Fiscal Note
No appropriation required.
Title
Recognizing students at Randall Elementary School - Room 208, for their hard work in researching the historic and present Greenbush community and recommending suggestions to the Common Council on how to preserve the Greenbush community.
Body
Preamble:
Room 208 at Randall School has been studying the Greenbush community since February 2005, first as 4th graders and now as 5th graders. Working with past and present community residents, local businesses and service providers, UW students and staff, community historians and archivists, and city agencies, we have researched the historic and present community that extends from the railroad tracks south to St. Mary's Hospital, and from Mills Street east to Lake Monona. We have reviewed historic documents, interviewed local experts, conducted an extensive community survey, built 50 3-D models of historical buildings for display at Monona Terrace and Festa Italia, organized a one-day Greenbush Conference held May 2 at the Italian Workman's Club, and are completing a substantial web site and a hand-held computer game to be played while walking through the community. They have learned to care deeply about the Greenbush.
Whereas, the historic Greenbush was once Madison's melting pot which welcomed poor people of diverse ethnicities and religions, becoming a great community known for its strong families, vital cultures, abundant gardens, small shops, and neighborliness towards everyone; and,
Whereas, ethnic prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination led not only to attacks on the Greenbush in newspaper articles and Ku Klux Klan marches, but also to a belief that the community needed to be drastically altered; which led in turn to the Urban Renewal projects in the early 1960's which destroyed the heart of the Greenbush, displaced some of Madison's most vulnerable citizens, and led to psychological devastation similar to that documented by Columbia University psychiat...
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