Manitowoc City Alderman Aaron Bailey was in Kenosha on one of the first nights of protests and riots following the shooting of Jacob Blake.
We reached out to him to hear what his experience was like, and he started by telling us, “When I went out there, our experience was solely to see how everything developed…From the protesting, where does the rioting start?” He explained that during his time in Kenosha amidst the violence, he saw people attempting to quell the rioters, but to no avail. “It’s chaos against peace sometimes,” he explained. “Seeing that stuff, it really messed with me…emotionally, because I love to step up and step in, but I came there for the purpose to understand, and to be a voice. But when that voice was shut off then it was people with just pure rage. And that’s hard.”
We also spoke with Jennifer Estrada, who went to Kenosha with Bailey, who said she and her daughters were hit with tear gas, “Which caused chaos. I couldn’t see. There was no call to disperse, there was no call to move,” she claimed. Aaron said that he felt there were agitators on both sides, as well as peaceful people on both sides, saying some of the police officers and National Guardsmen would engage with them and hold a conversation, while others were “stone faced.”
He went on to say “That was all we wanted to do, was have a peaceful conversation. An open dialogue about what we are feeling and what they are feeling.” We asked Bailey if there was any validity behind the rumor that people were coming from Kenosha to recruit people to incite violence, to which he responded, “If I heard something like that, I would definitely stop it.”
