1y ago

Four years after losing funds for supporting Black Lives Matter, a Wisconsin domestic violence shelter worries about their future

www.wxpr.org

Four years after losing funds for supporting Black Lives Matter, a domestic violence shelter worries about their future

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240515121430/https://www.wxpr.org/community/2024-05-15/four-years-after-losing-funds-for-supporting-black-lives-matter-a-domestic-violence-shelter-worries-about-their-future

14 comments

So, when do churches that support Trump lose their tax-exemption status?
- Did you read the article? They haven't lost their tax exempt status.
  They were getting large donations from the police department, and the police department stopped donating because of their support for BLM.
  
  Once again showing that the police don't actually help anyone, and this was just an opportunity for good publicity to them.
  
  They were getting large donations from the police department, and the police department stopped donating because of their support for BLM.
  It's actually a bit more complicated than that. From the article,
  Then, Jacob Blake was shot by police seven times in Kenosha, prompting the statewide coalition of advocacy agencies Embrace is a part of to signal their support for police reform and Embrace to release an anti-racism statement.
  In response, the local law enforcement groups, which had been close working partners, pulled out of collaborative groups and the Sheriff of Barron County resigned from Embrace’s Board of Directors.
  Katie Bement is the Executive Director of Embrace.
  “He notified us that he would no longer support the organization or advocates for our services when survivors called 911 and he contacted other departments within our service area across county lines and told them to stop working with us too. And they did,” explained Bement.
  They had been receiving $25,000 annually from the Barron County Department of Health and Human Services, but that was cut after Embrace released their statement.
  “There were a lot of attempts to try to figure out, kind of, how to repair those relationships and get the funding returned,” explained Bement.
  “We didn't think that we could do this work without the criminal legal system, without being aligned with the criminal legal system,” she said.
  She explained that Embrace and local law enforcement agencies had spent years developing collaborative programming that Embrace didn’t want to see crumble.
  Some of the 14 law enforcement agencies in the area still refer survivors to Embrace, but that’s the extent of their relationships.
  [Bolding added throughout]
  
  What article? We're talking about stupid christians supporting an orange man.
I'm surprised police were giving the shelter money to begin with.
40% of police officers self-report that they have used violence against their domestic partners within the last year. In the general population, it's estimated that domestic violence occurs in about 10% of families.
http://www.purpleberets.org/violence_police_families.html
And they usually get away with it too.
https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/06/12/still-armed-officers-accused-domestic-violence-often-keep-their-guns-badges/
- 40% of police officers self-report
  I can't even imagine how much higher the real number is when all we have is those who openly admit it.
- I'm surprised police were giving the shelter money to begin with.
  because now the partners of cops have one fewer places they will feel safe going to for help 😎
- Actually, it was a county health department that pulled its funding in response to the pro-BLM statement and law enforcement outcry. Police departments had been participating in "collaborative programming" with this organization (not sure if that's just trainings or something else) and stopped doing that.
- I expect it's not the 40% who are donating. Its the officers who aren't pieces of shit. The ones who see their colleagues abusing their partners but don't feel like they can do anything about it because of the "thin blue line".
  
  Your third sentence invalidates your second sentence. One cannot uphold the fat blue line without being a piece of shit criminal.
Speak against violence, lose support of sheriff and cops. That’s cool.
I think this is a symptom of people losing their sense of cause and effect over political talking points. A shelter rightfully speaks out against power, as it should, but because of culture war nonsense they get upset and start defunding important things. Then they don't understand why it's struggling financially and the community is worse off.
We're also seeing similar things with libraries, where parents want to ban books for everyone because their "objectional content" is located in the adults section and their kid might be where they shouldn't. The libraries get defunded, close, and then the conservatives get shocked that something important to the community is closing.

14 comments