#Shutitdown! Disrupting one of the biggest ongoing Madison events where thousands of predominately white people come Wednesdays during the summer. We can’t wait for #CommunityControlOverPolice and for #BlackFreedomNOW!
Here is a statement from the coalition of groups that put this weeks actions together including: Groundwork, Freedom Inc, YGB, No New Jail, ISO, UNITY, and others.
We are here to invite you to join us in the Movement for Black Lives, and to call on the city and county for community control of police.
We are here because our conscience calls us to interrupt business as usual. When business as usual in our city and our country is murder, none of us can justify inaction. We all must ask ourselves, What are we doing to take a stand?
This interruption is an inconvenience, yes, but your inconvenience is negligible compared to the fear, violence, and death that our Black neighbors experience every day.
We are here to bring your attention to the fact that Black people in our community are being arrested at 11 times the rate of white people.
We are here to call your attention to the fact that 50% of young African-American men in our community are under control of the department of corrections.
That our jails are disproportionately full of Black people and other people of color locked up for trying to survive poverty.
We are here to voice our noncompliance with business as usual in our city, and to urge you to join us in taking action.
We want an end to police officers murdering our neighbors and facing no accountability.
We ask you, who was being protected and who was being served when a mental health officer brutally beat an 18-year-old Black woman, Genele Laird, last month in the name of keeping the peace? Peace for whom? We will not allow this to happen in our names.
We want Black community control over the police, so that people most impacted by police violence set the policies, practices, and priorities of the police. So that we can hire and fire and bring true accountability to those who are supposed to protect and serve.
We demand the City of Madison invest in community not cops, that $6 million of the Madison Police Department budget dollars be redirected into needed community based resources, such as culturally relevant mental wellness and conflict mediation.
We want Black Freedom Now!
We want Community Control of the Police!
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
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