The area is named after the people who brought it to life: the city’s first generation of Polish-American settlers, commonly referred to as Polonia.
The earliest of Milwaukee’s Polonia settled here or nearby, amidst cultural adversity that pushed them away from the city’s metropolis. Naturally, they made themselves at home in this quaint district by establishing public institutions like parks and schools.
Don’t be fooled by their names—ones like Pulaski Park and Zablocki Public School—which resonate polish heritage despite an influx of newer inhabitants. Milwaukee’s Poles dispersed long ago and newer establishments, like restaurants and stores, reflect the people who inhabit Polonia today. But who are they?
Milwaukee’s first decade in the 21st century gave way to a selective change. Between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the city’s total population fell by less than one percent, while its Latino population rose by an incredible 44 percent. This demographic tilt is becoming more evident, with the sprouting of bilingual business names like Mi Tierra Food and Nuñez Multiservices.
Resident Janet Perez moved to Polonia ten years ago. “I moved here from California, so it was a big change—especially the weather.” Perez, 38, sits in a lawn chair at Pulaski Park while recalling her old home, Fresno, Calif. Her son jogs in circles with a group of peers, trying out for the youth soccer team.
Perez has seen the area change. “I wish I could say for the better,” she remarks, “But as far as the criminals, I think it has gotten worse.”
She recalls both homes adjacent to hers being broken into and her daughter, 21, being robbed at gunpoint.
Perez isn’t alone.
Only a stone’s throw away is Orlando “Lonnie” Gonzalez, who admits to a similar observation of his neighborhood. “I bet you’ve never met a handicapped person who was hit in the head with a gun before,” he says.
Last summer, two men approached Gonzalez on his porch while he was unwinding from a day at the amusement park. The men placed a gun to his temple and demanded the contents of his pockets before running off. All they got was a cellphone.
Gonzalez, 40, is a Milwaukee native and is confined to a wheelchair. In his lifetime, he says that crime has always gone up and down. Right now, it’s on a roaring upswing. He claims that he did everything to catch the men who assaulted him—including identifying them in two separate line-ups—to no avail.
In recent years, Milwaukee’s crime rates have escalated from a regional problem to an ever-growing national concern and no neighborhood has escaped this fact. However, this past July, the Milwaukee Police Department reported positive news: rates of burglary, theft, and general property crime are all falling. Total crime is down a mere 1 percent from this time last year and down 30 percent from 2007. For those willing to wait out the storm, it’s a start.
Despite the stories they have to share, both Perez and Gonzalez say that they don’t see themselves leaving Polonia any time soon.
“The weather is still difficult, but, other than that, I am pretty happy here,” Perez says.
“I have lived in the same house my whole life,” says Gonzalez. His grandfather bought the home from a Polish family many years prior to his birth, unaware that it would make Lonnie’s lifetime mobility much simpler. “It’s too accessible to leave.”
Winding in the direction of the setting sun, casting shadows on the teenagers playing pick-up basketball and the children climbing on monkey bars, is the Kinnickinnic River. It wouldn’t be doing the neighborhood justice to ignore the mellow stream, which runs across the entirety of Polonia.
Kinnickinnic is taken from the language of the earliest of the early settlers: the Chippewa. The word literally means, “What is mixed,” and the symbolism of that is not lost on those who note the area’s recurring theme of integration.
