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Michigan

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.

Workers On The Picket Line

November 26, 2024 Marie Kelly, Workers World. , , , ,
Union workers at CVS stores in California asserted their rights by holding a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike at seven CVS store locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The workers are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Not one CVS union member crossed the picket line, which represents 7,000 CVS workers in southern California. The strike came after UFCW filed ULP charges against CVS with the National Labor Relations Board, citing unlawful surveillance of workers, retaliation against union supporters and prohibiting workers from engaging in union activity.

Michigan Nurses Win The Largest Union Election In Years

November 22, 2024 Kari Thompson, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
It is the largest successful union election in recent memory: 10,000 nurses will be joining the Teamsters. They work for hospital conglomerate Corewell Health at eight hospitals and one outpatient facility, all in southeast Michigan. “We’re so excited we can hardly stand it,” said Katherine Wallace, a nurse at the hospital in Troy, who has been a core part of the campaign since October 2023. The union won the November election with 63 percent, with more than 85 percent voting. The union committee is Nurses for Nurses, part of Teamsters Joint Council 43.

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.

The June Jordan-Audre Lorde Dispute, Kamala Harris, And Palestine

August 14, 2024 Charisse Burden-Stelly, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , , , ,
At a rally in Detroit Michigan on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, Kamala Harris chided pro-Palestine protesters. As they chanted “Kamala, Kamala You can’t Hide! We Won’t Vote for Genocide!” the self-proclaimed “top cop” shot back, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” This open contempt displayed by the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party came exactly two weeks after she met with Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated the United States’ unwavering commitment to the right of the colonial entity (“Israel”) to exist, and by extension, to continue its war-intensified genocide of Palestinians.

Community Holds Public Hearing For Police Murder Of John Zook Jr.

August 4, 2024 Emma Boyhtari, Left Voice. , , , ,
On Wednesday, July 10 in Westland, MI, several organizations, along with family and community members, organized and attended a public hearing about a young Black man — John Zook Jr. — who was killed by police on June 18 after he called emergency services on himself in the midst of a mental health crisis. The event, organized and sponsored by several groups, including Survivors Speak, Black Coffee, Detroit Will Breathe, Washtenaw County General Defense Committee, and others, began with speeches by family members. Attendees heard from John’s sister, his brothers, and his father. John’s brothers were the first to arrive at the scene of the shooting.

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.

Power Plants To Parklands

June 1, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
There are currently more than 200 coal-fired power plants in operation in the United States, but the country has been scaling back since reaching its coal generation peak in 2011. By the end of 2026, the U.S. is projected to have retired half of its coal capacity. Coal plants emit toxic pollutants into the air, water and soil, leaving a legacy of contamination that must be cleaned up after their decommission. But what happens to coal plants after they shut down? Michigan’s Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) sees retiring coal plants — once viewed as industrial scars on the landscape — as “canvases for the creation of new greenways, parklands, wildlife habitat, and clean energy development,” a press release from ELPC said.

BLM Activists In Grand Rapids Face Repression And Need Solidarity

May 29, 2024 Emma Boyhtari and Tristan Taylor, Left Voice. , , , , ,
In April 2022, Patrick Lyoya was murdered by police officer Christopher Schurr. His murder garnered national attention — his funeral was attended by Al Sharpton, and Lyoya’s family was represented by Ben Crump. The movement in Grand Rapids mobilized, and held a 1,000 person demonstration demanding Schurr be fired and prosecuted. In response to the movement, Christopher Schurr was fired from the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) and charged with second-degree murder. However, two years have passed, and Schurr has still not gone to trial. Yet, in those two years several BLM activists have faced trumped up charges, including felony assault of a police officer.

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.”

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.

Vote Uncommitted Is Becoming A Powerful Force For A Ceasefire

March 8, 2024 Alessandra Bergamin, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , , ,
In late January, about three and a half weeks out from the election, a group of multiracial and multifaith organizers came together to form Listen to Michigan and launch the Vote Uncommitted campaign. Through phone banking and media outreach — and with the support of Michigan’s Arab and Muslim American communities — the campaign reached out to registered Democrats and asked them to vote “uncommitted” rather than support President Biden’s reelection. While the campaign was not an endorsement of Donald Trump, it was an opportunity for Democratic voters to express their disappointment
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