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Detroit

Detroit Protest At ICE Slams Deportations

March 31, 2025 Cole Hamilton, Fight Back! News. , , , ,
Detroit, MI – 50 protesters gathered at the Detroit ICE headquarters, March 29, in response to Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants and to demand Detroit be declared a sanctuary city. Over the past weeks, several families in the city, including victims of the flooding in the Southwest neighborhood, have been turned over to ICE by the Detroit Police Department. Opening the rally, Kassandra Rodriguez of Detroit Comité de Acción Comunitaria spoke on the need to end all deportations, saying, “As a second generation Latina, this fight hits very close to home. I have seen the direct harm ICE causes to our community.

In Detroit, Broad ‘People’s Assembly’ Forms To Guide Movement Against ICE

February 9, 2025 Brian H. Silverstein and Tristan Taylor, Left Voice. , , ,
As the Trump administration ramps up its assault on the immigrant community, people across the country are asking how they can keep their neighbors safe and how to defend against ICE raids. Teachers, nurses, and neighborhoods are forming committees to discuss how to respond when ICE shows up at their door. Students are sharing Know Your Rights flyers and attending anti-ICE rallies. In Chicago, when teachers thought ICE was trying to get in, they denied them access. Likewise, the Chicago Teachers Union has been forming “sanctuary teams” and has called for a “walk-in” to protect their students.

Detroit’s Eastside Gets Affordable Electric Vehicle Carshare

December 4, 2024 Ethan Bakuli, Next City. , , , ,
As Loretta Powell settled into the driver seat of the Chevy Volt, she gave herself a few seconds to get acclimated to the vehicle’s settings before pressing the blue power button located behind the steering wheel. It was the second time the Detroit educator was behind the wheel of an electric car. The first time she drove the Volt, she recalled, was “nice and smooth.” “You couldn’t tell you were driving; it was very quiet and peaceful,” said Powell, as she backed out of the parking lot at community development organization Eastside Community Network‘s Stoudamire Wellness Hub. Like most electric vehicles, it emits an angelic hum as it reverses.

You’re Already On Strike; How to Turn Up the Heat

November 28, 2024 Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities. Workers have handbilled gas stations, as well as sometimes following Marathon trucks and picketing them when they make deliveries. They’ve gotten support from the Detroit City Council and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, as well as other unions like the UAW who have joined their picket lines.

Agricultural Design Studio Working To Build A Food-Sovereign Detroit

November 14, 2024 Samya Overall, Next City. , , , ,
Driving down Monterey Street on Detroit’s westside, there are more abandoned and vacant houses than occupied ones. Sidewalks are overgrown with grass, and stretches of land as long as football fields separate the homes that remain. About midway down the block, between Wildemere and Lawton streets, is Fennigan’s Farms. You can’t miss it from the tall towers of bright yellow sunflowers waving in the wind. As you walk up, there’s a table with tomatoes and a sign that reads “Free Produce.” Amanda Brezzell is the co-founder and creative director at Fennigan’s Farms. Brezzell says the farm and design firm’s mission is to be a resource to the community, helping Detroiters achieve food sovereignty by providing fresh, accessible food, some at no cost.

Raising Chickens, Ducks, And Bees Allowed In Detroit

November 13, 2024 Steve Neavling, Detroit Metro Times. , , , ,
Detroiters will soon be able to keep chickens, ducks, and honeybees in their backyards under a new ordinance passed by the Detroit City Council on Tuesday. The council voted 5-3 in favor of the measure, which goes into effect in January 2025, marking a shift in urban agriculture regulations and allowing residents to raise certain animals for fresh food production, including eggs and honey, within city limits. Advocates see the new ordinance as a way to combat food insecurity and improve access to healthy, local food. Urban agriculture can also raise property values and encourage homeownership in surrounding areas, they say.

Marathon Oil Teamsters Strike

September 22, 2024 Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
For the first time in 30 years, Teamsters at the Marathon oil refinery in Detroit are on strike. Close to 300 workers walked out September 4. Welders, firefighters, and heavy equipment operators in the union are demanding a raise that keeps up with cost of living, along with better hours. Above all, refinery Teamsters are trying to win a guarantee against outsourcing and to strengthen their union for the future. Although Michigan repealed its "right-to-work" law in 2022, Marathon managers are refusing a clause that requires every worker covered by the contract to pay their share, and they have aggressively expanded subcontracting with non-union labor.

Detroit Marathon Refinery Workers Strike For Better Pay

September 8, 2024 Brian H. Silverstein, Left Voice. , , ,
On September 4, following a 95 percent strike authorization vote, Teamsters Local 283 in Detroit, representing over 250 Marathon refinery workers, walked off the job. The Teamsters have been in negotiations with plant management since November 2023 and workers have been on the job without a contract since January 1, 2024. After the company halted negotiations, workers at the refinery went on strike for the first time in 30 years. Their main demands include cost of living raises that recoup the spending power lost to inflation since the COVID pandemic began, better healthcare, a requirement that all refinery employees be union members, and an end to the use of non-union subcontractors.

The Delta Disparity: Flight Attendants Rally For Equal Pay

August 7, 2024 Fight Back! News. , , ,
Detroit, MI - On Monday, August 5, Endeavor flight attendants represented by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) held an awareness picket at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) to highlight the significant pay disparities between flight attendants working for Endeavor, Delta’s wholly-owned regional subsidiary, and those working for mainline Delta Air Lines. Led by Oscar Ochomogo, president of Endeavor AFA, Council 46 DTW, the flight attendants sought to draw attention to the need to end Delta’s two-tier pay system, referred to by workers as the “Delta disparity difference.” On average, Endeavor flight attendants make 45% less than their counterparts at mainline Delta Air Lines.

Detroit Wayne State U Faculty/Staff For Justice In Palestine Formed

June 26, 2024 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
On June 4, hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and community members rallied on the campus of Wayne State University located in the Midtown District of Detroit. The purpose of the gathering was to send a clear message to the recently appointed President Kimberly Andrews Espy who ordered a Palestine solidarity encampment raided and destroyed by campus police on May 30. Metropolitan Detroit embodies the largest population of people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent in the United States. Consequently, many people within this community have direct familial and linguistic ties to the people most impacted by the settler-colonial regime occupying Palestine.

Detroit’s Wayne State University Encampment Shut Down By Police

June 13, 2024 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , , ,
After seven full days of an encampment at the center of Wayne State University in Detroit, campus police raided and removed the encampment which has demanded the complete divestment from corporations which have interests in the State of Israel. The encampment began with a demonstration on Thursday May 23 starting on Woodward Avenue and West Warren, which is the location of the WSU Welcome Center. Hundreds of students, faculty and community members then marched to the campus where the encampment was constructed right across from the Undergraduate Library (UGL).

Lessons From The Wayne State University Encampment

June 4, 2024 Tristan Taylor and Brian H. Silverstein, Left Voice. , , , , , , ,
Amid the latest military offensive in Rafah, the movement in solidarity with Palestine has remained active. Students across the country have been at the vanguard, setting up encampments and demanding that their universities divest from the Israeli war machine. The response from university administrations has been repression so intense that it has sparked broad outrage and condemnation because of its chilling effect on the right to protest and dissent. The intense crackdowns have led sectors of the movement to take up the issue of repression as a central part of the fight for Palestine.

Unity Through Resistance: 3,000 Pro-Palestine Activists Converge In Detroit

May 25, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
With 3,000 people and hundreds of pro-Palestine organizations converging in a metropolitan area with the largest concentration of Arab Americans, amidst the largest movement for Palestine in US history, the People’s Conference for Palestine feels nothing short of historic. “Eternal glory to our martyrs, speedy recovery to our wounded, and freedom for our steadfast prisoners,” Mohammed Nabulsi, leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement in Houston, Texas, opened the conference with these explicitly revolutionary invocations on the first day on Friday, May 24. “In the last eight months, we, the Palestinian people, have demonstrated to the entire world, that the only way we can author our own history, and transform our present reality, is the path of unity through resistance.”

Activists Arrested At Protest Of Biden In Detroit

May 21, 2024 Left Voice. , , ,
Detroit police arrested protesters, including members of Left Voice and Detroit Will Breathe (DWB,) at a demonstration outside of “Genocide” Joe Biden’s speech at the NAACP dinner. The protest was organized by several different Detroit based activist organizations and stood in solidarity with the people of Gaza against Biden’s continued support for the genocide. 

Detroit: $1,700 Duplex Is Now One Of The City’s Most Energy-Efficient Homes

May 12, 2024 Tom Perkins, Next City. , , , ,
In 2016, the home Kendal Kuneman’s grandmother grew up in sat abandoned in Detroit like so many others. Its doors and windows were gone, the roof was failing, part of a stairwell was missing, and scrappers had stripped the home of its metal. But the family connection drove Kuneman to buy the duplex for $1,700 from the Detroit Land Bank with the notion of transforming it into a green home. Seven years later, the Faust Street house is something else entirely: It is among the most energy-efficient homes in Detroit, fully electrified, and on the path to becoming net zero.
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