One of the oldest businesses on State Street is Underground Self-Defense, a cooperatively owned martial arts and self-defense studio that’s been serving the community since 1989. Ali Treviño-Murphy, a queer black-belt karate master and a co-owner, works alongside other co-owners to teach and empower every individual that walks through the door, ensuring they know they are “worth defending.”

Treviño-Murphy grew up in a “martial arts family” and has been practicing martial arts since she was only three or four years old. Her parents moved from Montreal, Canada back to Madison in the 80s, where they opened Fred Villari’s Studios of Self-defense (part of a franchise). Treviño-Murphy was teaching at the studio by the time she was in high school. When her parents moved away in 2007, she adopted the family business.

Several years later, Treviño-Murphy decided running the studio on her own was too much and began transforming it to a cooperative, called Villari’s Martial Arts Cooperative.

Like many businesses, the cooperative adapted during the pandemic. The studio closed for over a year, moving online. While locked down, she says, they really doubled down on self-defense offerings. “We became clearer about who we’ve always been, which is a studio that really focuses on self-defense.”

As the future took shape, the co-owners changed the studio’s name to Underground Self-Defense to reflect its new focus. The State Street location is literally underground, but the name touches on something deeper. “It speaks to the part of us that you might not see on the surface,” Treviño-Murphy says. Not everyone may see themselves as capable of practicing self-defense, but everyone has “the power to protect ourselves and others.”

Martial arts is a hobby, Teviño-Murphy says. Kickboxing is something people tend to see as fitness. But, self-defense is an essential life skill. “We realized we needed to put the self-defense foot forward,” she says. “That’s who we are, and what people will always need.”

Underground offers two types of class structures: short courses and weekly drop-in classes. Typically the self-defense classes are short, and the drop-in classes teach kickboxing or martial arts. There are options for holistic traditional martial arts, fitness, and self-defense. “We do a little bit of everything,” Treviño-Murphy says.

Several years ago, Underground started a pride self-defense course during June. Treviño-Murphy has always taught the course herself, in part because she loves to be surrounded by other queer people. She’s proud of the environment she and her team have fostered. “We understand how to respect and keep people physically and emotionally safe,” she said.

Over the years, queer and trans students have told Treviño-Murphy how much it means to them to see an instructor who is out and queer in a position of leadership. Martial arts is a “pretty male dominated” industry that falls into “traditional gender roles around masculinity,” she says. As a queer woman in martial arts, she believes it is “really important for people to be able to see possibilities for themselves.”

In the weeks after the election, Underground received an influx of emails inquiring about self-defense courses, many of them from groups who are specifically concerned about LGBTQ people. “I think private workshops create opportunities to craft a space that’s unique,” Treviño-Murphy says. “Being able to offer something private allows people to have the experience that they really want to have.”

“I think self defense has two functions. One is it helps you to be safer, but another one that is equally important is it helps you to feel safer. Especially right now, I think a lot of people in the LGBTQ community feel a lot of uncertainty about our future, and so self defense can be an activity that can just bring you back in tune with your sense of personal power.”

Treviño-Murphy explains a self-defense class can’t change who is in office, but it can give queer people the courage and confidence needed to meet all sorts of challenges in life.