More speech silencing: Michigan Student Assembly votes gag rule

October 29th, 2009

From Blaine in Michigan: Last night, the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA), a University of Michigan body, violated the Open Meetings Act, the First Amendment, and the university's Standard Practice Guide.

Look at today's Michigan Daily article, and judge for yourself:

Shocked by recent comments seeking to boycott Israel, the MSA voted for a Gag Rule.

That Gag Rule outlaws all public comments, uttered by any community member, unless they are pre-certified by an executive board to be "relevant to students".

The MSA also moved its meeting, for this vote, to a building up on North Campus, to ensure no one would even show up to complain.

The Michigan Daily editors had campaigned loudly for this Gag Rule, so great was their outrage that Gaza had been discussed at past MSA meetings, as Israel carried out massacres in the Gaza Strip.

Now Israel is free to massacre Gaza again without worrying about back-talk from anyone in the MSA meetings.

Here is the Boycott-Israel resolution that pained MSA so much that they shut down the First Amendment:

MSA Resolution to Boycott Apartheid Israel, and to Stop Apartheid on Campus

Resolution Summary:

1. Boycott all Israeli products.
2. Take that $1 trillion you’re spending to kill Muslims, and spend it instead on re-building Detroit.
3. Stop 400 years of White Privilege—the University should admit every Black high school graduate.

Boycott all Israeli products

WHEREAS, White Supremacism, including Zionism, is the most genocidal force on Earth,

WHEREAS, Congress has paid $300 billion to Israel, according to Congressman John Dingell,

WHEREAS, Israel spent that money on a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people, which has culminated in the Israeli siege against Gaza,

WHEREAS, Israel has forced 1.5 million Palestinians into a concentration-camp existence in Gaza, where childhood malnutrition and anemia are rampant,

WHEREAS, Israel is threatening to unleash a “Holocaust” on Gaza,

WHEREAS, Malcolm X was right— the Zionists had no “legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves”

WHEREAS, Israel’s alliance with Apartheid South Africa was "more intimate and more extensive than anything similar in Israel’s history", according to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi,

WHEREAS, Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, which it tried to share with Apartheid South Africa,

WHEREAS, Israel is training its pilots to nuke Iran, a land of 76 million people who have never invaded anyone,

WHEREAS, Israel trained and oversaw SAVAK, the brutal force of torturers who kept the Shah of Iran in power,

WHEREAS, the United States has been bleeding Iran with economic sanctions, then with U.S.-imposed dictatorship, then with U.S.-fueled invasions, almost continuously since 1952,

WHEREAS, those economic sanctions still make it impossible for Iranians to get spare parts for any airplane, from anywhere in the world,

WHEREAS, Israel is demanding even crueler economic sanctions against Iran,

THEREFORE, the Michigan Student Assembly demands that Congress impose a total boycott against all Israeli products,

THEREFORE, we demand that Congress cut off all aid to the racist state of Israel, the last Apartheid State on Earth.

THEREFORE, we demand that the University of Michigan Board of Regents declare a boycott against all products imported from the racist state of Israel.

Take that $1 trillion you’re spending to kill Muslims, and spend it instead on re-building Detroit.

WHEREAS, Congress has spent $1 trillion to kill millions of Iraqis since 1991,

WHEREAS, Congress has killed over a million Afghans since the 1980’s, using a series of unbelievable excuses,

WHEREAS, the U.S. repeatedly bombs Somalia, using more unbelievable excuses,

WHEREAS, Senator Clinton threatens to “obliterate Iran”, and Senator McCain sings “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”,

WHEREAS, Senator Obama threatens to invade Pakistan, then President Bush launches military strikes directly on Pakistan,

WHEREAS, Congress’s trillion-dollar genocide against Muslim lands is conducted at the direct expense of Black America,

WHEREAS, Congress’s trillion-dollar occupation of Muslim lands is conducted at the direct expense of Black America, the Michigan Student Assembly demands that Congress immediately remove its trillion-dollar army of occupation from every nation on Earth, because that army only brings coups, torture, racism, and death to the planet;

THEREFORE, we demand that Congress immediately spend that trillion dollars, which was stolen from Black America, on the immediate rebuilding of Detroit, including mass transit that every Detroiter can walk to, including the best elementary, secondary, and university education in the nation, including the best neighborhood clinics, the best neighborhood libraries, and the best housing infrastructure in the nation, and including the necessary industrial facilities to build all of those things, and to employ every Detroiter of working age, with full union wages and benefits,

THEREFORE, we demand that Congress similarly rebuild every U.S. inner city, and that this rebuilding be directed by Black engineers, architects, professors, physicians, educators, and managers, and that this rebuilding be staffed by Black union labor, nationwide, until Black unemployment ceases to exist,

Stop 400 Years of White Privilege—

–the University should Admit every Black high school graduate.

WHEREAS, centuries of government policy, backed up by organized white violence at every level, has attempted to beat down African political power, financial power, industrial power, and landholding power, from the Congo to Chicago,

WHEREAS, Martin Luther King Jr. was right— the U.S. government is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”,

WHEREAS, the U.S. has murdered and imprisoned African and African-American leadership on a mind-boggling scale, from Lumumba in the Congo, to Mandela in South Africa, to Fred Hampton in Chicago, to Marcus Garvey, to the Orangeburg Massacre, to the Jackson State Massacre, to the U.S.-Israeli-South-African invasion of Angola in the 1970’s, to the U.S.-Israeli-South-African creation of death squads across the African continent which have murdered millions and stripped Africa of unimaginable wealth,

WHEREAS, today’s white suburban power structure was built with a trillion-dollar federal highway subsidy, and with massive governmental subsidies to build all-white suburban settlements, which have sucked the wealth and political power of Black America into virtually all-white enclaves, while barring the bulk of Black America from entry,

WHEREAS, white political, economic, employment, and educational power has always been built on massive federal subsidies, from the railroads in the 19^th century, to the government-backed white academies created to suck away resources from any public educational system that might benefit Black students,

THEREFORE, the Michigan Student Assembly finds it obscene that a violent, 400-year steamroller of white privilege– where whites use the riches of Black labor to perpetuate a closed circle of privileged white university admissions, a closed circle of white business connections, a closed circle of white jobs, perpetuated by a heavily subsidized white suburban political machine,– is called a “meritocracy”, while the slightest effort to get Black students into the University is called “reverse racism”;

THEREFORE, the Michigan Student Assembly demands that the University of Michigan Board of Regents immediately guarantee admission, tuition-free, to every Black student who graduates from every Michigan high school, together with year-round tutoring for every new student who needs it;

THERFORE, we declare, in advance, a highly visible picket line and a 3-day student strike, if any state authority attempts to “stand in the schoolhouse door” to block the open admission of Black students to this University.

This Resolution was proposed for an immediate vote by the Michigan Student Assembly, at the University of Michigan.

This Resolution then was torn up by the Assembly's General Counsel, as the Michigan Daily reporter watched.

But the Resolution was again presented to the Assembly for a vote. This Resolution has also been proposed for a vote by the University's LSA Student Government.

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