Leslie Amsterdam
Hundreds marched Saturday afternoon to the house where Robinson died.
The moment Madison Police Officer Matt Kenny drew his gun and fatally shot Tony Robinson in the early evening hours of Friday, March 6, the incident was destined to become national news.
As squad cars blocked off the 1100 block of Williamson Street, neighborhood residents began to cluster in doorways illuminated by flashing red and blue lights. The officers who guarded the perimeter looked grim.
"It was a shooting," the guy behind the counter at Star Liquor said Friday night. He said he heard it was a cop who pulled the trigger, adding that the deceased might be a young, black male.
The crowd on Williamson Street grew as details emerged confirming the clerk's story: Robinson, a 19-year-old graduate of Sun Prairie High School, had been unarmed when Kenny forced his way into an apartment and shot him multiple times after a reported "altercation." Robinson was biracial, although police originally identified him as black.
It was those key factors that made Robinson's story explosive. With his death, he became the latest example of what many see as a chilling pattern of police using deadly force against young, unarmed black males. He shared the same fate as Dontre Hamilton, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and numerous others killed by police in recent years, prompting outrage and calls for reform.
Within hours, dozens of protesters arrived on the scene, holding signs and chanting "black lives matter." As news of the shooting spread via social media, national news outlets pounced on the story. By Saturday morning, the Willy Street neighborhood was swarming with reporters and television crews poised to document the aftermath.
On everyone's mind was a question: Would Madison become the next Ferguson, Missouri?
'Now a hashtag'
For Robinson's friends, his death carries the same sense of injustice many felt about the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. At protests on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, teens from schools across the city drew the comparison.
"When I heard about Ferguson, I thought: 'What if we lived there?' And now we do," said 17-year-old Jordan Chester, who was close friends with Robinson. "Nothing like this should happen in a city like [Madison]."
Even Madison Police Chief Mike Koval acknowledged the striking similarities between the two incidents. But in the days that followed the shooting, it was the emerging contrasts that became more noteworthy.
Unlike the Ferguson police chief, Koval rushed to the scene of the shooting Friday night and spent close to an hour talking and praying with Robinson's family. He released the name of the officer who killed the teen the day after the shooting. He apologized to the family and the city's African American community, asking for their eventual forgiveness.
Robinson's uncle, Turin Carter, said he appreciates law enforcement and trusts officials to handle the investigation "with integrity." But forgiveness may take time. At a news conference Monday in front of Robinson's home, Carter called for reform in the "universal problems with law enforcement," emphasizing the "systematic targeting of young black males."
"It's surreal to realize that my nephew is now a hashtag," Carter said.
Robinson's family also urged protesters to be peaceful. The demonstrations -- facilitated with the support of Madison police -- have so far occurred without incident. While Ferguson protesters set fires, Madison protesters preferred blazing rhetoric. The day after the shooting, hundreds met at the YWCA Empowerment Center on Madison's south side before marching from the Dane County Sheriff's office to the site of the Robinson's death.
The relatively calm protest had moments of tension, with demonstrators screaming at the police who stood in a line on the sidewalk in front of the house. But organizers redirected the crowd's energy through songs and chants.
"There are some in the extreme who have clearly to me taken a very radical perspective on the role of police in this matter," Koval tells Isthmus. "[They] chose to use hurtful language to my officers."
But even though most demonstrators have been civil to police and there have been no riots, like in other cities, there's an overwhelming sense among the protesters is that the police are to blame for killing Robinson.
Maria Hamilton, the mother of Dontre Hamilton, a schizophrenic man who was shot 14 times by police in Milwaukee, was among those who addressed protesters Saturday.
"Dontre didn't deserve to die. Tony didn't deserve to die," she told the crowd. "They're taking and killing our future."
At a vigil on Sunday night in front of the house where Robinson was killed, his anguished friends remembered him. Jack Spaulding, one of Robinson's best friends, sobbed under scrutiny of TV cameras and before several hundred silent protesters.
"I don't feel safe walking down the street any more. I never will," he said. "The fact that the police took Tony from us is totally fucked up."
Coming together
Madison students mobilized on Monday, with hundreds of middle and high school students walking out of class and gathering for a rally at the Capitol. UW-Madison students joined them in the Rotunda, where adults formed a protective circle around the young demonstrators.
"We want to be heard," said Kayla Haynes, a 17-year-old East High School student. "It's beautiful how everybody came together."
The songs, chants, signs and banners repeated the messages from similar protests over the weekend, calling for an end to police killing of young black males and consequences for the officer who pulled the trigger.
"If we get justice, maybe [the killing] will stop," said Iyanna Snowton, a 17-year-old East High School student.
Krystyn Jones, a 14-year-old Memorial High School student added: "It's just happening too much."
Those attending the protest called the youth demonstration powerful and inspiring, but Monday's protest was also underscored by deep grief over the loss of a peer whose circle of friends extended to multiple local schools. Robinson was a graduate of Sun Prairie High School, but had previously attended Georgia O'Keefe Middle School, in the neighborhood where he died.
Many of the protesters wore black to symbolize their loss.
"It's hard for me not to cry," said Siron Offord, a 16-year-old East High School student. "But I have to keep smiling."
How you build a movement
In recent years, Madison has been gripped by a "real sense of crisis" surrounding the issue of racial disparity in the community as well as nationwide, says Will Jones, a professor of history at UW-Madison who specializes in civil rights movements.
Groups like Young, Gifted and Black Coalition and the Justified Anger Coalition came together following the protests last year in Ferguson and the 2013 bombshell "Race to Equity" report that showed African Americans in Madison have significantly higher levels of incarceration, worse school performance and higher levels of poverty than their white neighbors.
YGB has been particularly vocal in recent months, clashing with local law enforcement over a proposal to spend $8 million on renovations for the Dane County Jail. Coalition members penned an open letter to Koval in January, demanding the release of prisoners locked up for "crimes of poverty" and a reduced police presence in Madison's predominantly African American neighborhoods, saying that racial profiling is to blame for the incarceration disparity.
African Americans are nearly 11 times more likely to be arrested than whites in Madison, researcher Erika Nelson told PolitiFact.
Jones says the presence of these advocacy groups helped mobilize protesters almost immediately following Robinson's death.
"We're certainly in a moment where people are very aware and really organized to respond," he says.
The Black Lives Matter movement came into national prominence following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Subsequent deaths have fueled the movement further.
"I wouldn't say that what we're seeing is the emergence of a new civil rights movement yet," Jones said. "But this is how you build a movement. And I think this movement is heading in that direction."
