A spokeswoman for the government-funded Wisconsin nonprofit Freedom Inc. declared Wednesday that all black people in jail are “political prisoners” after arrests at a protest it helped lead.
The group partnered with the activist coalition Free the 350 Bail Fund to raise money for demonstrators or other detainees’ bail after police cleared an anti-cop protest encampment in Madison that blocked streets, Freedom Inc.’s Instagram page shows. The nonprofit group — which received millions of federal, state, and local tax dollars in recent years — portrayed the city as oppressive for enforcing laws.
“How we understand this moment, in this state, and also historically, is that any black person behind the jail walls and prison walls are political prisoners,” a Freedom Inc. spokeswoman said in a bail fund video. “Black communities, black folks have been under attack by this state, continuously, historically.”
“The police is an occupying army, and they are harassing, surveilling, and arresting black people and locking them up behind these walls,” the woman said.
Freedom Inc. claimed to have bailed out 32 protesters by Wednesday, one day after the city cleared the encampment protesting the July 22 death of violent repeat offender Corey Ruiz in an altercation with police, Channel 3000 reported. The so-called Corey Ruiz autonomous zone started the day of his death and for weeks blocked traffic, caused businesses to close, and forced emergency vehicles to detour until cops dispersed it Tuesday, according to city officials.
Multiple leftist groups joined the encampment, with Freedom Inc. hosting a tent site, handing out gear such as “abolish police” signs, and working with Ruiz’s family to articulate policy demands to the city, according to activists’ online posts.
Freedom Inc. jointly posted a video with another Instagram user on Wednesday that showed a fire and vandalism from the protest, but called the arresting officers harmful to the community.
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“Instead of investing in housing, they invest in criminalization,” a speaker said on camera outside a county jail with Freedom Inc. tents nearby. “So we have to get our people out.”
The state has also invested more than $5 million into Freedom Inc. for its ostensibly charitable programs, according to tax filings and government records reported by the Washington Examiner. The grants include money awarded by former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice and the state of Wisconsin to help crime victims, state-level funding for “Immigrant and Refugee” work, city programs for minority demographics, and more.