WATERTOWN, Wis. — Protesters are holding a bail-bond benefit to raise money for lawbreakers arrested at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — weeks before the event even takes place.
The “benefit to raise bail funds for freedom fighters,” styled as an “RNC Protest Kickoff,” will be held the day before the convention starts at The Cooperage, a Milwaukee music hall and event space, a local news blog reports.
Brew City bar Boone & Crocket is the sponsor, according to the Eventbrite listing.
Tickets for the July 14 show, with a number of hardcore punk bands performing, are $20.
The Secret Service, RNC and City of Milwaukee held a press conference last week announcing the convention’s hard perimeter and security zone — with the state’s open-carry and concealed-carry laws allowing guns outside the hard perimeter.
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman warned then, “Just don’t do anything that would be considered a threat.”
The Coalition to March on the RNC, which has tried for more than a year to gain a city parade permit to march close to the Fiserv Forum, where the convention is being held, said it will be marching its own route, regardless of the Secret Service perimeter, and Milwaukee police don’t need to show up.
The group, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the city this month.
Coalition endorsers include the American Party of Labor – Fidel Castro/FL Division, the Colorado Palestine Coalition, the Freedom Socialist Party, Code Pink, the National Association of Letter Carriers – Branch 2 and the Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations with Cuba.
Wisconsin voters last year approved two referenda expanding the state’s bail-bond laws.
When determining a bail bond, judges must now consider the possibility of the defendant causing “serious harm” instead of “serious bodily harm” and the “totality of circumstances,” including prior convictions for violent crimes.
The amendments came after the Christmas parade massacre, in which Darrell Brooks, out on a low bail from Milwaukee County after being accused of running over a woman with his car, drove the same car through the festive event in downtown Waukesha, killing six people and injuring 60 others.
