tell me (12/?)

what you would do to tey to change it. You've got bed bugs biting out your whole body, your stomach feels like its stabbing you, your body aches from the hard floor, tell me then how you pull yourself up by your boot straps. I got out because I was lucky. I found help (13/?)

Not everyone got to be so lucky. The rest of this post is some photos of the Uptown I know and loved, good and bad. Hope you all can read this all and see some of it and understand their struggle.