By Gregory Gelembiuk | guest column, The Cap Times, October 20, 2026
I am writing as a private individual, not on behalf of Office of the Independent Monitor or the monitor herself.
I am engaging in a Satyagraha fast (essentially, a hunger strike) in protest of the impending Madison City Council action against Independent Monitor Aeiramique “Meeka” Glass and the Office of the Independent Monitor.
I have been fasting, consuming only water, since mid-Tuesday, Oct. 13, and plan to continue. Satyagraha is a term coined by Mahatma Gandhi and means “truth force.” It is an appeal to moral principles in fighting injustice.
In Satyagraha, one willingly absorbs hardships, penalties or physical harm to appeal to the opponent’s conscience and reason. Satyagraha was brought into the American Civil Rights movement by Bayard Rustin and inspired Martin Luther King Jr.
I am asking that Madison council members move to mediation or restorative conversations instead of a pure power move.
Former Ald. Rebecca Kemble, who played a crucial role in creating Madison’s police oversight mechanism, has written, “In a city where a police officer can shoot a restrained person three times point blank in the face in front of dozens of witnesses with cameras rolling, a majority of these individual alders have taken the absolutely obscene position of attacking the one office and the person leading it that has any chance of delivering justice for the victim and for the community.”
As Madison-based attorney Syovata Edari has written, “Part of a city’s job is defending its departments — including the police. Asking the city to police its own police presents an inherent conflict of interest.” Given that conflict of interest, criminal justice scholar Tim Lynch has noted, local power brokers in city governments almost always intervene in police oversight agencies, rigging them to fail.
You can see this pattern in city after city, and it is occurring here.
Glass is being subjected to a political lynching. A set of council members and other city officials have used the resources of the office to effectively run a campaign against her, including leaking documents to the media, which creates a toxic situation with no semblance of due process.
The Madison public has received a totally one-sided story. Many elements are false, distorted or totally lacking in context. The involved council members are blatantly violating their own code of conduct, which outlines how they are required to treat city personnel when concerns arise. Moreover, the removal resolution violates Madison General Ordinances governing our police oversight mechanism.
I have witnessed constant interference with and obstruction of the work of our office by the city. Glass made most of the choices she is now being criticized for in response to this, to maintain the independence of our office and preserve the integrity of our investigations.
But this is bigger than Glass.
As Police Civilian Oversight Board Chair Devon Snyder has noted: “What does this say to the next person who takes this job? Because if we tell someone, ‘Come into Madison. Be independent. Ask the hard questions. Follow the facts. Hold people accountable.’ But then we show them that when their work becomes uncomfortable, elected officials can move to remove them, what exactly are we asking them to be independent from? This is about protecting independent oversight from becoming political oversight.”
I have worked on police reform since my unarmed neighbor, Paulie Heenan, was killed by an Madison Police Department officer in 2012. But despite that background, since I began working on investigations in the Office of the Independent Monitor, even I have been shocked at what I am seeing, particularly regarding police conduct against Black individuals.
In my job, I am witnessing such pain that, at times, I find myself weeping. But if Glass is terminated, all the work on our close to 70 open cases will be fully disrupted and likely stop — and I believe the truth of what is happening won’t see the light of day if that is the case.
No one of good conscience can allow this, and thus I fast.
Dr. Gregory Gelembiuk is the data and forensic analyst and investigator in the City of Madison Office of the Independent Monitor
You must be logged in to post a comment.