Madison Let an ‘Autonomous Zone’ Take Over a City Block. Its Security Detail Just Threatened to Kill a Journalist.
On the night of Saturday, August 1, independent journalist Nick Sortor and fellow reporter Karlyn Borysenko drove past a barricaded intersection on Madison, Wisconsin’s Williamson Street. Sortor stepped out to talk to the people camped behind the barriers. Within minutes a crowd surrounded him, blocked his path back to his car, swung a metal pole, and sprayed vomit on him and the vehicle. A woman told him: “Hurry up and leave before your life ends out here! There’s a whole team of us!”
The intersection is the self-declared “Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone” — CRAZ, in the shorthand its own occupiers use — established at Williamson and Baldwin Streets after Madison police shot and killed Corey Ruiz there on July 22. Twelve days later, the barricades were still up, City Hall was still supplying services to the site, and no one in Madison government had ordered it cleared.
That gap — between what a city government tolerates and what it is willing to say out loud — is the story here. Rank-and-file Madison police, both journalists said afterward, responded to Sortor’s 911 call professionally. It is the policy above them that let a “law-enforcement-free” zone stand for nearly two weeks in the first place.
- 12 days Williamson and Baldwin Streets were blocked by resident barricades and city-placed salt trucks before the mayor even called for voluntary removal — Washington Times, Aug. 3, 2026
- 40+ prior arrests on Corey Ruiz's record over roughly two decades, including two felony convictions for injuring or resisting police officers — FOX6 News Milwaukee
- $4,800,000 in government funding received by Freedom Inc., one of about a dozen groups identified organizing support at the site, between 2021 and 2024 — Washington Examiner investigation
- $100,000+ in city cost, by Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway's own estimate, for the salt trucks used to hold the barricade in place — Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway (D), via Channel 3000/WISC-TV
Sortor is an independent journalist with more than a million followers on X, known for on-the-ground reporting from unrest legacy outlets often cover from a distance; Borysenko is an organizational psychologist turned independent commentator. Neither says the crowd recognized them. According to both journalists’ own accounts, Sortor got out of the car to talk to the people manning the barricade and tried cracking a few jokes. It had the opposite of the intended effect: the group closed in, someone swung a metal pole at him, and several people repeated variations of a threat to kill him before he could get back to his car.
“Hurry up and leave before your life ends out here! There's a whole team of us!”
Unnamed CRAZ occupant to Nick Sortor · reported by Twitchy and The Gateway Pundit, Aug. 2026
Borysenko filmed part of the encounter from the passenger seat with a hood pulled over her head, “trying to discreetly film,” as she put it. The vehicle’s left front quarter panel was damaged. Sortor called 911 once he broke free. Both reporters said the responding Madison officers were courteous and helpful — a distinction they drew deliberately, crediting the street-level department while faulting the policy that let the zone exist unpoliced in the first place.
Here's my footage from the passenger seat of Nick's car last night when we drove by the autonomous zone in Madison. Nick got out and made jokes to try to get them to laugh. It did not go well — they started threatening to kill him. I don't believe they knew who either of us were.
Corey Durell Ruiz, 38, was shot and killed by a Madison police officer on July 22 after a struggle that Chief John Patterson says began when Ruiz fled a vehicle-prowling call on a bicycle, was confronted by four officers, pulled a knife, and wounded one of them; a Taser deployment failed before an officer opened fire. Four officers are on leave pending a Wisconsin Department of Justice investigation. Ruiz’s record includes more than 40 prior arrests across two decades and two felony convictions for resisting or injuring police; his family, represented by attorney Ben Crump, disputes that record defines him and has called the shooting an execution.
Within days, activists had rebuilt the intersection as CRAZ — explicitly modeled, participants told reporters, on Seattle’s 2020 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. A Washington Examiner investigation identified roughly a dozen groups organizing or promoting the site, including the 50501 Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the nonprofit Freedom Inc., which has received $4,800,000in government funding between 2021 and 2024. Demands relayed to the city include firing the officer and defunding the department — asks Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway (D) says the city has no legal power to grant.
What it is: A roughly two-block occupation of public streets, barricaded with pallets, furniture, spike strips, and nail-studded boards, with tents, mattresses, and cooking grills inside.
What the city has supplied: Salt trucks used as blockade vehicles, portable toilets, and garbage pickup, according to reporting confirmed in part by a Madison alder. Mayor Rhodes-Conway has publicly disputed characterizations that the city is actively sustaining the site.
What it isn’t: A permitted demonstration. Republican Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney (R), the GOP nominee for Wisconsin Attorney General, walked the site on August 1 and called the blockade a violation of state statute that “should immediately be declared an unlawful assembly.”
Far-left extremists in Madison, Wisc. have erected an autonomous zone with check points and booby traps in memory of violent thug and deadbeat dad Corey Ruiz. The far-left have done this type of public occupation in multiple cities like Minneapolis and Seattle. Local left-wing leadership let them.
The timeline runs slow by design. Protests began July 23, the day after the shooting. Salt trucks went up around July 28. Mayor Rhodes-Conway gave her first television interview addressing the site on July 31 — nine days in — and did not call for voluntary removal until August 1. Only on August 3, twelve days after the shooting, did she announce a plan to tow blocking vehicles. As of publication, no forced clearance had occurred.
“There are too many residents and local businesses suffering because of the occupation, and it's become increasingly clear that unsheltered people are being used as leverage for demands that, frankly, the City of Madison cannot deliver because we do not have the power to deliver them.”
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway (D) · statement, Aug. 3, 2026
The mayor has also acknowledged what the blockade costs beyond dollars: it “affects public bus routes,” makes it “more difficult for community members to reach their jobs,” and “impedes fire and EMS response.” District 13 Alder Tag Evers, in an August 2 post on the city’s own council blog, put a finer point on the danger: recounting a medical emergency in his own life in which “EMS was there in four minutes and his life was spared” and that a fifth minute might have killed him, he warned that detours around Fire Station 3 “could add critical minutes” for anyone on those blocks. Evers called the occupation “revolutionary cosplay, not the hard work of social change.”
Madison's mayor is calling the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone 'not sustainable or safe' but is not saying when or if the city will clear the intersection where the community has built a memorial.
Madison is not improvising. Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest ran for roughly three weeks in June 2020 before Mayor Jenny Durkan ordered it cleared — after four shootings inside the zone, two of them fatal, plus armed “security” checkpoints that no elected official had authorized. Madison occupiers cite CHOP as their model directly. The through-line both cities share is not the barricades — it is a city government that treats a self-policed, no-go perimeter as a negotiation to be managed rather than an unlawful assembly to be dispersed, until someone gets hurt inside it.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) has confined his public comment to the underlying shooting investigation — calling for “transparency and accountability” — without addressing the occupation itself. The sharpest Republican reactions have come from Wisconsin’s own August 11 primary contest: U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R), the GOP frontrunner for governor, told his Democratic-socialist rival Francesca Hong — who took a bullhorn to the site and called the shooting an “execution” — that “you don’t get to ignite the fire and then complain about the smoke.” The threat against Sortor pulled in national attention beyond Wisconsin’s race.
BLM and Antifa activists in Madison, Wisconsin's self-declared 'autonomous zone' threatened to kill independent journalist Nick Sortor: 'Leave before your life ends out there. There's a whole team of us!' This is what the city has allowed to fester for nearly two weeks.
Mayor of Madison: Satya Rhodes-Conway (D) · elected 2019, re-elected 2023
Madison Police Chief: John Patterson · appointed, nonpartisan office
Common Council, District 13: Alder Tag Evers · nonpartisan office
Dane County Sheriff: Kalvin Barrett (D)
Wisconsin Governor: Tony Evers (D)
Wisconsin Attorney General: Josh Kaul (D) · whose Division of Criminal Investigation is reviewing the shooting
GOP Attorney General nominee criticizing the zone: Eric Toney (R) · Fond du Lac County District Attorney
Every officeholder with direct jurisdiction over the barricaded blocks — the mayor, the sheriff, the governor, the attorney general overseeing the shooting probe — is a Democrat. The loudest elected voice demanding the intersection be declared an unlawful assembly is a Republican running for statewide office who does not yet hold power in Madison. That is not a coincidence of this story; it is the story. A city government can tolerate a no-go perimeter for twelve days, or it can protect the reporters and residents who have to drive past it — not both.
A journalist was told there was “a whole team” prepared to end his life on a public street, twelve days into an occupation the city helped keep standing with salt trucks and porta-potties and never once declared unlawful. Madison’s rank-and-file police handled the 911 call professionally. The policy above them is the part of this story that is still unresolved.
