For four days last week, University of Michigan students passing by North University Avenue and State Street would see a series of events called the “Popular University for Palestine Freedom School,” featuring music, speeches and artwork intended to educate and build a community in support of the pro-Palestine movement.
The events were hosted by the TAHRIR Coalition and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, two organizations calling for the University to divest its endowment from companies with ties to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Public Health senior Erek Mirque, who helped organize the series, said he felt inspired by those who attended the events and hoped Freedom School would help the community grow in both knowledge and numbers.
“I think we’re building something really beautiful and every person that just stops by, even for a second, is helping build that,” Mirque said.
Tuesday
Freedom School opened Tuesday afternoon with an introduction to the history of freedom schools, reading circle and film screening. One of the day’s events, a lesson on the concept of freedom schools, tied the week-long movement to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools, educational events hosted by groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that encouraged members of the Civil Rights Movement to fight for equality through written expression, music and learning about key figures in Black history.
In an announcement on Instagram, the TAHRIR Coalition wrote their week-long series drew inspiration from student-led movements and the subsequent freedom schools that took place in Michigan.
“The original freedom schools, spearheaded by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and staffed by thousands of university student volunteers, empowered Black youth across the state to articulate their own desires, demands, and questions in order to find new directions for transformative action,” the post read. “Since then, there have been various freedom schools across the country, and specifically in Detroit, to demand change from educational institutions that were failing their students.”
Wednesday
Wednesday visitors to the Freedom School participated in a drum circle while waiting for the arrival of a Michigan Divest representative. The organization, dedicated to calling for the state of Michigan to divest its portfolio of Israel bonds from public pensions, has criticized institutions such as the state’s Retirement System, Investment Board and Michigan Department of Treasury. Mirque told The Daily he hoped Michigan Divest’s participation would remind the local community that the pro-Palestine movement for divestment exists beyond the University and Ann Arbor.
“Hopefully — and this is something that we’ll get to build on together — we’ll all be able to see that it’s not just the University of Michigan that’s complicit. It’s not just one institution and it’s not just one group’s responsibility to fight for divestment,” Mirque said. “It’s a statewide effort, it’s a nationwide effort, it’s a global effort and each one of us has our own unique role to play.”
Seated next to a keffiyeh sale, LSA sophomore Amelia Isacksen participated at a station that allowed Freedom School attendees to make birthday cards for incarcerated members of the LGBTQ+ community. The cards were organized by the Black and Pink at the School of Public Health, an organization that provides support for members of the LGBTQ+ community impacted by the prison industrial complex.
Lex Eisenberg, a public health lecturer who supports Black and Pink, told The Daily they believe Black and Pink and the pro-Palestine movement at Freedom School were united in the fight for universal freedom.
“The experience of homophobia and transphobia (is exacerbated by) the structural violence of incarceration,” Eisenberg said. “Abolition is imagining something like the end of prisons and the freedom beyond that, which ties to (the) Palestinian Liberation Movement, which is also an intersectional solidarity movement that believes that when Palestine is free, everyone can be free. That’s an abolitionist principle in many ways. We have to fight for the most impressed people in order for us all to experience freedom.”
The night ended with a public performance of dabke, a traditional dance style in the Middle East’s Levantine region, in the North Quad Residence Hall’s courtyard. Thaer Lutfi AlKiswani, a member of Al Hub, a Chicago-based Palestinian art collective that led the performance, told The Daily the dance was a symbol of sumud, the Arabic word for steadfastness.“For us to achieve freedom, we must have steadfastness,” AlKiswani said. “Steadfastness, especially in this form, also rekindles and connects the collective and the peoples to the land that they are on, and as well as has them shake off the materials, the dunya, the things that are not real. When we stomp, when we dance together, we shake it off collectively.”
Thursday
On Thursday at 5:30 p.m., the Freedom School featured Engineers Against Apartheid, a pro-Palestine automotive engineer collective. Four speakers from EAA criticized engineering companies and military contractors such as Raytheon, Honeywell and Lockheed Martin for providing arms and technology to the Israeli military. The speakers claimed the companies’ expressed values of safety and defense did not align with the act of manufacturing weapons of war.
They also criticized academic institutions, including the University, for associating with and allegedly promoting military contractors through career fairs, information sessions and recruitment. Student attendees spoke up about their experiences with military contracting companies and recruiters at the University, claiming that these companies targeted engineering students and military recruiters targeted students who couldn’t afford tuition. EAA speakers also claimed universities were motivated by profit to associate with contracting companies and the military, citing the $85 million over 430 projects the former U.S. Department of Defense, also known as the Department of War, contributed to research at the University in 2024.
Friday
On Friday evening, the Freedom School held a group painting activity accompanied by an art exhibit, both led by AlKiswani. AlKiswani displayed several group paintings from the Al Hub archives, each originally painted in response to specific events in the ongoing conflict in Gaza, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the shooting of 14 Palestinian emergency workers.
Varun Tandon/DAILY. Buy this photo.
In an interview with The Daily, Mirque said the Freedom School had been kicked off of University grounds by the University’s Division of Public Safety and Security earlier in the day, a move he felt was biased against pro-Palestine speech.
“Police officers said that what we were doing posed a threat to the public,” Mirque said. “In fact, many of us were sat down. We were listening to a lecture and we were building a beautiful community environment. However, because that environment was explicitly pro-Palestinian, the University police officers decided they would threaten us if we did not move.”
Organizers relocated the Freedom School from University property to the adjacent sidewalk on North University Avenue where the events were able to continue.
During the group painting activity, attendees were divided into three groups, each to paint on one large canvas. Students shared brushes, paint and canvas space. Nearby, students drank complimentary chai and screen-printed shirts with pro-Palestine messages.
Varun Tandon/DAILY. Buy this photo.
In an interview with The Daily, AlKiswani said group artwork can be liberatory and build community.
“It’s symbolic of how we are all a piece of one puzzle,” Al Kiswani said. “Skill share, mutual aid, also ascension of thought and also talking it out. It breaks chains internally and within groups. It’s decolonizing heart and mind as we speak.”
Daily Staff Reporter Brady Middlebrook can be reached at pmbrady@umich.edu. Daily News Editor Marissa Corsi can be reached at macorsi@umich.edu.
The post Four days at the UMich pro-Palestine Freedom School appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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