The University of Michigan in the Era of Black Lives Matter and Mass Incarceration is a primer on racial injustice at U-M first released in July 2020 and written by a group of faculty who work with the Prison Creative Arts Project, the Semester in Detroit program, and the Carceral State Project’s Documenting Criminalization and Confinement research initiative. The document provides an overview of, and our conclusions regarding, many of the key issues raised by campus and community members over the past several years, including U-M’s carceral practices in admissions and employment; prison education; the need to reassess our relationship with the Ann Arbor Police Department and campus police; and the status of the university’s relationship to Detroit. We invite you to share these resources with your communities and to send us your experiences and feedback as part of ongoing conversations, organizing, and action in pursuit of meaningful change.
This primer is presented in two ways: a newsletter overview with graphics, and a longer pdf text document with links to additional resources. The newsletter version with graphics is also linked below and the longer version is here.
For additional information, see the Carceral State Project’s resource page to Rescind U-M Criminal Records Policies and our June 2020 statement on Black Lives Matter and Police Violence. Also see the Semester in Detroit program’s Nov. 2019 statement “Leaders and Best? Questioning the UM ‘Detroit Center for Innovation.'”
Carceral State Project Statement on the GEO Strike and Campus Policing (Sept. 10, 2020)
The Carceral State Project supports the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) in their current labor strike at the University of Michigan. We ask that the university administration listen to their demands and negotiate with them in good faith.
We want to highlight our support, in particular, for these specific GEO demands:
- Access to a disarmed and demilitarized workplace, where lethal weapons are prohibited, our security services do not receive military funding, there is transparency around the use of surveillance technology, there is a standard of force for campus police, and no one faces retaliation for being unable to work due to police presence.
- The defunding of the Division of Public Safety and Security (DPSS), and a reallocation of the funds to community-based justice initiatives.
- U-M cut all ties with police, including Ann Arbor Police Department (AAPD) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
We also reiterate our opposition to all policies of criminalization in the areas of public health and public safety, including the proposed Ambassador Program. For more on the Carceral State Project’s position on these issues, please see our various statements calling on U-M to rescind its criminal records policies, our June 2020 statement on Black Lives Matter and the need for a radical transformation of public safety, and our July 2020 statement The University of Michigan in the Era of Black Lives Matter and Mass Incarceration.