by Maximillian Alvarez | Jun 24, 2026 | FBI, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Podcast, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Working People
On June 10, early in the morning, FBI agents raided the homes of individuals involved in Palestine solidarity activism at the University of Michigan. As Yarden Katz and Stephen M. Ward report in Mondoweiss, “with help from local and state police departments, including the University of Michigan Police, the raids unfolded simultaneously in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin…The case is now known as the Michigan Eight. The Justice Department indicted the eight defendants—five of whom are current or former students at the University of Michigan, and one of whom was a University employee—on multiple counts of severe charges, including “Conspiracy to Transmit Threats in Interstate and Foreign Commerce.” The defendants, all in their twenties, now potentially face decades in prison.”
In this installment of our ongoing series “Police State University,” we speak with Kevin Zheng, a member-organizer and secretary of the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Michigan, and Grace Viscito, a restaurant worker and former graduate student at the University of Michigan.
Additional links/info:
Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) website, Instagram, Facebook page, and X page
Legal Fund of Michigan Students for Palestine
Yarden Katz & Stephen M. Ward, Mondoweiss, “Inside the case against the ‘Michigan 8’: Palestine activism recast as antisemitic terror”
Alexa Cheaney, The Michigan Daily, “The Daily breaks down the indictment against eight pro-Palestine activists”
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / TRNN, “Campus life is unrecognizable in the Trump era: ‘There’s so many cops everywhere’”
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘The raids happened Wednesday, finals started Thursday’: FBI agents raid homes of pro-Palestine students at University of Michigan”
Featured Music:
Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song
Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript
by Stephen Prager | Jun 23, 2026 | Air Strike, Children, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, News, Occupied Territories, Palestine, UN, west bank
About 30% of those killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023, have been children, according to a United Nations inquiry on Tuesday, which found the “deliberate” targeting of kids to have furthered a genocide against Palestinians. The report, authored by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, follows a previous finding in September…
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by Maximillian Alvarez | Jun 23, 2026 | education, ICE, Israel, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, video, Working People
We sit down with Dr. Steven Thrasher to talk about his new book, The Overseer Class; how our police state today evolved from yesterday’s slave plantations; and why Dr. Thrasher has been blacklisted from academia after defending his students at Northwestern University during the Palestine encampment movement in 2024.
Guests:
Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, is the author of The Overseer Class: A Manifesto and the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, which was a New York Times’s Paperback Row Editors’ Pick, named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews, was longlisted for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Literature, and won the 2023 POZ Award for Best in Literature. He is also the inaugural Daniel Renberg Chair for Social Justice in Reporting at the Medill School of Journalism and a faculty member of Northwestern University’s Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. An internationally renowned scholar on race, gender, and infectious disease, Dr. Thrasher’s writing has been published by the Guardian, Atlantic, New York Times, Scientific American, Literary Hub, and in many academic journals.
Credits:
Studio Production / Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.
Dr. Steven Thrasher:
So I did stand between the students and the cops. I got beat up for it and I survived. It wasn’t that bad at the time and the students had an encampment for five days. But then a few weeks later, Congress called our president to the Hill and Congressman Jim Bank
by Shireen Akram-Boshar | Jun 22, 2026 | Arab Americans, BDS, Gaza, Israel, Israel Bonds, News, Palestine, UAW, United Auto Workers
The United Auto Workers (UAW), a union with some 400,000 active members across the U.S., has voted to divest its estimated $400,000 from Israel bonds. The divestment vote makes the UAW the first major national union to vote to divest from Israel. On Thursday, UAW members voted at the union’s 39th Constitutional Convention in Detroit, where some 1,000 delegates from UAW locals around the…
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by Hassan Herzallah | Jun 21, 2026 | ceasefire, Father's Day, Fatherhood, Gaza, Hunger, Op-Ed, Palestine
In Gaza, where I live, the Israeli occupation has stripped fathers of the most basic promises of fatherhood. A father cannot promise his children a safe place, because the place they flee to may be bombed only hours later. He cannot promise them a meal at the end of the day, because food has become uncertain. Even when they ask him whether they will stay alive, he must answer while not…
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by Stephen Prager | Jun 21, 2026 | Austerity, elections, immigration, Keir Starmer, Labour, News, Palestine, Palestine Action, UK
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce as soon as Monday that he will resign, according to new reports, as Labour supporters abandon the party. But many on the left remain skeptical that his likely replacement, Andy Burnham, will truly bring the “change” he promises. Britain’s Observer newspaper reported on Saturday that the prime minister appeared “resigned” to stepping…
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