2023–present · Connect · Curate · Education
My Brother’s Keeper Milwaukee
The Situation
Milwaukee has organized around Black male outcomes since the 1980s, in efforts that were started, replaced, and never finished. In 2018, local organizations were described as operating “in silos with inadequate resources and no unifying measures.” Then, between 2025 and 2026, the three institutional anchors of the education strategy (MATC, UWM, and MPS) ended or renamed their men-of-color programs. No budget required it. MPS's closure of its Department of Black and Latino Male Achievement was confirmed publicly at a September 2026 school board meeting. Five of eleven education seats at the MBK Leadership Table went vacant.
What It Produced
People: 313 distinct participants in one year of intergenerational programming, including 95 young people 18 and under. Partners: Running Rebels, CURTO/BLEST Hub, Mental Health America of Wisconsin, the Medical College of Wisconsin, the City's Office of Community Wellness and Safety, UnityMKE, and others. Projects: the intergenerational series, the men's wellness series, the Resource Hub, and a postsecondary data dashboard in progress. Procedures: dialogue agreements read aloud at every session, youth-first table prompts, youth feedback forms, and attendance tracking by age band. Publishing: a co-authored Wisconsin Watch op-ed (Lanier and Velez, 2024) and coverage in Wisconsin Watch, The 74, and the Milwaukee Courier. Resources: a $25,000 MBK Capacity Grant from the Obama Foundation (2025).
What GLUE Did
On March 2, 2023, Mayor Cavalier Johnson and County Executive David Crowley signed a joint declaration naming AALAM as the MBK Milwaukee backbone and its president, Walter Lanier, as “involved with our BMA and MBK work since our local movement started.” In 2025, GLUE became the formal backbone, with Marquette's CURTO and BLEST Hub as data partner and Black Men Organizing as the community base. Connect: a monthly intergenerational series, now hosted permanently by Running Rebels; GLUE Weekend with national leader Shawn Dove (2025); a higher-education convening with UWM, MATC, and Marquette (2026); and a weekly steering table that kept MPS and MATC people at the table after their institutions withdrew. Curate: two milestones chosen as one continuum (high school graduation and postsecondary completion), attendance tracked by age band at every session, and a Resource Hub design that moves the dropped institutional functions into community hands. Catalyze: programming moved into community custody, a men's wellness series launched, and in September 2026, testimony asking the MPS Board to restore public reporting on outcomes for Black and Latino boys.
The Evidence
The March 2023 joint declaration · Running Rebels attendance tracker (776 attendances across 25 Saturdays in 2026; largest session 126) · Wisconsin Watch, January 2024 · Lanier–Velez op-ed, May 2024 · Milwaukee Courier, November 2025.
The Lesson