Today, Governor Evers passed a law that gives money to police. It makes police and firefighters eligible for PTSD worker’s compensation.
Firefighters are fine. Cops are not. They are not workers and should not get worker compensation. The police are, and always have been the sworn enemies of the working class. They are the attack dogs of capitalism. When workers go on strike for labor protections, including worker’s compensation, it is the police who attack them and delay the passage of those laws.
To this day, the police continue to side with the exploiters over the workers. They should never be given rights and protections that they worked murderously hard to prevent workers from gaining.
Funding the Police in Context
In Wisconsin, police are mostly funded by municipalities. For example, nearly 50% of Milwaukee’s city budget goes to police. The state government’s role in police funding is limited, but the illegitimate gerrymandered legislature has been working aggressively to change that. By signing this bill, Evers gave them their first victory since last summer’s massive antipolice protests.
The legislature drafted a wildly unpopular “fund the police” bill in a direct response to protest demands. They tried to get people on board with police funding by tying it to COP houses, that provide “wraparound services” in exchange for snitching, even though the people burned one of those houses last summer.
It seems legislative bootlickers are trying to come up with all kinds of bills to shovel cash at cops, and the worker compensation angle convinced democrats to turn their backs on us. Unsurprisingly, senator Lena Taylor maintained her penchant for sponsoring trash laws by co-authoring this one. Unfortunately, a number of other democrats also voted in favor, and none against this legislation.
Post-Traumatic Stress
We don’t disagree that being a cop is stressful, or that some cops have PTSD. You cannot terrorize a community without experiencing terror yourself. We’re asking for lawmakers to sort their priorities. Police pensions are already tanking budgets. They don’t need more money. Last summer the police rolled out military equipment across the state to literally go to war against us.
Even democrats who try to position themselves as progressive, like Janet Bewley and Kelda Roys, supported this law to address trauma experienced by police. Meanwhile, what have they delivered to address the trauma inflicted by police?
We said “Black Lives Matter”, the cops replied: “blue lives matter!” and the legislature, including progressive democrats, met the police’s call.
Defund Efforts
The city of milwaukee has a budget process coming up. Last two budget sessions, the LiberateMKE coalition led by the African American Roundtable has organized to reduce the mpd budget. Revolution Ready is hosting a public hearing testimony training on Thursday April 29.
Despite this betrayal on a state level, local efforts will continue and there will be many opportunities to help get money out of the budgets of the police.