About Us
Freedom Action Now (FAN) advances the feminist abolitionist agenda, mobilizing allies to support grassroots organizations led by working class Black, Southeast Asian, and other women and queer people of color in Wisconsin.
Freedom Action Now (FAN) advances the feminist abolitionist agenda, mobilizing allies to support grassroots organizations led by working class Black, Southeast Asian, and other women and queer people of color in Wisconsin.
The Police Are an Occupying Force. Community Control Is the Answer.
Black people in Wisconsin are 5.2 times more likely than white people to be killed by police. Madison is not different. The same department that killed Corey Ruiz on July 22, 2026, killed Tony Robinson in 2015 and Richard Lee Johnson in 2024. The pattern is not an accident. It is the occupation made visible — and community control is the only answer.
Community Control Over Police means the people most impacted by police violence have power over the people doing the policing — the power to hire and fire, to set policies, to control the budget, to decide what safety looks like. Not oversight. Not reform. Not another commission that can investigate but cannot act. Power.
This campaign is led by Freedom Inc., a queer feminist organization that organizes within low to no-income Black and Southeast Asian communities in Madison. FAN follows their leadership — mobilizing allies to provide material support, amplify demands, and turn out the numbers that make community control politically undeniable.
The campaign has two active fronts:
The Madison Common Council votes on August 4 on whether to weaken the Police Civilian Oversight Board — stripping its independence, cutting its funding, removing its authority to investigate. The city created the PCO Board in 2020 as a compromise instead of community control. Now they want to weaken even the compromise. We are fighting to power it up — stable funding, independent investigative authority, binding power — while making clear that even a strengthened PCO Board is not community control. It is a step. Community control is the destination.
On July 22, 2026, Madison police surrounded and shot Corey Ruiz at the corner of Willy Street and Baldwin — in the Marquette neighborhood, blocks from where Tony Robinson was killed in 2015. Corey was tased, then shot at close range, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. We demand the release of all footage and officer names, the firing and prosecution of Officer Kile Peterson, the dropping of any posthumous charges, and accountability for every officer involved. Justice for Corey is not a separate fight from community control. It is why community control is necessary.
FAN mobilizes allies and conscience constituents across all backgrounds to provide material support to this campaign. We turn out bodies at hearings. We amplify demands. We provide resources.
There is a lane for you. Join us. →
