On Sunday night, the day before Labor Day, workers of the Graduate Employees Organization (AFT-3550) at the University of Michigan voted to strike. This strike is graduate student-workers’ attempt to pull the emergency brake on the administration’s stubborn plans to reopen the campus. As witnessed in universities across the country, these plans are intended to respond to the fiscal crisis sparked by the pandemic by capturing as much revenue from student tuition and rent as possible, without tapping into the university’s multi-billion dollar endowment — plans that also mean exposing students and workers to the deadly and still unknown effects of COVID-19.

But what’s also notable about the strike is its abolitionist demands. A safe and just campus for all cannot be achieved without disarming and defunding the campus police. Therefore, GEO’s proposal of a “safe and just” campus articulates two sets of demands: COVID-19 demands, which include robust testing, a universal option for remote teaching, extension of graduation timelines, childcare subsidies for parents and caregivers, and the repeal of international student fees. And anti-policing demands which include disarming, demilitarizing, and defunding campus police (GEO is demanding a 50 percent cut in the campus police budget, which should in turn be redirected to community-based initiatives), as well as severing ties from both Ann Arbor police and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This an abolitionist strike, building off of and inspired by the energy of this summer’s protests against the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others by the police. The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus cannot be “safe and just” with policing in all its forms.