We just received this statement from the District Attorney’s office in response to our email. While some of it we knew, such as City Attorney Tearman Spencer has discretion over municipal citations (such as curfew tickets), we want to draw your attention to this last paragraph. This is our response.
1. The DA has considerable discretion over which cases to pursue and we do not think this city’s time and resources should be spent on punishing these individuals, especially not while Joel Acevedo’s murderer (and so many other murderers) go free.
2. We refuse to trust the carceral system, that has proven itself time and time again untrustworthy, to provide justice for these individuals. That means that we do not trust the police officers that were tear gassing protesters to decide which folks merit criminal charges.
3. While the DA’s office strategically draws attention to people accused of looting and property crime, we know of at least four people fighting charges of reckless endangerment and resisting or obstructing an officer for very understandable reactions to police-induced chaos. These are just the folks we know of and any number would be too many.
We will not argue that every person was “peacefully protesting”, we will argue that they do not deserve the punishment reserved for Black people in this society.
If we are committed to seeing a better society, we are committing to protecting protesters over property, protecting citizens over police, protecting our future over the status quo.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 