Sunday, September 22, 2024
Tattoo shop owners seek new home after landlord's swastika mural 'ruined our business'
Claire Reid
Owners of a Milwaukee tattoo shop say they are "looking around feverishly" and raising money for a new home for their business after the owner of its former building commissioned a pro-Palestinian mural, which features a swastika, on the outside wall.
Aaron Rodgers and Matt Stolzenburg ― the owners of Black Dawn Tattoo, formerly located at 424 E. Locust St. ― said that Ihsan Atta, the Palestinian-American landlord who owns the building at North Holton and East Locust streets, didn't inform them that the controversial mural would be going up.
The mural suggests that Jewish people are carrying out a new Holocaust and intertwines a Star of David and a swastika. It carries the words, "The irony of becoming what you once hated," in all capital letters. The mural has drawn criticism, especially from Milwaukee's Jewish community. Leaders of Jewish organizations have condemned it as antisemitic, ill-informed and threatening.
Atta said he put up the mural because he wanted to raise awareness about Israel's devastation in Gaza, which he considers to be genocidal and akin to the Holocaust. When he spoke to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week, he defended the image, arguing the swastika is "equivalent" to the Star of David because, he said, the star is used not only as a religious symbol, but a political symbol.
That comment also drew criticism from people who consider the intertwining of the Star of David and the swastika vile, espcially considering Jewish people were forced to wear identifiers such as armbands, or badges, in the shape of the Star of David under the Nazi regime.
Black Dawn Tattoo has temporarily closed, and Rodgers and Stolzenburg have moved their business out of the building. Rodgers said employees plan to return if they can find a new location. So far, the owners haven't identified a place.
Last Friday, a woman used black paint to vandalize the mural, which was quickly restored. Then, late one recent night, Rodgers received a text alert from his security system that there was a "banging motion detected" at the tattoo shop. He said he rushed there to find two men hitting the mural with sledgehammers.
"What happens when someone wants to light it on fire?" Rodgers said.
Atta said he doesn't care that Black Dawn Tattoo moved out over the mural.
"There are people losing their lives in Palestine and in Gaza," he said. "So, if all I'm losing is tenants and money, I have no problem whatsoever. I'm willing to have an empty building, but I'm going to continue to express my freedom of speech and expression."
He said the artist who made the mural will reproduce it, but it will most likely be placed in a less accessible area. Atta plans to put up a new and different pro-Palestinian mural at the site of the controversy.
Black Dawn Tattoo set up a GoFundMe to raise money to help move the business to a new building. The GoFundMe page also says funds could go to "potential legal representation, and paying multiple lease agreements at the same time."
The fundraiser, which has a $12,000 goal, has raised nearly $4,400 as of Thursday afternoon. The Milwaukee Tattoo Festival pledged on social media to donate half of all festival ticket revenue through the end of September to help Black Dawn Tattoo with the unexpected expenses.
Black Dawn Tattoo says moving is not a 'political move'
Stolzenburg said some supporters of the mural have misunderstood the GoFundMe drive as a "political move." He said he and Rodgers simply want a safer space for their employees, clients and equipment.
"I don't know how people are angry at us about it, but ... those ones are the loudest ones, and it just sucks and it hurts," Stolzenburg said.
Rodgers said Black Dawn Tattoo has no ill will toward Atta, and that the mural is "well within his legal rights to do."
"But he still ruined our business by doing it," Rodgers said.
"I'm African-American, I don't want a swastika on the side of my building," he added. "I hate that a swastika (is on the building), especially in this climate where people are being threatened daily by white supremacist groups."
The pro-Palestinian mural replaced one of Breonna Taylor that was well-known to area residents. Taylor, a Black woman, was shot and killed in her home in 2020 by Louisville police during a botched raid. The police killings of Taylor and George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests about police violence.
Journal Sentinel reporter Sophie Carson contributed to this report.
Environmental groups say Microsoft's data center could harm state's clean energy goals
Enviro groups say Microsoft's data center could be a threat to clean air and green energy goals.
In an open letter to Microsoft on Thursday, the groups, including Sierra Club Wisconsin, Clean Wisconsin, and Action for the Climate Emergency, called on the company to power its planned data center with local clean energy.
"Right now, We Energies is planning to meet energy demand for the Microsoft data center by spending billions of dollars to build new methane gas power plants and pipelines. It's a massive buildout that will push our state's climate goals out of reach, locking us into 30 more years of fossil fuels at a time when we all know we must rapidly transition to clean energy," the letter notes.
"It will also harm the same communities who have been suffering with coal plant air pollution and dangerous ozone for decades," according to the letter.
The data center is one of the largest facilities of its kind now under construction in the United States. Each center is a collection of thousands of computers connected to the outside world by fiber-optic cables crisscrossing the country and the globe.
Microsoft has said it expects about 300 people to be working at the Mount Pleasant site by 2026 — a mix of contractors and permanent staff. The company has said the number of jobs could ultimately grow to about 2,000. Permanent jobs at data centers include a variety of roles from security guards to technicians and engineers.
The environmental groups say that while they appreciate the jobs, too much will be left on the table unless Microsoft prioritizes clean, homegrown energy.
The company's recently announced plan to help fund a currently unspecified 250-megawatt solar energy project in Wisconsin is a good start but would only represent a fraction of the data center's energy needs, according to the groups.
"There must be more. Other plans to buy out-of-state carbon credits to offset energy use in Wisconsin may technically meet your company's climate goals, but they do nothing to support the badly needed transformation to clean energy here in your new home," their letter says.
"This data center project represents a critical opportunity to help drive change in Wisconsin and put us on a path to clean wind and solar...the window to make meaningful progress in the fight against climate change is closing, and the decisions we make right now matter," it says.
In a statement to the Journal Sentinel regarding the environmental groups' letter, Microsoft said, "As Microsoft works to expand our cloud and AI infrastructure in Wisconsin, we look forward to working with community leaders and stakeholders on achieving our collective sustainability targets. We welcome the opportunity for dialogue on what we appreciate is a critical local need."
There also are deep concerns about water demands tied to the Microsoft project.
When there are thousands of servers packed into a warehouse-like building, it's important to keep equipment cool so that it continues to work. For some data centers, that means industrial-sized fans or air-cooling technology. Other data centers use evaporating water to cool the interior of the warehouse, much like a giant swamp cooler. The Mount Pleasant data center will use both air- and water-based cooling systems, although Microsoft has declined to provide details about the design of the system.
The plan has stirred new tension between Mount Pleasant and the City of Racine, which originally collaborated to assemble more than 1,000 acres of land into the Foxconn industrial park and build crucial water and sewer systems
Lindsay Muscato, a 2023-24 fellow with the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University contributed to this report.
Robert Haack Diamonds owner raises questions about Jan. 6 Capitol riot in newspaper ad
Ricardo Torres
In the ad, published Sunday in the Journal Sentinel, Eulberg poses questions about the January 6 riot. One example: "Ask yourself before voting: Why was the Capitol Police ORDERED NOT TO use tear gas on January 6, 2021?"
The move by the diamond store echoes what Penzeys Spices has done on the other side of the political spectrum, which is to embed the political views of owners in their advertising and online presence
The Robert Haack ad makes no mention of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. The committee interviewed more than 1,000 people and published an 845 page report on the attack, blaming former President Donald Trump for lying about losing the 2020 election.
Trump was impeached for his actions on that day, however he was not removed from office.
PolitiFact in 2021 called numerous statements about the Capitol riot the Lie of the Year.
The PolitiFact article states: "The events of Jan. 6 were widely broadcast on that day and many days afterward, allowing the public to see for itself exactly what happened. The body of evidence includes direct video documentation and many eyewitness accounts. So efforts to downplay and deny what happened are an attempt to brazenly recast reality itself."
One person was killed by police during the siege, and in the days after, two died of heart attacks, and one died of a drug overdose, according to Factcheck.org.
About 175 police officers were injured and four officers committed suicide after the attack.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,000 people with participating in the riot, and arrests continue.
Eulberg said he believes it is wrong to blame Trump for the attack.
Although Robert Haack Diamonds is the name of the company on the ad, Eulberg says the message is coming from him.
“This is stuff that’s been bugging me," he said.
Eulberg indicated he plans to run additional ads in advance of the the Nov. 5 election.
"All I'm going to be doing is running a series of questions of 'why?'" Eulberg said.
“Penzeys Spices, they can voice their opinion on political stuff, I guess I can too,” Eulberg said. “It basically opens up the conversation, that’s all I’m trying to do.”
Eulberg believes that-those who hurt people or did damage should be punished.
“The people that went in and hurt anybody, 100% they need to be punished,” Eulberg said. “I’m not condoning what happened on January 6th whole-heartedly, it’s disgusting."
USA Today has published fact check round ups about the events of January 6 on the anniversary of the riot, in 2023 and in 2024.
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