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At the center of the vigil for Corey Ruiz, a Black man killed by the Madison Police Department on July 22, stands a large wooden statue in the shape of a raised fist.
The statue rises from the intersection of Williamson and South Baldwin streets, the locus of a community-led, community-organized vigil for Ruiz. It originally stood in Minneapolis at George Floyd Square by the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue where, in May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin.
The statue is “a symbol of solidarity and power, collectiveness and unity, and that we all belong,” said Minneapolis-based artist and activist jordan jamal powell karis. He and a half dozen neighbors brought the statue to Wisconsin as a show of solidarity for the Madison community.
“It was Thursday morning that we started thinking about this, and Friday morning we packed it up and brought it down,” he said.
Williamson Street between South Few and South Dickinson streets remains closed to traffic. There are no immediate plans to reopen the street as the city works with organizers, residents and businesses to determine next steps.
The artist who made the sculpture, jordan jamal powell karis, adjusts the Pan-American flag on the top of a 11-foot raised fist sculpture he built and delivered from Minneapolis.
AMBER ARNOLD
The intersection has served as a gathering place for people to lay flowers and pay tribute to Ruiz while demanding accountability from the police and city for their excessive use of force, specifically toward Madison’s Black community.
The local community organizing group ACAB Underground School connected with powell karis to bring the statue to Madison. The group made a statement on its Instagram account: “We hope that this fist serves as a physical reminder to our community that solidarity is a verb, not just a passive email signature or a line in a song. … It requires sacrifice, discomfort, and belief that together we can create a better world.”
A statue ‘to help hold the space’
The fist is one of four statues powell karis built in 2021. He built the first fist statue in 2020 after “seeing my community of Minneapolis hurting. During the days following George Floyd’s lynching in 2020, I was very moved to show up in kind of a healing capacity, and to do that, people needed to have the space to heal.”
The original statue is in storage, powell karis said. He then built four more wooden statues and a metal one in 2021. The metal statue was designed to remain at George Floyd Square, and the wooden ones — also on display at the Square — were intended to travel. An additional statue was built and delivered to Akron, Ohio, in 2022 following the killing of Jayland Walker by police. (Walker, 25, was struck by bullets 46 times by eight police officers.)
He also built a statue for the Black Lives Matter branch in Los Angeles near Leimert Plaza Park.
Two statues by jordan jamal powell karis stand in George Floyd Square in Minneapolis.
jordan jamal powell karis
“My art and my creativity are just part of my expression, specifically grief (and) funneling emotion,” powell karis said. Friends knew he had building skills, so they suggested building something “large that’ll help hold the space.” The statue is over 11 feet tall.
“People were obviously taking up space out in the streets, claiming what is usually kind of a mechanized, linear, objective space of a roadway,” he said. “And they were holding it specifically where George Floyd was killed, and there was a tremendous amount of grief and community and just a process of energy unfolding there.”
As he saw people in Madison claiming space at the intersection, powell karis noticed parallels to how the community responded to the murder of George Floyd.
“Thousands of people have participated in the caretaking of George Floyd Square over six years, and we know what we continue to leverage and work towards,” powell karis said. “And the moment that Madison had barricades form on Williamson and Baldwin, there was a very clear image of like, ‘Oh, this is one of those situations.’”
A raised fist statue by jordan jamall powell karis helps hold space for mourning in communities in the aftermath of police violence.
jordan jamall powell karis
This fist delivered to Madison has stood at George Floyd Square for the last five years. “That specific fist has been struck by vehicles intentionally multiple times. That fist has caught bullets before,” powell karis said.
People across the globe have visited George Floyd Square, but the statues were not built to be a tourist attraction, powell karis said. “They were built to protest and to support the process of getting Black people to be able to live a safer life and not die in the hands of state violence and police,” he said.
The statue helps make the site of mourning hard to displace, he said. “The fist statue makes it more difficult for the state and the city to just walk in there and remove everything.”
With that time, the community can mourn, but they can also determine what happens next. “Whether that’s growing food or hosting educational workshops and rallies, playing music, just having a space to grieve or writing demands to have the police officer held accountable — it’s up for the Madison community to really make the most of more time and more space” powell karis said.
There’s no expectation that the statue be returned, powell karis said. “It’s just plywood and two-by-fours. One thing we really stand on at the end of the day from George Floyd Square is people over property,” he said.
“If it wasn’t there tomorrow, it wouldn’t be the biggest concern,” powell karis said. “It’s more (about), what are the people of Madison needing in this time? They need a place to go. They need a place to meet. They need a place to grieve and acknowledge and process the trauma of losing one of their community members to a horrific public lynching.”
Editor’s note: powell karis does not capitalize his name.