President Joe Biden visited Detroit on Sunday for the NAACP Detroit Branch’s 69th Annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner. Around 200-300 protesters gathered outside of the event at Huntington Place to criticize Biden and educate people on the concerns of genocide in Palestine.
Earlier the same day, Biden spoke at all-male Atlanta HBCU Morehouse College, where he received an honorary degree. Many students at the ceremony held up Palestinian flags, wore keffiyehs, and even turned their backs to the president.
According to video footage and numerous witnesses, the local protest faced escalation from the Detroit Police Department. Eight protesters were detained, two were arrested, and one Palestinian activist was told by a cop to “Go back to Mexico.”
Local groups Detroit Will Breathe, Community Movement Builders, US Palestinian Community Network, Detroit Heals Detroit, Project 1948, and Students for Justice in Palestine chapters called for the protests against Biden’s fundraiser.
Aside from the one outside of Huntington Place, another was being held a few blocks away at Hart Plaza. Around 4 p.m., protesters near the Joe Louis Monument were made aware of two arrests at Huntington Place, so the group marched to the perimeter of the convention center to support their fellow protesters.
Lexis Zeidan, a local Palestinian activist and the co-founder of Project 1948, says she was part of the group that marched from Hart Plaza.
At Huntington Place, a few dozen Detroit police officers were staged, and barricades were present to separate arriving guests from protesters. Zeidan says the officers continued to barricade the protesters into a corner and told them to get off of the sidewalk, even though it’s public property. The organizers then asked people to engage in a moving line, as police began to zip-tie barricades to make the space even smaller, she says.
“During that whole time, officers were surrounding the barricades taunting us, mocking us, one of them even put their hands on a protester when trying to put the barricades up for no reason, just really trying to escalate a protest that was peaceful,” Zeidan tells Metro Times.
Just before 4:30 p.m., a Detroit police officer began arguing with protester Theodore Matuszak, known as “Taj,” about where to stand and not stand. As seen in a video, Taj stood in the instructed area behind the barricade with the rest of the protesters but was forcefully grabbed out of the area and into the street by an officer, thrown to the ground, and arrested.
“I was peacefully exercising my First Amendment right and obeying all orders to stay behind the barricades,” Taj tells Metro Times. “It was pretty brutal too, they basically contorted my body in unnatural ways and put a knee in my back, like my neck basically, and hyperextended my arm backward basically as far as it would go. I had to go to the emergency room last night to have these injuries addressed.”
He adds, “My wrists are actually still red today and hurting right now and my fingers are numb.”
Following this incident, longstanding Detroit police lieutenant Brandon Cole told Zeidan, a Palestinian who grew up in Dearborn and now lives in Detroit, to “Go back to Mexico.” A video of the incident currently has over 2.8 million views on TikTok.
“I saw him videotaping me and I asked him ‘What are you videotaping me for?’ and this all happened before a friend started recording and he said to me, ‘You don’t know what’s coming for you,’” Zeidan says. “That’s when you heard me say, ‘What are you going to do, give me a ticket? I don’t give a fuck,’ and that’s when he said ‘Go back to Mexico’ and then we started screaming and shouting. When I walked away, he said to me, ‘Aren’t I so lucky I get to surveillance you anytime I want?’”
DPD held a press conference on Monday to discuss the weekend incidents. Detroit Police Chief James White says he saw the viral video and was “offended” and “outraged.”
“We are certainly a welcoming city, consistently have been a welcoming city and an inclusive city. Our goal is to never oppress anyone and everyone is entitled to their perspective,” he said. “We support peaceful protests. Our job is to make sure that everyone has the appropriate space to voice their concerns and express their views.”
Commander Michael McGinniss, who is investigating the incident spoke further on Lieutenant Cole’s actions. He showed the 15-second social media video and then showed a minute-long version of police body cam footage.
“What we’ve learned since yesterday evening is that the protester that the lieutenant was engaging was recently out of town on vacation in Mexico and the lieutenant was aware of that, and his comment was related to her returning to vacation,” McGinnis says. “When you have that context, it changes the egregiousness of the interaction, and though it does not eliminate concerns that Chief White has, it does change the storyline.”
DPD says that along with the investigation, the lieutenant has been relieved of his duties related to the mobile field force, which monitors protests, and has been placed on administrative duty. Currently, the department says they will obtain and process additional video evidence, interview witnesses, and evaluate policies so they can identify what misconduct the investigation discovers.
Zeidan feels that even if the lieutenant made the “Go back to Mexico” comment about her vacation, the interaction overall is no less of a problem.
“That’s also as problematic, if not more problematic, that you have a lieutenant and police force surveilling civilians without their consent, without a warrant, and keeping track of them and what they’re doing,” Zeidan says. “Why does he have all my information? I think that speaks to a bigger issue around our police and law enforcement and specifically targeting Palestinians within our country and surveilling them and keeping track of them when they're peacefully protesting and speaking out against the genocide.”
Chief White stated in the press announcement that DPD is “not keeping tabs on folks,” but Instagram and social media are public and that the lieutenant could have been tagged by a protester, which could have led him to Zeidan’s page.
DPD also stated that Zeidan knew private information about Cole as well.
Following this incident, protesters planned to march outside of the barricade and back to Grand Circus Park to make some speeches and end the protests. However, the police pushed everyone toward Campus Martius Park where they dispersed.
Both Zeidan and Taj say that this conduct from Detroit police is nothing new.
Zeidan helped organize a protest when Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Detroit, where she says there was a “one-to-one ratio of police to protesters.”
“Actually a truck of four officers, one of them was there yesterday, followed me to my car and then followed me while I was driving to taunt me over the intercom, and was literally saying, ‘Thanks for getting me paid overtime today,’ as they were following my car, and we were at a stoplight,” Zeidan says. “They were laughing and making jokes about it, so I just think that the police department and Chief White have a large mountain to climb when it comes to getting his officers trained in a way that is serving the community and de-escalating and ensuring that they're trained on de-escalation techniques, but also diversity and equity and inclusive training.”
“I have gone to a few protests and there’s a lot of what seems like very militant police,” Taj says. “A lot of harassment, they’re usually screaming at us in some way, shape, or form, or name-calling.”
Toward the end of the protest, two organizers were arrested, one whom witnesses claimed was tased by Detroit Police. Chief White says the taser didn’t actually take effect, but that he’s investigating why the attempt happened in the first place.
The department stated that of the two people arrested, one was arrested for disorderly conduct, and the other was charged with a felony for assaulting an officer.
“I think the police need to back off and allow people to express their First Amendment rights,” Taj says. “If anything they need to be protecting us in our ability to exercise our rights, rather than protecting the people that are supporting genocide against the Palestinian people.”
“It’s really encouraging to see so many young people out there protesting, it’s predominantly people it seems in their 20s and it says a lot about the younger generations coming up,” he adds. “I don’t want to center my voice. I’m a white, cis male… I really want to encourage more white people to show up at these protests. We need more solidarity from white people supporting these Palestinians and just people of color in general. We need more white people out here for this cause and for the cause of liberation for oppressed people.”
Exactly two weeks before these events, Detroit police were scrutinized for heavy-handed tactics during the Cinco de Mayo festival in Southwest Detroit, where officers dispersed crows and detained at least seven people. One city councilwoman questioned whether the actions were “racist” and “xenophobic,” and many are questioning the same after the recent incident.
“The biggest thing is just the harassment of the cops when we were following instructions. We weren’t on the streets. We remained on the sidewalk. They purposely kettled us. It was like they wanted to detain people, and they were making fun of us the whole time and it was just really unprofessional,” Zeidan says. “The protest was specifically a protest to engage outside of the event to one, educate people going in on the ongoing genocide happening in Palestine, and to send a message to Biden that he's not welcome in our cities.”
Scroll down to view photos of the event.
