Caffeinated Politics

The line from Madison Alder Davy Mayer and Dane County Board District Supervisor Yogesh Chawla jumps off the screen. It arrives at the opening of the sixth paragraph in their latest update to constituents about the growing issues at the corner of Williamson Street and Baldwin Street, where the police shooting of Corey Ruiz occurred two weeks ago this coming Wednesday.

We absolutely support sustained protest and demonstration, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the 24/7 occupation at Williamson and Baldwin Streets is unsustainable.

The question begs to be asked why it was not “increasingly clear” from the start that, even with completely understood anger and justified outrage over the police shooting, the closing of the intersection was never a good idea.

Madison has a long and storied tradition of confusing symbolism with constructive strategy. We love a gesture. We love a statement. We love a performative blockade that lets everyone know we are Serious About Justice. But at some point, early in this process, someone- let’s just go out on a wild limb and name Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who is seeking a third term and wishes to be seen as a leader- should have climbed out of her self-constructed bunker and said blocking an intersection does not heal a community. Nor does it advance accountability. And it does not create a safer or more just city.

There is no doubt that the anger over this shooting is real. The grief is real. About 90 minutes after the shooting, I was at the intersection and saw the shock and revulsion on the faces of people who did not see the violence or know the man shot, but had visceral and emotional reactions, many with tears in their eyes. It was perhaps the most intense moment I have seen in this city in my over 30 years of living here. This was not performative, but gut-wrenching.

So, while I understood the anger and the desire for accountability, we needed to have asked from the beginning what was hoped to be gained from the intersection closure?

What is disturbing to me about the words from Mayer and Chawla is how they use the phrase “increasingly clear” as if it is akin to a slow‑moving weather front that needed time to roll in. No. It was clear from day one. It was clear from the moment traffic and business started to slow that the closure was a bad idea. It was clear when emergency vehicles had to reroute. It was clear when residents started asking, politely at first and then with the kind of Midwestern edge that could slice through steel, why their daily lives were being upended for a tactic that had no strategic endpoint.

My decades of political work have instilled in me the deep desire to effect change. But I have come to see, through statewide and national efforts, that there is a big difference between righteous anger at times and logistical self‑harm from short-sighted efforts. Madison blurred that line, then pretended it was a bold stroke of activism. The truth is simpler. The intersection should never have closed. Not because the outrage wasn’t justified — GOOD LORD, IT WAS — but because the tactic was never going to accomplish what people hoped it would. It was a pressure valve disguised as a plan.

Madison needs to confront some hard truths about police shootings and the symbolic use of shutting down roadways. The next time someone proposes shutting down a major roadway to send a message, the city should feel empowered to respond with a firm, Midwestern‑polite “nope.”