“It is Earth Day and right now one of the biggest Earth crises as well as humanitarian crises is the war on Gaza, the genocide that’s happening in Palestine,” said Alex Guindon, a member of the Lincoln Community Garden — a collaborative garden for residents of the NMU Lincoln apartments. “This is just a way for us to kind of mourn all the lives lost and all the destruction that’s occurred while also trying to raise awareness for it.”

Situated next to one of the most central places on campus, the Wildcat Statue, Guindon and others were making and placing small placards with the names of deceased children written on them. Going chronologically in age through the list of dead from youngest to oldest, Guindon said they ran out of placards at age 3.

“There’s so many,” she said, looking out on the hundreds of placards situated on the lawn.

At their supplies table, the attendees also had chalk available to write messages on the surrounding sidewalks for all passers-by to see. Messages included: “Abolish the military industrial complex,” “We want a revolution of peace and love” and the most controversial one: “Starbucks supports genocide” in front of the Jamrich Hall entrance doors closest to the on-campus Starbucks.

Individual placards with the names and ages of deceased children in Gaza are placed on the lawn in the center of NMU’s campus on Earth Day. (Journal Photo by Alexandria Bournonville)

Vigil attendee Ian Watson said a manager from the campus Starbucks told them to erase the store’s name from the sidewalk. The group complied, washed off “Starbucks” and replaced it later in the day with a different message.

“This is kind of part of our spreading awareness, just trying to put it all over campus so that people walking around see the messages and they know what we’re all about,” Guindon said.

Additionally, there were phone scanning QR codes on the supplies table that automatically created a draft of an email addressed to faculty members letting them know what pro-Palestine students desires.

Guindon said there are three requests, including a condolence email acknowledging how the conflict is affecting students, the lowering of the flag in honor of lost Palestinian lives and full disclosure of NMU’s financial agreements with Tel Aviv University in Israel.

“… Tel Aviv University manufactures and sells weapons to the Israeli government for the purposes of genocide,” Guindon claimed. “We want to make sure that’s all disclosed to students. They should know where their tuition dollars are going.”

According to TAU’s Innovation Labs website, tilabs.tau.ac.il, the university partners with Israeli defense contractor company Elbit Systems. Elbit Systems is also a consistent sponsor of TAU’s Technology Employment Fair and cofounder of the entrepreneurship conference at TAU, Innobit.

“Me and several other students … have been attempting to find information on the university’s expenditures and see where that money is going and it’s just a black hole,” Guindon said. “It’s really difficult to find that sort of information.”

Other participating student organizations included the Medicinal Plant Chemistry Club, Yoga Club and Mycology Club.