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4 GROUNDCOVER NEWS GAZA U-M Tarihr Coaltion joins nationwide student movement for university divestment from Israel There are tents on the Diag, but they are not occupied by people experiencing homelessness. The encampment is the “Popular University for Gaza at U-M,” and is composed of University of Michigan students, faculty, staff and community supporters of university divestment from Israel. On Monday, April 22, at 6 a.m., over 60 student members of the Tahrir Coalition joined the national call from Students for Justice in Palestine to “occupy college campuses and demand that their institutions end their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.” This Diag occupation began four days after Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University began occupation of the East Butler Lawn in New York City, escalating this nationwide student-led movement for divestment from Israel. Hundreds of student activists at Columbia have been arrested or suspended, but the repression has only led to more and more support. The U-M Tahrir Coalition was formed in November 2023 in response to Central Student Government ballot initiatives AR 13-025 and counter-initiative AR 13-026, calling on U-M to LINDSAY CALKA Publisher formal inquiry into anti-palestinian, anti-Arab, and islamophobic racism and harassment. 3. Support and reaffirm the faculty and staff members who are being vilified for their support of Palestine. 4. Release a formal statement that clearly defines the massacre in Gaza as a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign led by Israel and aided by the United States.” The encampment intends to occupy condemn the state of Israel, and Hamas, respectively. The coalition is composed of more than 80 U-M student organizations that are “united for the liberation of Palestine at the University of Michigan.” To join the coalition, an individual or organization affiliated with U-M must sign on to the following demands to the University of Michigan President Santo Ono and the Board of Regents: “1. Divest from any and all companies that presently, or in the future, profit off of the human rights violations committed by Israel, and aid in the apartheid system maintained against Palestinians. 2. Conduct a the Diag — disrupting business as usual — until they achieve divestment from Israel at the U-M. Dozens of other universities across the country are organizing similar direct actions, with near-identical demands. What business does an academic institution have investing in another country, and what does “divest from Israel” really mean? The University of Michigan maintains an endowment of $17.9 billion that is invested in multiple companies in order to grow funds. There are staff persons that manage everyday decisions about the endowment, but at the end of the day, the University President and the statewide-elected Board of Regents make the final call about where funds are allocated. “Divestment from Israel” is a condensed phrase that draws the connections between large multinational companies that receive investments from the endowment that directly fund Israeli military activity in Gaza. The University has over $6 billion invested in funds that profit from Israeli companies or military contractors. This includes Hewlett-Packard, which supplies the electronic identification systems used to immobilize Palestinians at Israeli military checkpoints; Lockheed Martin, which has supplied Israel with billions of dollars worth of military equipment and training since 2001; and the Boeing Company, which expedited delivery of 1,000 bombs to aid Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. Other investments include drone manufacturer Skydio, military contractors Cobham and Ultra Electronics, Israeli spyware firm Oosto, and Israeli prisoner surveillance company Attenti. In a public letter, the Tahrir Coalition stated, “As long as U-M invests in these companies, we are paying tuition to a university that profits from apartheid, see TAHRIR page 7  MAY 3, 2024 Who's in charge? If you have been on a picket line or march for peace and justice, you likely heard the police asking, “Who’s in charge?” The usual response is “Everybody” or “No one.” I think a better response would be, “I am in charge of what I do, are you in charge of what you do, or do you have orders?” Chain of command thinking begins early. Two-year-olds have learned the word “NO” and use it often enough to have a reputation … THE TERRIBLE TWOS. As adults we are more likely to hear, ”You can’t do that here.” Your assembly may be declared illegal or more commonly, ”You can’t sleep here!” Camping on the commons, on any unused land, is usually a big “NO!” You can discreetly disappear into the bush but if you are discovered, you may lose all your possessions and be issued a ticket to appear in court where you will be fined and/or jailed. The hypocrisy of property rights becomes obvious as your body becomes the property of the state. We have yet to abolish slavery in prisons. Those who have eyes to see and a KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 heart that feels will be inspired to continue the struggle for freedom. “An injury to one is an injury to all” is a quote on the letterhead of some unions. It is a poignant expression of universal truth. Hillsdale College talks of transcendental truth and the constitution as if it is the domain of conservatives. We need some deep debate here. Nial Ferguson presents the conservative view in his “Treason of the Intellectuals.” As the Rev. James K. Parks said, “A little bit of truth is a dangerous thing.” How to be in charge of your life My 77 years of post-kindergarten graduate studies continue: life is an experiment, and I have discovered that I am a true son of Western civilization, that is Judaeo-Christian, Marxist and Einsteinian culture. It was the Vietnamese, then the Tibetans, who helped me weave all those Western threads into a workable fabric. Some Western threads need critical reflection, in particular the Enlightenment ideology and its bourgeois expressions of capitalism and rocket science. Relativity and quantum theory stand on the shoulders of Isaac Newton just as Marx stands on the shoulders of Hegel. The conceptual world of thinking and how we understand reality is a dialectical process that requires exploration of whatever limits, obstacles or insights arise. Rene Descartes, whose work became the Cartesian worldview, is author of the famous quote “I think, therefore I am.” This puts being in the context of thinking as understood by reason. The rational mind decides what is real. Any experience outside compliance with this model is dismissed as “illusion.” What if the appearances of the material world are so complex and interrelated that they only make sense in the light of a holistic view, before thinking imposes its prejudice of being the judge? If you observe your mind you will see that “Who is the thinker and who is the observer?” is the question we all face. Google gave me a wonderful essay on the difference between Descartes and Newton written by a philosophy student, Stephen Trochimchuk, actually a review of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” I got lost trying to follow Descartes, largely because I disagree with his assumptions, in particular dualism as best illustrated by the mind/body split which plagues us to this day. Descartes can only be understood by accepting his assumption that the world is a machine. Isaac Newton focused on the mechanics of the machine and gave us rocket science. Are the thinker and observer aspects of one mind, or is this see CHARGE page 8 

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