Two square miles: The evolution of Hamtramck
There is no place like Hamtramck.
This little island of two square miles in the middle of Detroit used to be so Polish that it once was known as "Little Poland." It was so Polish that the Pope himself once took a detour just to visit here.
Then, everything changed. Waves of immigrants poured into this tiny enclave — from Eastern Europe, from Asia, from the Middle East — swiftly transforming it into America's first majority Muslim city.
How did these different people wind up together in Hamtramck? Do people here get along? What's life like for the old-timers who stayed? And how do the newcomers fit in?
Columnist John Carlisle and photojournalist Ryan Garza spent almost a year immersed in Hamtramck to find the answers to those questions, through the voices of the people who call it home.
This is what they came back with.
One project. Five stories. Dozens of photographs.
Two Square Miles.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Two square miles: The evolution of Hamtramck
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Harvard withheld their degrees for participating in a pro-Palestinian protest. They don't regret it.
'It felt like a culmination of things that had already been happening,' said Joshi in an interview this week with the Globe. 'It felt inseparable from the way they were treating pro-Palestinian protests in general.' A year since Harvard refused to award degrees to the 13 graduating seniors who participated in a pro-Palestinian encampment on Harvard Yard, the students say the experience left them feeling disillusioned about their Ivy League education and frustrated with what transpired, but grounded in their activism and largely unscathed. A handful are now pursuing graduate degrees from other elite universities, and others are working. Some are still participating in protests. A pro-Palestinian protest encampment behind a gate of Harvard Yard in April 2024. Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe Advertisement All were eventually awarded their Harvard degrees in the months after their intended graduation, the graduates said. After the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas began, the 2024 tent encampments on Harvard Yard became one of the key symbols of a pro-Palestinian student movement that spread across the nation. At Harvard, both Jewish and Muslim students reported feeling uncomfortable, while a Advertisement On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people from Israel. Gaza health authorities have said that Israel's retaliatory offensive has The Harvard student protesters agreed days before commencement in 2024 to dismantle the encampment; university leaders Days later, the students found out they wouldn't graduate since they were not in 'good standing' with the university due to multiple campus policy violations related to the encampment. That prompted another wave of outrage among students and faculty, more than 1,000 of whom reportedly Graduating students walked out of the 373nd Commencement at Harvard University to call attention to the plight of Palestinians on May 23, 2024. The university's top governing board rejected the recommendation of faculty to allow 13 pro-Palestinian students who participated in a three-week encampment in Harvard Yard to graduate with their classmates. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Some protestors, including Joshi, were allowed to don their caps and gowns at Harvard's 2024 Commencement and walk across the stage. Joshi said she was handed a piece of white cardboard instead of a degree. Others, however, were barred from commencement. Syd Sanders, 23, was told to withdraw from the university (a directive that he says was later dropped) and was banned from graduation. He had several ongoing student disciplinary cases at the time related to what he described as 'a long and storied career' in on-campus activism. 'They kept trying to evict me,' Sanders said in an interview this week, 'They would go by my dorm and be like, 'Why is all your stuff still here?'' Sanders was the final of the 13 students to receive a degree, to his knowledge. Advertisement 'They mailed it to me in February,' Sanders said. In a statement, Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo said that the university does not comment on student matters and did not further comment for this story. The impact of the withheld degrees varied by graduate. Phoebe Barr, 24, was among the protesters who were placed on an involuntary leave by the university, meaning she lost access to her dorm room and could not work at her on-campus job for the remainder of the semester. 'I was homeless and unemployed very suddenly,' Barr said. She stayed on the couch of someone who offered her a place to crash. Those are the memories of Harvard she wants to recall, she said, the acts of kindness in the community. 'For all the hostility we received, we also saw a real outpouring of support from the community of Harvard students, faculty, and those who lived around us in Cambridge,' she said. Barr was denied access to the Harvard campus at the end of her senior year. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Barr's temporarily withheld history and literature degree also impacted her search for a job after college: She could not list her undergraduate degree as her highest level of education. Not knowing when she would get her degree, she said, was difficult and stressful as she cobbled together cover letters and resumes. To potential employers, she wrote that her degree was still pending. Her degree was conferred in July last year; she got a job at a Boston University library that fall. Joshi's probation was initially to last until May 2025, meaning she would graduate a year later than planned. That timing was a problem: If she weren't in good standing with the university, she'd lose her Harvard fellowship to fund a master's degree at the University of Cambridge in England. Advertisement The funding securing her spot at Cambridge eventually came through after Harvard conferred her degree over the summer. Sanders, however, said that, at least for him, the lack of a degree didn't have any impact on his professional life. He still moved to California and got his dream job as a union organizer. 'I can't imagine a career in college activism was an inhibitor to becoming a union organizer — it was probably an asset," Sanders said. The encampment taught him how to do effective community organizing, lessons he said he is applying today as he helps organize support for immigrants targeted for Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests. 'It was the most sacred moment of community I have ever felt in my life,' Sanders said of the Harvard encampment. 'No regrets.' A protester hung a Palestine flag in the pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard on May 7, 2024. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Sanders is now an activist in Oakland and is working as a bartender and waiter (he quit his union organizing job). 'Just like everybody else who graduated on time, I'm figuring life out,' Sanders said. He's thinking of applying to grad school or getting another union organizer job; he still participates in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Had the protesters' probation resulted in them walking at graduation this year, they would've been at a much different ceremony. This May, Garber was greeted by 'It was pretty jarring,' said Barr, who attended the commencement to take part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. 'Last year, he was booed by the audience.' Advertisement While she is glad to see Harvard fighting Trump, she said it does not negate her frustrations with how the university handled the encampment last year. Joshi added that while there is a lot of excitement for Harvard's stance against Trump, the school's stance on free speech and academic freedom still 'rings hollow' to her. She is now finishing a master's degree in sociology at the University of Cambridge — funded by the Harvard fellowship that almost didn't materialize — and writing her dissertation on South Asian involvement in the Palestinian movement in the UK. After graduation, she plans to find legal work at a nonprofit. Overall, she remembers the Harvard protests as a success: They drew attention to the thousands of children who have died in Gaza and will never have the chance to grow up to get a degree, she said. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Erin Douglas can be reached at
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Will Harvard win its legal battle against the Trump administration?
The high court has given more leeway to presidential powers, particularly on national security issues the White House has cited to justify its latest impositions on Harvard. Moreover, the battle of attrition could wear Harvard down on the financial front: the legal battles will be costly, and in the meantime, Harvard may lose students and scholars 'I think the government wins every time,' said Brad Banias, an immigration lawyer based in Charleston, S.C., and former trial attorney for the Justice Department. 'If I'm an international student and I have a choice between Harvard, Yale, Brown . . . why would I pick the one in a battle with the government?' Advertisement Under fire on multiple fronts, Harvard has filed two lawsuits against the administration: one to reverse the elimination of billions in federal funding after the school refused to agree to a series of demands; the second over the White House's efforts to block international students from attending Harvard, citing potential threats to national security. Advertisement On the latter fight, Harvard so far has won temporary relief. On Thursday night, US District Judge Allison D. Burroughs issued a temporary restraining barring President Trump from denying visas to all students seeking entry to the country to attend Harvard. Last month, the judge temporarily halted the administration's effort to immediately revoke Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students. In its lawsuit filed in May and amended Thursday, Harvard accused the administration of 'a blatant violation' of its First Amendment and due process rights as part of an ongoing, retaliatory campaign against Harvard and other elite schools by Trump. Banias said he believes the administration's actions against Harvard were 'unlawful retaliation' and predicted the school will obtain a permanent injunction to allow international students to continue their studies while the underlying lawsuit proceeds in court. But, he said, it's 'a coin flip' as to which side wins if the case reaches the Supreme Court. On the one hand, the court historically is hesitant to restrict a president's power on national security issues. Yet in this case, Banias said, the Trump administration is unlikely to prove that all Harvard student visa holders pose a national security threat. During Trump's first term, in a 5-4 vote in 2018, the Supreme Court upheld his ban on travel to the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries, a victory that came after two prior versions of the ban were struck down. The court found presidents have broad statutory authority to make national security judgments involving immigration. Laurence Tribe, a law professor emeritus at Harvard, said he's confident the university would prevail before the Supreme Court. Advertisement 'This has nothing to do with national security,' said Tribe, a liberal lawyer who's argued before the court dozens of times. 'The courts aren't stupid; they recognize a fig leaf when they see one.' He said Harvard has no choice but to fight Trump's actions. He noted Columbia University's more conciliatory approach: The Ivy League school in New York City agreed to change certain internal policies earlier this year in the face of federal funding cuts, but the Trump administration has continued to hammer the college. On the same day Trump announced the latest move targeting the student visas of Harvard enrollees, his administration sent a letter to the accreditation agency that oversees Columbia, writing that the school has violated civil rights laws and asking it to open an investigation. 'Columbia has seen the consequences of trying to deal with him,' Tribe said. 'We are not going to cave.' Daniel DiMartino, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said that if Harvard wins a permanent injunction, the school will be able to continue to admit foreign students, and likely run out the clock until Trump is out of office or the administration's attention shifts. 'If there is an injunction, essentially Harvard wins. If there is not an injunction, Harvard really is in trouble,' DiMartino said. But Trump's goal, he said, is not to stop foreign students from coming to Harvard: it's to cause the university enough problems that it has to agree to changes demanded by the White House. Trump and other conservatives say Harvard has discriminated against white and Asian people in admissions, failed to do enough to tackle antisemitism, and rebuffed efforts to have ideological diversity in its professorial ranks. Advertisement 'If their goal was actually just to forbid foreign students from Harvard, they would have done it much more slowly and given them notice,' DiMartino said. 'The administration is trying to make an example out of Harvard to threaten other universities into cooperating and not misbehaving.' And in a broad sense, with the legal fees that come with protracted fights, DiMartino said, 'Harvard will lose no matter what. It just matters how much they lose.' Harvard also sued the Trump administration in April after it announced it was slashing about $3 billion in federal grants to the university. That case is pending. Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge who teaches courses at Harvard Law School, said she believes the Supreme Court will come down on Harvard's side and predicted the case will move quickly because of the ongoing harm to the school and its students. Citing the administration's demand the school turn over disciplinary records and other information on international students, Gertner said the White House 'essentially wanted Harvard to be a whistle-blower,' and is now retaliating even though that information is not legally required or provided by any other schools. Northeastern constitutional law professor Jeremy Paul said the government is able to punish institutions that break the law, as the Trump administration says Harvard has in its handling of antisemitic incidents. But first, he said, they have to prove in front of a judge the institution has done so. They can't just make an allegation and then act unilaterally, as the administration has done, he said. 'The executive branch is acting as though they're both the prosecutor and the judge,' Paul said. Advertisement Shelley Murphy can be reached at
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Divisions deepen in wealthy, liberal Boulder after antisemitic attack
Divisions deepen in wealthy, liberal Boulder after antisemitic attack instead of bringing the community together, the attack appears to have further exacerbated existing fault lines across the wealthy, liberal city of Boulder Show Caption Hide Caption Boulder community honors attack victims, condemns antisemitism The Boulder Jewish Community Center hosted a vigil for community members to come and support victims of a fire-bomb attack. BOULDER ― In sandals and winter boots, in rain and snow and sun, their feet tread the red bricks with a silent request: Bring them home. They push strollers and wheelchairs, carrying flags and signs with that same message: Bring them home. They ignore the taunts and epithets flung by college students and counter-protesters, focusing on their goal: Bring them home. These moments, these footsteps, they weren't political. It wasn't about their personal views on Israel's war against Hamas. "We just want them home," said longtime marcher Lisa Turnquist, 66. "That's why we do this," she said. The small group of "Run for their Lives" marchers in this college town were sharing their message on June 1 − 603 days since Hamas snatched concertgoers and ordinary people from southern Israel and vanished them into Gaza's tunnels. But halfway through the Sunday afternoon march, a suicidal Muslim immigrant attacked them with a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, injuring 12, including an elderly Holocaust survivor. Many regular marchers of the group are Jewish. Six of the injured in what federal officials have described as a terror attack were from the same synagogue, Bonai Shalom. But instead of bringing the community together, the attack appears to have further exacerbated existing fault lines across this wealthy, liberal city where pro-Palestinian protests verging on outright antisemitism have become a way of life for elected leaders and college students. After the attack, someone posted "Wanted" signs on the Pearl Street Mall just steps from the scene, naming the majority of city council members as guilty of "complicity in genocide" for refusing to pass a ceasefire resolution and not divesting from businesses that are helping Israel wage its war against Hamas. "Not only has the rhetoric become increasingly centered around violence and division but we have an increasing amount of cowardice, from cowardly administrators, cowardly government officials," said Adam Rovner, who directs the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. "We're seeing it much more clearly now. And unfortunately Jewish communities are paying the cost." Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, faces more than 118 state and federal charges in connection with the attack, including hate-crime accusations. Investigators say he confessed and remains unrepentant, telling them he deliberately targeted the marchers because he considered them a "Zionist Group." Divisions continue after Pearl Street attack Amid the extreme positions on the Israel-Hamas war, Run for their Lives believed most people could get behind their message. The national Run for their Lives organization has sponsored walks or runs in hundreds of cities and towns since Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust in which over 1,000 people were killed and 240 were taken hostage. As of June 5, 56 hostages are still being held by Hamas, although that number includes both the living and presumed dead. On June 1, as she had dozens of times in the past, Turnquist was pushing her Australian shepherd Jake in a stroller as the group made its way past the historic Boulder County Courthouse on Pearl Street pedestrian mall. She saw a man dressed like a landscaper ‒ odd, she thought, since it was a Sunday ‒ and thought it would be best to just keep walking, as she had done so many times before when counter-protesters screamed and yelled. There had never been physical violence against the group, but there were insults, jeers, accusations that the marchers themselves support genocide. Turnquist and others who have marched said they often felt unsafe. "We ignore the people who are against us," said Turnquist, who is Jewish. "We can't let Boulder tell us what to do. We can't let university students tell us we can't do stuff like this, because that's what they do. Week after week, people are yelling at us all the time, saying we are causing genocide. We're not causing genocide. We were attacked and we are fighting to get our hostages back." The conflict between the marchers and counter-protesters is a microcosm of the vicious disputes that have long been on display in Boulder, where Palestinian students disrupted classes earlier this year. Turnquist, the protest marcher, said knowing the group lacked the full support of local elected officials made it harder to feel comfortable during those Sunday protests. She said she went into a Boulder shop at the start of the Gaza war while wearing a necklace with a Jewish symbol on it. The shopkeeper suggested she hide it, so she didn't become a target, she said. "One of the things I remember saying was ... the masks are going to come off and we're going to see who the antisemites are. We're going to see them for who they are. And sure enough it started happening all over," Turnquist said. "It was people that I didn't even think would be antisemites ‒ it was some friends." Nationally, polls have shown that younger Americans are more likely to side with Palestinians than with Israel, including young Jews. And an April 2024 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 31% of Jews younger than 35 felt Hamas' reasons for fighting were valid, compared to just 10% for Jews aged 35 and older. Turnquist said the Sunday marches were deliberately non-political: They didn't call for attacks on Hamas or for more retaliation by Israel. Instead, they focused on the one thing they thought everyone would agree with. To Soliman, that apparently didn't matter. According to investigators, he researched the protest group online, took concealed-weapons classes and planned his attack for a year. Video recordings of the attack captured Soliman shouting "Free Palestine" as he threw Molotov cocktails into the crowd of marchers, setting fire to several victims, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor. "Mohamed said it was revenge as the Zionist group did not care about thousands of hostages from Palestine," Boulder police wrote in an arrest affidavit. "Mohamed said this had nothing to do with the Jewish community and was specific in the Zionist group supporting the killings of people on his land (Palestine)." Soliman's motivation, as reported by police, mirrored similar language used by the sole member of the Boulder City Council who declined to sign onto a group statement from city leaders condemning the attack. Councilmember Taishya Adams condemned the attack but said she declined to sign the group statement, which identified Soliman's actions as antisemitic, because it didn't specifically note that he was also motivated by what she considers anti-Zionism. "If we are to prevent future violence and additional attacks in our community, I believe we need to be real about the possible motivations for this heinous act," Adams wrote in a statement explaining her decision. "Denying our community the full truth about the attack denies us the ability to fully protect ourselves and each other." Responded Councilmember Mark Wallach: "Your efforts to make what I think is a pedantic distinction as to whether a man who attempted to burn peaceful elderly demonstrators alive − to burn them alive, Taishya − was acting as an antisemite or an anti-Zionist is simply grotesque." Jewish groups in Boulder have previously tangled with Adams over what they say are her own antisemitic remarks regarding Palestine, and pro-Palestinian protesters repeatedly disrupted city council meetings. Adams did not return a request for comment from USA TODAY. On June 5, the first meeting after the attack, the mayor announced that in-person public comment would be prohibited because pro-Palestinian protesters have so often disrupted meetings. Among those who have watched protesters disrupt council meetings was Barbara Steinmetz, a Holocaust survivor burned in the June 1 attack. In a video interview last year, Steinmetz recounted what it was like to attend council meetings alongside pro-Palestinian protesters, including one interaction with a woman carrying a sign referencing "from the river to the sea," the rallying cry of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which called for erasing Israel. "I turned to her and said, 'Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?' But she just turned away," Steinmetz said. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars. They're taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house. They're not identifying themselves because they're frightened." Soliman's attack didn't happen in a vacuum Rovner, from the University of Denver, said pro-Palestinian college protests helped lay the groundwork for increased violence, in part because many students don't truly appreciate what it means to repeat and thus desensitize the meaning of chants like "globalize the intifada" and declarations that Palestine should run "from the river to the sea." Says the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs: "Calls to 'globalize the intifada' are not calls for civil disobedience, general strikes, or negotiations. They are calls for the murder of Israelis and Jews around the world and must be taken seriously by governments and law enforcement agencies." Like CU-Boulder, the University of Denver was home to an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters last year, and Rovner said there were repeated confrontations between the protesters and Jewish students walking to class. Rovner has a close friend who often participated in the Boulder walks. "These are precisely the kinds of things that cause terrorist groups to pick up weapons to attack people," Rovner said. "When you heighten the rhetoric of hatred and demonize one country and claim to only be opposing an ideology, you are almost inevitably going to see action based on that rhetoric." Jewish scholars and community leaders say the attack on Boulder was frustratingly predictable given the sharp rise in antisemitism sparked by the war in Gaza, with escalating rhetoric, protests and demonstrations nationwide, particularly on college campus and college towns. In response to those warnings, President Donald Trump specifically targeted pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, launching investigations into 40 campuses that his administration has accused of not doing enough to protect the Jewish community from participants. Security and extremism experts say a significant factor in driving violence is that many protesters draw no distinction between someone who is Jewish and someone who supports Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza, which is home to about 2.1 million Palestinians. In April, a man firebombed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's house hours after a Passover celebration, telling police he targeted Shapiro over "what he wants to do to the Palestinian people." And on May 22, a man shot and killed a young couple outside the Lillian & Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. "Free Palestine," the man shouted. "I did it for Gaza," he later told investigators. "These attacks and many more in recent months ‒ on campus, at Jewish institutions and this time at a peaceful gathering here in Boulder ‒ have targeted people whose only 'offense' is that they are Jewish. Or someone thought they were Jewish. Or they were standing as allies alongside Jews," the Rocky Mountain Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to USA TODAY. A report released last month found that antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2024 hit a record high for the fourth consecutive year. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security on June 5 issued a security alert warning that more antisemitic violence could be coming. "The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict may motivate other violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators with similar grievances to conduct violence against Jewish and Israeli communities and their supporters," the security agencies said in the warning. "Foreign terrorist organizations also may try to exploit narratives related to the conflict to inspire attacks in the United States." Survivor returns to site of the attack Run for their Lives organizers say they remain undeterred as they gear up for this weekend's march. "This didn't happen in a vacuum. It is the result of increasingly normalized hate, dehumanizing rhetoric, and silence in the face of rising antisemitism. But we will not be deterred," Rachel Amaru, the founder of Boulder Run For Their Lives said at a June 4 rally for the victims. "We invite everyone to join us, not just with your feet, but with open hearts and minds. Choose humanity over hate, curiosity over judgment, and learning over condemnation." The day after the attack, Turnquist returned to the scene of the attack to lay flowers and display a small Israeli flag on behalf of her injured friends. Still shaken by the attack just 24 hours earlier, she visibly shook as she recounted her efforts to help the victims. "I woke up this morning and didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to get out of bed and didn't want to talk to my friends who were calling me. But this is when we have to get up and stand up, and we have to push back," Turnquist said. And she promised to be back walking every Sunday until all the hostages are home.
