9/23/2025

 Tuesday, September 23, 2025

D+322/218/-1217

1955 An all male, all White jury found Roy Brant and John William Milam not guilty of the murder of Black teenager Emmett Till in Sumner, Mississippi; the two later sold an interview admitting to the murder

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered US troops to support the integration of nine Black students at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas

2020 President Donald Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the US November election at a White House press conference

In bed at 10, awake around 2:30, unable to sleep, and up at 3:35.  63°, high of 69°, mostly cloudy, partly cloudy later. 

Meds, etc., Morning meds at 10 a.m.  

Email exchange with James Causey of JSOnline:

Charles Clausen:  Thank you so much for your article about the housing situation facing the parents of the six children locked in the storage locker.  I had the same thoughts as you when I first read of the discovery of the kids, but without the benefit of all the terrible statistical information you provided.  It’s easy enough to throw stones at the parents, but what options did they have?  They and their children were, and are, in a terrible fix.  The storage locker provided the kids shelter from the weather and protection from predators.  We oughtn’t to be so quick to pass judgment on these parents.

James E. Causey:  Hey Charles,  Thank you for your email and for being a loyal reader. I was unsure how people would react to my perspective, but I'm glad that readers like you understand my intentions. I really appreciate it.  James

Charles Clausen: After I retired from the Marquette law faculty in 2001-2003, I was the executive director at the House of Peace, after Brother Booker was taken down with a series of strokes and finally passed.  I saw a lot of people, single people and families, in rough situations.   Booker's friend and Capuchin mentor, Father Matthew Gottschalk, lived there then, in a small upstairs apartment.  I learned a lot from Matthew about humility and real charity/love for your neighbor.  Judge not, lest ye be judged, and all that.  I did a few visits to the Green Bay Reformatory with Janine Geske years ago and met some guys who committed some pretty terrible crimes.  I learned some humility from most of them, also.  I suspect I would be put off by the parents of the kids in the storage locker.  I suspect they are very different from most of my students at Marquette Law School and my neighbors in Bayside, but I hope I'd be slow to find them uncaring of their children, or of the dog who slept in their car with them.  Life is hard, a lot harder for some of us than others.  It reminds me of William Blake's little poem.  "Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight.  / Every night and every morn, some to misery are born. / Some are born to sweet delight, /  Some are born to endless night."

                        After rote outrage over kids in storage unit, we're left with desperate families

Depending on how it is measured, Milwaukee ranks as the second or third highest in poverty among the 50 most populous U.S. cities, by James E. Causey, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee has a poverty problem that usually doesn’t trigger outrage until something shocking happens — which happened on Sept. 16 when police discovered six children, aged two months to nine years, locked inside a storage unit on the city’s north side.

The only toilet available was a red bucket, and the unit lacked electricity and running water. Their parents, Charles A. Dupriest, 33, and Azyia Zielinski, 26, were found sleeping in a car in the storage unit’s parking lot with the family dog.

Both have been charged with six counts of child neglect, four of which are felonies because they involve children under the age of six.

The comments on social media about the parents are too harsh for me to repeat here.

Many asked: Why do they have six kids?

While the parents deserve criticism and need to be held accountable for leaving their children in deplorable conditions, they were overwhelmed. I'm not trying to excuse their actions, but when you get beyond the rote shock and outrage, it's clear their circumstances made it nearly impossible for them to find safe, affordable housing in Milwaukee.

A month and a half before the children were found in the storage unit, Zielinski and her children were evicted from the Joy House after she gave birth to her last child. The Joy House is a shelter for women and children located at the Milwaukee Rescue Mission. This eviction forced the family into survival mode as they needed to find a way to keep a roof over their heads.

I’m not sure why they chose a storage facility, but it seems likely that it was a place where they figured they could store their belongings while ensuring they stayed together as a family without being separated.

People are suffering. Some just refuse to see it.

When news first broke about the children locked in a storage locker, many people expressed shock and called for the parents to be jailed and their children to be placed in foster care.

The reality is that poverty is rising in the U.S., and more families live paycheck to paycheck, which increases the risk of eviction. The poor are more affected because anything that disrupts their already tight budget can send them into a free fall. A past eviction. A health scare. A sick child could mean missing work, which means missing income or losing a job.

Depending on how it is measured, Milwaukee ranks as the second or third highest in poverty among the 50 most populous U.S. cities, and for years, it was labeled as one of the worst places to raise a Black child in the nation.

Sister MacCanon Brown, who operates the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary on the city’s north side, said the demand for services for the poor is greater than she’s seen in years.

“People are suffering, and some people just refuse to see it,” Brown said.

Food banks are strained, and people have seen their SNAP benefits cut, so they are stressed.

“I recently met a woman who told me she hadn’t eaten in three days," she said. "We must keep asking why this situation not only persists but is getting worse, primarily when millions of dollars are being allocated to the state.”

When it comes to the parents, it seems clear they were overwhelmed and nearly out of options. While they both admitted to receiving $2,000 each in Social Security benefits, they said finding affordable housing was impossible.

As of September 2025, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee is around $1,185 per month. If you are looking for a clean three-bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood, you would be fortunate to find anything for less than $2,000.

However, finding a landlord willing to rent to a young, unmarried couple with six children under the age of 10 —especially when both parents have evictions on their record — presents a monumental challenge.

And even if they were able to find someone to give them a chance, did I mention Dupriest is a registered sex offender?  In 2010, when he was 17, he had sex with a 13-year-old girl at least 10 times at her parents’ Mequon home.

Do I think they had a hard time finding an apartment? Yes.  I’m a landlord, and I wouldn’t rent to them either.

Given their circumstances, sleeping in the car and putting the kids in a storage unit may have seemed like a reasonable option for those under this kind of hardship. They managed to juggle this chaotic shelter situation for over a month before they got caught. The only positive outcome of this was that the children were not hurt.

This heartbreaking situation will leave lasting scars on both the children and the parents. Unfortunately, we know they are probably not alone.

When we hear about the next family in a similar situation, do we still have a right to be shocked and appalled? Could we, perhaps, serve correction alongside grace?

 

Shana Tova!  I woke up around 2:30 this morning and was unable to fall back to sleep.  My head was full of thoughts of long ago, working at the food and liquor store at 74th and Halsted in Chicago, owned and managed by Wally Halperin.  It was the summer of 1959.  I was 17 years old and had just graduated from Leo High School.  I had competed for and been awarded a Naval ROTC 4-year scholarship and had been accepted at Marquette University in Milwaukee.  I had worked part-time as a stockboy for Wally throughout my senior year at Leo.  When he learned that I was unsuccessfully looking for a second part-time job or even a different full-time job to earn enough money for my move to Milwaukee, Wally offered me full-time employment at the store, working as a clerk serving customers.  Wally himself was at the store full-time (and more), and he had 3 additional full-time 'grown-up' clerks: Jack, Ward, and Janet.  We staffed our small deli and the checkout counter, bagging purchases, accepting payments, and making change.  Most of the purchases were food items, but they could also include a quart of Meister Brau or Drewry's beer, a bottle of Wild Irish Rose or Thunderbird wine, or a pint of Jim Beam.  I learned midway through the summer that Wally provided a regular 'gratuity' to our neighborhood CPD cop to ignore the fact that Wally had a teenager, to wit, me,  selling alcohol at the store.  I also learned that Wally didn't need another full-time clerk in the store that summer.  He took me on full-time only because he knew I needed the added income to be able to head off to college and an expanding life in the Fall.  It was my first full-time job, and he hired me not because he needed the help, but because I needed help.  Thanks to his kindness and generosity, I did head off to Milwaukee come Labor Day and never returned to live again in Chicago.  If Wally is still with us, he is a centenarian plus and may not remember me, but I remember him, 66 years after the summer of 1959,  and the door to a new life that he opened for me. Shana Tova, Wally, and danke.