The institution Bauman cited as his primary motivation for introducing this ordinance had its most significant financial benefactor — a man with a building named after him on their campus — testify in support of the same ordinance. That benefactor is also a restaurant owner whose testimony at the hearing explicitly referenced restaurant patronage. And he identified himself in a way that concealed every one of those financial interests.

It is utterly naive to believe that the police, capitalists, and mad scientists are developing all this expensive technology to only go after a tiny fraction of dangerous people. Facial Recognition Technology and drones will quickly shift from targeting the scariest people to the most ordinary.

Pre-emptive compliance is the #1 way to cede power to fascism. The Common Council needs to act. Pass an ordinance, and if the fascists object? Take it to court. Fight back, you cowards.

We were warned. There were many Brower skeptics on the left who warned that he was only interested in self-promotion. He had seized control of the Milwaukee’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, causing many members (including the abolition working group, cooperation Milwaukee, and even the electoral working group) to leave the organization over a couple months.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffery Norman is trying to fill his department with officers who have been stewed in Republican villianization of our city. Mayor Cavalier Johnson and a majority of Common Council members gave that plan a green light last month. 

In Wisconsin, our racial caste system is exceptionally brutal. It is more invasive, restrictive, and more racially targeted than most other states. Police are the front line of that caste system, pulling people into it, and keeping them churning through it. 

Youth programming, mental health resources, infrastructure projects, affordable housing, basic human needs keep taking a back seat to law enforcement funding in both city and county budgets. Those things are actual sources of public safety, but we cannot invest in them when we’re giving nearly half of our budgets to the illusion of safety provided by the police. 

African American Roundtable highlighted that police were bankrupting Milwaukee in our report in 2021, yet nothing has changed and no one has seemed to listen. Police are the only department where results or metrics don’t matter. If crime is up, we need more police; if crime is down, we need more police. This logic fails to keep us safe, and this narrative fails to acknowledge what residents need and deserve.

Mayor Johnson is making a cynical calculus that is unfortunately typical with liberals: that tacking to the right’s benefits outweigh the political costs. He’s doing what the Milwaukee Police Association and Republican legislators want, maybe gaining him a bit of credibility with Wisconsin’s power structure –but losing only a few principled, abolitionist voters/elected officials/organizations/etc in the process.