In August 2016, Madison was reeling from a rash of shootings that touched nearly everyone in the city’s Black community — not just the people who were shot, but their families, their neighbors, and a whole community left anxious about who might be next. Anthony Cooper, who had gone through re-entry from prison years earlier and who was working as vice president of re-entry services at Nehemiah Center, decided to meet that moment head-on. He started talking to the people he knew from “back in the days” — men coming home from prison, or still locked up, who he’d grown up with or done time alongside — and asking a simple question: how do we stop this cycle?
Ten years later, that conversation has grown into Focus Interruption, a Madison-based violence-prevention and reentry organization that has expanded from four people working as volunteers to a staff of 21, moved into a new office on the east side, and built partnerships that stretch from Madison’s own Boys & Girls Club to violence-interruption networks in Milwaukee, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Minnesota and Detroit.
“Let me show you how I work”
Cooper said the idea behind the organization’s name came directly from what he saw happening in 2016: people caught in cycles of recidivism and retaliation, moving from prison back to the streets and back to prison again, or trapped in cycles of “beef” that kept escalating. Focus Interruption’s job is to derail that cycle.
“No one comes home saying, ‘I want to hurt someone,'” Cooper said in an interview for the 365 Amplified podcast. “The thought is like, okay, well, I’ll try getting a job. And there are some folks that will, and there are more people who want to do something different for their lives and for their family than I think is credited.”
Listen to the full interview:
Cooper didn’t build the organization by telling people what to do differently — he showed them, drawing on his own path out of incarceration and his relationship with the late Michael Johnson, the former CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County, who worked alongside Cooper in those early years.
“Many people know that even if I didn’t have a team to show up with me, even if I had to show up by myself, I would do so,” Cooper said. “That continued to the way how we work to this present day.”
From volunteers to a 21-person team
What began as unpaid volunteer work — with a little early support from then-Mayor Paul Soglin’s office — became a full nonprofit only within the last three or four years, Cooper said, after years of operating under the fiscal sponsorship of Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, where Cooper still sits on the board.
Today, Focus Interruption runs a wide slate of programs: a LOTS (Leaders of Tomorrow) school program active in three Madison schools — one elementary, one middle and one high school — plus community safety workers, an outreach team, an aftercare and recovery team, and the BAO (Brothers Against Odds) program. Staff also work inside the Grow Read Connect (GRC) juvenile detention center, at the Dane County Jail’s in-house resource center once a week, and with Madison’s homeless population through case managers stationed at area shelters. The organization delivers food to families in partnership with the nearby River Food Pantry and runs a summer program with the Boys & Girls Club on Mondays and Fridays.
Cooper has also brought therapy into the organization’s work directly, hiring a part-time therapist and pushing to bring on more. He said a number of the people Focus Interruption has worked with over the years are now in therapy of their own.
“I know that therapy helps. I know it works,” Cooper said. “A lot of our men and women and children have a lot of things that are inside of them that they need to be able to get out, and need the space to be able to do that.”
New office, next decade
Focus Interruption recently moved into a new second-floor office at 2801 International Lane, Suite 200 — a space Cooper said was chosen partly for cost, but mainly because it puts the organization closer to bus lines and the community it serves, with room enough to house a resume-building and job-application space alongside everything else under one roof.
Looking ahead, Cooper said his goal for the next decade is for Focus Interruption to grow into “a full functional center of healing” — bringing in doctors and therapists, expanding job workshops, and eventually developing housing. He was careful not to give too much away. “I got some stuff that I can’t really say right now,” he said, laughing. “Spoilers.”
Celebrating with a gala
Focus Interruption will mark its 10th anniversary with a gala fundraiser on August 27 at the Atwood Music Hall, the former Operation Fresh Start building on Madison’s east side. Tickets start at $100, with sponsorship opportunities also available.
Beyond the financial goal, Cooper said the event is a chance to highlight what the organization and its partners have built over the past decade, and to talk about what comes next — including new staff positions, additional therapists, and an expansion of the school-based programming beyond the three schools Focus Interruption currently serves.
“We know that knucklehead stuff is going to happen,” Cooper said. “But what can we do, and what have we done to be able to make sure it happens less? That’s our goal — and also being able to help community have a different conversation about it as well.”
For those who can’t make the gala, Cooper said there are plenty of other ways to support the organization’s work, from donations and volunteering to booking Focus Interruption’s team for de-escalation training and presentations at schools, agencies and group homes across the community.
