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INDEX
Vol. CXXX, No. 29
©2021 The Michigan Daily
N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
ARTS............................4
MIC...............................6
STATEMENT...................9
OPINION......................12
SPORTS........................14
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CALDER LEWIS
Daily News Editor
JARETT ORR/Daily
Ann Arbor community members protest for housing justice outside Larcom City Hall Friday afternoon.
ANN ARBOR
Locals call for permanent housing
establishments in Ann Arbor
Dozens of demonstrators gather to call for protections for homeless individuals
Gathered outside of Larcom
City Hall April 9, dozens of local
demonstrators stood with signs
calling for housing justice — a
message that would later echo
down the streets in chants like
“Homes for all, not just the rich”
and “The city has the land, we need
the housing.”
The rally was organized by
Washtenaw Camp Outreach, a
mutual aid organization working
toward achieving housing justice
and
supporting
the
homeless.
Prior to the event, WCO released
a list of five demands urging the
city of Ann Arbor and the Ann
Arbor Downtown Development
Authority to provide safe and
accessible housing for the homeless
population, particularly as many
overnight shelters start to close due
to the warmer weather.
Among
these
demands
are
calls for the city to halt all camp
sweeps on vacant city-owned land
that unhoused individuals use.
WCO also urges increased access
to sanitation, enforced one-week
notices for any evictions on private
property and the creation of a safe
emergency shelter at 721 N. Main St.
WCO representative Cynthia
Price told The Michigan Daily in
an interview during the protest
that one of the key demands on the
list is giving housing power back
to the community by converting
public land into community land
trusts. The demands name three
locations to begin with: 721 N.
Main St., 415 W. Washington St.
and 350 S. 5th Ave.
“We’re asking (the city of
Ann Arbor) to put land into a
community land trust,” Price said.
“It would allow for the community
to figure out what we wanted to
happen on a given swath of land
and a nonprofit would hold that
land. And so it would allow us to,
instead of having to work with
affordable housing, it would allow
us to determine what needs to be
done.”
Jim Clark, an active member of
WCO who is recently experiencing
homelessness, opened the event
by emphasizing the importance of
housing to survival, citing the “rule
of threes” that determines basic
human needs.
“You can live three minutes
without air, three days without
water and three weeks without
food,” Clark said. “Do you know
how long you can live without
heat? Three hours. Hypothermia
is a very real thing and if you look
at the weather, we think right now,
it’s nice. But when it starts raining,
if you have no place to go, if you’re
stuck in the wet and the wind in the
cold … when you force somebody
to stay outside and inclement
weather, you’re signing their death
warrant. That’s not fair.”
Clark also also told The Daily
that WCO is an organization that
allows those who are experiencing
homelessness to have more power
and say in the organization’s
actions.
“(WCO runs on a) consensus-
based leadership,” Clark said.
“And that reflects on the deeper
value of equal human rights and
value. I think that’s speaking to the
disenfranchisement of … one set of
humans.”
WCO member Peatmoss told
The Daily about their experience
at a warming center — which are
short-term
emergency
shelters
open during inclement weather
conditions — in Ann Arbor this
past winter and how the mutual
aid model of WCO helps the
community address issues like
police harassment.
“The way that we self-organize
is
that
we
have
community
meetings where we decide what
the rules are, how to keep each
other safe,” Peatmoss said. “And
in those meetings, we decided
that the cops need to stay out. And
that’s really important because the
cops will come, trying to search
up old warrants to the warming
center, and that’s terrifying … If we
don’t keep ourselves safe, nobody
else will.”
Adam
Harris,
an
Ann
Arbor
resident
experiencing
homelessness, spoke to the crowd
about his demands to eradicate
selling housing for commercial
gain.
“We have to decommodify
housing and decommodify things
that we have a right to,” Harris
said. “In our capitalist society,
that seems impossible, but it’s not.
There’s empty land and empty
buildings right now that could
be put to use. We see luxury
apartments go up all the time …
The city chooses to put private
property and profit before people.”
Affordable housing options in
Ann Arbor have long been an issue
for residents, with many saying
that businesses and developers
have overtaken the market by
increasing the number of luxury
high-rise apartments downtown.
SARAH STOLAR
Daily Staff Reporter
NEWS BRIEF
Some U-M clinics
canceled, others
to use Pfizer
after Johnson &
Johnson pause
J&J sites at Michigan Stadium,
Dearborn and Flint to be rescheduled
The University of Michigan’s
vaccine clinics scheduled for
students at the Michigan Athletics
Indoor Training Center and Mejier
April 13-16 will use the two-dose
Pfizer vaccine rather than the
Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, U-M
officials wrote April 13 in an email
to the campus community. The
Michigan Medicine J&J clinics at
Michigan Stadium April 19 & 20
and April 14-16 in Dearborn and
Flint have been canceled, and the
hospital is “working to reschedule
these as supplies allow.”
“If
you’ve
chosen
an
appointment at any vaccination
clinic because of the one-dose J&J
vaccine, please note that clinics
will now be administering only
the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,
which require a second shot
three or four weeks later,” the
email read. “Getting a first dose
this week would put your second
dose — depending on vaccine — in
early-to-mid May.”
Central Student Government is
providing free bus transportation
for students getting vaccinated
at Meijer April 15 and 16. More
information, including bus routes
and times, can be found on
michigandaily.com.
The Washtenaw County Health
Department is also pausing use of
the J&J COVID-19 vaccine until at
least April 15, as recommended by
the Food and Drug Administration
and Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention the morning of
April 13. The state of Michigan is
also following the recommended
pause.
The federally recommended
pause is “out of an abundance of
caution”, the FDA tweeted April
13, after rare blood clots were
discovered in six American women
who had recently received the J&J
vaccine. Nearly 7 million people
in the U.S. have received the J&J
vaccine. The adverse side effects
appear to be extremely rare, the
tweet said. The CDC Advisory
Committee
on
Immunization
Practices will meet on April 14
to discuss the complications, and
the FDA will review that analysis
before moving forward.
A clinic scheduled for April 13
in Chelsea, Mich., will offer the
Pfizer vaccine instead of J&J, and
a April 13 at Eastern Michigan
University has been postponed.
Two April 14 clinics, at Concordia
University and EMU, are also
postponed.
While the U-M clinics are
outside
Washtenaw
County
Health Department jurisdiction,
Public
Information
Officer
Susan
Ringler
Cerniglia
told
The Michigan Daily it is possible
Washtenaw County J&J clinics
could resume vaccinations April
15 after the CDC committee
reviews the situation on the 14th.
“We should be considering
them tentative at this point
until more is learned, ” Ringler
Cerniglia said. “Unfortunately,
this week we had a large supply of
Johnson & Johnson and scheduled
a lot of clinics.”
Michigan
Medicine,
Washtenaw
County
and
the
state will continue to administer
Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as
previously scheduled.
University
President
Mark
Schlissel had touted the benefits
of the J&J vaccines in his April
7 email announcing the student
vaccination clinics, writing that
its one-dose delivery makes it
easier to administer to students
leaving U-M campuses at the end
of the semester.
“The Johnson & Johnson/
Janssen
vaccine
is
highly
effective at preventing severe
illness
from
COVID-19,”
Schlissel wrote. “There is also
accumulating
evidence
that
vaccination prevents infection
and transmission of COVID-19
to others. It has already been
administered to nearly 4 million
people and is very safe.”
The Daily also has a running list
of vaccination sites in Southeast
Michigan that can be found at
michigandaily.com.
Daily News Editor Calder Lewis
can be reached at calderll@umich.
edu.
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
ACADEMICS
ANN ARBOR
Dissatisfied with offers from ‘U’
administration, LEO stages protest
Other campus labor groups march in solidarity with lecturers
The
Lecturers’
Employee
Organization was joined by members
of other campus labor organizations
in displays of solidarity in a march
outside of University of Michigan
President Mark Schlissel’s house
April 10. The protest aimed to
assert LEO’s demands for their new
contract in this current bargaining
period which ends when the current
contract expires on April 20.
About 70 people attended LEO’s
first in-person demonstration this
semester. LEO hosted weekly virtual
bargaining
sessions
beginning
in January, which were closed to
the public, and one public virtual
bargaining session.
“Austerity has got to go,” was one
of the protesters’ recurring chants of
the afternoon — “austerity” referring
to strict fiscal policies like budget
cuts and salary freezes in times of
economic crisis. Several campus
community
members,
including
members of LEO, have criticized
the University for overusing these
fiscal strategies during the pandemic,
instead of tapping into surplus funds
or the $12 billion dollar endowment
with a proportion of discretionary
funds. The University currently
spends no more than about 4.5% of its
endowment each year.
In
the
ongoing
contract
negotiations,
LEO’s
demands
include
salary
increases
across
the University’s three campuses,
longevity raises and a reversal of
the University’s controversial felony
disclosure policy before the current
contract expires.
LEO President Ian Robinson,
a lecturer at the U-M Ann Arbor
campus,
marched
down
South
University Avenue with his fellow
protesters, wielding yard signs that
read “#Invest in Students #Invest in
Lecs.
According to Robinson, April 9’s
closed bargaining session featured a
“very bad” salary proposal from the
University and “very little” in the way
of allocating greater funding toward
the Flint and Dearborn campuses —
a demand frequently echoed by the
One University Campaign.
“This (protest) is a way now
of demonstrating that we’re very
unhappy with how far things are
gone,” Robinson said. “We were
told when we began bargaining
that … the administration was very
serious about getting our contract
settled before it expires … but so far,
what they’ve been doing at the table
doesn’t suggest that they’re serious
at all.”
In an email to The Michigan
Daily, University spokesman Rick
Fitzgerald said the most recent
counter-proposal offered by LEO
is about eight times the cost of their
previous contract, the largest yet in
LEO history. He said despite efforts
to be more fiscally conservative in the
next year, since the University is still
recovering from the ongoing COVID-
19 pandemic, they have made fair and
reasonable proposals.
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Staff Reporter
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Councilmember defends,
then apologizes for, posting
homophobic slur on Facebook
Comments from Jeff Hayner also disparaged local journalists
Ann Arbor City Councilmember
Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, posted
a quote on Facebook April 10
containing a homophobic slur
and disparaging journalists. He
defended his use of the slur while
repeating it in a phone interview
with The Michigan Daily April 11
night before apologizing in a April
12 Facebook post.
In a now-deleted Facebook
comment, Hayner quoted excerpts
from
Hunter
S.
Thompson’s
1971 novel, “Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas,” one of which
calls journalists a “gang of cruel
(f*****s).”
Though
Facebook
removed
the comment, Hayner originally
commented multiple times under
a post in the Ann Arbor Politics
Facebook group about a MLive
article discussing online hate
against journalists. Hayner told
The Daily a moderator of the
Facebook group informed him
the comment using the slur was
removed after 10 minutes for
violating guidelines.
On April 11, Hayner told The
Daily he does not apologize for
posting the comment and thinks
his
language
should
not
be
considered offensive since it was
contained in a quote.
“People who are offended by
language like that are people who
want to be offended by it… who let
themselves be offended by it or who
have an ulterior motive,” Hayner
said. “They’re not my words.”
But
after
facing
increased
backlash from the community,
Hayner posted an apology in the
Facebook group on April 12.
“I acknowledge the language I
quoted is offensive, recognize my
poor judgement in using it, and I
sincerely apologize for the harm
I have caused the community,”
Hayner wrote.
In
response
to
Hayner’s
comments, Councilmember Travis
Radina, D-Ward 3, called out
Hayner in a Facebook post April
11 condemning the language and
sentiments expressed in the quote.
Radina posted the screenshot
of Hayner’s use of the quote along
with the contents of an email
he sent to Hayner and all other
councilmembers. In his Facebook
post, Radina wrote that despite
Hayner’s “prolific activity on social
media,” Radina has not received a
reply since he sent Hayner and the
other councilmembers the email.
In the email, Radina expressed
disappointment
and
criticized
both the use of the homophobic
slur and the anti-press sentiments.
JULIA RUBIN
Daily Staff Reporter
See HAYNER, Page 2