Protest movements succeed or fail entirely upon whether or not enough people show up to call out and rail against injustice, which is why the organizers of A2 Against Ice looked a bit nervous in the minutes leading up to their March 15 protest against the war in Iran on March 15. It was overcast and windless, Sunday; the sort of weather that would turn you rock solid with cold in the spring, but after a whole winter, feels pleasantly warm. And it was quiet.
Then dozens and dozens of people showed up in front of the Ann Arbor Federal Building. And they got really, really loud.
“It’s really good to see college kids organizing. It gives you a lot of hope,” Sarah Steele, an Ann Arbor resident, said once the protest turned into a march. She estimates that she has been to about 20 protests so far this administration. “I don’t have any words right now about what we’ve done in Iran. I feel like every time I close my eyes, I see that photo of the graves in Minab, so I thought that would be powerful enough message.”
The United States military succeeded in destroying most of the leadership in Iran with the strikes launched with Israel. They also blew up a grade school. According to the New York Times, about 175 people were killed.
Donald Trump did not consult Congress before launching his military strike against the Iranian theocracy. In the weeks that has followed, the Administration has yet to come up with a consistent set of reasons why they attacked the dictatorship now, and appear to have thought that killing the 87-year-old Ayatollah would cause the regime to capitulate, and seems to have not thought through what would happen if they didn’t. Instead, they have hunkered down, and Khamenei’s 57-year-old son has taken over.
The reason this has happened now has led to a lot of conspiracy theories and calls for accountability. Signs on the topics abounded – from “War Crimes Don’t Hide Sex Crimes” to “No Iran War No War In Our Streets” to “I Think I”ve Seen This Film Before… And I Didn’t Like The Ending…! Iraq Vietnam Afghanistan Palestine” to a quote from Winston Churchill “Those Who Fail To Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It.”
“ICE has come to our doorstep. They have ripped people out on the streets in Ypsi for the mere crime of existing. We have placed an embargo on Cuba just to starve its citizens, we have struck Iran with out Tomahawk missiles, a grade school in Iran … all for our empire run by pedophiles,” Alex Rodriguez said, as he paced from one end of the protestors to the other. “For our empire we have created a world where parents are burying what’s left of their children … where children foreign and domestic are terrified of going to school … we have expanded tariffs around the world. At what point do we say ‘enough is enough’?”
The original A2 Against Ice protest had loads of politicians from local to federal levels. This time the only organizers from Abdul El-Sayed’s senate campaign, a University of Michigan student government candidate, a co-president of the U of M Democrats and Yousef Rabhi showed up. He is a former Michigan House representative who currently represents District 8 on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, running to challenge incumbent Mayor Christopher Taylor on a democratic socialist platform.
RELATED: Ann Arbor Against Ice Gets Huge Turnout to First Protest
“Right now, the United States of America, and the imperialist minds that are running our country, are attempting to do a world take over. They want the world to be subservient to the United States … and to the corporate interests of the United States … so those that are really running things in Washington – the billionaire class, the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the oil tycoons – they want the world to serve them and their interests,” Rabhi said. He called these actions by the Trump Administration a war of “subjugation” and added “It is a colonizer and imperialist mindset. It is the same mindset that Europe used to colonize Africa, South America and Asia. It is the same mindset of extraction. They see countries not as people, but as resources…”
Rabhi added, “This war, like the war in Venezuela and the hopefully never war in Cuba, is about the war between the working class and those … and the billionaire class that wish to exploit us, and our labor. That is what this is about, and not just here in America, but across the planet. The war is a class war, what is happening in the United States is a class war, and we the working class in this country, we can’t take this shit any longer. This is our moment to say ‘We have seen the damage that you’re doing… the pain that you’re causing… the lives that have been lost at the expense of your greed… we have seen too much. And now in America we wish for a country where we have single payer universal healthcare… where anyone can go to school and not leave college and not leave with debt… That’s an America we believe in and that’s an America we can only have if we say ‘fuck war.’ No more!”
A big part of the reason why Iran is run as a theocratic police state in the first place is that a former American administration participated in ousting a socialist Prime Minister during the Cold War, because he was planning on nationalizing the oil industry. The Trump Administration seemed to not have thought of the Iranian regime blocking the Straits of Hormuz – which connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean – a choke point through which 20% of all of the world’s oil flows. This has resulted in the gas price increases that nearly everyone saw coming decades ago, as well as a cutoff in the supply of fertilizer. About “20,000 seafarers” are trapped because the strait is too dangerous to sale through, according to the Times of London.
Organizers point out that their organization is still very new. They are currently in the process of setting up a website, but do post regular updates on their Instagram page.
Future action has been called for by the organizers; including calls for the Ann Arbor City Council to pass a resolution calling for support of a disinvestment campaign the following day. Another organization, Ann Arbor Indivisible, will be holding another protest on March 28.
“The March 28 protest has a lot of potential, but I think that the people who are going there, and who are speaking, need to understand what’s going on, and they also need to understand of the grave consequences of giving in. I think it’s time for us to not feel good about ourselves. It’s time to feel angry,” Zane Parker, one of the A2 Against ICE co-organizers, said. “You should feel angry and you should have a plan on what you’re going to do after.”
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
