The Anti-Genocide Protestors at University of Michigan are In My Heart
The encampment is beautiful, full of equally beautiful people, and we should support them in any way we can.
I love protests, occupations, strikes, and marches. I wish we didn’t need them, but since we do, love them. And love the folks at them even more.
Here at the University of Michigan, I’ve spent a little bit of time with the amazing people – mostly undergrads and graduate students, but also some broader community members – who have set up an encampment in the middle of campus, demanding that the University divest from its investments in companies profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and their genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Of course, these are some really bright people, so they’ve been hard at work while camping out in the occupied space. They continue to crunch numbers and add to their already-impressive analysis, showing how approximately $6 billion of the University endowment is filtered to investments in genocide, spyware, and repression.
These brilliant folks have been working together constantly on new and creative ways to pressure the University administration to reverse its course and pull its funding from the companies responsible for arming Israel while it commits tens of thousands of individual war crimes in Palestine. Because the administration has flatly refused to talk about these demands, the protesters have invited the President and Regents to meet with representatives of the encampment to talk about divestment, posting 4 foot tall posters around campus, calling for a meeting.
And every time I’ve been to the encampment, it has been more beautiful than the time before. There are chairs circled up where small groups discuss strategy, food distribution, work load, and security. There are folks cleaning up the area. There are people managing supplies, greeting newcomers, and setting up a library. This last one hit my heart especially hard. It immediately reminded me of standing with my son strapped to my chest in front of the People’s Library in Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street. These are people who are fighting investment in genocide by investing in each other.
And there’s happy chatter everywhere – the giggling of folks who are camping together and trying to live with dignity in open sight of the rest of the campus. People smile and offer food. They want to hear why you’re there and then they immediately begin to craft new ways for you to feel included and to contribute in your own way.
Organizers constantly reflect on the things they’re learning during the process. I get the sense that that’s why they want to chat with so many people.
But most important of all, they’re keeping their eyes on the prize. The media focus on campus protests runs the risk of de-emphasizing the horrifying murder of Palestinians. While we also protest the mass arrest of mostly-peaceful demonstrators at Columbia and elsewhere, or the clear images of police violence used on middle-aged bystanders at Emory (if you haven’t seen this one yet, click the link and then tell me that cops are just dealing with violent protestors), we MUST keep the focus on the reasons these protests are happening. The violent repression of pro-Palestinian protestors is an effect of the infinitely more violent attempts to exterminate the entire population of Palestine.
The protesters at Michigan are keeping this focus admirably. Their outreach is all about the use of student and public funds to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the mass murder of Gazans.
They are teaching. They are learning. They are quite literally making the space better. In an especially cute but significant example, members of the encampment repaired a bit of broken brickwork that has been left by the University for months.
All of this great work makes me nervous though. Graduation is coming up. And the appetite to clear out protestors is only going to grow.
The best way to avoid this is by heading out to protest sites and spending time there. The more people in the space, the less likely it is that police will raid them, though, as we’ve seen across the country, this is not guarantee. This will be especially important in the coming days as there are fewer people on campus to serve as witnesses of any violence that happens.
We should all also be letting the administration know that we will not tolerate harassment of protestors on campus. The local chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine created this email template for people to use when contacting University officials.
Dear University Leaders,
I am reaching out to urgently request that the university refrain from taking any actions that would lead to the silencing, suspension, expulsion or arrest of students participating in the solidarity encampment on the Diag. Given the alarming developments at other universities across the country, I applaud our university leadership for responding to the encampment thus far in a manner in line with the university’s mission. In this critical moment the university has the chance to lead by example on the national stage by living up to our rich legacy–one that the university prides itself on–as a historic site of protests of all kinds.
The encampment is a peaceful protest in support of Palestinian freedom led by a group of multi-faith and multi-racial University of Michigan students. They have held a Passover seder, lead daily Islamic prayers, hosted teach-ins, art sessions, and movie screenings. They have established a small library to encourage study and are supporting each other in completing their course work for the end of the term. Many of the students in the encampment are Jewish. They are part of the diversity and richness of the Jewish community, but they are ignored by singular narratives that paint the community as a monolith. The encampment is supported by many on and off campus and I want to point out that families with young children have frequently been on site.
The incidents of brutality against students and faculty at campuses across the country this week have left us all deeply unsettled. We are seeing that law enforcement escalation only increases incidences of violence, taking oversight out of the hands of university leaders, and provokes more strident protest responses. I call on you not to repress our students and to foster a campus environment that values free expression while maintaining respect and safety for all members of our community.
Sincerely,
{name}
They even compiled this handy list of email addresses for sending the email!
umregents@umich.edu, jbacker@umich.edu, mjbehm@umich.edu, mjbern@umich.edu, pwb@umich.edu, regenthubbard@umich.edu, dilitch@umich.edu, kewhite@umich.edu, presoff@umich.edu, syaros@umich.edu, harmonma@umich.edu, rchunter@umich.edu, tstrickm@umich.edu, washine@umich.edu, provost@umich.edu, sbblair@umich.edu, ljpierce@umich.edu, tchavous@umich.edu, dawsonra@umich.edu, laurabj@umich.edu, robernst@umich.edu, mcopbob@umich.edu, cdjames@umich.edu, umlsadean@umich.edu, sacua@umich.edu, mrunge@med.umich.edu, davidjb@med.umich.edu, edjel@med.umich.edu, seetha@med.umich.edu
It would likely be a good idea to send similar emails to Governor Whitmer, since a large part of the police presence on campus is State Police.
There is no poetic or creative way to end a piece like this, and I don’t know that I care to. The situation in Gaza is dire and so are the threats we’re seeing at home as protestors are beaten and arrested.
But I will say that life has been full of a lot of fear and hopelessness lately. Trump, police brutality, climate change, pandemics, inflation, capitalism, genocide. They’re things that seem unbeatable or too big. But what I see in these folks working together against such enormous pressures is exactly why I know that those big problems are things that can be tackled. It just takes a lot of us, getting together, one-by-one, until things change.