KENOSHA, Wis.: A Black man, accosted by police on a domestic dispute call, is left with bullet wounds in his back that will likely keep him from ever walking again. A white 17-year-old, rifle in hand, strolls past authorities untouched amid cries that he just gunned down three people protesting the Black mans shooting.
Two moments of bloodshed, two days and 2 miles apart in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And in those two moments, this mid-sized Midwestern city seemed a stark microcosm of a nation wracked by discord over racial inequity, policing and the meaning of public safety.
The chain of events that began Aug. 23 with Jacob Blakes shooting has become a disputed X-ray of a divided society — a black-and-white picture where some see racial injustice that proves the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, while others see rioting that spurred a teenager to try to defend a community against chaos.
But to many in Kenosha — taking stock of a convulsive week ahead of President Donald Trumps planned visit Tuesday — its not as simple as that.
As people here navigate barricaded streets, boarded-up windows and their own place along some of the deepest fault lines cleaving the U.S., there are many more than two perspectives on what happened, what it means and the way forward.
I WANTED HIM TO SEE THIS PLACE
Charles Stevenson pulled up to a quiet, green block 150 miles (245 km) from his Green Bay home. There was something he wanted to show his 9-year-old son.
See that apartment over there? No. 4? Thats where I grew up, Stevenson said. He turned around, putting a hand on the boys shoulder. And this is where they shot him.
Both looked at the ground and fell silent.
I wanted him to see this place to understand the problems we face in this world, Stevenson said later.
It was the spot where Blake, 29, was shot in the back and paralyzed by Officer Rusten Sheskey, who grabbed Blakes shirt as he leaned into an SUV. Inside were Blakes children, ages 8, 5 and 3.
Taking on a coachs tone, Stevenson, 47, who works in construction, told his son: This is what they do to us. This is what can happen. You have to be prepared, like Ive been telling you.
Around the corner, Tireece Anderson said the shooting hadnt surprised him. Police dont get along with Black residents like him, said Anderson, a 32-year-old warehouse worker whos had his own encounters with the criminal justice system and with police he says wrongly targeted and were unduly harsh with him.
At the same time, he said, Black residents need safety and police as much as anyone else — especially after the shooting and the unrest and violence that followed, as rumors ricocheted around town that people were heading to Kenosha to cause more mayhem.
We dont know what to believe, said Andersons girlfriend, Rose Cavin, 30, who is white.
Or who to trust, Anderson added.
HE JUST SHOT THEM!
A couple of miles from the place where Blake was shot, gunfire erupted again two nights later.
This time, according to police, the shots came from the rifle of Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from a nearby Illinois town.
Buildings had been torched and businesses vandalized in Kenosha as protests flared the previous night. A former member of a police cadet program, Rittenhouse told the conservative news outlet the Daily Caller that he was there to guard a business and to help if people got hurt, bringing a first-aid kit along with his rifle.
He would end up killing two people, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounding a third, Gaige Grosskreutz, in a series of encounters that snowballed after Rosenbaum threw a plastic bag at Rittenhouse, according to a court complaint.
After the gunfire, with his AR-15-style rifle over his shoulder and his hands in the air, Rittenhouse walked toward police vehicles that kept going past him, even as a witness shouted, He just shot them! Police Chief Daniel Miskinis has explained the response as officers dealing with a chaotic scene.
Rittenhouse, a sometime lifeguard, later turned himself in, his lawyers said, and is now jailed on homicide charges. While prosecutors call his conduct criminal, his lawyers say he defended himself against a mob trying to disarm and hurt him. They and other supporters portray him as a hero who stood up to lawlessness.
He is a brave, patriotic, compassionate, law-abiding American who loves his country and his community. He did nothing wrong, said one of his lawyers, John Pierce.
Meanwhile, Hubers girlfriend helped plan the 26-year-olds funeral and ran over what-ifs in her mind. He had shepherded her into an alley, she said, before running after Rittenhouse when Rosenbaum was shot.
He knew the potential consequences of his actions, and he was prepared to die so that other people wouldnt, said the woman, Hannah Gittings. Thats a hero.
THIS IS DIFFERENT
Set along Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, Kenosha is to some extent a demographic slice of the U.S.
Its 100,000 residents are 80% white, 12% Black, and 18% Hispanic (an ethnicity that can include any race) — somewhat but not overwhelmingly whiter than the country as a whole, census figures show. The median household income of about $54,000 is about 10% below the national median. Trump won Kenosha County over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by about 250 votes.
A former auto-manufacturing hub, the city has grown in recent decades, with an Amazon distribution center and the planned Foxconn electronics factory nearby providing new opportunities. Condos and museums have been built on one lakefront site that had been devoted in manufacturing.
But residents are still quick to say Kenosha has a small-town feel, and many have been stunned to see their heartland city stricken by a level of conflict they had been watching from afar this summer, in cities from Minneapolis to New York to Portland, Oregon.
Ive been the mayor for a long, long time. But this isnt what Im used to, said John Antaramian, a Democrat who returned to office in 2016 after serving from 1992 to 2008. This is different.
THERES TWO JUSTICE SYSTEMS
Theres two justice systems. Theres one for that white boy … and then there is a justice system for mine, Blakes father, Jacob Blake Sr., told a diverse crowd of about 1,000 people at a rally Saturday.
Racism is the system, he added to reporters later.
Blakes family and police representatives dispute much of what happened. State investigators say it began with a call from a woman who said her boyfriend wasnt supposed to be there.
A police union said Blake fought with officers, refused to drop a knife and didnt respond when they stun-gunned him twice. His familys lawyer, Ben Crump, said Blake was just trying to break up an argument, didnt provoke police and wasnt seen with a knife. State investigators have said only that officers saw a knife on the car floor.
Blakes family has called for attempted homicide charges against Sheskey and the firings of two other officers involved in the encounter.
Lying in his Milwaukee hospital bed this week, Blake clutched his fathers hand and asked, Why did they shoot me seven times? the elder Blake told the rally.
I said, Baby, they werent supposed to shoot you at all.
THE POLICE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE
The morning after the rally for Blake, a far smaller group gathered in the same plaza to send a different message: Back the Blue.
To these demonstrators, most of them white, what had happened in their city was a travesty of destruction and criminality that was able to unfold under the cover of protest.
The police are the good people. They should be left to do their jobs, Amy Busick said.
She and her partner, Dustin Bose, live close to the center of the protests and the fires earlier in the week. The two said they had spent nights on their porch with their guns loaded, feeling they needed to protect their home and family, including a 5-year-old child and a disabled 19-year-old.
They dont fault Rittenhouse; he was defending himself, they say: I think the kids a patriot, said Bose, 40, who works in a metal fabrication shop.
The white couple expressed some misgivings about the shooting of Blake, particularly seven times, but they also noted that police said he was resisting them. Bose has been in trouble with the law himself, but he says the consequences were my doing.
The two dont see Blakes shooting as a function of race.
I know racism exists, said Bose, whose stepfather is Black. I support what people are trying to be out here protesting, but at the same time, I also support law and order.
People need to understand its not Black against white, added Busick, 41, a restaurant server. Its good against evil. Period.
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM
After George Floyds May 25 death at the hands of Minneapolis police ignited protests around the country, Isaac Wallner urged his hometown Kenosha police to start conversations with Black residents to avoid possible unrest later.
But they didnt, said Wallner, a Black truck driver, an activist and an aspiring police officer himself.
I want to tell the officers, My goal is to be one of you … well, not you, but a better you, says Wallner, 30.
That goal stands though Wallner says hes had his own share of run-ins with officers and sometimes feels targeted because hes Black.
But never, he says, has systemic racism felt so stark as during the recent protests.
At points, Kenosha County Sheriffs deputies fired pepper balls at protesters — including Wallner as he provided medical aid to demonstrators, he said — and arrested some for breaking curfew. Yet authorities in an armored vehicle were recorded tossing bottled water to a group of armed civilians, Rittenhouse among them, and thanking them for being there.
We appreciate you guys. We really do, said an unidentified voice from the vehicle. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth later said the remark doesnt mirror all of law enforcements perspective on what happened.
Still, if that doesnt scream the American problem, Wallner says, I dont know what does.
I CAN SEE WHY RACE IS BEING THROWN INTO THAT
Looking out on Kenoshas prized lakefront, James White and his girlfriend dissected the events that have shaken their hometown.
You have a Black man whos been shot, innocent. You have a white man thats shooting people … and then walking past the police, said White, 18. I can see why race is being thrown into that.
The soon-to-be college freshman, who is Black, sees his hometown as a friendly place where people forge connections with others. Still, he supports the protests.
But hes galled by the fires and window-smashing that he like many others here sees as people from out of town destroying our city; police say 58% of the 175 people arrested from Aug. 24 through midday Sunday had out-of-town addresses.
One night White was at a friends house, listening to police scanner traffic about an approaching crowd, and they got worried enough to turn out the lights out and sit in silence. Word had gone around that a crowd was out to attack white peoples homes in the friends racially mixed neighborhood, he says.
They say, at least because (Blake) got shot by a white man, that white people are the problem, says White, who doesnt see absolutes. His girlfriend is white.
I DONT FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO TAKE AN EXTREME SIDE
On a sticky afternoon, Lisa Pugh and two other moms shed just met painted some of the many murals that have sprung up on plywood-girded shop windows around Kenosha.
Love heals, the women wrote, their children helping where they could reach. Stay strong. Tolerance.
To Pugh, it was a way to do something positive to respond to the citys pain, to show the kids that people could come together.
The violence, the vandalism, all of it, had brought her to tears the day before. She sees residents channeling anger into peaceful protests, and they should be, she said. But the destruction broke her heart.
Shes seen online commenters ask: How can you be upset about that? Doesnt fighting for peoples lives matter more than things?
I dont feel like you have to take an extreme one side or the other, said Pugh, 32, a white graphic designer. You can be mad about people dying and about your community burning down.
For all the hopeful murals, more trenchant messages were written on Kenosha walls, too. Graffiti on a downtown school declared that police helped the murderer escape and asked: How many more have to die?
It was removed.
WE NEED A UNITED FRONT, FOR A UNITED CAUSE
It was a long week for John and Patricia Baldwin.
For days they stayed in their cellphone store nearly all night, John carrying his long gun, to guard the place as vandals hit neighboring shops. Finally, reassured by Wednesdays announcement of an increased National Guard influx, the exhausted couple went home for a night.
Sometime that night, the glass door was broken and some phones were taken. Tears welled in Johns eyes the next morning as he looked at the store he managed to buy 15 years ago, two years after a knock on the door of a soon-to-open cellphone shop turned into a job, promotions and an ownership opportunity for a man with no college education.
What would make you think that tearing up my store is going to benefit the cause? wondered John, who is Black. Were fighting for the same reasons, and we shouldnt be the victim.
Nevertheless, the Baldwins joined the peaceful protests this week, balancing their frustration against their own experiences of racial inequity. They sensed that the moment demanded taking it on.
If we dont try now, well never know, John said. This nation feels so broken right now.
It needs law and order, he says, but it also needs police officers who do the right thing and treat people fairly. It needs new laws to ensure they do.
And most of all, we need change. We need a united front, for a united cause, for a united nation, he said.
One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves and video journalist David R. Martin contributed.
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