Dylan Brogan
It was not until early Saturday evening, after hours of peaceful protest over the death of George Floyd, that things turned ugly in downtown Madison.
Confrontations between police and protesters escalated quickly. Officers in riot gear formed a line around 6 p.m. at the intersection of Johnson and State streets to clear the people who were blocking traffic. Police started spraying pepper spray at demonstrators at close range and walking forward to push people onto the 300 block of State Street. Brittany, a UW-Madison student, was hit with mace while trying to help someone who fell to the street as officers marched toward them.
“I was trying to help this girl up and they spray mace right in my eyes,” says Brittany, whose eyes were bloodshot and barely able to open. “Fuck, my face hurts.”
As pepper spray filled the air, protesters started throwing plastic water bottles at the wall of officers. Small rocks followed. Then chairs from restaurant patios. That sped up the movement of police pushing protesters, block by block, down State.
“Put that chair down right now,” one man, who lives on State Street, pleaded with a small group of people. “People live on this block.”
On Lake Street, a plume of red smoke from a smoke bomb sent people running towards Library Mall. Police then deployed tear gas, a tactic that continued for several hours.
“How dare you hurt us,” screamed one protester at the police. “This is fascism. Police started this. It wasn’t us who escalated this. It was you.”
A few minutes later, on the 600 block of State Street, a handful of individuals threw rocks at the Under Armour storefront, shattering the glass. Next door, a different group broke the glass windows of Urban Outfitters. The crowd cheered the destruction. One young man threw a mannequin into the street. The windows of several more State Street businesses were destroyed in the chaos.
Dylan Brogan
Paul Schlosser was busking when he got hit with pepper spray.
Madison musician Art Paul Schlosser was still strumming his guitar as police marched toward him from one direction and protesters stood their ground. He was in too much pain from the tear gas to explain what exactly happened. Down the block, protesters turned over large city flower pots, collecting rocks to throw at windows and officers.
Two hours after the chaos started, people broke the windows of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, stormed in and looted the museum’s store.
At nearly the same time, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and city leaders held a press conference at the City County Building.
“This afternoon, large crowds assembled on the Capitol Square to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights, decrying police violence leading to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the pattern of unarmed black men dying at the hands of the police,” said the mayor. “A relatively small group of individuals — who I believe were more interested in trouble than protest — remained behind and began a course of property damage in the downtown area.”
Rhodes-Conway said police did their best “to protect public safety.” At around 9:30 p.m., a Madison police car was set on fire and stolen. It was seen by police heading down Gorham Street before it was abandoned by Broom Street.
Earlier in the day, thousands of demonstrators — nearly all wearing masks — peacefully protested the killing of Floyd, who died May 25 after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Local demonstrators packed the state Capitol grounds, rallied outside the Dane County jail and marched for several hours, shutting down traffic on East Washington Avenue and other isthmus streets.
Outside of the jail, protestors chanted “Black lives matter,” “Send those killer cops to jail,” and “We believe that we can win.”
“As black people we have been murdered, we have been tortured...we have been dismantled as a people,” protester Jordan King told the crowd. “We have been hurt to the point where buildings — which are not people — are being destroyed. Do I condone it? No. But do I understand it? Yes.”
Rob Dz, a local emcee and spoken word artist, was inspired by the size of the crowd.
“I’m very encouraged by the allies that are non-black. We need the full narrative about oppression to get to the powers that be. We need more people than just us saying that this shit ain’t right. That’s what it’s going to take. It’s going to take a lot of love of different people to overtake all this hatred we’re dealing with.”
Outside the jail, Lorien Carter — the aunt of Tony Robinson, the young man killed by a Madison police officer in 2015 — addressed the demonstrators.
“Right now, in a time of war, we still give you civility. We are here for civil rights. It is our duty to fight for freedom,” said Carter. “We must love and support one another. The only thing we have to lose is our chains.”
The protestors eventually marched two miles east of the Capitol to demonstrate outside the Williamson Street home where Robinson died after being shot by Madison police officer Matt Kenny. Speakers there questioned why Kenny was still employed by the department. After an investigation, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne had determined that Kenny’s actions “were a lawful use of deadly police force.”
Dylan Brogan
The protests should serve as a wake-up call.
“What’s his name? Tony Robinson,” protesters chanted on Willy Street before marching back up to the Capitol.
Freedom Inc., a Madison social justice organization that has advocated for years for “community control over the police,” helped organize the mass protest Saturday. Several Freedom Inc. members spoke of the group’s efforts to reduce the number of inmates in jail and to keep cops out of Madison public high schools.
“Freedom Inc. has organized [dozens of] protests at our school board meetings. Where y’all been?” Brandi Grayson, founder of the nonprofit Urban Triage, asked the throngs of protesters through a megaphone. “In order for us to be real and create a new paradigm and do something different, you actually have to show the fuck up.”
M Adams, co-executive director of Freedom Inc., tells Isthmus that there is no difference between the deaths of Floyd and Robinson at the hands of law enforcement.
“George Floyd was murdered by police terrorism. By anti-blackness. By white supremacy. By capitalism. It wasn’t that officer’s knee that killed George Floyd. It was the weight of those things,” says Adams. “And those are the same issues that we have been talking about here.”
Adams says there are “too many stories” like Floyd’s in Madison.
“Bricks don’t have feelings. Cement doesn’t have feelings. A window doesn’t bleed. But people do,” says Adams, when asked about riots in other cities before the destruction began in Madison. “We have to choose black people over property.”
