jasmine @jasminee@scholar.social

Decolonization is an ongoing struggle

Who's that in your AVI, Jasmine?

That's a screenshot from the film Irma Vep (1996, Olivier Assayas) with Maggie Cheung.

Besides being a fantastic and dizzying/disorienting film, I have a soft spot for it bc I first watched it in a class with Prof. Yiman Wang, who would advise my undergraduate thesis! Here's the essay that she wrote on Maggie Cheung and the film Irma Vep: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/492536

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/24/21453935/zoom-facebook-youtube-cancel-talk-leila-khaled-san-francisco-state-university

its fascinating that the university contracts with Zoom prioritize FERPA but don't allow any autonomy for individual institutions to host speaking events

like

FASCINATING

"Zoom, the web-based videoconferencing platform, announced Tuesday evening that it was prohibiting SFSU from using its software to host a planned webinar on Wednesday with Leila Khaled, the Palestinian resistance icon who is now in her seventies and lives in Jordan."

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/youtube-zoom-and-facebook-censor-leila-khaled-israel

I don't think that making jokes about how fascists willfully misunderstand the substance and inquiry of Critical Race Studies is good, actually

Whether or not they understand CRT is beside the point, what's important is that it enables young dickheads like the ones in Turn*ng Point USA to surveil and harass any scholar that talks about race in a meaningful way (which many of them had already been doing to scholars who say anything about Palestine and/or trans studies)

Joy Lisi Rankin, A People’s History of Computing in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).

The strike is over. We folded under threat of the injunction and a possible civil suit, even though we made next to no progress on our demands.

Fear of repression outweighed any meaningful progress that was made. How humiliating.

Pres. Schlissel keeps on dismissing the anti-policing demands of the strike, this time saying there's no "community input'

Here's a letter, supported by prominent abolitionist organizations and collectives in Washtenaw County, explaining how defunding campus cops actually benefits the entire city of Ann Arbor

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-geos-abolitionist-strike-and-safety-for-all

https://www.michigandaily.com/section/columns/op-ed-policing-public-health-issue

"Institutions of higher education can reduce the harmful effects of policing by critically examining existing contracts with local police departments, actively pursuing alternatives and modeling the type of transformative change that is required through the management and funding of their own campus safety programs."

The Michigan Daily has been an incredible source for op-eds and for news on the strike (don't bother with M-live)

We're still out here

I;m sorry to link to Twitter, but there has been a COVID outbreak in the school of dance because of the lack of protocols, testing, and infrastructure to prevent it:

https://twitter.com/geo3550/status/1305879298142875648

Oh, the president of the university is pursuing legal action against the union

way to NOT convince us that you're all about $$$ sir!

Op-Ed: GEO strike gains momentum despite smears from ‘U’ administration

bit.ly/3hsECzi

"Overwhelmingly, the University’s response has mischaracterized GEO’s decision to strike, our demands and prior steps GEO had taken to avoid the strike. The rhetoric used in both internal and external coverage of the protests, rallies and work stoppage has sought to paint the University administrators as victims who have been working tirelessly with unreasonable graduate students."

We voted to extend the strike https://www.geo3550.org/2020/09/13/strike-extension/

So here we are! Still going. Overwhelmed, a little bit. Buoyed by the shows of solidarity from people outside of UM's campus. Heartened by how people are being so quickly radicalized. Shocked that such a strike is being pulled off through the frantic work making up for a lack of years of coalition building.

University of Michigan Graduate Workers Are on Strike

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/university-michigan-graduate-workers-strike

"GEO is insisting that 'safety' and 'security' aren’t two separate subjects. Take, for example, the university’s police force’s name: the Division of Public Safety and Security. GEO is insisting that such security forces do not make us safe. And the COVID demands speak to a different vision of safety, where the health of the community is not subordinated to the university’s bottom line."

Faculty at the University of Michigan have been circulating and signing this letter this morning:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yt-YuQ2keYhrWU6kAn2D3anAfG40U0dwmIeI_MxTKFg/preview?pru=AAABdKFxtdU*2KssxKmFTZrB0bkzCIHm_A

Over 200 signatures and counting! Faculty solidarity means so much!

Why we must support GEO: The historical power of strikes at the University
by Brittany Bowman

https://www.michigandaily.com/section/opinion/why-we-must-support-geo-historical-power-strikes-university

From the initial GEO strike in 1975 to the Black Action Movement to the current GEO strike of 2020, here's a great summary of why strikes work at the University of Michigan