Month: April 2025

Please, one quick action on behalf of students

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

I’ve been focused on stuff related to our recent move and haven’t been active here, but need to share information I received today. Spoiler alert: it’s rage-inducing. My ask? Use the template to personalize a letter that will be sent to 40+ university presidents and chancellors. Thank you in advance for taking two minutes to speak out on behalf of the courageous students who refuse to remain quiet about a genocide funded with their tuition and tax dollars. Solidarity!

Image from Truthout article linked below: Police and FBI agents raid a resident of University of Michigan pro-Palestine protesters in a video posted on April 23, 2025.
safexmich via Instagram

The following is from MPOWER Change:

Yesterday, police and the FBI raided the homes of students in Michigan who’ve engaged in Palestine solidarity, confiscating laptops and phones without making arrests. The Attorney General’s office claims the raids are part of a “vandalism investigation.”1

But even the press is questioning why the FBI would be involved in a vandalism investigation.

At a time when university leaders are finally standing up to Trump’s attacks on academic freedom, with Harvard’s public rejection of Trump’s orders and more than 200 educational leaders condemning “political interference” and “overreach,” many universities are still cooperating with Trump’s tyranny against students, including police raids and abductions.2

Tell the University of Michigan and other schools to protect students and academic freedom.

Despite the violent crackdowns, academic expulsions, and student abductions across the country, the encampment movement is strong and growing.

Students refuse to be silenced, and we must do everything we can to support and protect them.

Even if you have sent letters to university administrators before, please send more.

Trump fears students because they are demanding divestment from genocide and apartheid, and they are WINNING.

Yale students just relaunched their encampment after being forcibly cleared by police earlier this week, coming back even stronger. And their demands are being heard. At Northwestern, students just secured a historic agreement: the university will disclose its investments, establish a committee on divestment, and provide full funding for Middle Eastern and North African student groups.3

Take Action: Tell university administrators and presidents to protect students, not punish them.

From Columbia to UCLA, from Yale to Emory — this is a generation’s most significant wave of student protests. And the students are not alone: faculty are walking out, alumni are divesting, and communities are taking action to support them.

We must do our part as well.

Please take action now: Demand that more university administrators protect their students and reject Trump’s attack on academic freedom and student protesters.

Thank you for everything you do.

In solidarity,

Granate, Zara, Aydin, and the team at MPower Change

P.S. Want to support our work towards justice for all people, and against white supremacy and Islamophobia? Sign up for a recurring MPower Change gift now. 

Sources:

  1. “Activists say southeast Michigan police raids are targeting pro-Palestinian protesters,” Detroit Free Press, April 23, 2025. 
  2. “More Than 220 Academic Leaders Condemn Trump’s ‘Overreach’,” The New York Times, April 22, 2025.
  3. “The Daily Explains: As NU activists accept deal to deescalate encampment, demonstrators at other universities are seeing mixed results,” The Daily Northwestern, May 1, 2024

Learn more from Truthout: FBI and Police Raid Homes of Pro-Palestine Student Activists in Michigan

Call to Action: April 19th

/ Tracy Abell / 13 Comments

Hello, friends. I just had a change of heart regarding tomorrow’s Day of Action and want to share some thoughts. Zippy and I attended our local Hands Off! action on April 5th but because there was no clear “call to action” or visible (to me) organizing happening around it, I told Zippy I didn’t feel compelled to join future protests.

 

I’ve changed my mind and have journalist Laura Jedeed to thank because when I popped into Bluesky, this was at the top of my feed:

I felt called-out. I also knew in my gut that Laura was correct. And that feeling was cemented after reading her entire thread which also points out that optics do matter and how it’s imperative crowd sizes are even larger tomorrow than on the 5th in order to present a visual refutation of Trump’s so-called mandate.  (Go here to read a more fleshed-out version of Laura’s points via her newsletter.) Also? There was nothing stopping me on April 5th from doing some organizing of my own and it’s totally on me that I didn’t come prepared. Tomorrow, I will be prepared!

I’ll have the #TeslaTakedown flyers I didn’t think to bring on April 5th. (By the way, this campaign is having a huge impact and creating real pain for Nazi DOGE-bro Elon Musk: Tesla dealerships are no longer accepting Cybertruck trade-ins)

I’ll have Know Your Rights  With ICE flyers. From the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) site: These flyers explain what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) comes to your door or you have an encounter with immigration officials, what to do if you witness immigration activity by ICE or CBP, and examples of judicial warrants and ICE warrants.

I’m also trying to figure out how to also insert a QR code to the pdf flyer that links to an upcoming online KNOW YOUR RIGHTS / RAPID RESPONSE TRAINING led by WAISN. Doing so is a challenge for this low-tech person, so please share if you have ideas!

Anyway, I hope you’ll consider joining an action near you tomorrow, Saturday April 19th. I’ll be there and promise there will be no eye rolling!

Solidarity! ✊🏾

Thankful Thursday: holding onto my JOY

/ Tracy Abell / 24 Comments

These are incredibly hard days on the planet and today I want to give a shout-out to the JOY in my heart, something the fascists will never, ever take from me. They want us cowering in fear and apathy, quietly sinking into dark and joyless pits of despair, but it’s vital to stay connected to all the good stuff in this world. Here’s a list of some things bringing me joy today:

  • Running for the first time in months (not to mention at sea level!) and even though my joints were creaky and my pace pretty darned slow, it made me SO freaking happy. Joyous, even!
  • Singer/songwriter Valerie June‘s new release aptly titled “Joy, Joy!” which is catchy and uplifting (check it out here).
  • Watching the rain fall as the sun shines.
  • Putting on jeans still warm from the dryer.
  • Leaving on my walk to the library after posting this, knowing I’ll get answers to my questions because librarians rule! They take care of patrons and books alike!

I’d love to hear about what’s bringing you joy these days so please share in the comments!

Gaza is a “killing field”

/ Tracy Abell / 11 Comments

Gaza is a ‘killing field’, says UN chief, as agencies urge world to act on Israel’s blockade by Megan Fisher (BBC News). Since Israel broke the fragile ceasefire on March 18, they have murdered 1,449 Palestinians. Food and medical supplies are blocked.

There’s a very good chance you haven’t given much thought to what’s happening to Palestinians, seeing as we’re under another kind of assault in the United States. It’s no coincidence that as the fascists openly and willfully destabilize this country, there’s less focus on Gaza and the U.S.-sponsored genocide of Palestinians. That’s intentional. They’re overwhelming us with their shock-and-awe destruction, throwing so much horribleness in our faces at once that we lose sight of what’s still happening on the other side of the world:

Genocide.
Ethnic cleansing.
Intentional starvation.
Journalists and medical personnel targeted for murder.
Children shot and bombed and slaughtered at a rate never seen before.

And the media isn’t helping matters. Journalist Adam Johnson documented how mass death and destruction has been normalized.

Know who else isn’t helping matters? The Democrats. Last week only 15 Senators voted to block more arms to Israel. This is NOT what democracy looks like. The majority of people in the U.S. do NOT want to spend billions of dollars to arm an apartheid state so they can commit genocide. Many of us called and sent emails only to have our voices ignored again.

I’m exhausted. We’re all exhausted. But we can’t stop talking about Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

Signage of the times

/ Tracy Abell / 7 Comments

Here are images from my community’s HANDS OFF! protest yesterday. Apologies for the poor quality as many were photographed from across the street plus I cropped them to remove all identifying features as I do NOT want to further fuel the surveillance state. It was a beautiful day and people were simultaneously upbeat and pissed. There were 1200 of us there, the majority in their 60s and 70s, which is why when the first speaker was introduced, I anticipated the white-haired woman would speak about the assault on Social Security. She did not. I missed much of what she said because I was across the street, straining to separate her words from the sounds of traffic, solidarity honking, and nearby conversations, but I did hear PALESTINE. I also heard GENOCIDE and STUDENT PROTESTERS. While I would’ve welcomed a story about how Trump and Musk’s greed and cruelty are affecting senior citizens, I was so very glad this speaker centered the U.S.-sponsored genocide and the ensuing attack on the brave students leading the moral fight. When I got home and uploaded my photos, I noticed someone behind the speaker with a sign: PROJECT ESTHER IS THE NEW RED SCARE.

These photos are presented in the order in which I photographed them and it feels like the story comes full circle, beginning with a reference to three immigrants recently abducted by ICE and currently incarcerated in Louisiana, and ending with NO TO FASCISM. NO TO FEAR. RESIST.

If you were able to attend a protest near you (and I fully understand it’s much more risky for some than others), please share in the comments.

Solidarity with the millions in the streets yesterday, April 5, 2025!

The abduction of Rümeysa Öztürk

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

Rümeysa Öztürk is the Tufts University grad student abducted off the street in Somerville, MA, on March 25 by Homeland Security. If you can stomach watching the confusion and terror of this young woman as masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel grab her, video is here.

h/t to Ryan Pancoast on Bluesky

The terror didn’t end there. Per this AP article, After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in remote Basile, Louisiana.

Why was Öztürk targeted? She’s one of several students at American universities whose visas were revoked after they expressed support for Palestinians during the ongoing conflict in Gaza. 

This strategy was laid out in Project Esther, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to use anti-terror and immigration laws to crush pro-Palestinian demonstrators under the guise of combatting anti-semitism. The fascists have made it crystal clear they’re going to use pro-Palestinian protest as the launching point to crush dissent in this country–ALL dissent. That’s why they went after Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil earlier in March. I shared Kelly Hayes’s piece on Khalil here and have been meaning to update that post with Khalil’s statement which you can find here.  Note: Khalil’s statement was dictated over the phone from where he’s being held in an ICE facility in, you guessed it, Louisiana.

The one piece of good news in all this is that yesterday, in a rare show of moral courage by a university, Tufts issued this University Declaration for Rumeysa Ozturk. I encourage you to read the entire declaration which includes a valuable timeline of events as well as full-throated support for their student.

 Today, Öztürk’s legal team had a hearing with a federal judge on jurisdiction (being sent out of state to Louisiana). That decision will come soon. A legal journalist live-posted this thread on Bluesky during the hearing.

If you’d like to contribute a few dollars to Öztürk’s legal fund, you may do that HERE.

Please do not remain silent while the U.S. government disappears people. Please understand that if we normalize what is happening, they will eventually come for you, too.