For obvious OPSEC and PERSEC reasons I won't get into ANY details of the "how's and why's" but I've got some involvement in a project of sorts that at least in part aims to help out disadvantaged inner-city Milwaukee kids.
Granted, these are by and large the GOOD KIDS, the ones who CARE about themselves and their future, and as far as I know, they have a parent or parents who do too. Otherwise we wouldn't have even been involved with them in the first place, or they with us.
There was some travelling, and scouting locations going on in various downtown parts of Milwaukee for a new phase of this project.
Mind you, these kids are about 13 to 17 years of age. Taking the kids around to various locations, we learned some jaw-dropping things.
They have lived in Milwaukee for their whole lives... 13 to 17 years of it.
They had never seen Lake Michigan or the Lakefront before.
They had never seen or been among Milwaukee's downtown skyscrapers before.
They had never seen or been in the Third Ward (For non Milwaukee peeps, this is the hoidy-toidy gentrified part of the city just south of the Downtown.) And they wondered aloud and asked the adults if all the "old buildings" meant it was another "bad part of town". They had no idea or clue how to recognize the old brick buildings remodeled with new windows and tons of signs for hipster-ville restaurants and art galleries etc.
I suppose there's some cause for concern where some other municipality borders Milwaukee's north side, like Wauwatosa, or Brown Deer, without a choke point like the river or the freeways in the way, but the idea that riots would willfully spill out into the Milwaukee burbs en-masse is a non-starter. At least not at the current level of angst. IMO it would take 10x as much, and an interruption in welfare/benefits to make it happen.
That's not to say we won't see some onesy-twosey incidents, or some more flash mobs at a store or mall etc. But an actual in the street riot with arson outside of Milwaukee's North side isn't going to happen.
If SMART GOOD KIDS from the hood have no idea how to navigate or get around Milwaukee outside their immediate neighborhood... I have a hard time believing the majority of low-lifes actually willing to burn stuff down or throw bricks at cops will. I'm sure there's criminals more along the lines of being "kingpin types" who have cars and are mobile and do "business" in multiple parts around the city, but I don't see those types being willing to risk their "capital" and "assets" just for political/social change, even if expressed in the most negative way possible. Nor are there enough of them.
The professional agitators who might not even be from Milwaukee will be able to go anywhere in the Milwaukee Metro, especially since they already came from afar to get to the Sherman Park neighborhood, but they're going to be all alone without a crowd to hide in, or to do their bidding, if they do.
