This is a letter signed by hundreds of students and community members in Southeast Michigan demanding that Attorney General Dana Nessel drop the charges she slapped on members of the University of Michigan Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Nessel’s criminalization of protest shamefully seeks to protect U-M’s investments in the genocide of Palestinians—and also reflects Nessel’s personal and financial ties to the Regents themselves, as The Guardian recently reported.

Attorney General Nessel,

We write to demand the immediate dropping of the felony and misdemeanor charges against eleven pro-Palestine protestors associated with the University of Michigan Gaza Solidarity Encampment. These charges are legally absurd, racist, and motivated by political self-interest. As such, they are an unjustified and unprecedented escalation against a movement advocating for divestment from genocide and for Palestinian life and liberation.

Your press release suggests these cases were pursued due to their supposed multijurisdictional nature; however, the charges only involve a single jurisdiction. Your justification is a lie. Further, these charges appear to be motivated by your relationships to the Regents at the University of Michigan, six of whom have donated to your election campaign prior to requesting these horrifying charges against protestors – a clear conflict of interest. If that weren’t enough, your history of anti-Palestinian bias raises serious concerns about your ability to act as a fair arbiter in this situation. You have previously condemned Representative Rashida Tlaib for her pro-Palestinian advocacy, distorting her words to fit your racist narrative. Furthermore, your actions have been praised by sites like Canary Mission, which target and harass pro-Palestinian activists. These facts indicate that the charges are politically motivated rather than grounded in any legitimate legal rationale.

Continue reading “The Palestine Exception” →