In NYC — Protests include a Trump effigy hanging from a noose.

A stuffed Donald Trump figure on a noose is being passed around. pic.twitter.com/coRxBp1jW4

— Patrick deHahn (@patrickdehahn) November 10, 2016

From "Liberals Gone Wild: Protests, flag burnings, Trump hung in effigy."

From Madison, Wisconsin, David Blaska cracks the joke everyone here in Madison should get: "Assuming the folks with the noose won't be admitted to Camp Randall. Right?"

You might remember — click my UW noose incident tag — that here in Madison, much was made of an incident at the football stadium (Camp Randall) on the night of Halloween festivities, when people saw of a photo of a man in a black-and-while prison suit with a noose around his neck and an Obama mask on the back of his head. On the front of his head was a Hillary mask and holding the other end of the rope was a guy in a Donald Trump mask.

This wasn't tolerated as free speech and political street theater, but condemned as racism, and everyone was supposed to know that a noose refers to the lynching of black people and that the guy in the noose was enacting hate and had to be punished.

Initially, the University referred to freedom of speech and purported to have dealt properly with the incident by simply talking to the man and persuading him to voluntarily remove the noose. But criticism ensued and the University repositioned itself. On Monday, 9 days after the incident, the UW–Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologized:

“I am personally very sorry for the hurt that this incident and our response to it has caused,” Blank read from a prepared statement at a Monday afternoon Faculty Senate meeting. “I have heard from students, faculty and community members who are dissatisfied with our response and I understand why. A noose is the symbol of some of the worst forms of racial hatred and intimidation in our country’s history. We understand this, and we should have communicated that more forcefully from the very beginning...I understand the deeply hurtful impact this particularly has on our students and communities of color.”...

Blank told the Faculty Senate that she was limited in what she could say, but that the season tickets of “a pair of individuals related to this event” were revoked because the person using them brought a prohibited item into the stadium, and failed to follow directions of event staff....

"This is a work in progress, and we are a long way from where we want to be," Blank said. "But with your advice and input of governance, we have invested time, energy and effort into things like the Our Wisconsin program aimed at incoming freshmen, a bias reporting system, a review of our ethnic studies curriculum, and a black cultural center."

You can read my old posts at the tag. I'll just repeat that hanging in effigy is long-standing political theater — notably in the American Revolution — and when current political figures are hung in effigy the reference is more naturally to that tradition and not to the history of racism and lynching. There is at least ambiguity, and the punishment of these individuals through revocation of their season tickets is shameful pandering and a violation of freedom of speech.



Maybe the hanging of Trump in effigy will restore some interest in the depth of the meaning of the noose in American history and the importance of freedom of speech in the form of street theater and protest.

"Today, we stand as a collective, stand as a single voice... calling on the university to create a policy where there is zero tolerance..."

"... for racism, or racial gestures, slurs, proxies, or anything perpetuating against communities of color, whether it by staff, whether it be by teacher, whether it be by student."

Said Minister Caliph Muab’El, of Breaking Barriers Mentoring Inc., quoted in Isthmus, about the person at a University of Wisconsin football game last Saturday (the night of the Madison Halloween festival, Freakfest), who was wearing a prison suit, a noose, and a Hillary mask on the front of his head and an Obama mask on the back of his head. University officials asked the man to remove the noose and he did, and the University also put out an immediate statement calling the costume "repugnant" and reminding us that the man has a right to freedom of speech. That could have been the end of it, but it wasn't. It's an incident that something can be made of, and so we're getting statements like the one quoted above.

The idea of "zero tolerance" is horrifying in a context where street theater and symbolic speech is aggressively interpreted as racist, with the university officials taking the most extreme, hurtful position on what the costumed man meant. A university should be dedicated to intellectual exploration, and, indeed, our university has a famous plaque:

"Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found."