black lives matter

Wisconsin’s attack against unionized workers and police brutality against people of color are two sides of the same coin say activists.

From ThinkProgress:

Activists took to the streets by the thousands in Madison, Wisconsin on Wednesday with a long list of grievances — ranging from the police killing of unarmed 19-year-old Tony Robinson to the impending multi-million dollar cut to the state’s universities, which they say will “devastate Wisconsin for generations to come.”

Those organizing the action told ThinkProgress that Wisconsin’s legal assault on workers and physical assault on its residents of color are two sides of the same coin.

“The purpose of this march and this movement is connect the dots between the different forms of injustice and how it all leads back to state violence,” said Brandi Grayson with the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition. “Stripping resources from our local communities is state violence. Cutting hundreds of millions from the UW is state violence. The non-taxation of corporations and the over-taxation of the poor and middle class is state violence.”

Wisconsin already had the some of the worst racial disparities in the country when Governor Scott Walker took office, but those demonstrating say he has made the situation much worse. Soon after taking office, he defunded a program that tracked the race of people stopped by police, even though black residents of Madison’s Dane County were found to be more than 97 times more likely to go to jail for a drug crime than a white resident. Now, the Governor’s new budget proposes an $8 million jail expansion in Dane County, at the same time many social services are being eliminated.
Read more at ThinkProgress