Madison is considering a wider pilot of body-worn cameras (BWCs) for police, with eventual plans to roll them out city-wide. The state attorney general just publicized a report about dash cams and body cameras which treats them as an unalloyed good that should spread across the entire state. But should we sprinkle body-worn cameras liberally over the Madison Police Department? This is an expensive experiment, with some large assumptions about the helpfulness of body-worn cameras.
Building on the earlier work of the Police Department Policy and Procedure Ad-Hoc committee, the Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee (or BWCFRC, it simply rolls off the tongue…) has worked to produce a report that the city council would use to determine next actions. However, that committee lost some of its contrarian voices over time. And it lost another strong voice on January 15th.
In November, Red Madison discussed how the consensus in academia has slowly flipped from “body cams are probably good” to “body cams are likely bad.” Dr. Gregory Gelembiuk’s own views have followed this slow evolution: when he got involved in all this back in 2015, he saw body cameras as a way to help communities hold police accountable, such as in the police shootings of his neighbor Paul Heenan and later, Tony Robinson. Dr. Gelembiuk was one of the voices who really pushed for investigating body-worn cameras at the time.
Gradually, as Dr. Gelembiuk read the literature, he realized that study after study was showing adverse effects from body-worn cameras. They were, unfortunately, not the promised panacea. A recent meta‐analysis found that BWCs produce “few clear or consistent impacts on police or citizen behaviors,” and does not cause a clear reduction in use of force, in some cases exacerbating it. As Red Madison has shared before, we can look to jurisdictions where BWCs are already in use to see how they are used. In one survey, 93% of prosecutors reported using video evidence in cases against civilian suspects. Only 8% of those same prosecutors used body camera video as evidence to prosecute police.
Dr. Gelembiuk felt that the current committee report, as initially drafted by Keith Finley working alone in mid-December, was missing much of the current conflicting academic context. Unable to see a path to fixing the report, Dr. Gelembiuk resigned from the committee during the January 15th meeting, in protest.
In one survey, 93% of prosecutors reported using video evidence in cases against civilian suspects. Only 8% of those same prosecutors used body camera video as evidence to prosecute police.
In the January 19th meeting of the BWCFRC, you can see many of Dr. Gelembiuk’s suggested edits and comments scroll by like orange ghosts [as “Patron”] while committee members pore over the draft report. Towards the end of the meeting, Keith Finley says, “We’re putting this all in here because it’s important to the ultimate decision. So, let’s all take it into account. […] What is the bottom line? Where do we want to be?”
And that is the big question. Is Dr. Gelembiuk’s contrarian feedback well represented in the final report? Will anyone pay attention to the nuances of this issue?
Dr. Gelembiuk says that, while he thinks everyone on the committee has good intentions, many of them are blinded by confirmation bias. He believes this has led them to create and edit the report in a way which elides many of the negative aspects of body cameras, puffs up their positives, and is not scientifically rigorous. He took pains to point out that in some cases the report relies on secondary sources which misconstrued the primary study’s results, and even got the important parts completely backwards. (For much more detail on all this, see his letter to the council.)
In their January 22nd meeting, although edits on the report were still incomplete, the committee ended up voting 5-1 on a motion to recommend that the city commit to a body camera pilot project, pursuant to all provisions of their “Report and Model Policy”. (Veronica Figueroa Velez was the one “nay” vote.) There were a fewmore meetings, and then on February 2nd, the City Council accepted the final report, which you can view along with Dr. Gelembiuk’s letter to the Council on Legistar. The report will now be bounced to the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Public Safety Review Committee before the full council makes a decision.
We need to keep asking: who will new policies, including the use of body cameras, harm and help? If they won’t actually aid our most marginalized communities, why do we keep considering them?
The simple summary is that body-worn cameras likely cause more harm than their proponents expect. And as Dr. Gelembiuk notes in his letter, they may cost more than expected, as well: he estimates a total cost (including hours for administrative tasks) at $23 million over 5 years. We should invest this money elsewhere: for example, to help make the emergency mental health response team pilot this spring a full 24/7 operation instead of running only during business hours. It remains to be seen if alders will have the energy to dig below the surface of this report to make this kind of decision.
We need to keep asking: who will new policies, including the use of body cameras, harm and help? If they won’t actually aid our most marginalized communities, why do we keep considering them? If our committee volunteers find evidence that people on all sides will possibly be harmed, why do we want to spend the money? Is it simply a gesture to make us feel better, or can we find a better path for our community?
The Wisconsin Uprising began on August 3, 1981. On that day, president Ronald Regan fired the 11,000 striking Air Traffic Controllers. The vast majority were never allowed to work again as air traffic controllers.
The AFL-CIO was slow to react, in part because the Air Traffic Controllers union had endorsed Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter for president. However, starting almost immediately local unions and labor councils began to demand action. Within about two weeks, more and more unions coalesced around the idea of a massive solidarity demonstration to be held in Washington DC on September 19,1981. My local, IUE Local 201 representing workers at General Electric in Lynn, MA, put up the original money to rent trains from Boston to DC.
Thousands participated. The march was a huge success. In a show of support the AFL-CIO rented the then-new DC subway system for a day to provide free rides for the marchers. However, there was almost no on-the-ground follow-up or work actions. There was no strategy to deal with the new reality. There was no coordinated response from other unions in the industry.
Direct action opportunities did exist. Access to some of the largest airports, such as Boston, Chicago, and LaGuardia in New York City depended on relatively long and narrow access roads, or in Boston’s case, a four-way intersection. As we demonstrated in Boston, it would have been easy to block the access roads to the airports. For example, the car driven by myself and a colleague experienced engine failure just as we got to that intersection. But our efforts and some similar disruptions at other locations remained the exception.
The strike was lost but the corporations saw something. They saw that the labor movement could put on a big demonstration – but little else. The corporations went on the offensive against the private sector unions, demanding concessions and proposing contracts that no union could accept. Unions were forced on strike, and lost. Whether it was Greyhound or Hormel, the American labor movement was on the defensive. During most of the next 20 years it did not manifest any ability to act in a unified manner to resist concessions or deal effectively with increasing capital mobility. There were exceptions of course: the Teamsters strike against UPS in 1997 and the anti-free trade battle of Seattle in 1999.
By 2010, conservative politicians had been attacking the public sector unions for years. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker and his political allies constantly reminded private sector workers and middle class people who had lost pensions or had none to begin with, who lost medical insurance or had none to begin with, that public sector workers were privileged and essentially sponging off of them. To an extent, this attempt to split the working class worked.
Walker, sensing that the public sector unions were politically vulnerable, took action. When the Democrats lost a key member of the Senate though resignation, leaving the public sector unions, especially AFSCME and the AFT, with no state contract in force, he announced that everything was off the table. AFSCME dropped its demands for contract improvements and offered to accept the Walker proposals if Walker would sign a contract. Walker refused, pointing out that he had no obligation to do so. But Walker and his allies had another objective – destruction of meaningful collective bargaining in the public sector. In February of 2011, he announced the evisceration of collective bargaining known as Act 10. He had been watching the labor movement and bet that AFSCME, the AFT, and the WEAC would continue to use political mobilization but did not have the internal organizational strength or leadership to mount effective workplace mobilization.
Just like in 1981, there was a huge outpouring of support for public sector workers and their unions. Thousands marched. Initiated by the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA), the Wisconsin state capitol was occupied for several weeks. In spite of the huge crowds and the 24-hour a day occupation of the capitol, there was no violence, no vandalism, and no rioting. But there was also no formal call for any direct action at the workplace. Once again, the labor movement and supporters showed that we could mobilize on the street, but that we were fearful of or unable to mobilize in the workplace where it counted.
While thousands were in motion, the state leadership of the public sector unions was meeting across the street from those occupying the capitol. They never met with the people in the capitol.
While thousands were in motion, the state leadership of the public sector unions was meeting across the street from those occupying the capitol. They never met with the people in the capitol. Public sector unions continued to emphasize only the political, with AFSCME continually polling to assess public opinion. The Wisconsin Education Association Council did make a successful effort to reach every teacher in the state but it was to deliver the message NOT to engage in any work stoppage, but only to come to Madison on Saturday. This was in spite of the fact that the Madison Teachers Inc. – a WEAC affiliate – had figured out a strategy to close the schools, arguing that teachers had first amendment rights of freedom of speech, and that the schools were also unsafe because so many students had left. AFT-Wisconsin, with thousands of members within walking distance of the capitol, never even asked their members to think of taking a long lunch as a show of force so that the Republicans would have an idea of the value of state workers. There was not even a union signup sheet. Instead, all official mobilization efforts focused on organizing a recall of the governor, which lost in June of 2012.
2011 looked like 1981. A great demonstration. Obvious widespread public support for the workers but as with the Air Traffic Controllers, no strategy except political mobilization combined with a refusal to creatively mobilize at the work site. One cannot say that victory would have been achieved had there been workplace actions, but it was perfectly clear that without the workplace mobilization the Republicans had no desire to change their minds. By mid-March of 2011, the Republicans passed their legislation. Collective bargaining in the public sector was gutted.
However, unions were not outlawed because the freedom of association, the first amendment to the Constitution, is still in effect in Wisconsin. After 10 years what is their situation? Employers must bargain in good faith with unions that are a certified bargaining agent, which means that the employer recognizes the union as the exclusive representative for the workers in its jurisdiction. In order to remain as a certified bargaining agent, each year Wisconsin unions have to be recertified by wining 50% of all those in the bargaining unit.
Act 10 also limited the subjects covered by collective bargaining, as well as limiting the total amount that a union can win in wage increases. Act 10 also eliminated dues checkoff. Dues checkoff is a system that allows workers to have their union dues deducted from their paycheck and forwarded to the union by their employer. It is an important contributor to union financial stability. Given these circumstances, many workers simply do not participate. The American Federation of Teachers lost close to 90% of its largest state unit. AFSCME has also experienced significant losses at the state level, and considerable losses at the county and city level. However, AFSCME has been able to maintain significant levels of organization in places where there were stronger units to begin with and where there’s a more favorable political situation, such as in Madison and Milwaukee.
The single largest number of organized workers in Wisconsin were K-12 teachers and support staff, most of whom were members of the WEAC. Because they are organized on a school district by school district level, many of their locals were able to maintain themselves and so total WEAC membership is a bit more than 50% of the prior membership. There are some positive exceptions such as Madison Teachers Inc., which has close to 90% of its former members.
Working people in Wisconsin are at a cross roads. If we are to regain rights at the workplace and become organizations that the employers have to meet and confer with, we are going to have to figure out ways to show the employer how valuable we are.
Workers at state hospitals, like UW, had their rights to collectively bargain eliminated completely, essentially destroying the nurses’ union at UW Hospital. UW faculty and academic staff, which had just won bargaining rights in 2008, were again shorn of those rights and United Faculty and Academic Staff local 223 was left with a couple hundred members. The TAA chose not to certify under the new rules. However, even though they have suffered considerable membership erosion they have a significant functioning organization, in part because they never abandoned their culture of continuous organizing and membership mobilization.
In the most basic sense, public sector workers found themselves back in the 1960s. Some had collective bargaining rights, but with a very narrow scope, all the locals were under extreme financial pressure, and none had the ability to initiate direct action in the workplace. Finally, taking advantage of the weakened labor movement and in violation of the promises he made to the building trades, Governor Walker initiated passage of a right to work law in 2015, basically further weakening private sector unions.
Working people in Wisconsin are at a cross roads. If we are to regain rights at the workplace and become organizations that the employers have to meet and confer with, we are going to have to figure out ways to show the employer how valuable we are. In the absence of that, even with an effective but purely political mobilization, there is little likelihood that the balance of forces will change.
Wisconsin hit its worst COVID-19 numbers of the pandemic in November – its worst numbers so far, at least. While cases have been trending downward in the state since that peak, the number of new cases is still worse than at any point before last fall. Vaccine distribution is underway, but failures on many levels of government have led to a dismal start. At the earliest, it will be several months until we can rely on vaccine-based herd immunity to protect us. Meanwhile, multiple new strains of the virus that have been found to be more contagious are spreading through the United States, largely undetected. These strains have led to astronomical spikes in places like the UK, Brazil, and South Africa. The CDC has warned that B.1.1.7, the strain that was first detected in the UK, could become the dominant COVID-19 strain in the US by March.
We aren’t out of the woods. Wisconsin could plunge into an even deadlier surge in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Safety is not a foregone conclusion, but an outcome that depends on the actions we take today, tomorrow, and in the coming weeks and months. The last thing we should be doing at this critical juncture is reopening schools and loosening up restrictions.
Safety is not a foregone conclusion, but an outcome that depends on the actions we take today, tomorrow, and in the coming weeks and months.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening throughout Dane County. Madison Metropolitan School District is now in the minority as teachers and students continue remote learning into the third quarter of the 2020-2021 school year. Sun Prairie School District began its return to in-person learning in December. In Verona, Stoughton, McFarland, Oregon, and more, school districts are expanding their phased reopening plans. Some of these school districts are not limiting their in-person activities to instruction, but are also allowing student athletes to train and compete outside of Dane County, beyond the reach of Public Health Madison & Dane County’s most recent public health order.
These reckless reopenings are dangerous for teachers, students, and their families, but the harm won’t stop there. As we learned when UW-Madison’s disastrous reopening took place last fall, an outbreak in one part of the community eventually affects all of us. If anything, teachers, school staff, students, and their families are even more closely integrated with the rest of the community than college students. Our entire county could pay a steep price for these premature reopenings.
There are real reasons to want to resume in-person education as quickly as possible. Like all people, children need social outlets. Younger children especially are not able to approximate their normal social interactions online. What’s more, neoliberal austerity and the shrinking of the social safety net means that more students rely on their schools for essential resources than ever before. For some students, schools are a safe haven where they can find food, counseling, and even medical attention. It is indisputable that students who are trapped at home for months on end are suffering.
Also, already-struggling districts face enrollment pressure. Dissatisfied parents can take their students to other districts, to private and charter schools, which pulls money out of the district’s already-tight budgets. With pandemic safety being a partisan political issue, and with open enrollment putting neighboring districts in competition, a district reopening in the next town over is a threat to the solvency of a district that prioritizes safety.
But in this instance, the immediate interests of struggling students and school districts happen to align with the interests of businesses, which is why you see “reopen the school” demands amplified in powerful places. For example, the editorial board of the Wisconsin State Journal has published threedifferentpieces arguing for schools to reopen since December 1, a period in which 2,391 Wisconsinites have died of COVID-19. The paper frequently invokes the well-being of Black students and cites ongoing racial disparities as a reason for returning to in-person learning. As Madison Teachers Inc. Vice President Mike Jones pointed out in a scathing letter to the editor, it is hard to believe that a paper that has long specialized in spreading panic about Black teens is sincere in its concern about racial disparities.
So what’s the real reason for this obsession? Getting kids back to school means getting parents back to work at pre-pandemic levels of productivity. Remote learning requires not just parental supervision but ongoing support, especially for younger children. It has taken an enormous toll on working parents, especially women, who are exiting the workforce en masse. Employers who are eager to bring their own workers back to in-person work will struggle to do so, as long as schools are remote. Locally, this includes Epic Systems, which tried and failed to force workers back in August, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Additionally, many businesses need a sense of normalcy to prevail in order to make money. Zach Brandon, president of the Madison Area Chamber of Commerce, referred to this as restoring “consumer confidence” at a Downtown Madison Inc. presentation last spring. Confident consumption these days means believing you are safe as you go out to eat at a restaurant or linger inside a shop. If you and your children are stuck at home because it’s not safe for them to return to school, it is hard to forget that you’re living through a deadly pandemic that is far from over.
The big push to reopen schools is not limited to Dane County or even Wisconsin. It is a part of a nationwide push, aided and abetted by the CDC under the guidance of the Biden administration. Biden has made reopening schools in 100 days an early priority for his presidency. This is not surprising. Biden is also quite attuned to the desires of businesses. He also has the interests of the Democratic Party to consider. The Democratic Party has shown real reluctance to provide the kind of meaningful, long-term financial assistance that would allow people to shelter in place without going hungry or losing their homes, and which might provide a buffer to a fragile economy if we locked down. A lockdown without financial support would lead to more clashes with the right, more job losses, and greater economic downturn – perhaps not a recipe for midterm election success.
While it is true that his administration has taken a far more organized and proactive approach to managing the pandemic than the Trump team, Biden will not adopt the sort of measures that would stem the tide of mass death. In fact, he has openly warned people that it will get worse before it gets better and that we should brace ourselves for hundreds of thousands more deaths in the months to come, as if they are inevitable. Party loyalist Democratic mayors and governors are actively carrying out the Biden approach in their own locales. Governor Andrew Cuomo, once heralded as a science-minded hero of the pandemic, is now pushing to reopen New York’s economy even as the state is emerging as a hotspot for new COVID-19 variants. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is locked in yet another showdown with the Chicago Teachers Union over Chicago Public Schools’ attempts to force teachers back into unsafe classrooms.
With more infected people infecting people more, that can result in worse exponential growth – multiple times more cases than the previous strain under similar spread conditions.
Those arguing that it is time to restart schools are almost exclusively relying on research that was conducted before the emergence of new strains of COVID-19, several of which are now circulating in the United States. How widespread are these strains? We don’t know yet. Virus sequencing in the United States happens slowly compared to other countries, which means that the numbers we have are likely undercounts. Still, the CDC is reporting one or more of the new COVID-19 strains in 30 states so far, including one case of the B.1.1.7 variant in Wisconsin, 10 in Minnesota, and nine in Illinois. Scientists are warning that some of these new strains appear to be 30-70% more contagious than the strain we’ve been living with. With more infected people infecting people more, that can result in worse exponential growth – multiple times more cases than the previous strain under similar spread conditions.
From the start of the pandemic, working class people in Dane County have led the way in shutting down in-person work, fighting for workplace safety, and filling inthe gaps where the inadequate web of government and non-profit agencies have failed. When we came together in the hundreds and thousands to fight for Black lives, our actions did not lead to a surge in COVID-19 cases because of the steps we took to protect one another. Even as business-led lawsuits and Republicans in the Wisconsin State legislature undermined the most basic safety measures, even as Public Health Madison & Dane County willingly relaxed restrictions, most people have yet to return to a normal way of life. Our choices and our care for one another has saved lives.
We cannot hope that someone will intervene on our behalf now to protect us from the selfishness and greed of the business community, or the spinelessness of school and public health officials. But we can organize to defend ourselves – again. This pandemic is far from over. In fact, the danger is increasing. Now is not the time to resume in-person learning or to relax restrictions in any way. Now is the time for us to come together to protect teachers and students and our broader community and to demand financial relief that will allow people to stay safe at home while we wait to get the vaccine.
3:09 A.M. PHST a 41-year-old leans back from her sewing machine, her lower back is tangled rope but she is behind her quota
12:09 P.M. MST a 79-year-old woman staccato respiration, alone she feels the sweat gluing her hospital gown to her flesh. This will be her last breath and she wants to see her granddaughter Rose
1:09 P.M. CST The 28-year-old woman hears the knock at the apartment door. Static from a radio sings through the wood. The deputy says she must vacate
2:09 P.M. EST, a 41-year-old, jean clad man climbs a yellow rope. He has broken through and rage smells like stale cigarettes
9:09 P.M. EET The seven-year-old boy shivers, the nurse has no antibiotics. Gazan moonlight strikes the window
12:16 A.M. IST, a 23-year- old driver drinks red bull, he is too tired to read the textbook, the Uber app has been silent for two hours
2:16 A.M. ICT a 16-year-old limps and wipes the blood from her lip, her pimp thought she was hiding some of the pay
2:16 P.M. EST A 55-year-old waves the yellow snake flag in the Cox Corridors. He’d like a selfie by the frieze of the invasion of Mexico City
8:16 P.M. CET A 60-year-old clutches a wine cork and waits for the laptop to chime. The bond market is soft and it’s time to buy
9:16 P.M. EET A 51-year-old-farmer holds the shotgun. Shakes. The golden wood of the table is gleaming and his bankrupt field sings in the snow
11:56 PM AFT A 28-year-old huddles with two children as the Americans break down the door. Her son’s cheeks are warm and wet. A blue plate drops from a shelf and breaks into triangles
A new billboard campaign seeks to connect Wisconsinites to a full spectrum of pregnancy and birth resources.
This story was produced in partnership with Tone Madison, an independent website covering music and culture in Madison.
Pregnancy Options Wisconsin: Education, Resources, and Support (POWERS) has launched a statewide billboard campaign, the group’s first foray into a communications medium most frequently utilized by abortion opponents. Per their name, POWERS’ focus is on providing education, resources, and support for the full spectrum of pregnancy, including not just abortion care, but miscarriage, pregnancy, birth, and adoption. The group’s new billboards, located off of highways in Central Wisconsin to start, read “Trust Pregnant People: Abortion, Adoption, Birth, Miscarriage.” The billboards direct viewers to the POWERS website and call line (608-514-1714).
POWERS began in 2019 with the intention of acting as a connector between pregnant people and the resources and information they need to make informed decisions about their pregnancies. The group’s website is a comprehensive directory of pregnancy-related information, from guidance for choosing a birth practitioner, to accessing abortion care, to a directory of licensed adoption agencies that are LGBTQ friendly and align with POWERS’ mission, for making an adoption plan. POWERS also has a 24/7 phone line, staffed by three licensed midwives who can connect callers to resources or just provide emotional support for a pregnant person as they navigate the next step in their pregnancy plan. In a press release about the billboard campaign, POWERS president Johanna Hatch explained: “Wisconsinites deserve access to unbiased and full and factual information around all pregnancy options. Whether experiencing pregnancy release through abortion or miscarriage, planning for a safe birth at home, hospital, or birth center, or making an adoption plan, pregnant people deserve to be met with dignity and respect.” I spoke with Hatch last week about the campaign, the barriers that pregnant people in Wisconsin face, and the structural factors that limit their autonomy.
Dayna Long: Tell me about POWERS’ billboard campaign.
Johanna Hatch
Johanna Hatch: If you’ve spent any time in the upper Midwest, there is only really one side that is well represented with billboards and large ads on many of our major roadways, and there’s a lot of energy both from folks who are active in launching POWERS as well as from folks who would identify as supporters or people who are interested in what we’re doing that, “Gosh, it would be so cool if POWERS had a billboard.” And so coming in at the end of 2020, we looked into that to see if it was actually feasible, and it turns out it’s very feasible. I was joking, it’s surprisingly easy to get a billboard as long as you contact the company and have a budget. It was something that turned out to be much more doable than I think we thought at the beginning, basically, and so we went for it to really spread a positive, holistic message around support for all pregnancy options for folks in Wisconsin. And right now we’re started with, as you saw in the press release, primarily rural areas in Central Wisconsin. We know that folks who are seeking some pregnancy care, specifically abortion care in Wisconsin, if they’re rural have to travel long distances to Madison, Milwaukee, or Sheboygan to legally access that care.
So we wanted to get something, like I said, that was positive and holistic for folks who were working through their own pregnancy decisions to provide some balance and to hopefully provide greater outreach for folks who wanted support through those different decisions as well.
DL: The group must have taken some time and some care in crafting a message for a billboard. I’m interested in the thought process behind what you came up with, and I’m especially interested in the fact that your group used the word abortion, when a lot of pro-choice organizations tend to dance around it a little bit.
JH: Like I said really, what I think is the core belief of everyone who is involved with POWERS is that we trust pregnant people as the authority over their lives and bodies, full stop. So for us, that means, among other things, being really clear that that includes abortion. And that includes the decision of how to access abortion. That includes what type of termination is best for them.
But also, when we’re talking about pregnancy options, I think a lot just gets tacked onto abortion only. The conversation really gets boiled down to abortion. For us, in POWERS, it is also really, really important to talk about, what are your options with continuing your pregnancy? What are your options with birth? You can safely and legally have a birth at home, in a birth center, or in a hospital here in Wisconsin, attended by a licensed midwife, a certified nurse midwife, a family physician, or an OBGYN.
Just as important as it is for people to have clear and accurate information about choosing to release a pregnancy through abortion, it is equally important that people have clear, factual, full information about what their options are with regard to pregnancy care and continuing pregnancy, giving birth, what their legal rights are with choosing to make an adoption plan for their child. And also we included miscarriage, because we really wanted to highlight the commonality of the experience of releasing a pregnancy either through abortion or miscarriage. It is extremely common and often not talked about.
So basically what that message is, we wanted to recenter the pregnant person as the focus of this discussion. And make sure that the conversation was wide open about all of our pregnancy options, but also it should be really clear and specific because people have a legal right to an abortion and we should not be afraid to say that.
DL: I would love to hear about what some of the barriers and information access are when it comes to people who are choosing to end a pregnancy via abortion, but I would also be interested in hearing about some of the barriers and information access when it comes to giving birth. What is prohibiting people in Wisconsin from giving birth the way that they want to, or what makes it harder to choose to give birth?
JH: I think there’s some commonalities both if we’re talking about choosing to release a pregnancy through abortion, or how we decide to give birth and where we decide to give birth. I think one of the big things is—so like, going back to how we specifically used the word “abortion.” A lot of people don’t talk about it…people may not feel comfortable asking those questions of their health care practitioner. Healthcare practitioners may not feel comfortable bringing up those options.
There’s also, I think, in order for medical practitioners to get education about providing abortion care as well as even getting good information about it in their educational programs. At least through my experience as a nurse and a student nurse midwife, there’s not a lot of time spent on those topics, and if you want deeper education and skills training, you often have to seek it out in addition to your program. That’s not universally true, but for many medical practitioners that is the case. So I think that’s one barrier is that maybe medical practitioners don’t have the full scope of most current accurate information as well as knowledge about the intricacies of the legal requirements within the State of Wisconsin, so I think that’s another piece.
It can be really, really complicated to legally access an abortion in the state of Wisconsin, and it’s designed to be that way. That legal situation is just rife for creating confusion and the unintentional continuation of misinformation or incomplete information. That therefore also then makes it more difficult to access that care.
Secondly, for both abortion care and birth care, one of the difficulties of accessing the full range of options is insurance and money. I mean really, truthfully, because of the Hyde Amendment, BadgerCare will not cover abortion care in the state of Wisconsin. And it’s been less than 10 years since licensed midwives or certified professional midwives could bill BadgerCare. So that’s a relatively new development, and I think a lot of folks even know about that. They don’t even know that if you wanted to have a home birth and you have BadgerCare, your provider can be covered and provide that care for you, instead of having to pay out of pocket for that care.
And even with birth care, I think there continues to be a lot of misinformation about what exactly licensed midwives do, and their scope of care and their training. And how they provide safe care in the community rather than in the hospital. And so I think for us it’s really about helping people get access to that information because it can be really hard.
DL: You mentioned that Wisconsin is a is a pretty tough landscape for abortion access in particular. What’s the group’s outlook on what the next few years might look like in Wisconsin? Does POWERS get involved in lobbying at all?
JH: Our focus is not on lobbying. Our focus is definitely on being that place to provide education, resources, and support for pregnant folks in Wisconsin and always in our work, trying to model in healthcare of having the pregnant person at the center with the knowledge and authority over their own life. I don’t know if I would say that we have a specific outlook on what the next few years will bring. We are living with the realities that there is a Supreme Court that is majority anti-choice. We live with the reality that Wisconsin has a criminal abortion statute from the 1800s still on the books, and recognizing what that could cause if Roe was overturned. And also being an island between two states, Illinois and Minnesota, that have state constitutional level protection for abortion care.
So it’s kind of thinking about, where would we sit in that picture in the coming years? I think where we would always fit is dignity, autonomy, and the right of the pregnant person to decide what’s best for them. And how that would look if the worst happened—we would just have to change and adapt, but that’s always going to be the side that we’re on.
DL: I think it’s a surprise to folks to find out how difficult it is to get an abortion in Wisconsin. What is the current landscape like? How many clinics do we have? Is it the sort of thing where you can just make an appointment and show up?
JH: At my last glance, for clinics that provide abortion care, there is one in Madison that provides medication and surgical abortion up to 19 weeks, two in Milwaukee that provide the same service, and then a clinic in Sheboygan that provides medication abortion.
In the state of Wisconsin people are required to have two separate in-person visits at least 24 hours apart. So for a person who lives three or four hours from the nearest clinic, that means two separate trips on two different days. And the reality is that due to scheduling, there’s often not back-to-back appointments, so in addition to having to find the money for the care that is not covered by insurance, they need to find transportation [and] probably someone to care for their own children [and] take time off of work.
So all of these things really stack up and make it really difficult to access. Then the additional layer is if someone is under the age of 18, they are required to either have an adult who fits kind of certain legal criteria present with them, or they have to seek out the judicial bypass.
Just as a comparison point for people—just to help them understand—in Illinois, you make an appointment. You show up at the clinic. You get the care you need. It is covered by their state Medicaid, if you need it.
So it’s very, very different based on which side of a state border you live on, how easy it is to access care.
DL: Do you think that there are people from Wisconsin who are already traveling to other states to get abortions because it’s more accessible than trying to get one here? Is that already a reality?
JH: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But I think there’s also, with that, a question about who has access to the information, who can get transportation even further to cross the state line. So there are definitely people who make that decision, and I think it also is a question of privilege, about who gets to make that decision.
And then also the reality is that in the state of Wisconsin, as in many places across the United States where abortion is difficult to access, some people will choose self-managed abortion through medications that they’ve obtained online. And that’s just a part of the picture here too.
DL: So we talked a little bit about the misinformation and how it’s difficult for people to access information. To what extent is that a product of the issue of crisis pregnancy centers? Crisis pregnancy centers bill themselves as pregnancy options places. Even if they’re not providing information about abortion, are they providing good information and resources about pregnancy and birth?
JH: I’m not an expert on crisis pregnancy centers, but what I will say is if you are not clear with people upfront about the services that you do and do not provide, as well as how to access services that are still a constitutional right, you are not providing all options.
I think that it’s great to help people with material support during pregnancy. I think that can be very helpful to a lot of people. But I think the reality is if a person presents to you as a healthcare practitioner or somebody who is expressing themselves with the authority of a health care practitioner, and that person says, “full stop, I want to end my pregnancy and I’m trying to end my pregnancy,” I think there is an ethical obligation to provide them with true, accurate information. Anything else can create delay, which with something that’s really time-sensitive, like access to abortion care tends to create for the barriers to access, can create increased costs for people in getting that care. And so I think anything that’s there as a delay or a diversion is really unhelpful.
I’m a student midwife and what I learned in my accredited educational institution is that when a person presents with a pregnancy and they tell you clearly that they do not want to continue the pregnancy, even if you disagree with their decision, you have an ethical responsibility to tell them the truth and to direct them and to refer appropriately, so anything that is attempting to subvert that it’s not helpful.
DL: It’s not healthcare.
JH: Yeah. To a certain extent, there’s probably a lot of variability with regard to crisis pregnancy centers, and as far as I know, not a lot of state oversight or credentialing, so it’s hard to say things like, if a place also offers free ultrasounds, is that a ultrasound tech or a registered nurse with specialized additional training in providing ultrasounds? Or somebody who does not have that kind of specialized training? Is there a medical professional, like an advanced practice nurse or physician, who can properly interpret those ultrasounds? There’s a lot of things that can be found on early ultrasounds that require quick referral and specialized care, like in ectopic pregnancy. What are the systems in place for that?
So I think those are questions that I have about what happens at a crisis pregnancy center. With regard to providing people free ultrasounds.
DL: Your website mentions support for reproductive justice for Black lives. Can you talk a bit more about that aspect of the work specifically?
JH: So this is definitely a place where we are always continuing to learn from Black women and to try to support the efforts of Black women in our state. So, among other things, we have been trying to do some solidarity grants and supporting efforts like the Harambee Village Doulas Birth Center plan.
Reproductive justice really is a movement that was conceptualized, and a framework that was designed, by Black women addressing the needs of their community. I will say clearly that at this time POWERS’ leadership is majority white, so I am very careful to not co-opt the language of reproductive justice and to acknowledge that it does not belong to the community that I come from and give full credit to the folks who pioneered it.
But I think that for us as an organization, that framework does resonate with us, and so we want to work to support the efforts and leadership of communities of color in this state who are already doing the work to uplift and, frankly, save the lives of Black women and Black babies and Black folks who are pregnant.
DL: What are some of the biggest challenges that POWERS has faced in its first year?
JH: Honestly, I think the challenge that everyone has faced, which is COVID. March of last year we had really just started to develop a couple different things that we’re working on, trying to build more community connections. We had launched the website, we had the phone line going. In early February we did a training for abortion companions with folks who wanted to either incorporate it into work they’re already doing or begin doing work supporting folks through the abortion process. And then COVID hit. At first we were all just like, OK, well, we’ll just pause and we’ll figure out what happens next and then we’re like, oh, it’s never going to be over. We have to figure out what to do next.
So I think right now we are really trying for—and part of the billboards, too—is bringing our focus back, really highlighting the work of education, connecting folks with the resources they need, and providing support across the pregnancy spectrum. And that’s helping folks connect to the website, which has lots and lots of information on it. And help connect folks if they need kind of the more real-time support with the phone line to know that this is an option and this is something that’s available to them if they are having questions or having trouble accessing the resources they need or seeking support through the pregnancy process.
DL: What’s the most effective way for people to support POWERS? And where should people who care about this idea of bodily autonomy, and of trusting pregnant people, be focusing their energy and attention?
JH: So I would welcome anyone who is interested in learning more and getting involved and, you know, any way that we can be helpful to other folks’ activism around this issue, can go to our website, which is pregnancyoptionswi.org. There’s a “contact us” form and we can kind of get them connected.
I think there’s a lot of places that folks can be focusing their attention.
I think there’s so many pieces of bodily autonomy, especially around the type of pregnancy, people kind of hop on in different ways, so we would definitely welcome getting involved with POWERS, getting connected with us.
I think there is always room for folks to get to know what are the resources in your local community. Are there tools available in your community? Is there midwifery care available in your community? Who are the leaders with regard to reproductive justice? I always want to lift up the work of Maroon Calabash in Milwaukee. They are, through COVID, providing doula support and assistance for people of color to access midwifery care and support for people who are releasing pregnancy through abortion or miscarriage. Here in Madison, the Harambee Village doulas are doing amazing work of providing doula support and envisioning this birth center to try to reverse the huge disparities and infant mortality rates.
But we would love to connect with them with POWERS. We always want to connect with people in all parts of the state to help support them and uplift them in their work and also to just look around your community. Connect with the leaders in your community. Because there’s always work to be done.
DL: Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you wish that I had or that you’d like to talk about?
JH: We always really try to highlight that POWERS is not affiliated with any political organization. We’re totally independent. We’re not affiliated with any religious group.
This really is something that came from a group of folks who are midwives, physicians, nurses, doulas, community activists who are really coming into this discussion about pregnancy options from a lot of different angles and experiences. I think that’s why, for us it’s so important that this is a place that is holistic and that this conversation is really inclusive of all pregnancy options and outcomes. Because we know that the truth of the matter is a person who has an abortion is going to be somebody who has a home birth later, or somebody who has had two or three babies could be a person who has an abortion five years later.
There’s this false dichotomy that all these things are kind of silos, and they’re all different and they’re all disconnected. But the truth of our lives is that it’s all really, deeply connected. And so we just seek to honor that connection and honor the truth of our lives, that they aren’t separate. It’s really not separate.
Gallup has reported that two-thirds of people in the United States approve of labor unions, the highest rating in two decades. And yet, unions represent the smallest share of the workforce in one hundred years—fewer than before there was a legal right to form a union and collectively bargain with an employer. Only one in ten workers in the U.S. are represented by a union, in the private sector it is even fewer: roughly one in twenty (6.2 percent).
Chicago Teachers Union
With so few union members, even workers who are favorable to unions have little direct experience with the labor movement or the maze of labor relations in this country. What follows is an explanation of the context in which unions operate and why things shaped up the way they did. It is especially important for workers who want to organize and be a part of reviving the labor movement to know how things work and to understand what needs to be different.
It is especially important for workers who want to organize and be a part of reviving the labor movement to know how things work and to understand what needs to be different.
Back in the day
A union is a group of workers acting together for better wages and working conditions. But unions also exist in a complicated legal framework with a history. In the U.S., workers did not have the legal right to form unions at their workplaces until the 1930s, when the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was passed in 1935. (Technically, the right to organize was first recognized when the National Industrial Recovery Act was passed in 1933, but this collapsed and gave way to the NLRA in 1935.) Before then, unions had little legal standing and were often regarded as a criminal conspiracy. Employers had no obligation to recognize or negotiate with unions, and they routinely suppressed unions by firing or blacklisting organizers, creating spy networks, and hiring goon squads like the Pinkerton detective agency to attack unionists.
To get anything from an employer, unions had to disrupt production and stop business as usual. First, to bargain for a contract, an employer had to be willing to recognize the union—essentially agree to deal with the workers’ organization and be willing to acknowledge it as a representative of their workers. Most employers resisted recognizing unions as long as they could, and it would take numerous battles, boycotts, work disruption, strike action, and secondary strikes to force an employer to agree to deal with the union.
If workers were able to push the employer to recognize their union and negotiate, enforcement of an agreement required job action to protect the integrity of that agreement. Companies sometimes created their own unions that they controlled (“yellow unions”) to undermine independent unions, which workers had to confront to protect their organization and the things that they had won. This was the world unions lived in before the NLRA—and somehow a larger share of workers were union members back then.
The National Labor Relations Act
The legal right to organize followed intense conflict between workers and employers. In 1934, bitter union fights boiled over into general strikes in Minneapolis, Toledo, and San Francisco. The NLRA created legal mechanisms for organized labor with the intention of mediating fights through labor boards set up by the government that would bind both unions and companies. The NLRA introduced the features of the labor movement today:
Legal recognition of the right of workers to join a union, to act collectively, and to strike
A legal process for recognition of a union, binding both sides
Exclusive representation by one union, if certified as the representative of workers in a “bargaining unit”
A defined set of rules that employers would have to observe in the process of working towards union certification (“unfair labor practices”)
A requirement that both sides must bargain in good faith after a union is certified
Establishment of a labor board to rule on disputes, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
That is a lot, so let’s unpack it. First, the NLRA does not cover all workers, and only governs the private sector. The NLRA excludes domestic workers, farm workers, and “independent contractors,” which reflects racist and sexist attitudes, since these industries were (and are) racialized and gendered. (Rail and airline workers are governed separately by the “Railway Labor Act.”)
Second, the recognition process in the act is now what we commonly refer to as “unionization,” but that is not technically correct. Any group of workers acting together can be a union. What the NLRA does is provide a path for a union to be recognized by the employer as “exclusive bargaining agent”—a union that speaks on behalf of all workers in a defined area. Exclusive representation is a feature of labor law in the U.S., and it comes out of the struggle against company unions. Before the NLRA, companies would try to deter workers from joining independent unions by creating their own rival, company-controlled unions to divide workers and weaken organizing efforts—exclusive representation curbs that. When a union is certified, no other union may represent workers in that bargaining unit (a defined group of employees represented by that union), and no deals can be made with individual workers.
The NLRA outlines three ways to establish union recognition: recognition strikes, voluntary recognition, and NLRB secret elections. Certification of union recognition is necessary to be able to bargain a union contract.
Strike recognition basically does not happen anymore, but it is included as a legal way to be certified because it used to be the way unions won recognition. Workers would declare their union, and strike to stop work until the employer agreed that the union is the legitimate organization of the workers. In the NLRA, this process ends with the employer agreeing that the result of the strike is certification of the union.
Voluntary recognition is rare, but an employer can simply agree to deal with the union. In modern union campaigns, unions often request voluntary recognition before they file for an election with the NLRB—they almost never get it.
The NLRB election route is the most common way for a union to be certified now. The way it works is that workers sign cards or a petition “authorizing” a union to bargain on their behalf. After submitting the petition, the NLRB holds an election to determine if workers want the union to represent them or not. If a majority votes for it, the union is certified as the exclusive agent and it can bargain a contract.
Most existing union members have not gone through this process but get hired into a job where the union has already been certified. Before the NLRA, workers would join a union even though it represented a minority at a workplace and they would strive to win the majority and eventually recognition by demonstrating what workers could do together. The NLRA still has some parts that pertain to unions and labor organizations that do not have a majority, and more generally the rights of workers without union representation to “concerted protected activity.” You have more rights when acting together (but enforcing them is another thing altogether). At this point, unions generally choose not to allow membership for workers who have not won a certification election. Many unions simply do not have a concept of anything other than a certified bargaining unit now. As unions have moved away from confrontation with employers to relying on the law and employers’ goodwill, viewing themselves as simply servicing contracts, minority unions striving for recognition have become very rare.
The NLRB method is intended to move the struggle for union recognition away from the shop floor, with all the strikes and work disruptions that entailed, to a legal process in which organizing is contained. Workers either win the representation election and then “unionize” or they lose, the sponsoring union withdraws, and they are not allowed to try again for a full year. The NLRA set up rules that employers must observe when dealing with unions, and breaking them is called “unfair labor practices.” The most significant rule for the modern labor movement is that companies must bargain with a certified union (whether they want to or not).
The Taft-Hartley Act
You might hear old labor veterans swear about Taft-Hartley and have no idea what that means. In 1947, the U.S. Congress passed a series of significant amendments to the NLRA, removing some rights and introducing new sections that overwhelmingly favored employers. The changes:
Outlawed secondary strikes and boycotts
Outlawed closed shops
Allowed states to introduce “right-to-work” laws
Stripped supervisors of their right to form unions
Extended unfair labor practices to unions
Allowed employers to oppose unions and to campaign against them
Forced union leaders to file anti-Communist affidavits (ruled unconstitutional in 1965)
Employers passed these amendments to outlaw the tactics organized labor relied on to build unions. A secondary strike is when workers at one shop strike to support other workers at another shop. For example, an autoworkers union negotiating at an assembly plant might call for another shop that supplies their plant to strike to put additional pressure on their employer. The workers at the second shop may not have an immediate issue with their employer, but they stop production of the materials needed at the assembly plant until that company gives in. The labor movement relied on this kind of solidarity to win, but also to build unity between unions and workers. These types of strikes were outlawed by Taft-Hartley.
Likewise, a closed shop agreement meant that a company could only hire union members. This provided incentive for workers to join a union regardless of whether they were at a represented workplace in order to be hired by an employer.
A major change was granting employers the right to oppose unions in formation. Prior to that, a company had to be neutral and allow workers to decide for themselves whether to be represented by a union. After Taft-Hartley, companies could hold meetings to attack the union, send propaganda to vote against the union, and generally make the process a living nightmare. A less well-known part of Taft-Hartley removed the right of immediate supervisors to form their own unions.
Right-to-work laws, justified by racist segregationists, do not take away any rights granted by the NLRA. However, in states where they exist right-to-work laws prohibit employers from entering into agreements in which everyone represented by a union has to be a member or pay their fair share of the representation costs. Because they are a certified exclusive representative, a union has to represent every worker in their unit, but workers can freeload, refusing to pay dues while expecting to receive the benefits of a union contract.
No-strike clauses, grievances, and arbitration
When a union negotiates with an employer, they create a collective bargaining agreement, or a contract between the union and the company. The contract spells out wages, working conditions, benefits and the like, and it cements the relationship between labor and management for a time. What happens if management violates the contract?
In the early years of the Congress of Industrial Relations (CIO), if there was a dispute over the contract the union demanded that it be dealt with or they stopped working. This gave the union teeth—respect the agreement or we will strike. Beginning with World War II, unions started to give up their right to strike during the life of a contract and they instead introduced the grievance process. This practice concedes the ability to disrupt work and instead lays out a process to resolve disputes between labor and management. It typically involves filing a complaint, discussing it, and aiming to resolve it between the union and management. Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers is credited with marking the shift away from fighting over the quality and operation of the workplace to simply bargaining for wages and benefits in the “Treaty of Detroit” (1950). Initially, unions reserved their right to strike at the end of a grievance process, but that gave way to “arbitration”—essentially taking the issue to a judge to determine what should happen. Most union grievance processes now end in arbitration, and do not permit strikes. (Note: This isn’t a law, its just common practice now. Unions have the right to maintain strike rights.)
UFT teachers picket for first contract
Public Sector Unions
In the 1950s and 1960s, teachers, city, and state workers started to form unions without any legal right to do so—remember that the NLRA only deals with certain private sector workers. Like the union movement before the NLRA, public sector unions organized workers, made demands, and struck to win concessions from the government. A strike wave of teachers in the 1960s and 1970s won bargaining rights and transformed what were at the time professional associations like the National Education Association (NEA) into genuine unions. With no federal laws for the public sector, every state in the U.S. has its own specific framework for unions in the public sector. Often these reflect the NLRA, but some states grant few or no bargaining rights to public employees (North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas,) and most outlaw strikes. This has led to very uneven experiences for public employees depending on what state you live in. Overriding changes to public employment have come through the Supreme Court, as with the 2018 AFSCME vs. Janus ruling.
Employees of the federal government only won bargaining rights in the 1970s, when a general strike of postal workers forced the reconfiguration of the postal service and with it the right for unions to bargain. In 1978, the Civil Service Reform Act established bargaining rights for federal workers more generally.
Always Forwards, Never Backwards
All advances are the product of militant collective action (strikes). Over time, the things labor wins are rolled back—sometimes dramatically, like the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act or Scott Walker’s Act 10 in my state of Wisconsin. There is also the constant barrage of lawsuits and court cases to make death by a million small cuts. Without a framework that sees workers’ activity as the central factor, the fallback will be to acclimate—get better at playing worse and worse hands. We do win sometimes, but by and large our gains are through the big pushes.
Looking at it like this, we should of course support positive reforms to bad labor laws, but we should never make the mistake of thinking that legislation is where our power comes from. Years of labor tailing the Democrats has left little to show for the millions of dollars and countless hours spent on these politicians. History shows us that it is when there is independent activity, workers in motion halting production and asserting what should be, that the state prepares to make compromises that move us forward.
The following speeches and excerpts are from the Car Caravan and Rally Against Fascism action and online panel held on January 9. You can read more about the action in this report or watch a recording of the panel and rally.
Ayomi Obuseh, Impact Demand:
Hello everyone, my name is Ayomi Obuseh and I am the Executive Director and co-founder for Impact Demand. I am speaking today to talk about the abhorrent threat to our democracy as we watched fascists try to initiate a coup within the US Capitol.
This was not a protest. This was not a revolution. This was an action that was spurred from seditious rhetoric from the President and other Republican leaders from D.C. to right here in Madison, Wisconsin.
This was a plan to redirect our focus from the real issues and shows us at a last resort those in power are trying to embolden violence to shake our democracy.
This display comes right after the officer who shot Jacob Blake not one or two but SEVEN times in the back wasn’t charged.
And it’s clear: Enough is enough.
There are countless images to come to mind when we ask ourselves, “What if they were black?” Images containing tear gas, noise munitions, rubber bullets, and people not only handcuffed and brutalized, but killed.
As a Nigerian American, I’m fighting police brutality not only here but back home with SARs, and I hold these identities as though they are reflections of each other — both of which are on fire.
I am tired of waiting for our representatives and institutions to stand up to call out these injustices. I am tired of “liberals” playing catch-up while we watch Black death on TV almost EVERY DAY. It is time we hold people accountable. To keep each other safe, we have to recognize that we hold the power, that we mobilize and move each other forward.
It is imperative that we analyse the structural characteristics of racism. Because there will always be a man that we need to remove from office; there will always be a threat. There will always be racism. What we need is to stand together as a community to pull ourselves forward.
We have to understand this is the manifestation of misogyny, racism, facism, and polarized government. The real America was on display yesterday. The real America is founded on white supremacy, and violence, and the systems which upholds it. It is not a surprise for every Black and Brown American, who have witnessed this time and time again: When you condemn silently kneeling, yet have kids in cages and steal Native lands — Shame!
Madison is angry. We are not asking for those who condone domestic terrorism to step down, we are demanding it!
We demand the removal of Ron Johnson from office.
We demand Breonna’s Law.
We demand the Hands Up Act.
We demand community control.
There is no trust between us and the police. It is imperative that we have the resources we need to build healthy and safe communities.
Brian Ward, DSA:
When we look at settler colonialism, we look at white supremacy, we look at capitalism – these are all destructive systems that have continued to ravage this land mass, the people on this mass, specifically Black and Indigenous people. The thing about the Capitol, when people were like, “Oh, White supremacists are invading it,” I’m just like, “Oh, they’re invading a building that was built by slaves.” That’s the origins of this country. We need to understand that to its core. Understanding that is the first step to this because this only is shocking if you do believe in the myth that America is that beacon on the hill. And underneath that hill are bodies and blood that built that country. That needs to be said pretty continually.
A point that Ananda made that I think I think liberals are going to gravitate towards, and that we’re starting to see, is state repression. There’s a call for more police in response to this. The FBI is going around starting to arrest people because these people are stupid enough to put their face all over social media. But we know that those institutions are not just going to be used against these right-wingers. Maybe they’ll be used against them right now. But we need to look back to the past. Like COINTELPRO. Who did that affect? That affected the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, the Young Lords. It affected people of color and other anti-war activists that were fighting a multi-racial fight against the systems that we’re talking about and that we’re calling out that are rotten to their core.
I want to urge a resistance to that idea. We saw on the congressional floor after all this everyone praising the police and everything. We need to understand the role of the police and those same forces that are used disproportionately on people of color and other people on the left. We need to combat that language that liberals and Democrats might start trending towards to protect things and we need to understand that’s not the way that we’re going to combat this. It’s not by increasing police forces and increasing funding for the FBI. We’re going to combat [fascism] with the numbers as we continue to say. I just wanted to make sure to bring out that point because I have a real fear that that’s going to be the response. A lot of my liberal friends are starting to talk about that lot.
We can’t forget the uprising this summer. The police are not on our side. Somehow we think we can wield the police to go after right wingers – I don’t believe that for a second. That same increased power will be used continually against the left and against people of color that are out there fighting to be rid of this system. Ultimately we need to fight for a system that doesn’t value profit, that values humanity and the planet and that’s what we need to be pushing towards.
Ananda Deacon, ACLU Student Alliance
Hi. My name is Ananda Deacon, I use she/her pronouns, I am the current leader of the ACLU Student Alliance on campus as well as a member of the newly formed Civilian Oversight Board, and these views are my own.
The events of this past Wednesday were a lot of things, particularly unreasonable, unsurprising, and unacceptable. However, these events were NOT un-American. If you saw what went down and it filled you with fear and disgust, and if you so badly want that type of domestic terrorism to be considered un-American, we need drastic change and we need it now.
Watching those events as a Black woman were triggering for several reasons. The first being that this country discovered this past summer what every black person grows up knowing: Black people are being hunted for sport in this country and are not afforded the same privileges as white people. Myself and many others watched these events with baited breath, because we knew had it been black and brown people pepper spraying the police, assaulting the police, destroying property, and causing an evacuation the Capitol hadn’t seen since 9/11, the last thing we would have been getting were selfies. To be clear, we did not want to see the pro-Trump rioters be shot, we wanted to see us having the same recognition of humanity given to them.
In 2017, when they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, over 40 disability rights activists were arrested, with many more arrested in the days to come. In 2018, when women led the protest over the separation of families at the border, 600 people were arrested. According to The Guardian and Al-Jazeera, 9 to 10 thousand people were arrested in relation to the George Floyd protests.
On Jan. 6th, 2021, 14 people were arrested after an attempted coup.
If you haven’t caught on yet, the system in place is not broken, but fixed, and its sole intention is to uphold white supremacy above all else.
But as I said, this is unsurprising. Make no mistake, these events cannot be seen as separate from having had our first black president 4 years ago, having just elected our first black Vice President, and Georgia having elected its first black senator that very day. This harkens back to the 1898 Wilmington Insurrection, when Black citizens were murdered en mass, 100 thousand registered black voters fled, and over 100 Black politicians were removed from office. There are years and years of precedent for this country enacting violence over the idea of black people given the same, or similar to the same, things that they are given, because this goes against everything they were taught to believe in this country.
If we want so desperately for domestic terrorism, fascism, and white supremacy to not be considered as American as apple pie, we need to dismantle these structures now. We need to defund the police, have full citizen control over them, and then create a world where we don’t need them anymore. We need to include all people at the table, and amplify black, brown, neurodivergent, disabled, trans, and immigrant voices. We must reinvest into those communities, and protect them from such violence moving forward by actively condemning every sign of racism, fascism, and frankly any other -ism that upholds white supremacy.
We are past needing words, we need action.
Julianna Bennett
This is fascism, but this is America. The system that needs to change. I call upon you today to do your part. To take one thing – this is what I did when the black lives matter movement started, is to say every day in the morning – what am I doing to change the system? What am I doing for Black lives today? What am I doing to end racism? So one thing you can do today is sign the petition calling for the resignation of Ron Johnson. Another thing is email your local elected officials, your state elected officials. Calling for the resignation. Emailing Tammy Baldwin, emailing Mark Pocan, emailing Ron Johnson himself to call for his resignation. And just continue the learning and unlearning. We’re making change just having this conversation.
Joanna Love, Reshaping Madison Together
I am a founder of Reshaping Madison Together. Reshaping Madison Together started with justified anger. Anger because these politicians are not doing their fucking job. Get to work! We are hurting. We’re dying. We’re going through a pandemic and nobody cares. All these politicians who have the power – they don’t care. They continue to see all of the Black and Brown bodies getting murdered by the police, getting brutalized, getting criminalized. Women like me go unprotected. Black and Brown women are the most unprotected group!
We need to fight, we need to organize, we need to come together. We need to hold these politicians accountable because we all in this together. And if we don’t do it, then we have people like Ron Johnson. Then we got people like Skidmore on our Common Council, we got people like Carter. They need to go.
Rehsaping Madison Togehter started organizing all of the activists and community members. We started inspiring with the support and resources that we have so [people] can run for office and take over the Common Council. I believe that we will be the first city in the history of America with the most Black Lives Matter activists and people of color community leaders, running for office, taking over our city. Reshaping. Reforming. Retaking our justice and our peace. I am really inspired by how people continue to pay attention. The way that we get treated, it’s way different. I mean look at what happened in Washington D.C. Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer were peaceful. They had children. We had homeless community members on State Street that were tear gassed for no reason. For literally screaming, with nothing in their hands. Maybe a megaphone. This is ridiculous, the way they continue to treat us. The way they continue to treat the undcoumented community, the immigrant community, when right now they’re the essential workers. They’re the ones feeding America. Then we got people like Robin Vos and Ron Johnson continuing to attack them. Continue to deny relief funds. [Undocumented workers] are not getting any relief funds. They didn’t get no stimulus, nothing.
We need to come together, we need to talk about these things. We need to address all of these issues. We need to hold them accountable. Demand that they resign. Or take over their seats. We need to organize and take over the seats. Right now it’s the Common Council, next year it’s the County Board and the mayor. We’re coming. Reshaping Madison Together, we’re retaking, we’re reforming, we’re bringing back the power to the people. We’re bringing back the power to the people where it belongs because we got the power.
Benji Ramirez Gomez, DSA & Reshaping Madison Together
I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for going out today. Because what this shows me is that you care. You fundamentally care about the people around you. Wednesday’s action terrified you because it shook the foundation of what our nation’s built on, on what Madison values. We look around and we care about one another. We love each other. We understand that when we have unity, we have power. I want us to hold that in our hearts because that is what the work is built upon.
We don’t do this for free, we do this because we are coming together because this is for you, this is for me, this is for all of us. So when we look at fascists, when we look at the symptoms that have given way to embolden fascists to come out and to strike fear in the heart of the nation, we have to look into our hearts and look into each other to understand that this isn’t okay. This doesn’t stop today. This is something that has been festering for a long time.
We are out here because we are saying no more. We are out here because it is time we build something. Don’t let today be the only time you come out. Engage in something. Take those values that make us Madison, that curve the sidewalk around the tree, and put them to something. Whether that’s joining the DSA, as I did this past June, or starting your own coalition, as I did with Joanna a few months ago – shout out to RMT! I’m asking you to do something, to keep doing something. Because otherwise they’re going to keep building, they’re going to keep organizing. The extremists who want to take everything away from us, who don’t recognize people who look like me, people who look like my Black brothers and sisters out here. They don’t see us as humans, but ya’ll do. And ya’ll have to keep fighting for that. So thank you. Thank you for being out here today. Thank you for continuing to commit yourself to a better tomorrow.
Tatianna
I thought that it was important that I came out here to speak today because I thought I would touch on a few points that maybe people haven’t been thinking about recently because of the events that happened on Wednesday. Even though people keep saying they weren’t surprised, it actually is surprising. At the end of the day it’s surprising. We expect something like it but we never know when it’s going to come or how it’s going to come so yeah, it’s still surprising. I also think a lot of people keep saying, “Yeah, we need to end white supremacy,” and that is 100% true, I’m down with that at any time, any place, anywhere. But I think that something that we really need to focus on is the fact that people feel comfortable.
That’s what we really need to end. White people feeling comfortable. Cause too many people feel comfortable in the world that we live in. The fact that people say the events that happened on Wednesday aren’t surprising – that’s a problem. Because we’re too comfortable with the fact that they reflected what America really is. People say it’s embarrassing a lot of times. Whenever America is in the news, it’s about something embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to be from this country. Yeah! I’m happy to feel embarrassed because at least that means you don’t feel comfortable. But I don’t even think that feeling embarrassed is enough. Embarrassed isn’t enough. You should feel disgusted. you should want to do something. Because tweeting “I feel embarrassed isn’t enough. It never has been and it never will be.
Tessa E., DSA
Thanks for coming out, everybody. I’m so excited the caravan was as large as it was. Thanks to all of the amazing speakers. I just wanted to quickly say – you know we’re watching these news streams and we’re seeing how the police are treating the fascists and everyone goes, “That’s not how they treated the Black Lives Matter protests,” and making all these comparisons. And I just want to stress how not similar those protests were.
When the Black Lives Matter protests are in the street – when leftists are in the street – we’re fighting for life. We’re fighting for dignity. We’re fighting for the police to not murder people. That’s an important thing, that’s something that should get us out in the streets, that we should be protesting. When fascists go out, that is an act of violence in and of itself. Because they want to kill people. They want to take away people’s rights. And they should not be allowed to do that. So yeah. The police shouldn’t just respond the same way. They should actually stop them because being a fascists is a violent act. Throwing a brick through a window is not a violent act. That’s property. Violence is against people. What we have seen this last year is police brutality against peaceful protesters in the Black Lives Matter movement and violence from fascists to our state capitol. And all of that is not okay.
So we need to keep showing up, we need to keep showing solidarity between the working class and turning up for these things. So Ron Johnson? He’s gotta go. But so do so many other elected officials including on our city council, last week, where they tried to pass a bullshit resolution to support “non-violence” as a thinly veiled white supremacist attempt to stop people from protesting in Madison. Luckily it didn’t pass, but it didn’t pass because everyone abstained. Even our council members are not willing to stand up and say that that is not okay. So keep fighting. Keep showing up. Like everyone said before me, there are multiple ways to be involved.
Cherry, UW BIPOC Coalition
I may be half-Asian, my mom may be from South Korea, she may be a dark-skinned Brown woman, but I am still here because I’m white. I have the privilege to be speaking. Right now, there was another member of the UW MAdison BIPOC coalition that couldn’t be here today who had a voice that I would have loved to have here anyways. Because it’s not my voice that deserves to be heard in this situation. Asians have a very different history in this county. Yes, we were oppressed. Yes, you put us in camps. But you still used us as a weapon against Black and Brown bodies. you brought us in to break up your strikes. You brought us in to do your labor. The reason why you call us Chink is because we built your railroads and that’s it. That sound is the sound that echoes in all of us every single one of us has to get there. I have been called chink, I have been called gook, but it doesn’t matter to me.
What matters to me is if I am at a protest and a white man on a motorcycle rolls up on my friends that are visibly darker than me, that are visibly more people of color, the only reason why I feel like I’m not about to get shot is because I look white and [people are] going to care more if I get shot. So I’m going to put my body in between and I’m going to get my foot ran over. I’m gonna get, you know, told by several of the members of the administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, congratulations and thank you for your activism but we’re not going to do shit. And they didn’t. They waited until [the white motorcyclist and UW employee] dug himself into a hole deep enough that he couldn’t get out of so that they could fire him. They didn’t care that he ran me over. They didn’t care about the fact that he called my friend the n-word. They didn’t care that he later racially profiled people that I care about. They didn’t care about any of that. Because they don’t care.
UW Madison is one of those systems that – just like Ron Johnson, we don’t do anything about. We let it happen. We keep putting them in power because, like Tatianna said, it’s comfortable for you. It’s comfortable for you to look at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and have the face of that be Becky Blank. It’s not comfortable for you to look at the University of Wisconsin Madison and see my face. Because when you google that you start seeing “UW Madison Power Plant Employee Runs Over Protesters.” They hate me because I give them bad press. And that’s fine. But imagine what they would have done if it was a Black person giving them bad press. I wouldn’t be able to stand here if I was a Black person. They would’ve gotten me already. And that’s the fucking fact that we have to deal with every single morning.
Madison Area DSA is continuing to organize against fascism and for COVID-19 relief. Join us on Sunday, January 24 for a Freeze Out Fascism event. Find more information on Facebook.
A report on the Car Caravan Against Fascism by Scot McCullough
On Saturday, January 9 over 150 people participated in a car caravan against fascism, demanding the resignation or removal from office of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Ron Johnson has spent much of his political energy since November feeding into Trump’s baseless claims that there was widespread voter fraud and that the election was rigged against him. This led to the thousands-strong fascist coup attempt in D.C. last Wednesday, where Congress’ normally symbolic confirmation of the electoral college votes was delayed by hours after fascists breached the capitol building.
A view of the car caravan on East Washington Avenue. Photo by Benji Ramirez Gomez
Ron Johnson is partially responsible for the credibility and confidence given to the far-right in the US right now through his public statements that he would vote to reject the election results. Even after seeing the fascist paraphernalia and confederate flags in the capital, Johnson still published a statement saying “I refuse to dismiss the legitimate concerns of tens of millions of Americans who have lost faith in our institutions and the fairness of our electoral process.” This is what is motivating people across the state to call for his removal right now, including calls from the mainstream newspapers like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Wisconsin State Journal.
Saturday’s action, initiated by the Madison DSA and involving Socialist Alternative, Allies for Black Lives, Sunrise Movement, Impact Demand, Our Wisconsin Revolution Dane County, WI WILL WIN, Urban Triage, and the Teaching Assistants Association, began at the Wisconsin State Capitol at noon. Cars blocked traffic on the square as they circled the building. The caravan left the square and went down the mostly straight shot to Ron Johnson’s office 9 miles away. People honked their car horns and led chants on megaphones from their windows.
At Johnson’s office, in a small corporate office-building near the mall, people spoke to the crowd about the magnitude of Johnson’s actions, as well as speaking about the connections between the fight for Black Lives all summer and fall and what happened in DC on Wednesday. Many at the rally were among those tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed (or worse) by Madison police over the summer, and the juxtaposition between their treatment and that of the fascists was lost on no one.
Local activist Joanna Love speaks at the demonstration at Ron Johnson’s office. Photo by Benji Ramirez Gomez.
In addition to having speakers at the rally, participants were encouraged to leave a message to Johnson on the sheets of paper provided and tape it to the front of the building. Some messages focused on the events of last week, like “Get Out, Fascist Trash” and “You Support Fascists, How dare you object to the votes of US citizens? Resign Today”, while others focused on other crimes of Ron Johnson and the US government, like “Free the kids in cages! Abolish ICE!”
In addition to the car caravan, Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America hosted a simultaneous livestream discussion of Wednesday’s violent attack for people who could not participate in the car caravan and rally, either due to a lack of transportation or due to COVID-19 concerns. The discussion featured four local activists, including Julianna Bennett and Ananda Deacon, in addition to DSA members Brian Ward and Dayna Long. The discussion covered the difference between the police response to the white surpremacist mob in Washington D.C. and their response to non-violent protests for Black liberation. The panelists also discussed how the violent aims of the fascists movement were reflected in the lack of care shown to their own supporters, one of whom was trampled to death at the scene of the mob, and how this contrasts with the community care practiced at local Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
While Saturday’s action focused on Senator Ron Johnson, he is not the only Wisconsin politician who is responsible for the growth of far-right street movements right now. In the House, Tom Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, and Bryan Steil also legitimized the far-right conspiracy theory in the days leading up to the 6th through their refusal to publicly state that they would certify the election results. In the final and official votes, Johnson, Grothman, and Steil did confirm the election results, but their 11th-hour change-of-heart is too little and too late. Tiffany and Fitzgerald, even after the fascist riot, continued to back Trump and they voted to object to the election certification.
While the Republican Party makes it clear every day that they are a party of capital, the actions of these people—rioters and elected officials alike—represents a new and more dangerous threat to both democracy and people’s lives. As the various strands of far-right politics search for fuel to ignite their spark into a full-fledged populist movement, these politicians have given it to them, legitimizing their conspiracies and their violence. Socialists must fight fascism at every turn, and a part of that fight is shining a light on and isolating the mainstream fascist collaborators like Johnson, Tiffany, and Fitzgerald.The Democratic Socialists of America is supporting the resolution of Representative Cori Bush calling for Congress to condemn and remove from office the Republicans in office who empowered fascists in the streets. In Wisconsin, this means Senator Ron Johnson, who vocally supported Trump’s conspiracy theories; and Reps. Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, who actually voted against certifying the results. Sign the petition here to add your name to the call for their removal.
Madison Area DSA’s organizing against fascism and the growth of the far right continues. Join us for a Freeze Out Fascism event on Sunday, January 24, location TBA. See Facebook for details.
By Mary Croy, Dan Fitch, Greg Geboski and Dayna Long
The last twelve months have been some of the most momentous of our lives. The COVID-19 crisis was a catalyst, sharpening existing contradictions in society and making the harsh conditions of life under capitalism in the United States even more unbearable. After police in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd at the end of May, people reached a breaking point. Protests erupted around the country, and the movement for Black lives and Black liberation continued to shape political expression in Madison and elsewhere for much of the rest of the year.
In Madison alone, too much has taken place to include everything in any succinct summary. But reflection and assessment are critical practices for socialists and so the Red Madison Working Group has attempted a collection of local political moments that matter – the wins, losses, and turning points that tell us something about the strength of our movements and the working class. This list is not comprehensive. We’re sure to miss a lot. But we hope it provides a useful starting point for reflection in these early weeks of the new year. We can’t look forward with any clarity without also looking back.
2/29/2020: F35s at Truax. Hundreds protested against basing the wasteful, noisy, and dangerous F-35 combat aircraft at Truax Field on the North side of Madison. Despite an impressive grassroots campaign and neighborhood organizing to oppose the F-35s, the military chose Madison to be the newest base for the monstrosities just a few days later. Noise pollution is only the most noticeable form of environmental harm caused by these war machines. Tests have shown that the activities of the Wisconsin Air National Guard have already led to high levels of PFAS chemicals in groundwater samples, as well as in Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona. Construction to prepare for the F-35s might disrupt a highly contaminated site and make the spread of PFAS even worse.
3/12/2020: IWW General Defense Committee begins its mutual aid project, later renamed Dane County Community Defense, working from a model of solidarity, not charity. The group provided families throughout Dane County with food, toiletries, cleaning supplies, and financial support following the wave of job and income losses as a result of the COVID-19 shutdown that was just beginning. The group continued its work through June, providing over $75,000 in direct aid and feeding nearly 4,000 people. Other mutual aid projects that began at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic continue, including the COVID19 Mutual Aid Madison Facebook group, a moderated, non-judgemental space for solidarity and resource sharing.
3/15/2020: Schools close due to COVID-19. Public Health Madison & Dane County closed all of the schools in Dane County to prevent the spread of COVID-19. By this point in the month, it was clear that a massive, nation-wide shutdown was underway, though no one anticipated how long the pandemic would continue to ravage the nation or how badly the US Government would fail the public in managing the crisis.
4/7/2020: Risking our lives to vote. The Republican-controlled state legislature, backed the conservative-stacked Wisconsin State Supreme Court, refuses Governor Evers’ request that Wisconsin’s spring elections be rescheduled for June and also fights efforts to allow election officials to accept absentee ballots received after election day. As a result, voters throughout the state were forced to line up to vote in-person in the early days of a global pandemic. This outcome was especially terrible in Milwaukee, where there were only five polling places for almost 600,000 people. Milwaukee voter Mia Noel shared her experience with Wisconsin’s racist, flawed democracy in an interview.
4/8/2020: Sanders presidential run comes to an end. The presidential election campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the only candidate endorsed by DSA, brought the promise of socialism to millions. Locally, Wisconsin For Bernie (W4B) had already started organizing for Sanders as early as 2019, long before the official campaign came to the state. DSA was part of a coalition with W4B and others that campaigned for Sanders before COVID brought efforts to a premature end. After the socialist Sanders got a stunning win in Nevada, however, the Democratic Party power structure coalesced around former Vice President Joe Biden as the preferred candidate. This was capped off by the grotesque spectacle of the April 7 Wisconsin primary, won by Biden, going forward as the COVID pandemic raged.
The sudden defeat of the Sanders campaign did not lead to a collapse of the activism surrounding his campaign however. In one example, W4B leader, Sanders delegate, and DSA member Laura Valderrama was a lead organizer of a May Day rally for workers in Madison. Later, members of W4B organized with others to defend the November election results.
4/14/2020: UW Student, leading climate activist, and DSA member Max Prestigiacomo was elected to represent District 8 on Madison’s Common Council. At 18, Prestigiacomo is one of the youngest elected officials in the country. During the summer’s anti-racist uprising following the police murder of George Floyd, Prestigiacomo played a major role in giving movement demands a voice on the Common Council. Prestigiacomo was a leader in the fight to end the mayor’s curfew, and introduced legislation to curb police use of non-lethal projectiles, to decriminalize marijuana, and to ban the city’s use of facial recognition technology.
5/24/2020: Forward Into Hell. Public Health Madison & Dane County’s reopening plan went into effect, allowing businesses that had been closed since mid-March to reopen with limited capacity and no mask ordinance. While elected officials on the Dane County Board and the Madison Common Council were not given the opportunity to review the plan before it was announced to the public, the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce did get early access and the opportunity to weigh in. This ominous start set the stage for a midsummer COVID-19 spike. It was also an early sign of PHM&DC’s ongoing reluctance to put public health ahead of private interests and profit-making.
5/30/2020: George Floyd’s murderand the subsquent protests in Minneapolis and cities around the country finally reach Madison. Thousands took to the streets for a protest against police brutality and white supremacy led by Freedom Inc, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Urban Triage. After the official protest ended, hundreds of protesters still gathered on Capitol Square and the protest took a more militant turn. Witnesses recall protesters surrounding a police vehicle, then forcing the police officers who remained at the scene to retreat down Hamilton into the Public Safety building.
Next, the protesters headed to State Street where the much maligned window breaking and looting took place. A comrade who was present at the time said the scene brought to mind Lenin’s observation that a revolution is a “festival of the oppressed,” – at least until the police arrived and unleashed a wave of tear gas, pepper spray, and sound cannons at protesters. Police were further empowered to criminalize and brutalize protesters when Mayor Rhodes-Conway imposed a curfew shortly after the protest reached State street. DSA members who were present shared their impressions of that first evening. The pattern of evening protests followed by severe police repression held for the next few days until the Common Council struck down the curfew under immense pressure from the community. On Wednesday, June 3, activists held a powerful community gathering on Capitol Square with food and music and remembrance.
6/10/2020: Mayor’s private apology to cops leaks. The Mayor recorded a sympathetic video message for Madison police, saying“It must be absolutely infuriating to stand in a heavy gear outside while listening to people constantly insult your chosen profession,” and “It must be frightening to stand and have rocks and other things thrown at you, and to be in harm’s way constantly.” The password-protected video was released to police privately but it didn’t take long for everyone to become aware of the Mayor’s duplicitous bullshit. Backlash from all sides ensued.
6/23/2020 Yeshua Musa Arrested. Yeshua, a 28-year-old Black Lives Matter protest leader, was arrested by the police in what many saw as a targeted attack on an effective Black activist. His arrest sparked outrage and other organizers called supporters to the Dane County Jail to protest, later leading a march that lasted for hours and snaked through the isthmus. It ended in the early hours on June 24 with protesters removing the Forward statue and a statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg on Capitol Square, prompting tone deaf hand-wringing from liberals and conservatives alike over “good” monuments.
In some ways, that night and Musa’s arrest marked the opening of the legal backlash against the protests. In the days after Musa was arrested, several other young Black men who were involved with and leading the protest movement in Madison were arrested. Some now face serious federal charges that could see them spend decades in prison. Later, police began circulating pictures of protesters taken from security footage, leading to many more arrests for looting on the night of the first protest in Madison, as well as subsequent protest activity.
6/29/2020: No more cops in schools. Freedom Inc’s Freedom Youth Squad has been leading the charge to have “school resource officers” removed from Madison schools for years. This summer’s upsurge in protest against white supremacy and police brutality helped to push the struggle over the top. Madison Metropolitan School District’s School Board voted to end their contract with the Madison Police Department, marking the most significant movement victory of the year.
Photo by Emily Mills
7/8/2020: Doyle Resolutionis on the table. Dane County Board Supervisor Elizabeth Doyle announced that she would introduce legislation to halt the Dane County Jail consolidation project, which will cost the county hundreds of millions of dollars and expand Dane County’s capacity to incarcerate its residents. The jail population was dramatically reduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating that it’s possible to incarcerate fewer people and calling into question the need for a new, larger facility. Supervisor Doyle’s resolution was met with an outpouring of community support, as well as support from Supervisors who have been opponents of the jail project for years, like Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner. Unfortunately their moral clarity and fortitude is not matched by many of their colleagues. Other Supervisors opted to thwart democracy by allowing the resolution to languish in committee, declining to even take a vote on legislation that garnered more public comment than any other matter the board discussed this year.
8/11/2020 Nada Elmikashfi’s campaign for a State Senate seat comes to an end. Elmikashfi finished second in the crowded primary, her first run for office. Her grassroots campaign garnered over 13,000 votes, 26% of the overall total. Elmikashfi, a DSA member, connected with voters in the 26th district by advocating for affordable housing, racial justice, and an agenda which stressed working class interests. Although she lost to a well-heeled corporate candidate, Elmikashfi established that she’s a force to be taken seriously and helped to show the continued growth of working class power.
8/13/2020: Epic workers win. Unprecedented outcry and worker organizing forced tech giant Epic Systems to abandon its plans to force workers to return to its Verona campus in the middle of a pandemic. In spite of the company’s notorious hostility towards worker organizing, Epic workers risked their jobs to speak to the press about the company’s dangerous plans, with some even leaking audio recordings of internal meetings to national news outlets. Workers affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World rallied public support, while other workers began organizing with International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 565.
8/23/2020: Jacob Blake is shot by Kenosha police. Wisconsin became the center of the world’s attention when, in the middle of protests still raging over the police murder of George Floyd, Kenosha cop Rusten Sheskey shot Black Kenosha resident Jacob Blake seven times in the back, leaving Blake paralyzed. Then, two days later, Kyle Rittenhouse was driven in from Illinois by his mother, picked up a gun, and shot three protesters who were supporting Blake, killing two. Holding his weapon, Rittenhouse walked right past local police and became a hero to the Right. Blake’s family, many of them decades-long local civil rights activists, were central to organizing a march and rally less than a week after Jacob’s shooting, and their organizing continues. Many in Madison DSA have attended the protests. A charging decision on the cop shooting can happen any time, and is expected in early January.
9/2/2020: Reckless Restart. Days after beginning the Fall 2020 semester in person, administrators at University of Wisconsin-Madison were forced to impose strict lockdowns on dorms following a massive spike of COVID-19 cases among returning students. The result of their “Smart Restart” plan was exactly as faculty and staff predicted: disastrous for campus as well as the broader community, which has experienced higher COVID-19 case counts ever since. University officials attempted to blame student behavior for the surge in infections, but we haven’t forgotten that it was the administration that inflicted this risk on our community.
10/6/2020: Police civilian oversight board is formed following tremendous community pressure and ongoing organizing by Madison’s Community Response Team. Although the powers and purview of the oversight board are still in question, citizen oversight of police is a good step. 2021 will tell us if they have any teeth.
12/18/2020: New top cop. Since September 2019 and the sudden resignation of Madison’s temperament-challenged police chief Mike Koval, Madison’s Police and Fire Commission has had to search for a replacement. In the meantime… 2020 happened, a massive civil rights movement rose up here and across the country, and it looked like tear-gassing protesters was a higher priority for MPD than respecting Black lives. As the year ended, the police chief search came under increasing public scrutiny, and it <did not go over well with the community> with the sudden announcement that one of four—or was it five?–final candidates included one man, Christopher Davis, who was involved in an incident where a fellow cop killed a hospitalized Mexican citizen, with the same candidate also an architect of the notorious police crackdown of protesters in Portland, Oregon. Despite overwhelming support in public comments for Ramon Batista, former Chief of Police of Mesa, Arizona, and questions about the openness of the PFC’s search, the Commission chose Shon Barnes, the director of training and professional development for Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, who at least checked the box “not the Portland killer cop.” The vote was 3-2, Barnes over Batista.
12/18/2020: It’s official: Foxconn is a scam. After promising 13,000 jobs, Foxconn has built a factory 1/20th the size it claimed originally and now says it never promised to build an LCD plant. Hundreds of residents were forced to move into often substandard housing and local governments poured funds into roads and other infrastructure that leads to a dead end.
A critical look at the arguments and evidence used to justify new tech for policing
by Dan Fitch
Technology startups are infiltrating every part of our life, sometimes in secret and sometimes visibly. It’s time to look at two technologies whose impacts on public safety are not widely understood.
Facial recognition technology is harder to see, but is used behind the scenes by police. These algorithms can be used in many ways, but the most common in the context of policing is to search a database of faces for matches. Alder Max Prestigiacomo introduced a facial recognition technology ban which has since been taken up and passed by the Public Safety Committee and is headed to Madison’s Common Council for a vote on Tuesday, December 1. The proposal has led to heated public debate over the use of the technology in Madison.
The primary question asked by police proponents in these debates is, “why not use the technology?” as if those who are against it are all Luddites. Maybe the questioners are Luddites, in the sense that they would like technology to be applied to our lives ethically. We should think carefully about power and oppression, and large-scale surveillance can tip the scales in an incredibly powerful, largely invisible way. We must ask, who is helped and who is harmed by these technologies? Who is asking for these technologies? Should we keep listening to them?
Part of the problem is that most of the evidence is not in. Studies of body cameras on use of force and other metrics have conflicting results. Most studies on efficacy of facial recognition tech have conflicting, unconvincing results as well. The experts do not agree, and if anything, the consensus in academia is reversing from “body cams are probably good” to “body cams are likely bad”; where the consensus against facial recognition has always pointed out its biases. The only evidence heavily in favor of facial recognition seems to come from manufacturers of it, trying to sell their software.
The second major emphasis of pro-police council speakers, at least on the facial recognition ban, has been to “think of the children.” They believe that facial recognition is the only way to fight sex trafficking and the like. But this is propaganda that has little real world evidence. For every AI-fueled child-safety startup that gets announced, how many police investigations are actually helped? And in what ways can assembling an AI database of children backfire? There’s a lot of nuance here, and the burden of proof falls on those pushing to use the technology.
Neither side should succumb to fear, so let’s take a look at the actual evidence about body cameras and facial recognition software.
Body Cameras
Surveys of assistant district attorneys and public defenders have shown that 66% of PDs thought that BWCs increased the likelihood of acquittals, while 61% of ADAs thought they increased the likelihood of convictions. Those numbers should add up to 100% if everyone is understanding the situation correctly. So there’s something we’re missing here.
In 2016, in jurisdictions that deploy body cams, video was used by 93% of prosecutors in cases against civilian suspects. Only 8% of those same prosecutors used body camera video that year as evidence to prosecute police.
Did body cameras make LA more safe? No. Randomized studies have shown no meaningful measurable effects of introducing body cameras; a recent meta‐analysis of 30 studies and 116 effects of police use of BWCs found that they produce “few clear or consistent impacts on police or citizen behaviors.” It had been hoped that body cameras would reduce police use of force, but it appears that they don’t (in some trials, use of force actually significantly increased when officers wore bodycams). It was hoped that they would improve police behavior, leading to citizens feeling that they were better treated, but no such effect occurred. It was hoped that they would reduce lawsuits and settlements, but that didn’t happen either. There is currently no good evidence that body cameras reliably do anything in particular, except cost jurisdictions big cash. But there is substantial evidence that they consistently sweep up more people with misdemeanor charges for minor offenses, contributing to overcriminalization. After being charged, most people then agree to plea deals to get out of jail or to try to move on with their lives; but they remain entangled in the arbitrary dictates of the probation system.
Who gets misdemeanor charges in Dane County? Disproportionally Black people. Misdemeanors are the bulk of our justice system: possibly as much as 80% of Wisconsin dockets. In my sample of Dane County data on WCCA for criminal cases active in the last year, 60% of the cases were misdemeanor charges. The extremely small proportion of Black people (5.2% in the last census) account for fully 55% of those misdemeanor cases. And our misdemeanor bail in Dane County is skewed heavily against Black people. 9% of non-Black defendents with only misdemeanor charges get cash bail. 28% of Black defendents with only misdemeanor charges get cash bail.
That means you are three times as likely to get cash bail and be stuck in jail if you are Black in Dane County. (Full article on why is forthcoming, but spoiler alert: it’s more bad technology, this time racist AI making “safety” decisions.) And this doesn’t even touch on wealth disparity, how much more likely Black people are to be poor and unable to pay, and how it will ruin their life (and their family’s lives) to be stuck in jail awaiting trial.
We have one of the worst disparities in our very racist country on misdemeanors. Meanwhile, Alderman Paul Skidmore is on record about body cameras saying “It’s just a tool”. Do we really want to pay for the tools that will likely be used by prosecutors to charge more misdemeanors and make systemic injustice worse?
When it comes to the actual body camera footage, you might think that wearing a camera directlyon one’s body results in an impartial recording; a record which serves true justice. Of course, it depends on if officers are allowed to change the record by actually editingfootage, or byturningtheircameras off or by “recreating” events, and if the system using the resulting footage is fair. Let’s grant the impossible scenario that body cameras get applied in a completely unbiased way. Even then, the recording is not impartial: it has been shown a body camera video can bias people much more than a dash cam (or written report), leaving in one’s mind a “diminished sense of blame or responsibility” for the wearer of the camera (who is invisible in the video). That sort of bias would be directly involved in, for example, juries deciding between first degree murder and manslaughter, as well as many other actions taken by “bad apples”.
So, knowing all this, why do communities rally behind body cameras? When BWCs first rolled out, folks had hope. It was hype: new technology for technology’s sake. There wasn’t evidence. Nobody knew any better.
Now, with more information in hand, it would be foolish to give our unaccountable, detached-from-the-community police more tools to add charges and inoculate themselves to major, real justice reform. What are the net harms and who is actually helped by body cameras? It sounds like body cameras might widen our already-biased misdemeanor arrest race gap, and the evidence does not show that the community benefits in any other way. And let’s not forget, body cameras cost money to purchase and maintain.
Facial Recognition Technology
As with body cameras, there can be a bias to assume facial recognition systems are correct. This is often called the “automation bias.” But facial recognition systems which work fine on their predominantly white male programmers can fail in interesting ways. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tested Amazon’s Rekognition software on all the members of Congress. The algorithm incorrectly matched twenty-eight congresspersons to criminal mugshots; eleven of these false matches misidentified representatives of color, including the late civil rights pioneer John Lewis.
Jake Parker, a lobbyist from the security industry, recently gave testimony to the City of Madison Public Safety Review Committee (PSRC) on the topic of facial recognition. He referred to a huge National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report and claimed there were “undetectable differences across race”. But what did the primary author of the report, Patrick Grother, a NIST computer scientist say? “While it is usually incorrect to make statements across algorithms, we found empirical evidence for the existence of demographic differentials in the majority of the face recognition algorithms we studied.” The report shows quite clearly that the accuracy of these algorithms can vary widely based on a person’s age, gender, or race. Algorithm accuracy gets worse with the very elderly, very young, and especially with darker-skinned and non-male faces. The NIST study found that for children, even using ideal photos, the typical vendor algorithm incorrectly labeled 1% of all photos in a database as a match to the test subject (rendering this technology useless for all practical purposes).
Facial recognition has resulted in at least one high-profile false arrest, that of Robert Williams in Detroit. Williams was arrested in front of his wife and children and held for 30 hours until finally released. He later wrote an article for the Washington Post, saying: “Federal studies have shown that facial-recognition systems misidentify Asian and Black people up to 100 times more often than white people. Why is law enforcement even allowed to use such technology when it obviously doesn’t work? I get angry when I hear companies, politicians and police talk about how this technology isn’t dangerous or flawed. What’s worse is that, before this happened to me, I actually believed them. I thought, what’s so terrible if they’re not invading our privacy and all they’re doing is using this technology to narrow in on a group of suspects?”
Even if we try to limit the uses of facial recognition to something specific, as with those who support using the technology to fight child sexual exploitation, the harms are likely to outweigh any help we can get. The current ban under discussion by the Common Council allows specific uses to find victims. But as Lindsey Barret (Georgetown University Law Center) writes in Ban Facial Recognition Technologies for Children – and Everyone Else: “Clearview AI, which has been heavily criticized for its privacy violative services, has been quick to tout the use of its product in cases involving children, including investigations into child sexual exploitation. The horrendous nature of those crimes may seem to reduce the need for scruples when it comes to the harms of these technologies, when in fact the sensitivity of the circumstances makes their problems even more concerning. The false identification of a victim could be deeply traumatic, and the false identification of an ostensible perpetrator could lead to tremendously damaging consequences for the wrongly identified.”
Multiple observers have raised alarm bells about the fact that Clearview’s secretive algorithm and weird giant database of children have not been tested for accuracy by an independent agency. This puts us back at the “hope and hype” stage, as we discussed earlier with body cameras. In the case of Madison, MPD has not yet released information on how actually effective their tools are. In how many child victim cases that used facial recognition technology, was that technology (in whole or in part) responsible for finding the child? The public is in the dark.
Vic Wahl, the interim chief of MPD, argued before the PSRC on November 18 that we should continue using facial recognition technology based on a Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology report from 2016. But that very same center has since updated their recommendations, saying: “[W]e now believe that state, local, and federal government should place a moratorium on police use of face recognition. We also believe that jurisdictions that move to ban the technology outright are amply justified to do so.” When faced with this new report, Wahl said we should rely on our own community standards instead of these updated recommendations.
As a final question about facial recognition, some ask, “Why ban it entirely? What about other uses, like security?” We should throw supposed security uses out as hype, as well. Facial recognition is a bad model for securing things, because you can’t signal your intent. This is the problem where someone can threaten you and unlock something with your face without your consent. How well the algorithms work in one-to-one face matching simply does not matter. The first major breach of face data from one of these databases is going to be bad: you can’t easily change your face like you can change a password. The result: nobody should want face-based locking for anything serious.
Conclusion
As we consider technologies like body cameras and facial recognition, let’s think really hard about harm and help. Who do these technologies harm and help? If they don’t help our marginalized communities, and the people who need help the most, why are we considering them? If body cameras can increase misdemeanor charges and don’t actually help communities stay safe, we should not use them as they only increase the power differential. If facial recognition algorithms can actively harm our communities and do nothing about entrenched systemic biases, we should actively fight against such “innovations.”
Many thanks to Greg Gelembiuk for sending his evolving opinions and an archive of information and references from the Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee.
