Alana Goodman writes for the Washington Free Beacon about an inconvenient fact for one high-profile Michigan candidate.
Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in the 2026 Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat, was on the board of an anti-police group when it organized Detroit protests that turned deadly in May 2020, public disclosure records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
El-Sayed served as a board member of Michigan United from 2019 through 2020, as its president in 2021, again as a board member in 2022, and as president once more in 2023, according to the organization’s tax disclosure filings. During this time, the group advocated for the movement to defund the police, compared cops to “slave catchers,” and organized a May 29, 2020, demonstration outside the Detroit Police Department’s headquarters that spiraled into vandalism and violence.
The event, cohosted with a litany of other left-wing extremist groups, drew an estimated 1,000 protesters. Though it began as a peaceful demonstration, it soon devolved into a riot, with activists defacing police cars and attacking officers with bottles, rocks, and other makeshift weapons, resulting in hospitalizations. At least 60 people were arrested, and one man was shot and killed after a gunman fired into the crowd, according to reports.
Michigan United used provocative language in its advertisements for the demonstration.
“Tomorrow we will rally in front of Detroit Police Headquarters to demand social and criminal justice,” the group wrote in a May 28, 2020, post on X alongside an advertisement for a “Rally and Picket for Justice Against Police Brutality” to “Jail Racist and Killer Police.” The ad included a list of demands, which include an “End and Abolishment of Mass Prison Incarceration” and the release of all “non violent [sic] offenders due to COVID-19.”
In X posts promoting the demonstration, Michigan United wrote, “No Justice. No Peace.”
