Milwaukee Common Council is having their annual session for public testimony on the budget on Monday, October 4, at 6:30pm. This is the single opportunity the government creates specifically to get yelled at by residents about what budget priorities should be.
This year the hearing will be virtual, due to the pandemic. Register online now! Registration closes at 4:30 PM on Monday.
Continue reading “Testify to Defund MPD Monday!”
This is an audio version of “Testify to defund MPD Monday!” published at ABOLISHmke.com on October 2, 2021.
Music thanks to snag. snagmke.bandcamp.com
Continue reading “Ep. 20- Testify to Defund MPD Monday!”
Leading up to Milwaukee’s Shut Em Down 2021 mobilization, it’s important to remember that there are rebels and fighters in Wisconsin prisons. We don’t often hear about the kinds of massive strikes, uprisings, and escapes that are tracked at Perilous Chronicle, but that doesn’t mean people are safe or passive within Wisconsin prisons. Part of the Shut’Em Down mobilization in Milwaukee will include holding up the sacrifices and struggles of Wisconsin prison rebels in greater depth, but here is a start.
During the 2020 pandemic, documented resistance to prison increased dramatically, but Wisconsin’s prisons were very effectively locked down. The the DOC put security and control over health and safety. We heard of little direct action other than a brief, staff-assisted escape. Meanwhile, outside solidarity during the pandemic included home demos targeting DOC secretary Kevin Carr and Governor Evers, a COVID Compassion Campaign demanding Evers issue emergency pardons, and body bags dropped on secretary Carr’s lawn. None of these efforts proved effective. The George Floyd marches and the Kenosha uprising also overshadowed the prison crisis for many, while Evers and Carr allowed DOC staff to neglect prevention and punish prisoners for getting sick. More than half of the DOC population were infected, no pardons were granted, and an unknown number of deaths piled up.
Continue reading “Resistance, solidarity, and repression in Wisconsin”
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.
Continue reading “They’re Spitting on George Floyd’s Grave”
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.
Continue reading “Snitch House Democrats”
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