defund the Police – ABOLISHmke

Money Grubbing Sheriff

Earnell Lucas on Fox News urging people to “help law enforcement take back our neighborhoods” in May of 2020.

[UDPATE: The meeting happened Thursday June 17. Jason Haas put these items at the very end of the 31-item agenda, requiring everyone who wanted to testify to wait on the phone 7 hours for the chance. Only Ryan Clancy’s proposed right to council for eviction defense had as many public testimonies, Haas scheduled that as item 25. It passed. Haas also tried to invoke parliamentary rules to silence Clancy on the CART program. When that failed, he invented new rules. Willie Johnson Jr took over chair duties during the discussion of sheriff overtime. He refused to acknowledge at least one of the submitted eComments because it brought up the spurious origin of Ted Chisholm’s position as MCSO chief of staff. We’d counter that Chisholm gaining his position through nepotism and cronyism seems directly related to his inability to write an acceptable report.

The votes:
– For CART, only Clancy and Sequanna Taylor voted against creating three new sheriff positions. Chisholm brought in sheriff Lucas and Michael Lappen from BHD, who convinced the rest of the board that CART could not happen without giving MCSO $300,000 to add three deputy sheriff FTEs to the list of vacant deputy sheriff positions they cannot fill because so few people want to be deputy sheriffs.

-For overspending, Chisholm’s report was again rejected because the only “solution” to overtime overspending he proposed was everyone giving them more money. The vote was close: Clancy, Taylor, Liz Sumner, and Joseph Czarneski were in favor of rejecting the report. Haas, Johnson Jr, and Shawn Rolland wanted to let Ted Chisholm and MCSO off the hook.]

The people of Milwaukee want less of our money going to law enforcement, but county officials are letting sheriff Earnell Lucas rake it in. Unsatisfied with their generous budget, the Milwaukee county sheriff’s office (MCSO) has a habit of overspending on overtime. They’ve also worked to take in money allocated for mental health and tried to control the shift to more humane and effective approaches to public safety. Amidst all this resource-hoarding, Lucas is also working to silence his most vocal critic on the county board.

They’re Spitting on George Floyd’s Grave

Former supervision officer Sheila Stubbs and “political loser” Jim Steineke, co-chairs of the task force to delay and obstruct police reform.

Two days after the one year anniversary of his murder and on the eve of the anniversary of Minneapolis’ third precinct going up in flames, the government of Wisconsin has little interest in meeting the simple demands of the people. By refusing to institute real accountability measures for police, they are spitting on the grave of George Floyd.

Snitch House Democrats

The aftermath of community defending itself against a snitch house.

There’s a bill working its way through the state legislature that will give police $600,000 to establish snitch houses in many Wisconsin cities. A snitch house, also called a COP or “community oriented policing” house, is a small police department that looks like a house and provides “wraparound services” like after-school programming to the neighboring community in exchange for improved community and police relations. By “improved relations,” they mean snitching.

Senator Lena Taylor brought the senate version of this bill to a public hearing in Milwaukee alongside some other trash. There, residents, including many of her constituents, roundly opposed it. Nevertheless, Taylor went forward, promoting it at a press conference and then seeing it pass unanimously in the senate on Tuesday, May 11.

Now the assembly version of the bill, AB258, is coming up for a hearing in Madison on Tuesday May 18 alongside the assembly version of SB119, the notorious “fund the police” bill. SB119 is an empty republican provocation with zero bipartisan support. Governor Evers will certainly veto it. The snitch house grant is a bigger threat because, without intervention, it will actually become law.

Governor Evers Ignores the People, Funds the Police.

Gov Evers signing money over to the police on April 27.

Today, Governor Evers passed a law that gives money to police. It makes police and firefighters eligible for PTSD worker’s compensation.

Firefighters are fine. Cops are not. They are not workers and should not get worker compensation. The police are, and always have been the sworn enemies of the working class. They are the attack dogs of capitalism. When workers go on strike for labor protections, including worker’s compensation, it is the police who attack them and delay the passage of those laws. Continue reading “Governor Evers Ignores the People, Funds the Police.”

Wisconsin’s Republican Death Cult

Senator Van Wanggard, apparently experiencing the throes of death cult rapture.

We need to talk about the Wisconsin Republican Party’s fascination with killing Black people.

On a national level, the way Republicans lined up behind Trump led to even conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin describing the party as a cult. When the pandemic spread and Trump led his people onto a path of denial and conspiracy theory, Rubin got more specific: calling the party a death cult.

Republicans in Wisconsin epitomize that death cult zeal–with a particular racial focus. From their reactions to the last year of pandemic and protest, to the upcoming budget process, the policy aims of the Republican Party consistently pursue the deaths of Black people. Their obsession most recently manifested in the state senate’s passage of Senate Bill 8, which explicitly denies covid19 vaccines to Wisconsin’s highest risk population: prison captives. Continue reading “Wisconsin’s Republican Death Cult”