To mark one year of genocide against the Palestinian people, an autonomous group visited the homes of two University of Michigan leaders, President Santa Ono and Chief Investment Officer Erik Lundberg. They also decorated the offices of the Jewish Federation of Detroit and the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator, organizations that are deeply entrenched in the apartheid state. From businesses to universities, we reject all financial support for the Israeli regime.
https://publicaffairs.vpcomm.umich.edu/key-issues/incidents-at-regents-residences/
University of Michigan action at regant’s home in Lansing
The following are links to the safeumich posfs about the action
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6_LOZFrZgV/?igsh=MWlkcXJhMnAzMHR2bw==
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6_7bNngZez/?igsh=ZXljc3NtNzQxNGFt
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
The TAHRIR Coalition has launched a Palestine-solidarity encampment on the Diag on the UM campus in Ann Arbor! Police repression is expected, and we are our defense. Join us on the Diag today! Art supplies, noisemakers, and warming supplies are needed. Come picket with the campers, protect the encampment, and help force the university to divest its over $6 billion from Israel, genocide, and war!
LONG LIVE PALESTINE
JOIN US IN THE STRUGGLE
Follow our Telegram: https://t.me/s/TAHRIREncampment
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
Word was spreading about a pro-zionist rally planned for the University of Michigan campus for November 3rd, and a crew of about 20 anti-zionist Jews and supporters decided to counter the shit-show.
The diag on UM campus is a popular spot for rallies and protests, but this was the most well-resourced event I’ve ever seen there, and with the largest police presence. Uniformed officers were spread throughout the crowd, and there were many plainclothes cops as well. The speakers not only had a large professional sound system, but two big-screen displays that I’d never seen used at a diag event before. There was a crowd of about 300-500 rallygoers, many with Israeli flags. It also seemed that a large number of attendees were older, probably due to the rally being planned for parent’s weekend when parents of students visit town to spend money at the M Den.
The rally’s speakers showed how close to power the rally was. We suffered overly-long speeches from right-wing former UM regent and Trump fundraiser Ron Weiser, as well as AIPAC president Betsy Berns Korn, and a separate speaker whose name I didn’t catch, but was introduced as affiliated with the “FIDF”.
The genocide denial and nationalism was coming from the halls of power. There were standard IDF talking points and conspiracy theories about Hamas command centers in hospitals and fake photos of palestinian victims. No tears were spared for the dead and captured from October 7th, and none were shed for the victims of IDF retaliation in Gaza, let alone victims of settler violence in the occupied West Bank. It seemed that the most compassionate the speakers or rally-goers got was to shrug their shoulders at how unfortunate it was that they had to retaliate by killing Palestinian children by the hundreds, as if their hands were forced. NOT killing these children however was unthinkable.
Speakers claimed to defend “Free Speech” while calling for the banning of all criticism of Israel, on campus and beyond. The existence of voices speaking against the genocide of Palestinians were blamed essentially on “the woke mob”. Intersectionality was specifically called out as dangerous for the Israeli state. Accurate descriptions of life in Gaza under occupation were claimed to be conspiracy theories. The standard lie that anti-zionism and criticism of Israel is anti-semitic was a regular feature. The crowd seemed to follow the speakers the entire way, letting out loud cheers to a speaker’s call for everyone to be “proud zionists”, and following in other pro-Israel chants. It felt almost like an Israeli MAGA rally.
Thankfully we were there to make sure this shit couldn’t be spewed in public without opposition. We held cardboard signs with simple messages like “Never Again for Anyone” or “Genocide is not a Jewish Value”. Zionists tried to cover us with Israeli flags, get close-up photos of us, heckled us calling us “nazis” and even saying one of us should be beheaded. More than once we had to physically block an angry rallygoer from approaching one of our group. Police would also intervene if it looked like a confrontation was going to become physical and not just verbal. This was almost entirely coming from the older people in the crowd, not the younger student-aged attendees who seemed to at least consider the signs as if they were totally unaware of anti-zionist Jews. It was one of the rare times I felt like physical violence was a possibility at a Diag event, but the rallygoers didn’t end up trying anything foolish. Some did try lecturing us about how Israel wasn’t apartheid, or how things “really were over there”, but quickly left when one of us who spoke Hebrew challenged them.
As the rally died down, we left as a group chanting “Free Palestine”! No physical altercations happened, and nobody was arrested or detained by police. Overall I’d call it a success. The point of the zionist rally was to conflate pro-palestinian and anti-genocide organizing with anti-semitism, which as anti-zionist Jews we visibly disrupted. Zionists were also clearly uncomfortable that there was even some resistance they had to confront.
Some lessons learned and other thoughts:
Shutting down zionist rhetoric in mainstream spaces is important right now, as well as interfering in the material support for the state of Israel. This may take some nuance since in the wider world there are actual anti-semitic actors trying to take advantage of the situation, as covered in It’s Going Down. But, you can still act. Find each other! Do something!
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
Thanks to various antifascists, “Alan MI” — the leader of the Michigan cell of the fascist organization Patriot Front — has been exposed as Jackson Rex, an undergraduate student at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor. The full article and a printable flyer can be found here: https://lonegunmenafa.noblogs.org/post/2023/04/22/university-of-michigan-student-unmasked-as-regional-patriot-front-leader/
Jackson is graduating this year so we made sure that his last week would be extra memorable for him by flyering all over campus and Ann Arbor, especially areas that other Ross students and parents visiting for graduation would see. His involvement in a fascist organization and his racist vandalism of the Ypsilanti BLM mural deserve to be known by his classmates, friends, and family.
The University of Michigan put a lot of effort into removing the flyers we put up (probably more effort than responding to concerns about their nazi student), but they kept going up. Fuck U of M and anyone else who shields fascists.
No safe spaces for nazis.
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info, received mid-April, 2023.
last friday [April 14th], five fire alarms were pulled at university of michigan buildings simultaneously. the buildings were those with the most students in class, and the action was done in solidarity with the striking graduate students. trans people are being attacked from all sides and it is time that someone raised the alarm. love to every graduate student putting their job on the line for a better world, every u of m member who does not cross a picket line to side with the abusers, and to every queer and trans person who refuses to assimilate. rage at human resources, at scabs, and biggots.
xoxo
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
On Wednesday February 9, 2023, the University of Michigan welcomed a variety of military and government recruiters into its Career Fair in Ann Arbor. The U.S. Navy, the National Security Agency, and other militaristic organizations, were provided stands to promote US imperialism and occupation– and to recruit many young students to their ranks.
In protest, a series of disruptions against these recruiters took place throughout the day. Multiple people pushed passed the registration desk carrying banners that said “Stop Camp Grayling” and chanting “No prisons, no borders, fuck your law and order”, emphasizing the Army’s plan to expand an already massive and environmentally-damaging National Guard training facility in Grayling, Michigan. The actions converged in a rally outside of the career fair, where protesters chanted “Stop Cop City” and “Fascist, racist all the way, US army, go away!” and passed out flyers to incoming students to warn them against working for the US war machine.
Another group sprayed red food coloring on the NSA and U.S. Navy displays, and were then detained for several hours while the U of M police refused to give information about their whereabouts or status to concerned friends and supporters. They were eventually released, but this just demonstrates how the University of Michigan continues to support the military industrial complex by unlawfully holding detainees for extended time and refusing to provide information on them to outsiders.
We will not stand by while the University of Michigan continues to support and help recruit people into the US military-industrial complex. We will not stand by while the state expands its capacity to brutally repress our communities by expanding Camp Grayling in Michigan and building Cop City in Atlanta.
2, 4, 6, 8, FUCK THE POLICE STATE
