One week ago, I witnessed images of local justice leaders, Zon Moua and Hope Vang of Freedom Inc, being attacked, injured and arrested by the Madison Police Department for exercising their First Amendment rights. They, like so many residents over the past month, were protesting police violence and the Madison Police Department’s July 22nd killing of Corey Ruiz. They were protesting the violent ambush on the Ruiz memorial – an onslaught that saw agents of Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway trashing the property of the unhoused, throwing people down into glass and concrete and flattening tents with a skid steer. I was deeply concerned for their safety and well-being and enraged by city leadership’s inability to lead with spine, truth, integrity and the public’s best interest at heart… save for Council Vice President Glenn and a few others. The question keeps coming up: why can’t city leadership learn from a calm voice? Why do they force us, their constituents, out of our homes and into intersections? People do not protest for leisure; they protest because they have been ignored, gaslit, and left with no alternative. But our requests for change always begin face-to-face with the Mayor and council during public comment at city meetings.
Months ago, I gave public comment in the Council chambers alongside fellow advocates. On the chopping block was the independence of Madison’s community-nominated police oversight mechanism. This is a mechanism that thousands of us created in response to MPD repeatedly harming our loved ones and neighbors with impunity. Members of Freedom Inc. testified beside their elder, urging the Mayor, Common Council, and staff to respect, fund, and protect the independence of the Independent Monitor’s Office and Police Civilian Oversight Board. They urged the city not to repeat the fatal mistakes that claimed the life of Tony Robinson, describing how over-policing Black and Brown communities perpetuates poverty, disparate incarceration rates and death in their communities. These were not comments shouted through a bullhorn in a crowded intersection; they were timed, three-minute remarks spoken plainly by tax-paying residents. These statements were not novel either. Freedom Inc. has engaged in this work, making these exact demands for the better part of a decade, exercising their First Amendment right to petition the government. Yet, once again, city leadership turned up its nose and failed to act.
Why isn’t polite engagement backed by decades of statistics, study outcomes, heartbreaking stories and too many preventable deaths enough to effect change? Why does city leadership claim to care only to escalate with violence?
We handed city leadership a playbook on how to make policing safe for all communities. Guided by unbridled political ambition, they thanked us by making it easy for MPD to kill another Black man suffering from the byproducts of their own administrative malpractice and neglect.
When logic, reason and evidence repeatedly fail to move city leadership, we are left with no choice but to give up or demonstrate. The First Amendment protects our right to gather, protest, and speak without government retaliation. These rights exist precisely to guard residents, just like us, against state violence while we expose institutional corruption and disrupt abusive power structures – protections that will be upheld in court.
The city remains unchanged in this pattern of behavior no matter how calm and polite we are in our three-minute comments for peace and policy change:
- Killing community members with impunity.
- Offering excuses rather than accountability.
- Reversing victim and offender roles while vilifying the dead.
- Using racist tropes against protesters and oversight officials.
- Selectively sharing investigative details to exonerate officers in the court of public opinion.
- Restricting public comment
- Refusing face-to-face meetings with those who disprove their narratives.
- Employing empty pacification tactics.
- Attacking, defunding, and obstructing the Independent Monitor’s Office.
- Physically assaulting the Independent Monitor.
- Weaponizing law enforcement, retaliating against protestors, pepper-spraying and violently detaining and arresting nonviolent residents.
In the aftermath of MPD’s killing of Corey Ruiz, the Common Council hosted a Q&A led by Council President Sabrina Madison. During this carefully curated charade, Mayor Rhodes-Conway spent a significant amount of time peddling lies the way a cult leader might. She claimed she wanted to de-escalate tension at protest sites by limiting police presence. What actually happened is they imported officers from surrounding jurisdictions notorious for overt racism – officers that, conveniently, were not under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Independent Monitor and therefore could not be investigated by her. Without warning, they destroyed Corey Ruiz’s memorial, violently removed unhoused residents, threw away many of their belongings and injured and arrested protesters. The resulting legal fees have cost community members tens of thousands of dollars – directly perpetuating the poverty and desperation city leadership claims to care about.
City Leadership seems confused about the idea that they too must follow the law. It is in their best interest to respect our First Amendment rights and immediately cease retaliating against us when we exercise them. It is in their best interest to drop the charges, refund the bail money, and stop attacking the people’s independent oversight of the police. Until city leadership chooses genuine accountability over institutional self-protection, we will continue to speak, organize, and occupy public space. We will not back down until equity, justice, health and safety extend to all.
