“F*ck the p*gs,” Freedom Inc. wrote. Josh Kaul’s agency has funded its efforts by funneling federal grants to the non-profit for years. The group advocates for abolishing the police.
For years, Attorney General Josh Kaul’s Department of Justice has funded the radical non-profit group that bailed out Madison rioters after a police officer shot a knife-wielding man. His office is currently investigating the shooting. In 2024, the group posted a picture of a pig in a police uniform crossed out with a red X and wrote, “Our vision of safety does not include police.” Yet, in 2025, Kaul’s agency was sending it more federal money, and, as Kaul runs the DOJ, the buck stops with him.
Kaul’s DOJ has funded the group by awarding it federal grant money, for years, and it’s no small amount.
The group has repeatedly called for abolishing the police and makes no secret of this, writing in May on Facebook, “We joined thousands of people today in Madison, WI, for May Day, demanding no ICE and abolishing police.” The group shared a photo showing young people holding signs that read “abolish the police.”
On July 5, 2024, the group wrote, “America doesn’t deserve a birthday this year or any year for that matter.” They accused the U.S. Supreme Court decisions of reflecting “white outrage.” The group labeled Republican legislators “fascist right wingers” and slammed a bill to ban boys in girls’ sports.
“The notion of crime is a tool of oppression deeply entrenched in anti-Blackness,” the group wrote in 2024. On Women’s History Month, Freedom Inc. noted that “white womanhood has long been treated as the default.”
The group has a long history of agitating to defund the police, and has repeatedly written “f*ck the pigs.” The group also wants to abolish prisons and advocates for boys in girls sports and gender surgeries of minors. Yet for years, it’s survived on a stream of government grants, many of them directed to it by the agency of Kaul, the man who is supposedly Wisconsin’s “top cop.”
Freedom Inc. “bailed out over 30 protesters out of jail after they were arrested for taking over the intersection of Williamson and Baldwin streets,” WKOW-TV reported.
The group aligns with socialists and adopts some of their rhetoric against capitalism, whites, the “patriarchy,” and police. The non-profit Freedom Inc. made a joint post with the Madison chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, urging people to protest the Madison shooting of Corey Ruiz, who, police say, injured the officer who shot and killed him. The group helped organize the protests, and even posted a video showing a march to the mayor’s house.
Those are all incendiary positions that likely cost socialist Francesca Hong the primary election for governor – yet now it appears that under Kaul’s leadership, DOJ has taken it one step farther: Actively funding the group by diverting federal grant money its way – and we’re talking about a LOT of it.
Freedom Inc. Has Received Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Awarded to it by Josh Kaul’s DOJ
The funding stream dates back years. In 2020, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that “the state has awarded contracts and grants worth $3.6 million to Freedom Inc.” That included more than $876,000 in federal money awarded by the state Department of Justice under AG Kaul, the newspaper reported, and more than $730,000 from a state agency during Evers’ administration.
The state DOJ, which Kaul runs, has continued giving Freedom Inc. federal money despite years of incendiary and outrageous statements against police. For example, another $48,000 grant went to the group in 2025. Kaul’s agency shoveled another $98,000 to the group for 2025-26. In 2023-24, Wisconsin DOJ listed Freedom Inc. receiving a whopping $745,550. DOJ determines grant awardees for federal money through the Violence Against Women Act. The city of Madison and another state agency have also given the group money.
Incidentally, Kaul’s Office of Crime Victim’s Services is the office that so botched the aftermath of a federal audit that the DOJ was temporarily labeled a high-risk state for grant purposes.
The 2025 grant is for “FREEDOM, INC.’S LOVE PEOPLE LIKE US (LOVE PLUS) PROJECT,” which “WILL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT AND UPLIFT BLACK, SOUTHEAST ASIAN QUEER, TRANS, AND INTERSEX (QTI) ADULTS, FAMILIES, AND YOUNG PEOPLE, IN DANE COUNTY, EXPERIENCING OR AT RISK OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT (DVSA).”
In 2022, the group argued that defunding the police was a “gender justice” issue that would stop domestic abuse.
In 2024, Kaul’s agency listed a Freedom, Inc. board member at its annual Domestic Violence Summit. “Between 2023 and 2026, Wisconsin’s Department of Justice awarded the charity hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal DOJ funds related to crime victim programs,” the Washington Examiner reported.
Kaul, who is running for re-election despite letting the crime-fighting functions of his office languish (backlogs at the crime lab, for example), has been AG since 2019. Fond du Lac County DA Eric Toney, a former Wisconsin District Attorney of the year, is running against him in November. Toney has criticized the abolish the police movement, and he has called out Kaul for his silence on socialism, abolish the police rhetoric, and the Madison autonomous zone created after the police shooting.
There’s so much more.
Freedom Inc. chastised then Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes, accusing him of “prioritizing white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism…police are often the ones causing harm, and therefore can never be the solution.”
In 2022, the group released a statement on its letterhead that advocated for abolishing the police. “No more pigs in our community!” the group wrote in 2021. “All cops are guilty,” the non-profit wrote with a photo of a police officer wearing a KKK hood. They also shared a photo of young kids in front of a sign with a crossed out pig and urged people not to call the police.
In 2023, the group wrote, “Freedom for our people means freedom from policing!” That same year, the group released a statement that started, “Dear comrades,” and wrote, “The pigs are at it again!” Another statement read, “F*ck the pigs!” In 2022, the group called to defund the police and held “Queersgiving.” The group even blamed domestic violence on “white supremacy and policing.” The group labeled the policing system “racist.”
“Join the Party for Socialism and Liberation,” the group wrote in 2023, adding again, “F*ck the pigs.” The group noted, “At Freedom, Inc., we do not believe that people belong in prisons.”
The group’s posts show it has been active in schools, writing, in 2021, “We teach our little freedom fighters about self love and liberation.” The group declared August 2022 “a time to remember incarcerated Black freedom fighters, organize against prisons.”
A group of radicals associated with Freedom Inc. also trashed police during a Fitchburg meeting several years ago. They called police violent, racist rapists who are neo-fascist colonials. See more videos here.
Yet Kaul’s DOJ kept sending them federal money.
Freedom, Inc. has also worked with DSA, the radical socialist group that claims Francesca Hong as a member. The group also advocated for the anti-Gaza encampments on campuses.
In 2025, Freedom Inc. wrote on X, “Today launches day 1 of the national BLM @ School Week of Action. As we enter a new phase of #policefreeschools, FI w/ Madison DSA & coalition partners, we’ve been fighting for universal school meals!”
Opposing Body Cams for Cops
According to WPR, Freedom Inc. opposed body cameras for Madison police officers, calling them “another tool to surveil our communities.” The lack of Madison police body cameras has been criticized in the wake of the officer’s shooting of Corey Ruiz, who was seen on citizen video wielding a knife and who injured the officer, the chief said.
The group “called for diverting funding from Madison’s police department.”
A flyer for a talk by the group’s leader at UW-Madison called it “transgressive” and added, “Freedom, Inc. sets a model for the nation for coalition-based activism campaigning for Gender Justice, Queer Justice, and Black and Southeast Asian Liberation.”
On Mother’s Day, the group pushed something called the Free the 350 Fund; the latter’s website says: “The Free The 350 Bailfund seeks to prioritize bailing out Black people incarcerated in the Dane County jail system, and also seeks to end the unjust and antiquated prison and jail system in general. Prison abolition is the ultimate goal, free them all!”
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