It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains. —Assata Shakur Today I say, let’s lose these chains of having been victimized by the system. Let’s lose the chains of oppression. Let’s lose these…

Saturday, March 2 6–9 PM Riverside Arts Center 76 N Huron St., Ypsilanti Come celebrate the Winter 2019 issue of The Opening Statement with MAPS and friends! Featuring a screening of The Prison in Twelve Landscapes by Brett Story. The Opening Statement is a quarterly newsletter written for and primarily by incarcerated folks in the Michigan…

Monday, Feb. 25, 4:00 p.m. 1014 Tisch Hall University of Michigan In her new book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and…

In the aftermath of Larry Nassar, Michigan has pushed over 30 bills through the House and Senate ostensibly under the familiar rhetoric of safety. Some of the bills—expanding sexual education and requiring schools to keep records about why employees leave—make sense in treating our sex crime problem holistically. Most of the bills, however, focus on…

Vinyl mixes like these, produced by the hearts and labor of tender comrades, are gifts that never stop being received. Check out what La Garza and Ordinary Joe have made for you:  

Saturday, January 19, 7 pm Riverside Arts Center 76 N. Huron Street, Ypsi A Community Conversation, facilitated by Solidarity & Defense, Huron Valley Before 2018 came to a close, a bunch of us gathered to discuss care networks that we imagine beyond policing. Our conversation touched on police funding, power mapping, recognizing our limits and…

December 15, 7 pm Riverside Arts Center 76 N. Huron Street, Ypsi A Community Conversation, facilitated by Solidarity & Defense, Huron Valley How could we address harm without police? How are we already resolving conflict without police? What tangible examples can you share from your own life? This evening will kick off with a brief slideshow as inspiration…

[editor’s note: this communiqué was submitted anonymously] On the snowy morning of Friday, November 9th, a banner was hung on a pedestrian overpass over I-94 in Ann Arbor to greet workers as they commuted into the city. Reading “Remember Aura Rosser, Murdered by A2 Cops,” the banner both calls on the passer-by to remember Aura,…

The Black Panther Party was the most significant radical organization in American history, and you’d be wrong if you thought that in order to achieve that prominence their graphic identity needed to follow convention. Not only did the Panthers create propaganda and visual materials that broke with the anaseptic conventions of mid-20th-century design and culture,…

For those of us looking for ways to stand up and care for black comrades in our community, here’s a timely one: help Nya Njee get the pay she’s owed by Mighty Good Coffee Company of Ann Arbor. Here is a bit about Nya’s plight, in her own words:   The following is a statement…