Gregory
Portrait with Kissenia Chara
Description: A portrait of a dark-skinned young person dressed in a gold adorned dashiki and crown sits at the top of the Earth in outer space. The African continent is centered underneath him.
Portrait with Zachary Maxwell Stertz
“I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at St. Joseph hospital, May 17, 2005.
The most important people in my life are my dad, mom, my older brother. My older brother sets a good example for me. I follow in his footsteps to make sure I’m going on a good path. My dad tells me stuff and I take it to heart. One slip up can make you go to jail or even worse, you’re dead. So I just have to keep myself away from all that.
Sometimes I think people care more about youth such as myself than they do about themselves. We are the future and we are making the world a better place. Other times, I think we get looked over because we’re younger. The youth, we have great ideas to help the world be a better place than most adults will. They might think our ideas are impossible. Say if you wanted to live on the moon without any space gear, you will have to work hard for that. Adults will say that’s not possible. But over the years, there can be a way that it’s actually possible for you to live on the moon like that.
I think people perceive youth of color in Milwaukee doing a lot of drug dealings and that a lot of violence is because of us. We get judged because our skin. A lot of people fear we are angry from events of the past, like slavery. Black people get shot for no reason, get pulled over by the police -- like we’re out to get them or it’s our fault. I want them to see us as everyone else. And that we are better than just normal. We’re not just normal. We can do more! Say it’s a lot of Black people that are homeless. But there’s some Black people with mansions! Black people worked harder than anyone else on this Earth. It’s hard to see it, because it’s harder for a Black person to grow up than a White person. A White person doesn’t have the same limits as a Black person. We can’t say certain stuff or do certain stuff because we’ll get in trouble.
And Black people, we got to just stop this violence. We have to be noticed for all the reasons we are great. For example, there are professional basketball players, but they’re just not basketball players. They donate to charities and build schools! Black people do more than we get noticed for. Most of the reason life is the way it is now has come from Africa. You got a think about it. If it wasn’t for Black people, half of the stuff you do today wouldn’t be in your life right now.
My dreams are that I will make the world a better place for when I get older. There’s people with no food, no houses, nothing. They don’t have clean water to drink. They don’t have family to talk to. There’s a lot of stuff in the world that doesn’t really make sense. Why some kids go to school every day and get made fun of or bullied? It has to be better. We’re just like the other person. Some just have less stuff than others, or we don’t have as much money or food. But you both bleed the same blood. You both breathe air. You should be equal, no matter what.
My vision is - the good people and the bad violence - you just have to own it. You yourself can make the city better. Get together and calm down. There’s a lot of tension. Just sit down and talk instead of getting a gun and shooting somebody, taking your anger out on something.
I dream of how other people imagine Heaven to be like. There is no violence or none of that, no world hunger, no depression, nothing. Everyone is equal. We are all the same towards each other. No diseases and heart attacks from stress, or drug addiction because of the pain they feel inside. I’m not saying you don’t feel pain, but people find better ways to deal with it. I think this is possible if we can find something to be happy for and something to be grateful for. Whatever you do, you got to put your heart to it.”
Milwaukee, 2019