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.
August 5, 2026
At 5 a.m. on Tuesday, August 4, while the city slept, Madison police in riot gear and city crews with bulldozers, forklifts, and street sweepers descended on the corner of Williamson and Baldwin. In the pre-dawn dark, they dismantled the memorial and encampment that had stood for thirteen days at the site where Officer Kiel Peterson shot and killed Corey Ruiz.
Sixteen people were arrested. More than ten were cited. The memorial — the flowers, the candles, the signs, the names of the dead — was swept away. The intersection was reopened by 9 a.m.
By sundown, the memorial had been rebuilt. The protesters had returned. The intersection was blocked again.
You can bulldoze a memorial. You cannot bulldoze a movement.
The city did not clear the encampment during the day, in public view, with some attempt at the transparency it so often demands of others. It did it at 5 a.m. — before sunrise, before the news crews arrived, before the community could mobilize a defense. It did it with riot police, heavy machinery, and the kind of force reserved for people the city considers a threat.
Katey Nelson, a member of the Police Civilian Oversight Board — the very body the city tried to weaken last week before the community forced them to back down — told WMTV: "It's not necessarily what was done. I mean, it is what it is, but it was also how it was done. To show up at five o'clock in the morning with bulldozers was disgusting."
When a member of the city's own oversight board calls the city's actions disgusting, the city has a problem. When that board member is on the same board the Common Council was preparing to gut — and the raid happened on the same day the Council was taking up the PCOB ordinance — the timeline is not a coincidence. It is a message.
The message: we will clear your grief with bulldozers, and we will decide the fate of your oversight in chambers you cannot fill.
The community's answer: we will rebuild what you tear down, and we will govern ourselves when you refuse to govern justly.
The encampment lasted from July 22 — the day Corey Ruiz was killed — to August 4. For thirteen days, the intersection of Williamson and Baldwin was not just a site of mourning. It was a site of community. Food was shared. Supplies were distributed. Vigils were held. Names were spoken aloud. The encampment was what communities build when the state kills one of their own and then asks them to move on: a physical refusal.
Dwayne Washington, a Madison restaurant owner and resident of nearly thirty years, told WMTV: "I'm lost for words. I cannot understand or believe why they are not allowing us to protest these crooked police."
The answer is that protest makes the powerful uncomfortable — and sustained protest makes them afraid. An encampment that lasts thirteen days is not a disruption of business as usual. It is a challenge to business as usual. The city tolerated the vigils. It could not tolerate the occupation.
Within hours of the clearing, protesters returned to the intersection. They blocked traffic. Drivers honked in support. When police reopened the street, demonstrators re-blocked it. When the city thought it had won the morning, the movement won the afternoon. And the evening.
By the end of August 4, the memorial had been reconstructed. Trash cans were repositioned as barricades. Flowers were laid again. The corner of Williamson and Baldwin looked less like a site that had been cleared and more like a site that had been reclaimed.
Freedom Inc. issued a statement that same day — recounting the facts the city wants to bury: four MPD officers held down and tased Corey Ruiz before Officer Kiel Peterson shot him in the head at close range. The statement declared "shame" on the officers who made the arrests. The statement did not ask for permission to protest. It announced that the protest continues.
On the evening of August 4, while the city congratulated itself on a morning's work, the movement held a People's Council Meeting at the Social Justice Center. On August 5, a rally was held at the Dane County Courthouse. The city has its chambers. The movement has its own.
This is what the city does not understand. Clearing an encampment does not clear the demand. Arresting sixteen people does not arrest the idea that the police who kill Black people should be held accountable. The movement does not need the city's permission to gather, to mourn, or to govern. It is already doing all three.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said, in a statement dripping with the language of exhausted patience, that "multiple efforts and calls to end the occupation peacefully were made but ultimately ignored." The framing is instructive. The occupation the mayor wants to end is not the police occupation of Black neighborhoods that has killed Tony Robinson, Richard Lee Johnson, and Corey Ruiz — all within blocks of each other, all within ten years. The occupation she wants to end is the community's occupation of an intersection where one of those killings happened.
The ACLU of Wisconsin has responded to the mass arrests and reported injuries. National media — from the Washington Post to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — have covered the raid. International risk monitors have classified it as a Level 3 event. The world is watching.
Freedom Action NOW condemns the pre-dawn raid on the Corey Ruiz memorial and encampment. We stand with the sixteen people arrested for the crime of mourning in public. We support the right of the community to gather, to grieve, and to demand justice at the site where Corey Ruiz was killed — for as long as justice remains undelivered.
We follow the leadership of Freedom Inc., the Black and Southeast Asian-led queer feminist organization that has organized the community response from the first night. Their demands are our demands: justice for Corey Ruiz, jail killer cops, community control over police.
The city sent bulldozers before sunrise. The movement rebuilt before sundown. That is not a metaphor. That is what happened. And it is what will keep happening until there is justice.
<p dir="ltr">WMTV 15 News — "Hours after Madison clears protest encampment honoring Corey Ruiz, protesters take over intersection again" (Aug 4-5, 2026)
<br>https://www.wmtv15news.com/2026/08/05/hours-after-madison-clears-protest-encampment-honoring-corey-ruiz-protesters-take-over-intersection-again/</p>
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<p dir="ltr">WPR — "Madison police clear encampment at shooting site, arrest 16" (Aug 4, 2026)
<br>https://www.wpr.org/news/madison-clears-encampment-site-arrests-7</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Cap Times — "City clears Willy Street encampment, dozens jailed or issued citations" (Aug 4, 2026)
<br>https://captimes.com/news/government/city-clears-willy-street-encampment-dozens-jailed-or-issued-citations/article_4c3cb410-4c61-4c1b-a78d-6ad05222041b.html</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — "12 arrested as police, city workers forcibly remove Madison encampment" (Aug 4, 2026)
<br>https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2026/08/04/madison-encampment-for-corey-ruiz-removed-by-city-workers-aug-4/91161891007/</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Wisconsin Watch — "Madison clears encampment at police shooting site, arrests 7" (Aug 4, 2026)
<br>https://wisconsinwatch.org/2026/08/madison-clears-encampment-police-shooting-site-arrests-wisconsin-corey-ruiz/</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Madison365 — "Protesters respond after Madison police clear protest encampment honoring Corey Ruiz" (Aug 5, 2026)
<br>https://madison365.com/protesters-respond-after-madison-police-clear-protest-encampment-honoring-corey-ruiz/</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Freedom Inc. — "Statement on the Justice for Corey's Corner Encampment Raid" (Aug 4, 2026)
<br>https://wibailoutpeople.org/2026/08/04/freedom-inc-statement-on-the-justice-for-coreys-corner-encampment-raid/</p>
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<p dir="ltr">ACLU of Wisconsin — "Responds to Mass Arrests, Reported Injuries Following Sweep of Madison Encampment" (Aug 4, 2026)
<br>https://www.aclu-wi.org/press-releases/aclu-of-wisconsin-responds-to-mass-arrests-reported-injuries-following-sweep-of-madison-encampment/</p>
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