Pro-Palestine organizers host introduction to week-long Freedom School

Editor’s note: Amatullah Hakim is a former Daily staffer. Hakim did not contribute to the reporting or editing of this article.

Tuesday afternoon marked the beginning of the “Popular University for Palestine Freedom School,” a four-day series of educational, social and artistic events hosted by the TAHRIR Coalition and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, two campus groups calling for the University to divest its endowment from companies tied to the Israeli government. The Freedom School will run through Friday, starting each afternoon at 1 p.m., and events will largely take place on the lawn at State Street and North University Avenue from early afternoon to late evening. 

The Freedom School’s introduction event, attended by about 30 individuals, was held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a reading circle, history lesson and film screening. Despite most of the lawn being fenced off for construction, TAHRIR set up the event on a small annex on North University Avenue. An hour before the event, students were already setting up blankets and folding chairs, tying large Palestinian flags to trees and hanging a banner that read “FREEDOM SCHOOL FOR PALESTINE.” 

As the event began, organizers offered food to attendees and sold keffiyehs, from which the profits would be donated to families in Gaza. Students handed flyers advertising the events to pedestrians while music played over a loudspeaker.  

Event speakers, Public Health senior Erek Mirque and Public Health junior Amatullah Hakim, took center stage at 2:30 p.m. Mirque welcomed the attendees and introduced the aim of the Freedom School to the crowd.

“We’re here to learn together, eat together and make art together,” Mirque said. “We’re here to build community, build relationships and acknowledge that our education is necessarily tied to liberation in Palestine.”

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Mirque expanded on the purpose of the Freedom School, which will include anti-colonial teach-ins and art workshops related to Palestine, with a focus on connections to the University. The week-long series of events is inspired by the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement. 

“This is an attempt to lay claim to our education, to our ability to reveal the connections to the liberation of Palestine that exist across the entire U.S., across the entire world,” Mirque said. “This is a space where we will purposefully recognize that our education and the liberation of Palestine is one, so we are inviting the audience, the organizers, the community members, the students and staff to come and help build this education with us.”

Hakim explained the history of SAFE and the TAHRIR Coalition and criticized the University administration for investing money in companies that fund Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Hakim also condemned the Office of Student Conflict Resolution for allegedly targeting student protesters and former University President Santa Ono for comments he made at an Anti-Defamation League conference earlier this year. 

In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Tarana Sharma spoke about the importance of education and community. 

“Our university invests in the massacres that we see every single day,” Sharma said. “The student body has a responsibility and a right to education that tells us the roots of our struggle … and (that is) grounded in the principles of liberation.”

Sharma also said she believed there are parallels between the University’s influence in Palestine and displacement of individuals in Michigan due to rising housing prices. 

“The University is complicit in displacement and occupation in Palestine, but also in our own backyards, in Detroit, Ypsilanti, Flint and Ann Arbor, where they drive up the housing prices and they push out the unhoused population,” Sharma said. “(The event’s purpose) is to really illustrate the relationships between all those things and how completely intertwined the University is with occupation, locally and globally.”

In an interview with The Daily, LSA freshman Stefan Minkov said he hopes the Freedom School will transform learning in and out of the classroom. 

“A clear benefit is educating yourself on the injustices that are occurring and how this university is not just connected but actively partakes in them,” Minkov said. “Learning what you as a student can do, what actions you can take, I think is your duty as a student. Ideally, pressure from these kinds of organizations would lead the administration to reconsider and hopefully divest.”

Mirque said of all the events planned this week, he is most excited for the SAFE at Night Art Exhibition event hosted by AL HUB, a Palestinian art collective. 

“There’s going to be an open art exhibit on Friday at 6 p.m., it’s the event right before the vigil, and we’re inviting a Palestinian art collective based in Chicago, they go by AL HUB,” Mirque said. “This will be a culmination of a lot of the work and community we’ve built throughout the rest of the week.”

Daily News Reporter Brady Middlebrook can be reached at pmbrady@umich.edu.

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