After Raids, Columbia, UMich Organizers Say “We Keep Us Safe”

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Maximillian Alvarez: The battle over our institutions of higher education will continue to be a critical front where the future of democracy and the Trump administration’s agenda will be decided.

Today, we are grateful to be joined by four guests who are on the front lines of that fight: Lavinia, a PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information, and an officer in the Graduate Employees’ Organization, or GEO; Ember McCoy, a PhD candidate in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, and a rank-and-file member of GEO and the TAHRIR Coalition; Jessie Rubin, a PhD student in the School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University, and a rank-and-file member of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC); and Conlan Olson, a PhD student in Computer Science at Columbia and a member of the bargaining committee for Student Workers of Columbia.

Ember, Lavinia, I want to ask if you could help us break down the FBI and police raids out there in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, all around the University of Michigan. Can you tell us more about what happened, how the people who were detained are doing, how folks on campus are responding, and just where the hell things stand now? 

Ember: On Wednesday, the FBI, Michigan State Police and local police officers in the three different cities conducted a coordinated raid in unmarked vehicles at the homes of multiple University of Michigan pro-Palestine activists.

I think that’s very important to name, because the Attorney General, who is a Democrat, who signed these warrants that have no probable cause, is saying in their press release that the raids don’t have anything to do with University of Michigan campus activism, and they don’t have anything to do with the encampments. But the people whose homes were raided are prominent pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan.

I would say people are doing as well as they can be.

It’s been a lot, but the organizing still continues. People are very mobilized. People are probably more agitated than they were before. It definitely hasn’t curtailed the movement for a free Palestine and the movement for free speech broadly in the state of Michigan.

Maximillian: Trump’s administration really set the template for this broader assault on higher ed by first going after Columbia. What is your message to workers and students on other campuses like Michigan who are facing similar attacks?

Jessie: The biggest takeaway is that we help us. It’s us who take care of each other. We can’t expect the university or the administration to protect the most vulnerable among us, to protect our international students, to protect our research. It’s us who has to create the infrastructure to keep us safe.

If anything, the university’s response to the Trump administration has made it clear that they’re not just capitulating, but they are active collaborators.

Conlan: As a union, as activists, we can’t sit tight or wait this out. We can’t stay quiet in order to survive. If we start appeasing or hedging our bets, we’re going to lose our values and just get beat one step at a time.

Maximillian: I wanted to sort of talk about the signs of life that we’re seeing amidst all of this darkness and repression. As I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of folks around the country, a lot of folks that I’ve talked to in higher ed have been really galvanized by seeing the news that Harvard, of all places, is fighting Donald Trump’s attacks. I wanted to ask if there are more efforts that you’re seeing on your campus or other campuses that are giving you hope right now.

Conlan: I really feel that our institutions are not going to save us. These days, I’m far more inspired by activist movements, by students, staff, professors, community members.

We’re still seeing student protests. We’re seeing increasing faculty support for student protests, which is really important to me. We’re seeing mutual aid projects. We’re seeing legal movements to fight against visa revocations. 

Jessie: It’s been heartwarming to see encampments starting to pop up again around the country, even though the stakes are much higher than ever. Students are putting their bodies on the line. They’re risking expulsion, they’re risking arrest, they’re risking physical injury. And it’s really clear that no matter how hard our administrations try to stamp out dissent, including by expelling core organizers, that students keep coming out in greater and greater force and developing new tools to keep each other safe.

And we see that this student pressure works. MIT was forced to cut ties with Elbit Systems after a targeted campaign by a BDS group on campus. Elbit is an Israeli arms company and has been a target in many BDS campaigns across the globe.

Maximillian: What is the reality on campuses, are they overrun with antisemitism and wokeness the way people are being told?

Jessie: As an anti-Zionist Jew, I would say that our schools are not overrun by antisemitism, but instead, we’re seeing growing mass movements that are anti-genocide, movements that are Palestine liberation movements and that is by no means antisemitic.

And on top of that, these new definitions of antisemitism that are getting adopted on campuses actually make me feel less safe. They completely invalidate my identity as an anti-Zionist Jew, and say that my religion or my culture is somehow at odds with my politics.

Ember: That’s something we’re definitely being accused of at the University of Michigan. The elected officials are Zionists, right? And so they’re weaponizing this argument of antisemitism on campus, while also persecuting and charging anti-Zionist Jews with felony charges for speaking out for Palestine. 

You have to really listen to the people who are part of these movements, and look who’s a part of it. It’s an inter-generational, interfaith group that have shared politics. And it’s really important to understand that distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism that is being conflated in terrifying ways. 

Lavinia: I think one thing that was really wonderful, at least about the encampment at U of M, is that there were lots of people who did have this misconception that there was some relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. And then upon visiting the encampment and seeing the kind of solidarity that was being displayed there, they potentially were disabused of that notion. Unfortunately, I think that’s part of why the encampments were so threatening to university administrations and Zionist officials.

Maximillian: What can labor organizations do to work together to fight this?

Jessie: As workers, the most powerful tool that we have is our labor, and we have the power to withhold labor. We have to remember that we’re not just bystanders who the Trump administration can crush with no consequences. Graduate students, we produce the research that saves lives and human health. We write books that shape American life, and we invent the things that America is so proud of. We also teach undergraduates. The university would just simply not run without its graduate students. So, a strike poses a threat that cannot be ignored. 

Conlan: One troubling pattern that we’ve seen recently is people who are nervous to sign a union card because they’re worried about retaliation for being involved with labor organizing. I think that fear is totally understandable, and I don’t think it’s silly or invalid, but I also think that we need to remember that people are far safer in a union than they are without a union.

In addition to our power to withhold labor, we’re also just a group of people who keep each other safe. We have mutual aid collectives. We run campaigns to defend each other, like the one that we’re running for Ranjani [Srinivasan]. Lying low is just not going to work, especially in this political moment. I really want people to remember that unions keep you safe. 

Maximillian: This is a very terrifying moment, and the more filled with terror we are, the more immobilized we are, the easier we are to control. I wanted to ask y’all if you had any final messages to folks out there on your campus or beyond your campus who are feeling this way, what would you say to them about ways they could get involved in this effort to fight back?

Lavinia: Now is a wonderful time to plug in. For people who previously hadn’t been thinking about unions as an important part of their lives or thought, oh, the union on my campus is just doing whatever it needs to do, but I don’t necessarily need to have any personal involvement in their activities, right now is when we need all hands on deck, given the level of political repression that’s happening.

Ember: If folks listening are interested in supporting us here at the University of Michigan, we have a legal mutual aid fund for our comrades who are facing charges, who are raided by the FBI: bit​.ly/​u​m​l​e​g​a​lfund. Thank you.