2021-04-14

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ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Some U-M clinics canceled, others to use Pfizer after Johnson & Johnson pause

NEWS BRIEF

J&J sites at Michigan Stadium, Dearborn and Flint to be rescheduled CALDER LEWIS Daily News Editor

JARETT ORR/Daily Ann Arbor community members protest for housing justice outside Larcom City Hall Friday afternoon.

Locals call for permanent housing establishments in Ann Arbor

ANN ARBOR

Dozens of demonstrators gather to call for protections for homeless individuals SARAH STOLAR Daily Staff Reporter

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) consensusbased 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

ACADEMICS

Dissatisfied with offers from ‘U’ administration, LEO stages protest

Other campus labor groups march in solidarity with lecturers JULIANNA MORANO Daily Staff Reporter

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

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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 COVID19 pandemic, they have made fair and reasonable proposals.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

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.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

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.

ANN ARBOR

Councilmember defends, then apologizes for, posting homophobic slur on Facebook

Comments from Jeff Hayner also disparaged local journalists JULIA RUBIN

Daily Staff Reporter

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

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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

Vol. CXXX, No. 29 ©2021 The Michigan Daily

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.

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