Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers' administration gave more than $1.5 million to a radical organization whose executive said Wednesday that it supports the rioting in Kenosha. Mahnker Dahnweih, Freedom Inc.'s director of community building, told Madison's WKOW-TV that "the organization would not condemn or discourage any of the demonstrators from damaging property."
"When people set buildings on fire, I support any form, Freedom, Inc. supports any form of expression," she said. "Our Black people are expressing anger and hurt and grief. If that was my brother, my child, my son anybody, my sister that got murdered that way I would be going crazy."
In June, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Freedom Inc. has received more than $3.6 million in grant money and state contracts since 2014. Since Governor Evers was inaugurated in January 2019, the group received "$876,674 in federal grants awarded by the state Department of Justice" while the "state Department of Children and Families has paid out $732,403 to Freedom Inc."
That represented a massive increase to the organization, whose total budget was just $3.3 million in 2018, the year before Evers came to power.
In early June, Dahnweih and Monica Adams, Freedom Inc.'s co-founder, defended rioting across the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
"Thank all the youth freedom fighters who were in the streets fighting [Sunday] night and Saturday night," Dahnweih said after rioting in both Milwaukee and Madison. "Every action is a contribution to liberation.”
"You stop murdering black people and your glass will be safe," Adams added. "In terms of the rebellion, people are going to rebel until they’re not going to rebel."
The rebellion has been profitable for Adams, whose annual salary doubled with the influx of state and federal contracts and grants to $104,230 in 2018 — up from $52,154 two years prior," the Journal Sentinel reported.