At 4:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, January 8, over a thousand Palestinian solidarity activists and families gathered outside the McNamara Federal Building in downtown Detroit for a rally and march to protest the Israeli siege and aggression against the people in Gaza.

The demonstration was organized by the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) in conjunction with the Palestine Office of Michigan and the Congress of Arab-American Organizations. The Detroit metropolitan area has one of the largest concentrations of Arab Muslim immigrants outside the Middle East.

At this protest, a couple dozen pro-Israel counter-demonstrators were separated from the pro-Palestinian activists by police-protected barriers. The demonstration was peaceful and there were no arrests.

All photographs were taken by Detroit photographer, Patricia Lay-Dorsey. Feel free to reprint them, just please credit the photographer.

To view the photos as a slideshow, click on "slideshow" in the top right corner of your screen.