Early this month, in the days after Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said he’d be moving forward with a plan to require thousands of Detroit businesses to buy into a costly surveillance program intended to reduce crime, a sponsored post that looked favorably upon the program appeared at the top of our Facebook timeline. The linked…
This time last year, tens of thousands (or more) put their hearts, minds, and bodies into resisting the inauguration of an increasingly fascistic regime—itself embedded in the genocidal logic of the origins of this stolen land called the United States. The violence of the state cracked down hard on some 220 of those people, kettling…
Defend Affordable Ypsi today is releasing its second zine, Perspectives on International Village, in which roughly fifteen people weigh in on gentrification in Ypsilanti, the International Village development proposal for Water Street, and local bureaucratic ineptitude/non-transparency. It’s a passionate and factful document, as well as a much-needed reminder that history is writ from the ground…
Maggots, rotten food, unsanitary kitchens, staff shortages, calorie shortages, sick inmates, angry inmates, drug-dealing kitchen employees, employees having sex with inmates, quarantines—these are the issues that documents show and inmates say are taking place in Michigan’s prison kitchens in 2018, which sounds just like what we heard about them in 2015. That and other issues…
Quicken Loans owner Dan Gilbert—who is Michigan’s richest man and worth an estimated $6.2 billion—is requesting $618 million of state taxpayer money to help fund four downtown Detroit projects that he’s developing. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation will likely consider his request in March. As part of the PR push to gain support for the…
To all who carry the weight of this world on their shoulders as a constant companion. To all who can’t not see hierarchy and domination everywhere in this social order. To all who are told that they are worthless, disposable, less than human, displaceable, invisible, object for torture or murder, ungrievable. To all who are…
[Editor’s note: sixteen-year-old Palestinian rebel Ahed Tamimi was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers this week. What follows is Justin King’s 2015 account of meeting her.] The first time I saw Ahed Tamimi she was unarmed and screaming at an Israeli soldier on a dirty road. At one point, the soldier threw a concussion grenade. While many around…
Currently, 2017 is on track to becoming just as deadly a year in terms of the police killing of American citizens as 2016, and the numbers aren’t pretty. According to the police monitoring website, Killed by Police, as of December 19th, 2017, 1,142 people have been killed by American law enforcement since January 1st, 2017. This is compared to…
Ed Lee gave huge tax breaks to tech companies willing to settle in SF, let tech buses ruin the city, over 8,000 people have been evicted in the city since 2012—had the highest eviction rate year being 2017, after the murder of Mario Woods he rallied in support of both the police chief and SFPD.…
Earlier this year, the Michigan Legislature approved $1 billion in state tax money for Dan Gilbert and other wealthy developers. The arrangement allows the rich and corporations to collect state residents’ income tax instead of the government. On Nov. 21, the Detroit City Council approved $250 million in local tax money for Gilbert to use on four…
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