EMU students were reminded today that if you’re Black and you creatively organize against campus hate crime, the administration’s going to come down on you. Appeals from faculty protesters and even racial justice attorneys were met with ice-cold recalcitrance from the administration, via Geoff Larcom: regardless of moral context, EMU takes a hard line against Black activists.

And though administration refused to allow ACLU attorney Mark Fancher to accompany faculty into a heated meeting with Vice President Phillips, they can’t bar the public from reading the letter the ACLU published the very same day.

The RAW community has a message for EMU administrators and their puppeteers the white Regents: we see through your front line (media relations professionals, cops, and other Level-1 brand managers), and we’ll continue to support students at Eastern until Black Life matters on their campus, and the Black Student 10 has been implemented.

Hello all,

As you know, I am one of the four black male students being pursued for my accused role in a campus sit-in protesting racist vandalism, and seeking safe space to gather. I have no statement to issue on my, nor the other black men being accused behalves. What I will say is that in this move to sanction us, the real victims are the entire black student body.

The very same black student body who has fought tirelessly since being allowed on campuses such as Eastern Michigan University for one thing, the right to belong. This fight is not something we are unfamiliar with, rather one we have inherited. Our skin has made our lives into a battle we didn’t ask for but are determined to win.

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Robin D. G. Kelley

If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between antipoor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. —Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s”

Donald J. Trump’s election was a national trauma, an epic catastrophe that has left millions in the United States and around the world in a state of utter shock, uncertainty, deep depression, and genuine fear. The fear is palpable and justified, especially for those Trump and his acolytes targeted—the undocumented, Muslims, anyone who “looks” undocumented or Muslim, people of color, Jews, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, women, activists of all kinds (especially Black Lives Matter and allied movements resisting state-sanctioned violence), trade unions…. the list is long. And the attacks have begun; as I write these words, reports of hate crimes and racist violence are flooding my inbox.

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Led by Maryam Aziz, this is a basic self-defense class for folx whose visible identities make them susceptible to hate crimes. Read more here, and then RSVP here.

Today, November 10th, 2016, marks two years since the murder of a Black woman, an artist and a mother of three named Aura Rain Rosser. Today, we still assemble to honor her memory and to affirm that Black Lives Matter. Today, more than ever, we ask: Who killed Aura Rosser?

Posing this very question should give us pause. In a strict sense, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ann Arbor Police Officer David Ried fired the shots that literally broke Aura’s heart. But if we understand that the who in our question is always-already a collective “who” then we begin to understand that Ried is only a single node in a broad web of relations that materially and symbolically murdered Aura both before and after her death.

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Dear President Smith:

I am a Secondary Education: Language, Literature, & Writing major here at Eastern Michigan University from Flint, Michigan. Flint is still enduring a water crisis and is one of the most poverty stricken and violent cities in America. I say this to infer: where I come from it is not enough to be smart, you have to have heart. My time at EMU is supposed to be a pathway to a better life and an environment where I do not have to live under intimidation, oppression, and intolerance. This has not been the case and while I endure many microaggressions everyday on campus the blatant and repetitive hate speech and terrorist actions have exposed EMU to have a race problem. This has been a traumatic experience which has affected me emotionally, physically, and mentally. While I have “heart”, this semester is weighing heavily upon me and others.

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#DaysOfAura. Like the hashtag, our movement is permanent. See you Thursday.