Candles, flowers, crosses and plenty of television cameras have accented the Madison cityscape following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School that wounded six and killed three, including the 15-year-old shooter. 

Here’s what it looked like this week as community members gathered to support traumatized families and memorialize lives lost.

Police and first responders lined Buckeye Road as investigations continued.

Abundant Life remains closed to students. The United Way of Dane County has established an Abundant Life Christian School Emergency and Recovery Fund, with all proceeds going to those affected by the shooting, according to the school’s website. Supporters can donate online or text help4ALCS to the number 40403.

By Tuesday morning, news media vehicles swarmed where parents would have dropped off their children on normal school days. Reporters conducted interviews along Buckeye Road, lining sidewalks and street parking spaces.

Police tape surrounded the school and neighboring City Church. Flowers and candles lined the sidewalk.

On a chilly Tuesday evening, hundreds mourned at a candlelit vigil at the Wisconsin Capitol.

Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Joe Gothard and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway called on the community to support those affected. 

“That is where our focus is right now — caring for everyone who has been impacted,” Rhodes-Conway said. “Let us be a community that takes care of each other.”

She highlighted resources available through the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety and Office of Crime Victim Services, available 24-7 at 1-800-697-8761 or schoolsafety@doj.state.wi.us.

Vigil attendees sang and held their hands near their candles, protecting flames from gusts of wind. They wrote messages on crosses representing the dead.

“We will fight for change so this can’t happen again,” read one message.

Calls to end gun violence have echoed throughout Madison, including a plea from the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial board to “break America’s curse of gunfire in schools.”

Photos: Madison mourns after Abundant Life Christian School shooting is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

As rays of setting sun striped the hill at Madison’s James Madison Park, Arthur Kohl-Riggs practiced handstands on his favorite tree. 

“I never really planned on handstanding but it’s proven very meditative,” he said. 

Kohl-Riggs, 36, a native of Madison’s west side, said he initially started exercising at the park to regain strength in his shoulder following an injury. Now it’s his “third space” — a familiar spot to connect with others. 

“The idea of being a regular at a park is nice,” he said. “There’s no cost, you don’t have to buy a drink an hour, it’s just a free space to be.” 

As fellow park-goers walked by, some stopped to watch as Kohl-Riggs wrapped his hands around the old oak’s branch, brought his feet near his hands, hooked the branch with his feet, then dropped his arms to the ground, dangling upside down.

“I’ve been trying to find ways to reintegrate intentionally into the community,” Kohl-Riggs said.

Routines developed earlier in the pandemic kept him cooped inside for months at a time, he said. But now, between using his friend’s laundry machine in exchange for handyman work and attending karaoke nights at the Gamma Ray Bar just off the Capitol Square, Kohl-Riggs said he’s forcing himself into community — resisting the forces of complacency to avoid reisolation.

Kohl-Riggs has lived eclectically.

As an activist and citizen journalist in 2012, he ran a protest campaign against Scott Walker in the Republican primary for governor, touting the values of Republicans like Robert La Follette and Abraham Lincoln and growing a Lincoln-like beard. He received nearly 20,000 votes, 3% of the tally, despite spending less than $2,000. Over the next five years, he and a friend produced a tongue-in-cheek YouTube travel series about Dane County called Dane & Dash. He said he now works as a legal investigator for a private law firm that works on public defense overflow cases, helping to “ease the congested public defender rolls,” he said.

Kohl-Riggs said he feels optimistic about the state’s future, despite a range of challenges people face — from housing and financial instability to a lack of health care.  

“Despair only hinders progress,” he said. “We’re more capable now than we were before of seeing more of the faults in a lot of the systems that have always existed. It’s harder to be complacent when everything’s obviously not working how it’s supposed to work.” 

“People are motivated to make their communities better and to protect from potential threats to the people in their communities and around them,” Kohl-Riggs added. “That energy is contagious… we can build strong, resilient local strategies to combat national threats.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Arthur Kohl-Riggs finds comfort in Madison’s ‘third spaces’ is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Election Day involves more than quickly marking a ballot and anxiously awaiting election returns.

Filing dispatches from across Wisconsin during Tuesday’s general election, our reporters examined how residents participated in the democratic process. Voters and election workers brought joy, angst and purpose to the polls. 

In some cases images told their stories more powerfully than words. 

Here is the best of Wisconsin Watch’s photography from Election Day, portraits of what we saw and who we met.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Photos: What Wisconsin’s democracy looked like on Election Day is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.