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Along with its picket lines, rallies and protests, the Graduate Employees’ Organization has begun endorsing and collaborating with other students on strike parties and community concerts. With the support of GEO, University of Michigan students organized a rally concert on the Diag Saturday to promote awareness of Camp Grayling’s expansion, advocate for decreasing the campus police presence and show support for GEO.
The event was primarily organized by LSA freshmen Henry Barron, Salem Loucks and Cole Nogawa. Nogawa told The Michigan Daily that the group independently organized the event to bring together students who are passionate about similar social issues. He said he felt music was the best way to unite the campus community.
“We wanted to bring people together and have music as a draw to educate about some important environmental issues as well as show solidarity for (the) GEO strike,” Nogawa said. “We are actually not doing this as a part of any club or organization. We’re just a handful of interested students who decided that these are causes we believe in.”
GEO also led a Hot Labor Summer Strike Party at noon on Friday, followed by a rave in Ypsilanti later that night. Rackham student Isaac Blythe, a GEO departmental steward, told The Daily that GEO wants to connect with as many students as possible to show that the strike is not just an issue for graduate students.
“A big part of (the strike) is (ensuring that) everyone (remembers) that we are a community and we’re in this together,” Blythe said. “We’re in this for each other, and that involves not just what (collectively) impacts us as individual (graduate students) on campus, but also what individually impacts us as people outside of just on campus.”
GEO member Sasha Bishop said more casual social events like parties and concerts help promote GEO’s mission in new ways.
“There’s two sides,” Bishop said. “One where you’re … going after the institutions and infrastructures (that) perpetuate oppression … and while you’re doing that, you’re simultaneously building (a community). … I think that social events have a very tangible benefit, (like) recruitment and bringing people in and giving (them) an opportunity to talk to each other.”
GEO President Jared Eno was the first speaker who presented at the concert between musical acts. Eno thanked the student organizers and encouraged attendees to seek any opportunity to demonstrate solidarity, helping the strike to continue.
“Let’s not let this university get away with screwing us all over,” Eno said. “It’s about us looking to each other for support, instead of these broken institutions that care only about profit and prestige. I feel that support and that solidarity on the picket lines. I feel it with you here at this concert.”
Engineering senior Brendan Ireland helped organize the concert. At the event, Ireland specifically discussed the expansion of Camp Grayling, a military base in Greeley, Mich. Ireland also mentioned the “Stop Cop City” movement which aims to stop Atlanta from building the largest police base in the United States in a primarily Black area.
Ireland explained how all these issues interact with each other, and with the GEO strike, in a way that amplifies the event’s focus.
“To be able to have all these different focuses that all come together and are able to amplify each other is really powerful,” Ireland said.
Student band The Streaks performed at the rally concert. In an interview with The Daily after the event Music, Theatre & Dance senior Evan Holifield, a member of the band, explained how the concert organizers had reached out to them over social media.
“We were contacted by someone on Instagram who was really nice,” Holifield said. “(He asked): Would you be interested in playing for the protest in support of GEO and against the cop city stuff happening? I had heard a lot about that. It was something that I’d already cared a little bit about, and I hadn’t really known of any outlets to support that. As a student in undergrad, you still have to go to class every day, and you feel a little guilty.”
Holifield explained the significance of standing up as an artist because music holds a power that speeches and statistics may not.
“The kind of music we’re playing is such a rich tradition in punk music and grunge and rock of protest, and using it to send a message and disseminate sort of an outlook or an opinion,” Holifield said.
Daily Staff Reporter Sneha Dhandapani can be reached at sdhanda@umich.edu.