The Aftermath of the Rittenhouse Acquittal: Report from Wisconsin

After the murder of George Floyd May 25, 2020, millions of people protested—most for the first time in their lives—to say that “Black Lives Matter”. Thousands demonstrated dozens of times across the urban centers of Wisconsin. in Madison, the protests were called by large not-for-profits as well as new, young groups of African American activists. Hundreds of National Guard members were called up by Democratic Party Governor Tony Evers—and supported by Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway—to teargas and arrest Black and white protesters on the street. Much of State Street experienced fires and graffiti as peoples’ rightful rage against overwhelming police and National guard violence erupted.

A few months later, on August 23 2020, Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times as he was getting into a parked vehicle with his three children. He had tried to flee after being approached by two cops with guns and tasers drawn. The police at first tried and failed to tase Blake into submission as he tried to leave. Sheskey then recklessly fired seven shots into the car hitting Blake, right in front of his three children who were also caught in the line of fire. Blake was left permanently paralyzed and his children traumatized by the encounter, while Sheskey was let off scot-free.

State and federal investigations accepted the dubious claims of the police, who stated they acted out of “fear for their lives” and that Blake threatened them with a knife—despite the fact that he was trying to leave the scene and the incident was recorded with multiple witnesses showing otherwise. After the shooting of Blake, protests again erupted in Kenosha, Milwaukee, Madison and elsewhere; and again, police were brutal and repressive towards protesters.

Racism, police violence, and duplicitous Democrats

On August 25, 2020, hundreds of anti-racist protesters participated in a rally in Kenosha against the shooting of Blake. That same night, Wendy Rittenhouse drove her 17-year-old son Kyle—armed with a high-powered assault rifle—from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin so that he could participate alongside the police in repressing the protests. Claiming to “protect businesses and to be a medic” Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26; and severely injured Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27, in a racist rampage for which he would not be held accountable. The men he murdered and maimed were white anti-racists. The intersectionality of the movement was on full display that night as people of all ages, genders, ethnicities, and religions came together to call for the indictment of the Officer Rusten Sheskey and voice frustration with the notoriously violent Kenosha Police.

After the killing and maiming of these three men, the protests continued although everyone participating felt in even greater danger than previously imagined in the attempts to push the state back from their brutal behavior. However, it would be a travesty for those men to have died and had their bodies disfigured in vain. Wisconsin has been identified as the worst place in the United States for African Americans to live and raise children. The racism is palpable in schools, workplaces, on the streets, in the courts, jails and prisons. The huge demonstrations and marches prove there are many thousands in Wisconsin who want to fight back against racist hate, police violence, and systemic underdevelopment.

The racism is palpable in schools, workplaces, on the streets, in the courts, jails and prisons. The huge demonstrations and marches prove there are many thousands in Wisconsin who want to fight back against racist hate, police violence, and systemic underdevelopment.

Unfortunately, there were no publicly advertised and open democratic meetings (virtual or otherwise), nor any ad-hoc coalitions with members of different organizations and new unaffiliated activists called and held where anti-racists could come together to discuss the political crisis and how to move forward. Instead, people showed up in the streets night after night as individuals, which led to targeted arrests of young Black men, police-inflicted injuries, demoralization, and eventual dwindling of participation. The energy of the movement was also siphoned off due to promises made by the mayor’s office to defund the police—promises that were never intended to be kept. The experience of moving from “defund” to demobilize protests, to then change position and act to “refund” the police once people left the streets is what happened in Madison. This phenomenon was also replicated across the country as Democratic mayors and city councils gradually restored and even increased police funding. Pledges to establish review boards, community policing, removing cops from schools, were also walked back.

Need for leadership and organization

In Madison, civil rights-based non-profit organizations have actively supported and led many of the BLM-inspired racial justice protest movements since May of 2020. While employing radical and abolitionist rhetoric, they have opposed building mass organization and have limited the demands to meet the needs of their organizing model, which relies primarily on state government funding. For instance, they have raised millions of dollars from state administrative offices of both Democrats and Republicans over the last several years to provide resources and programs to help communities of color. This form of patronage model limits the operations of non-profit-led protest to dissent-channeling that can be leveraged to garner more resources—but to also to constrain and even demobilize movements. White liberals and aligned organizations have focused their political action on making financial contributions to POC-led civil rights non-profit organizations as a form of making “reparations”.

While it is certainly a meaningful gesture to donate money, those donations amount to little more than a band aid over what amounts to an open-heart surgery. For example, at this moment hundreds of people in Madison are sleeping under blue tarps together “illegally” in a park as the night time temperatures dip into the 20s and winds and rain drench them—with snow on the way. To adequately address these overlapping crisis issues, the people need radical, structural change. This requires building mass organization and movements to force the whole system to concede to our demands. For example, the city of Madison is preparing to spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on a new state of the art prison rather than making plans to build housing and a much-needed mental health facility. Austerity cuts of 5% have been imposed on every single department in Madison’s government, yet the police budget is scheduled to increase from $80,000,000 to $84,000,000 in the 2022 budget.

Without an ongoing movement where organization can grow, where ideas can develop and the newly politicized can solidify their political understanding and involvement, we will continue to see cycles of militant demonstration followed by long periods of silence.

With a campus of 40,000 and massive corporations with thousands of young workers, and an infuriated BIPOC community, mass public meetings where discussions can be had, where decisions, strategies, and tactics can be made were nowhere to be found. Without an ongoing movement where organization can grow, where ideas can develop and the newly politicized can solidify their political understanding and involvement, we will continue to see cycles of militant demonstrations followed by long periods of silence. Additionally, police and vigilantes will become ever more aggressive towards all the anti-racists here in Wisconsin, making it ever harder to participate. At this very moment some of the most militant and committed young African-American men in Madison are sitting in the county jail as political prisoners.

Socialists remain absent

Meanwhile, although this struggle against racism has raged on and off in the streets, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are not calling emergency meetings, emergency demonstrations, are not marching in the streets demanding Rittenhouse be thrown in jail for the atrocities he committed.

Kyle Rittenhouse’s complete acquittal with nearly no protests here in Madison attests to this crisis in organization and elected accountable grassroots leadership. While a not-for-profit called a last minute speak out with an attendance of a couple of dozen there was no forethought to how we could most effectively protest a verdict most of us anticipated. The largest socialist organization in the country, and the largest here in Madison, Wisconsin—the DSA—has not called for protests against this dangerous acquittal because of expressed sentiments that it would be inappropriate to do so as a majority white organization.

Additionally, the DSA is not structurally designed to prioritize street action in order to address emergency racist murderous attacks like those of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Jacob Blake and so many others. Rather, its organizational model is hard-wired into electioneering and campaigning. This became apparent most recently throughout the Rittenhouse trial, where the leadership has chosen to focus their energies on internal debates over the character of the vote taken by New York Democratic Congressman and DSA member Jamaal Bowman.

Bowman, who is openly pro-Zionist, voted to fund the Israeli military in its war on Palestinians. This has rankled many on the leftwing of the DSA, including the Madison branch, who have rightly argued for his expulsion. The question of whether Bowman can be censured—let alone expelled—has created a crisis as the elected leadership and numerous branches across the country have come out to aggressively in defense of Bowman. That the DSA has centered the debate and the question of shifting or expelling its elected members, and largely abdicating itself from building the urgent anti-racist struggle that is needed in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse acquittal is cause for concern. Once again, the activity the DSA is engaging its membership in is how to work within and try to shift the Democratic Party versus how to build an anti-racist movement on the ground.

Once again, the activity the DSA is engaging its membership in is how to work within and try to shift the Democratic Party versus how to build an anti-racist movement on the ground.

In the absence of political organization willing to step up and prioritize the racial class struggle in the streets, one will need to be built anew. Otherwise, the Democrats will continue to shed crocodile tears while they increase policing and enable more vigilantism—and giving even more ground to the far right.

With an imminent election where the tiny Democratic Congressional majority will likely be ended and the next president may very well be Donald Trump or some Trumpian figure, it must become clear to those on the on the left that there is simply no time to wait for better politicians or the next tragedy to occur.

Kim Gasper-Rabuck is a former middle school teacher and full-time parent. She has been an activist and organizer who has worked to stop wars, defend abortion, fight police brutality, support strikes, and fight for socialist ideas and organization for the last 35 years.