Madison, I love you, but you’re bringing me down
Recent decisions by city leadership and behavior from certain activists have turned a tense and complicated situation into a toxic one
Vol. 93
In This Issue: ESSAY | VOTE. PLEASE! | NOW READ THIS | TRAVELOGUE/FINAL FRAME
I’ve spent most of the past month traveling for work. I’m exhausted and glad to be home now (for a little while, anyway), but the time away meant watching events in my hometown unfold mostly from afar. That’s been both hard and instructive. There’s some forced perspective to not being immediately involved, to keep a birds’-eye-view on things, and to frankly be too tired to jump in with my hot takes in the heat of the moment.
I’ve had time to think and to listen/read/learn. Mostly, I find myself feeling heartbroken and frustrated by it all.
I’m referring largely to the ongoing fallout from the police killing of Corey Ruiz in July and the bigger issue of how our community handles difficult situations and conversations.
First and foremost, it feels painfully instructive that the first and so far only person to lose their job in the wake of that (IMO egregious) police shooting is Aeiramique Glass, the interim director of the Office of the Independent Police Monitor (OIPM). Read that again, more closely: A Black woman whose job mandate was literally to independently investigate police when they harm someone in the community was fired after actually trying to do that job.
Madison’s Common Council voted 14-6 to terminate Glass from the position after having initially extended her interim contract through early next year. Despite hours of testimony that overwhelmingly supported Monitor Glass maintaining the position for the full term. Despite serious questions about the process.
Glass had, by all accounts, maintained a very cordial and professional relationship with Madison Police during most of her tenure. It wasn’t until after she released a report contradicting a previous finding about the death in police custody of Richard Johnson, placing blame on police, that things seem to have turned sour. That finding, by the way, marked the first-ever instance of any official Madison office determining police culpability for a death.
After Corey Ruiz was shot at point-blank range in the middle of Williamson Street on Madison’s east side, Glass immediately got to work collecting information for an investigation. She showed up at the ongoing memorial vigil and worked directly with Ruiz’s family. She was then attacked by a Madison police officer while attempting to get information from them as they tore down the memorial. An ill-advised statement of clear hyperbole and metaphor on her part after the altercation went viral, thanks to Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and the local media. And then one of the police officers claimed that it was Glass who attacked them and even successfully got a restraining order against her.
Our heavily armed and effectively-legally-immune police claiming to be terrified enough of one unarmed woman to get a restraining order would be hilarious if it weren’t so chilling.
I still have so many questions about how everything has gone down in the wake of the Ruiz shooting. I have no doubt more of the story will come out over time. But it stinks to high heaven right now that the only major outcome of everything that happened over the summer so far has been the firing of Glass, the one person doing the most to ask the hard questions of our city’s entrenched systems. And though this is a serious issue/problem, it also feels like a distraction from actually making needed structural changes to help prevent tragedies like this in the future.
My heartbreak gets all the more complicated because several alders who I respect and even have friendships with ultimately voted to fire Glass. I hope to have constructive conversations with them about that decision. It’s incredibly important to me to get their side of the story, even if I still ultimately disagree with them. I would very much like to see more of this attitude from folks on the left who are passionate about the issue. I’d love to see more deep-dive investigative journalism from local outlets that really gets into the nitty gritty, too. This is an incredibly important topic with a complex history and too much misinformation and misunderstanding swirling around right now. The people, especially those directly involved and/or harmed, deserve so much more than what we’re currently giving them.
What I won’t do is let myself become so angry and self-righteous that I demonize and harass people in my community for making decisions I disagree with. I’ve watched as a loud minority of leftist activists let their anger turn bitter and even dangerous. Threats of physical violence and ridiculous amounts of verbal, sometimes deeply racist harassment have been leveled against several of the more prominent city officials involved, from Mayor Rhodes-Conway to Council President Sabrina Madison and other alders who voted to fire Glass. That heat has too frequently also extended to regular people asking honest questions and making earnest suggestions about the situation.
I generally have no interest in tone policing, especially when people have suffered real harm and/or are running up against the vicious manifestations of white supremacy culture. Making threats and personal accusations against people with whom you disagree, however, far exceeds a matter of tone. Especially since so many of the worst offenders are themselves white leftists, it also becomes a matter of centering our white self-righteousness above the needs and voices of the people most negatively impacted by the actions we claim to be against.
The actual, day-to-day hard work and relationship building that’s needed to meaningfully make positive change doesn’t typically involve spending hours online screaming at people in the comments section about how wrong they are, or demanding that they even be jailed for it (as I saw in at least a few Facebook comments).
One of the many reasons the Ruiz memorial site was so beautiful and impactful is that it was a space for people to gather in person, to talk and share ideas and stories, to make space for imperfections in service of working for the greater cause. Of course, there were individuals who showed up and attempted to center themselves as leaders, to tell everyone there was only one way to do the work and it was their way. Those folks rarely seem to spend time actually building relationships and trust, and they can and do cause real harm to movements.
There are a small handful of consistent and loud voices online who have dominated the conversation around this topic over the past couple of months, too. Some have provided helpful context and background information. Others have mostly just stirred shit.
A large number of people are not engaging online or off because things have gotten so heated it often feels like there’s no room for questions or constructive conversation. There’s a real sense from a number of people I’ve spoken to that if you step even a little out of line with the prescription of the loud few, you’ll be torn to shreds. We’re seeing that happen already, particularly to the alders who voted to end Glass’ contract and to Mayor Rhodes-Conway (who I have many issues with, and who has, I think, not been a good-faith actor in many of her public statements on this issue - and still doesn’t deserve the level of vitriol and demonization I’ve seen leveled at her by some).
I’m truly, deeply exhausted by watching these same cycles play out over and over during my 26 years in Madison. We are a city filled with deeply passionate and engaged citizens. I’d wager that the vast majority agree there needs to be an independent oversight body for the police that has actual teeth and can help bring some real accountability to law enforcement. I’d also wager that a solid majority agrees that Madison has a lot of hard work to do to meaningfully address the serious racial disparities that exist here (and for which we have mountains of well-researched data and recommendations, largely collecting dust on a shelf somewhere).
But white Madison does seem prone to getting too high on its own supply. We’re ready to kick and scream and feel holier-than-thou, show up for the protest, post furiously to social media. We’re perhaps less ready to slow down, listen, fact check, and do the difficult work of showing up for and following the lead of the people and communities we claim to support. I count myself as guilty of this at times. I’m very here to work with anyone who wants to try to do better.
We owe it to this community–this allegedly “best of the world” city--that still gives white people so much and everyone else so little.
Be angry about what’s gone down and gone wrong. Say that you’re angry. But I hope we can all do a better job of keeping our eyes on the prize and expending our energy on the underlying systems and other barriers to progress, and maybe less so on personal attacks and cults of personality. As a colleague recently told me, “be hard on ideas; be soft on people.”
Additional reading:
Alder Yanette Figueroa Cole (who voted ‘yes’) has a detailed, two-part series on her official blog that digs into the timeline of events leading up to the current situation with the OIPM. You don’t have to agree with her takeaways or framing to benefit from the information/records she’s curated here:
Alder Julia Matthews (who voted ‘no’) wrote a very detailed and thoughtful piece on her official post that lays out some of the inconsistencies and other concerns about the situation with the OIPM and the vote to terminate Monitor Glass’ contract.
WMTV has an interview with Monitor Glass, her first since the Council voted to end her contract.
Brandi Grayson, Executive Director of Urban Triage, wrote two detailed and thoughtful pieces for Madison365 in the lead-up to the vote to terminate Monitor Glass.
Vote. Please!
Tuesday, November 3 is the big day! Find your polling place (double check because some have moved/changed) and make sure you’re registered and ready to go! Help your neighbors, friends, relatives, etc. make a plan to vote, too: myvote.wi.gov/
For what it’s worth, I will be voting David Crowley for governor, and NO on all three proposed constitutional amendments (see the ACLU and League of Women Voters for why).
You can find a huge resource on downballot races across the state courtesy of Dan Shafer’s The Recombobulation Area.
Now Read This.
“Preparing for November” [Margaret Killjoy]
This election isn’t a regular midterm election, then. It’s the moment when we find out if the US still has a functional system of representative democracy. Not because one side believes in democracy and the other side doesn’t (although that’s true), but because we will see whether or not the Republicans accept a partial loss of control.
“The Patriot Act Turns 25” [Parker Malloy]
In September I wrote that the government used the attacks to justify attacking our civil liberties, and this is a big part of how that happened. I’ve also been thinking about how a lot of younger people don’t really remember a world before the Patriot Act. We just sort of accept it. So let’s review it.
“Gutting the Fourth Estate” [Sarah Kendzior]
Paywalls are toll roads to a gated community, one that the average American cannot afford to enter in an era of inflated prices and deflated expectations. Democracy relies on an informed citizenry. Pay-to-play democracy is no democracy at all. Bereft of well-researched resources, the public is told to rely instead on hallucinating robots.
Travelogue/Final Frame(s).
I recently visited Seattle for a work conference and managed to be there during truly excellent weather and fall color. I hadn’t been there in over a decade so it was nice to spend some real time in the city again. The Pacific Northwest remains one of the more magical landscapes I’ve spent time in. Shout-out to Seward Park in particular, a beautiful park on a peninsula in Lake Washington with the only remaining old growth forest in the city proper.
‘Til next time.
Take care of yourself and of each other. Free Palestine. Abolish ICE.
This newsletter is an AI-free, venture capital-free, bespoke labor of love. If you like my writing, please consider supporting my work with a paid Grist From the Mills subscription - or just send me a tip in the amount of your choice and/or share this newsletter with a friend.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
