Thoughts on my experiences in Zapatista communities from 1997 – 2001
Editor’s note – What follows in this post are excerpts from journal entries that will be included in my forthcoming book, “Reversing the Missionary Position: Learning Solidarity on Mayan Time.
We have a very important weapon which the government does not have. That weapon is called dignity. With this weapon no one and nothing can defeat us. They can kill us or jail us, but they will never defeat us. EZLN Communique, Sept. 12, 1997 after the murder of 45 campesinos in Acteal, Chiapas
In 1997, nearing the 4th anniversary of the indigenous-led Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, I spent several weeks in the EZLN autonomous community of La Realidad.
December 9, 1997
We finally found the right truck to bring us to La Realidad. We left early so as to avoid la migra. While on the trek, the sun came up creating a panorama that was breathtaking. It warmed up quickly which made the ride more grueling. On the way, we were passed by two different military convoys. After six hours, we finally arrived and were questioned by representatives of the community on our possessions and credentials. After a brief rest and escape from the sun, we were welcomed by the other internationals, most of whom have been here for just a few days.
December 12, 1997
It is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The village is alive with marimba and pots brewing the day’s nourishment. We just got back from counting soldiers as they made their daily trek through the village to do what Lucifer only knows. Packed with shovels, picks, radios, and chickens, they rolled past on a wet morning. The rains came during the night to give us a more interesting mode of maneuvering in the compound.
December 17, 1997
With the clear sky today, the view is amazing. To the north and south of us are mountain ranges. The south being closer and the one that includes the road that the military descends and ascends daily. Apart from the community, there are no openings in the selva – nothing but thick green foliage of trees and other plant life that creates a lush canopy in the horizon. With no industrial pollution, the sky is incredibly clean and blue. At night, the stars burn so bright that it makes for a constellation seekers paradise.
December 31, Oventic, Chiapas
This morning was one of the more moving experiences of my life. At about 5:30 am, several thousand people gathered on the road in front of Oventic. Their mission was to walk to the nearest army base and tell them to leave … now! Many from DF and international observers were invited to participate.
After the first mile or so, we were greeted by another group marching from the south. We then took a side road that wove through the mountains to the army base. People carried signs that read, “Military Leave!,” “Fulfill the Accords of San Andres!,” “Release Political Prisoners!,” “Leave Already!,” and “Demilitarize Chiapas!”
The morning was cloud covered, but you could tell when the sun was rising as it gradually became light. One thing that was impressive was the level of order and discipline that the participants showed. After about an hour’s walk, we finally arrived at the military base. The crowd immediately began chanting at the gate. A few soldiers walked down carrying their rifles and the few in the guard post held their position. Then the group decided to move past the first set of barbed wire, by crawling under it. While some entered, others threw paper airplanes at the soldiers who stood their ground. Again, the “Zapatista Air Force” was called in!
People were now pressed up against the last gate, while others had panned out on both sides of the entrance, pressing up against the guard post structure. The chanting continued with statements such as, “Chiapas is not a barracks!” Then, catching the military and many of us off guard, the people forced their way onto the base.
Trudging through the mud, the hundreds of supporters had backed the soldiers up against the barracks, now chanting, “ ¡Hoy, Hoy, Hoy!” and “ ¡Zapata Vive!” The look on many of the young soldiers’ faces was one of disbelief as villagers began telling them the pain that their presence has caused their families.
After thirty minutes had passed, some of what appeared to be military officers came out to speak to the crowd. People kept demanding their immediate departure, and I overheard one of the officers tell a pleading man that they indeed were leaving today. The exchange between some of the villagers and the officer went on for some time, when all of a sudden, one of the communication antennas began to fall. I was able to turn quickly enough to capture it on film. The crowd cheered wildly as it hit the muddy terrain below. Later we found out that someone had cut the lines to prevent the soldiers from communicating for outside assistance.
At one point, one of the villagers got the crowd to quiet down as a declaration was read out loud expressing their demands. When the reading was finished, as if on cue, the people began to sing the Zapatista anthem. By this time, more than two hours had passed and people eventually began filing out of the base and back to Oventic.
The video below provides a visual representation of the December 31st, 2000 journal entry.
GRIID end of the year in review: Part IV – Documenting the radical history of Grand Rapids
In Part I of the GRIID end of the year review I looked at my efforts to monitor the local news in 2025, particularly around critical issues like immigration, policing and the Schurr trial. In Part II I wrote about the work of monitoring the Grand Rapids Power Structure. In Part III I looked at the social movement work of Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE. Today I want to share a summary of all the stories I posted about the radical history of Grand Rapids.
I posted 20 separate stories regarding the rich history of radical action in service of social justice in Grand Rapids. Eight of those posts were specific to a collaborative efforts I started earlier in the year with Fountain Street Church, specifically to highlight some of the Great Lecture Series speakers they have hosted over the past century. I have posted talks by Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael, James Meredith, Dick Gregory, Amy Goodman, bell hooks, Jane Fonda, Jonathan Kozol and Norman Thomas, all of whom spoke at Fountain Street Church.
There were several radical GR history posts that centered on immigration justice and sanctuary work, including the following:
19th anniversary for the largest immigrant justice march in Grand Rapids
I also did two posts that focused on the contributions to radical change in Grand Rapids by two women, Voltairine De Cleyre and Viva Flaherty.
Then there were two posts that talked about white supremacists and imperialists coming to Grand Rapids. One post was about the 1925 KKK march that took place in Grand Rapids and was given a police escort on the 4th of July. The second example was a recounting of the numerous visits that Dick Cheney had made to Grand Rapids while he was Vice President in the George W. Bush cabinet. This post centered on how there was organized resistance every time Cheney came to town.
I also posted two stories about the Community Historians Workshops that began in September. These workshops are a project led by GVSU professor Leanne Kang who has been doing interviews with people who attended the Grand Rapids Public Schools since the 1960s. The second post was done after the workshop in November.
I also did a stand alone post on the City of Grand Rapids celebrating the 175th anniversary of its founding. In that post I wrote:
As a foundational framework, it is vital that we come to terms with the fact that Grand Rapids, like virtually all US cities were founded on what Native scholar Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz calls Settler Colonialism. Settler Colonialism in West Michigan is the result of a larger White Supremacist strategy that included legal means (treaties), forced relocation, spiritual violence (role of churches) and cultural imperialism, most radically seen with the policy of putting Native children in boarding schools with the goal of, “Killing the Indian, Saving the Man.”
I end that article by saying:
Grand Rapids is nothing more than a playground for the rich and powerful, which get whatever they want. Grand Rapids is a deeply racist city, which practices gentrification, housing injustice, and gives the GRPD carte blanc to suppress and repress any effort to demand justice. Grand Rapids is more committed to expanding capitalism and maintaining business as usual, than it is to centering the most marginalized and practicing justice. This is the legacy of not coming to terms with Settler Colonialism.
I believe it is vitally important that we all learn from the insurgent radical history of Grand Rapids, a history which is rarely taught and too often marginalized by the history of great white businessmen. For a deeper look at radical Grand Rapids history, go to my Grand Rapids People’s History Project site and read my book, A People’s History of Grand Rapids.
GRIID end of the year in review: Part III – Documenting the work of Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE
In Part I of the GRIID end of the year review I looked at my efforts to monitor the local news in 2025, particularly around critical issues like immigration, policing and the Schurr trial. In Part II I wrote about the work of monitoring the Grand Rapids Power Structure. Today I want to look at the organized social movements in Grand Rapids in 2025.
There was no shortage of protests in 2025. In fact, every week there has been something happening in Grand Rapids during the past year, protests that have centered on opposing the Trump Administration. There are too many protests and actions to name, so I will limit this post to just talking about what I believe has been the most impactful social movement that currently exists in Grand Rapids, the immigrant justice movement led by Movimiento Cosecha, with support from GR Rapid Response to ICE.
Even before the end of 2024, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE working organizing trainings and assemblies to mobilize people to take action to resist ICE. The first big action of 2025 was on January 20th, but despite cold and snowy weather over one hundred people showed up to the Cosecha action on the same day as the Trump Inauguration.
Behind the scenes, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE had campaigns to pressure the GRPS, the City of Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt sanctuary policies that would make it more difficult for ICE to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants.
I also was writing posts entitled, Lessons on the history of US Immigration Policy, which began on January 29th. I decided to write this series because too many people are unfamiliar with this history and often think that the repressive US government anti-immigration actions began with Trump. Here is a link to a slide presentation I do to illuminate this history.
Because the Cosecha/GR Rapid Response to ICE campaigns with the City and the County included an online action alert, I had been tracking them, especially after a City Commissioner made a comment about hearing from those who did not support the sanctuary policy demands in an article headlined, 3204 people are already on record demanding that the City of Grand Rapids become a Sanctuary City compared to 16 people who oppose standing up for immigrants.
At the same time that all of this was happening, Movimiento Cosecha was doing their own Know Your Rights trainings with immigrant communities, trainings that provided concrete tactics to be better prepared to avoid ICE as well as developing plans for what to do if ICE did apprehend a family member. GR Rapid Response to ICE was also continuing to do trainings in Grand Rapids, but was also getting requests to do them in places like Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Newaygo, Muskegon, Grand Haven, Lansing and Saugatuck, since there were no other existing Rapid Response to ICE groups established.
In March, Cosecha/GR Rapid Response to ICE went to another City Commission meeting to pressure city officials on the sanctuary demands, this time with a disruptive action. Cosecha then began planning for the upcoming May Day actions, which saw the GRPD threaten to arrest people before the march even began. On day two of the May Day actions Cosecha hosted a cultural event at SECOM, where SECOM publicly announced they would be a sanctuary space for undocumented immigrants. This was just days after LincUp made the same commitment. Then on day three of the May Day actions, Cosecha engaged in a disruptive action at Walmart, what they referred to as a Salsa Shutdown.
On May 15th Cosecha hosted a people’s assembly, which laid out plans for movement work throughout the rest of the summer. Two weeks later ICE did a raid at the local ISAP office which saw Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE mobilize people to prevent further ICE arrests.
The two groups also made it known that for future appointments they would be offering accompaniment to any who had to go to the ISAP or ICE offices. For the rest of the year GR Rapid Response to ICE accompanied dozens of immigrants during their appointments, where no one was arrested or detained.
In late June Cosecha and GR Rapid Response held an ICE out of Grand Rapids rally, which the local news reported on, but in limited fasion. In July Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE held a protest in front of the home of Mayor LaGrand, since he has consistently dismissed the sanctuary policy demands from these two groups.
Later that month, people attended at Kent County Commission meeting to also pressure the commissioners to adopt the same sanctuary policies. Then on July 30th, for two hours people demanded that the City of Grand Rapids adopt the 6 sanctuary policies, which also included some street theater that disrupted the meeting, leading to threats of arrest by the GRPD.
In August, Cosecha held another assembly with more plans to finished out the year of resisting ICE and demanding immigrant justice. GR Rapid Response to ICE also began doing daily patrols in several different neighborhoods, since immigrants were telling them that ICE was most active in the mornings in those neighborhoods. The patrols have been done with small teams driving around looking for ICE activity. In September, Mayor LaGrand said some awful stuff about Cosecha and the sanctuary policy demands, which was followed up by a forum hosted by Cosecha where all City and Kent County Commissioners were invited to hear directly from immigrants affected by ICE violence.
Because the low commissioner turnout, Cosecha then began a campaign to boycott the businesses owned by Mayor LaGrand beginning in October. This action was followed up by a second action that was at another Long Road Distillers location in November.
In early October, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE also received word that there might be possible raids at GRPS schools, with ICE looking for immigrant minors. Then in late October, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE did a tour of shame, which involved showing up at the homes of state representatives that have co-sponsored legislation that would criminalize anyone showing compassion to undocumented immigrants.
In November, No Detention Centers Michigan, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE held a Day of the Dead vigil to commemorate immigrants that have died in ICE detention centers all around the US.
There were also two actions at the Kent County Sheriff’s office after Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE learned that the Kent County Jail was putting holds on immigrants for ICE. The first action was on November 2nd with the second action taking place on November 20th.
In December, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE attended an event hosted by Mayor LaGrand, which resulted in him giving a verbal commitment to talking with city commissioners about adopting sanctuary policies.
I have also posted several narratives from GR Rapid Response to ICE volunteers sharing stories about working directly with people affected by ICE violence. In October one volunteer talked about collaborative work with No Detention Centers in Michigan. A second personal narrative centered around how ICE has terrorized a Guatemalan family. A third example was from an accompaniment with an immigrant to court, with one final example from December with an accompaniment at the ISAP office.
GR Rapid Response to ICE also responds to requests from community groups to do crowd safety for people who are afraid of ICE coming to community events for immigrant communities. Lastly, when ICE separates families, GR Rapid Response to ICE provides Mutual Aid for families, such as transportation, material support, legal counsel and raising money for families who have little or no income coming in. Since September GR Rapid Response to ICE has been able to raise just over $36,000 with every cent going directly to immigrant families.
There is a whole lot more that can be said about the work of Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE, but these groups have been doing amazing work over the past year with lots of volunteers stepping up to raise money, accompany immigrants, engage in patrols, monitoring ICE activity, showing up when ICE alert calls come in, participating in protests and other direct actions, working with community groups to provide sanctuary spaces and educating countless people about US immigration policy and how we can all resist ICE terrorism. Thanks to everyone who has engaged in this work!
Rep. Hillary Scholten is out of touch with the realities of what working class families face every single day
In her weekly Monday Minute email for December 22nd, Rep. Hillary Scholten wrote:
Michigan’s minimum wage will rise to $13.73 an hour on January 1, giving workers across the state a pay increase and helping families better keep up with rising costs.
Now, some people might be cheering that the minimum wage will go up to $13.73 on January 1st and I understand why some people might cheer. However, people cannot live off of $13.73 an hour.
If you make $13.73 an hour and work 40 hours a week, that translates into $28,558.00 gross pay a year. After local, state and federal taxes are taken out you are now under $25,000 a year left to pay your bills. If you are a single person and live in an apartment that costs $1500 a month, that means you will be paying $18,000 a year in rent. Add to that utilities – electric, gas, trash, and phone and possibly internet and you are looking at another $500 a month (this is a very low estimate) that will add another $6,000 a year.
Between rent and utilities you are now up to $24,000 a year and that doesn’t leave you money for transportation, groceries, health care costs and leisure activities. In other words, making $13.73 an hour will NOT help families keep up with rising costs. This is why Rep. Scholten and most politicians are completely clueless and out of touch with what working class individuals and families are facing on a daily basis just to survive.
Stop insulting working class people Rep. Scholten. Scholten just voted for the $900.6 Billion US military budget, as I noted two weeks ago. The FY2026 US Military budget that Scholten voted for will translate to $2.01 billion leaving the 3rd Congressional district, her district, in tax dollars just to pay for US militarism and imperialism. Imagine of that $2.01 billion stayed in the 3rd Congressional district. It could pay for 248,043 Public Housing Units for 1 Year, according to the National Priorities Project or lots of other really beneficial items that working class families would benefit from.
Again, stop insulting your constituents Rep. Scholten, especially since the majority of your constituents are working class individuals and families.
GRIID end of the year in review: Part II – Monitoring the Grand Rapids Power Structure
In Part I of the GRIID end of the year review I looked at my efforts to monitor the local news in 2025, particularly around critical issues like immigration, policing and the Schurr trial. Today I will focus on the monitoring I do regarding the most powerful families, institutions and organizations in Grand Rapids, what I refer to as the Grand Rapids Power Structure.
There were a total of 73 stories that I posted on GRIID that were specific to the GR Power Structure, and I began the year with a story about who was behind the dark money in the 1st Ward race for City Commission in 2024.
With the growing resentment that is directed at the Trump Administration, I wrote two articles to try to get people to make the connection to who are the biggest supporters of Trump. One article in early February was entitled, Why are we not more pissed off with the DeVos family regarding the shit show that is the Trump Administration? I followed that article up a month later with an article entitled, Why are we not focusing as much attention on the Billionaires in our own back yard as we are on Musk and Bezos?
I also started a new segment called, Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids. There have been 8 different segments run, focusing on local members of the GR Power Structure. The first one was posted on March 12.
It has been interesting to see which Grand Rapids groups are actively opposing the Invest in MI Kids ballot initiative, which would increase taxes for millionaires and billionaires and use that money to fund public education. The first article I wrote to expose those opposing an increase in taxation for millionaires and billionaires was in July. This was followed by another post on August 25th, November 12th and December 15th. In each case it was the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and the West Michigan Policy Forum.
I also wrote other articles about the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and how they are influencing policy right here in Grand Rapids, my critique of the GR Chamber’s history timeline, the GR Chamber-created group Housing Next, and the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce’s secret meeting to discuss immigration policies.
In addition, I wrote my annual critique of Crain’s Grand Rapids Business 200 most influential people, which is really a critique of the GR Power Structure.
Of course, monitoring the Grand Rapids Power Structure wouldn’t be complete without including all the things I have written about regarding the DeVos family in 2025. Here are 11 articles I wrote about the most powerful family in West MI.
DeVos family always looking to expand their wealth, this time with high end bourbon and whiskey
Believe in Our City: Just another iteration of the same old business as usual brand in Grand Rapids
Why is Rep. Scholten celebrating a DeVos created charter school?
Further evidence of how much the DeVos family has their tentacles in all things Grand Rapids
9 years ago the GRPS Superintendent was praising Betsy DeVos: What is she up to now?
I write about the Grand Rapids Power Structure because it is absolutely essential that we know what they are doing, especially if we want to resist the local oligarchy and practice radical change in this city. Tomorrow I will write about social movement work in Grand Rapids in Part III.
State board OKs $561M tax incentive to billionaire Amway families for 3 tower project: Mayor LaGrand celebrates this decision
The Michigan Strategic Fund Board approved $561 million in state tax incentives for the DeVos and Van Andel three tower project that hopes to break ground in the summer of 2026, according to a recent Crain’s Grand Rapids Business article.
The unanimous decision by the Michigan Strategic Fund Board should not surprise anyone who pays attention to this group, which is made up of a few government appointment officials, but mostly corporate representatives. In fact, there are two people who are based in Grand Rapids that have a direct connection to the DeVos and Van Andel families. One is Randy Thelen, President and CEO of the Right Place Inc., which has an Amway Corporation and Van Andel Institute representative on their Board of Directors. The other person is Dan Meyering, CEO of Trillium Investments, which not only just expanded their control over apartment complex ownership in West MI, plus he is also part of the West Michigan Policy Forum, which the DeVos and Van Andel families were instrumental in creating in 2009.
The other aspect of this story has to do with how Mayor LaGrand responded to the news. First, it must be pointed out that LaGrand attended the Michigan Strategic Fund Board meeting and spoke during public comment. According to the Crain’s article, LaGrand stated, the 700 housing units proposed in the project will “achieve an objective that’s near and dear to my heart, which is to get people living in our downtown core.”
What makes this all the more absurd and infuriating is that the development will include 76 condos – which will no doubt only be affordable to those with deep pockets and a 130-room hotel, with rates that start at $400 a night. But wait, it gets even more disgusting. There will be 595 market-rate apartments that will cost the following:
For a studio apartment, that would be $2,643 per month, $2,833 for a one-bedroom, and $3,401 for a two-bedroom.
When the Mayor says that he wants people to live in downtown Grand Rapids, he left out the fact that the three towers project will be specifically be for members of the professional class, as they are the only ones likely to afford the cost of the apartments and the condos that will be built. This is also not surprising, since Grand Rapids officials have been consistently pushing to attract “talent”, meaning people who will demand higher salaries and people who will be more likely to embrace a more normalized, business as usual way of seeing the world.
The billionaire DeVos and Van Andel families certainly want to attract these kinds of people, people who celebrate capitalism and don’t want to be bothered by the rabble masses who are more prone to dissent and challenge the increasing power and influence of the local oligarchy that continues to use public money to expand their wealth. Shame on Mayor LaGrand for endorsing this billionaire theft of public funds!
GRIID end of the year in review: Part I – Local News coverage of ICE, GRPD and the Schurr trial
We are getting close to the end of 2025, which means I will be providing some end of the year reviews of the major themes that GRIID has documented. I will be looking at how GRIID tracked the Grand Rapids Power Structure, along with social movements in this community. Today I will focus on my work of monitoring local news.
There were a total of 40 posted that I did that fall under the category of dissecting the local news. Interestingly enough, the first post from January 7 was a WOODTV8 story where they provided former January 6th insurrectionist participant Ryan Kelley with an uncritical opportunity to present why he took part in the January 2021 action.
There were 14 times that I dissected how the local news reported on immigrations matters, with the majority of those stories having to do with how they reported on what Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were doing to resist ICE repression. There were also several stories where I critiqued how the local news reported on what the Mayor of Grand Rapids or Police Chief Winstrom had to say about ICE. In each of these stories the local news took the Mayor and Chief Winstrom at their word. One example from WOODTV8 centers Mayor LaGrand’s comments during a City Commission meeting, despite the fact that for 2 hours during public comment people condemned ICE terrorism.
I also wrote a couple of responses to how local news was hyping the GRPD-centered show on HBO/MAX, which was nothing more than copaganda.
There were also several times where the local news provided Chief Winstrom a platform to misinform the public, stories where the local news acted like stenographers rather than reporters. Here is an example of a story that I critiqued, with the headline, GRPD creates counter narrative about incident from last weekend, while Chief Winstrom claims the cops have regained community trust.
In April it was the 3rd anniversary of the GRPD killing of Patrick Lyoya, so I provided a critique of the local news coverage for that anniversary coverage.
I also monitored the local news coverage of the stories leading up to the trial of Christopher Schurr, the GRPD cop who shot Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head. The headline of that article was, Local news coverage leading up to Schurr’s trial has been influenced by his lawyers, experts, a failure to provide community voices and a pro-GRPD bias.
Lastly, I did a six month study of local news coverage around several issues, with policing being one of the dominant themes of local coverage, along with courtroom coverage because of the Schurr trial. Here is a summary of the trial coverage from the GRIID Report.
While there might have been 46 stories created regarding the upcoming trial of Schurr, there have been two things that stand out. First, the local news media missed opportunities to do a deeper dive or investigation into issues like whether or not the racial make up of juries will have any influence in the outcome of this trial. See the recent report, Race and the Jury, from the Equal Justice Initiative.
The local news also could have created stories by talking with people and organizations in the community that have been organizing fund raisers for the Lyoya family, marches, protests, even those who have been arrested by the GRPD for demanding justice for Patrick Lyoya.
Second, most of the 46 stories generated over the past two weeks have been recycling the same narratives about the GRPD killing of Patrick Lyoya some 3 years ago. This recycling of story narratives is a disservice to the public and it disproportionately reflects a bias that favors the GRPD and how policing is done in Grand Rapids. If I was someone who hadn’t already formed an opinion about what happened the day that Schurr shot Lyoya in the back of the head, I would mostly likely be swayed by the most recent pre-trial coverage.
Once the Schurr trial had begun, I wrote a series of articles on the GRIID blog, that also centered aspects of the trial that the local news media either did not address or addressed in a superficial manner. Here are those GRIID blog posts:
As the jury prepares to render their decision in the Schurr trial, why is there so little attention around police killing civilians and cop convictions? https:// griid.org/2025/05/05/as-jury-prepares-to-render-their-decision-in-the-schurrtrial-why-is-there-so-little-attention-around-police-killing-civilians-and-copconvictions/
Responses to the mistrial of ex-cop Schurr who killed Patrick Lyoya – Part I https://griid.org/2025/05/11/responses-to-the-mistrial-of-ex-cop-schurr-whokilled-patrick-lyoya-part-i/
Responses to the mistrial of ex-cop Schurr in the death of Patrick Lyoya – Part II https://griid.org/2025/05/12/responses-to-the-mistrial-of-ex-copschurr-in-the-death-of-patrick-lyoya-part-ii/
Responses to the mistrial of ex-cop Schurr in the death of Patrick Lyoya – Part III https://griid.org/2025/05/13/responses-to-the-mistrial-of-ex-copschurr-in-the-death-of-patrick-lyoya-part-iii/
Chief Winstrom is now saying that Patrick Lyoya was killed because the GRPD was understaffed https://griid.org/2025/05/15/42056/
There are reasons why the Kent County Prosecutor will not re-charge Schurr for murdering Patrick Lyoya https://griid.org/2025/05/22/there-arereasons-why-the-kent-county-prosecutor-will-not-re-charge-schurr-formurdering-patrick-lyoya/
Mayor and City Manager statement after County Prosecutor’s decision to not re-charge Schurr for the killing of Patrick Lyoya praises the GRPD and wants lawful and civil responses from the community https://griid.org/2025/05/26/mayor-and-city-manager-statement-after-county-prosecutors-decision-to-not-re-charge-schurr-for-the-killing-of-patrick-lyoya-praises-the-grpd-and-wants-lawful-and-civil-responses-from-the-comm/
I include these articles because they communicate two things. First, these articles demonstrate the reality that local commercial news agencies don’t question systems and institutions of power. In fact, I would argue that they begin with the premise that the GRPD and the local courts are both necessary and provide essential services to the residents of Kent Count. The other conclusion to draw is that it underscores the point that when commercial news agencies don’t hold power accountable, the public needs other sources and other news or news analysis sources, especially around critical issues like public safety.
The company at 545 Michigan in Grand Rapids that already has a contract with ICE, will now be using bounty hunters to track down immigrants for ICE
Since June 4th, the public awareness around the existence of the ISAP office in Grand Rapids has increased, since ICE agents arrested and detained immigrants who were coming to their scheduled appointments at the 545 Michigan St. office building.
Since then, GR Rapid Response to ICE has been providing accompaniment to people who have appointments at that office, along with those who go to the ICE office at 517 Ottawa NW, just north of the 196 overpass.
A lot more people have also learned about what an ISAP office is. ISAP stands for Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which is a program operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that provides an alternative to detention for individuals in immigration proceedings.
What is instructive about the ISAP office in Grand Rapids, is that it is run by BI Incorporated, which is a subsidiary of the GEO Group. The GEO Group is one of the largest private prison entities in the world, which also runs prisons that are specifically ICE Detention Centers.
In addition, BI Incorporated also sells location tracking devices, such as ankle bracelets or wrist bracelets that people have to wear, so that ICE or other cops can monitor their whereabouts.
Think about it this way. The people who come to appointments at the ISAP office in Grand Rapids, are in the ICE system. They have to access the BI SmartLINK app, which allows “for real-time communication between officers and clients,” according to the BI Incorporated page. If they have a wrist or ankle bracelet, that is also provided by BI Incorporated. When they come to an appointment at the ISAP office in Grand Rapids, that is owned by BI Incorporated. Lastly, if they are detained by ICE agents while coming to their appointments, which is what happened on June 4, they will be sent to detention, which will soon mean that they will be sent to the GEO Group ICE detention facility in Baldwin, Michigan.
BI Incorporated will now be using Bounty Hunters
On December 19th, The Intercepted reported that BI Incorporated has a new contract with ICE to use bounty hunters to track down immigrants for ICE. The article states:
Records show ICE has already paid BI $1.6 million, with the potential for the contract to grow to as much as $121 million by the time it concludes in 2027.
It was also recently reported that a Bulgarian man died at the GEO Group owned North Lake ICE Detention Center in Baldwin, Michigan, supposedly of “natural causes.” The MLive article failed to mention a more relevant aspect of the Bulgarian’s case, which was reported by the ABC affiliate in Chicago.
“Gantchev was one of hundreds of people that a federal judge in Chicago ordered released on bond last month, after his warrantless arrest was flagged as possibly violating the Castañon Nava consent decree in place. In court records, federal officials indicated Gantchev’s release was not considered a high risk to public safety.
Gantchev’s wife said the order initially renewed their hope that he would be released and could seek further medical treatment, as he was diabetic.
But when the order was blocked by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court, Gantchev’s wife said her husband Nenko faced a difficult decision: Submit to voluntary removal from the country back to Bulgaria, or stay in custody at North Lake, hoping he would eventually be granted bond.”
Last week, I wrote about accompanying someone to the BI Incorporated-run ISAP office in Grand Rapids, where they once again threatened those of us who accompanied an immigrant going to their appointment, harassed that same immigrant and also took pictures of us while standing outside the building where the ISAP office is located, which is 545 Michigan in Grand Rapids.
What this all means:
- The GEO Group makes massive profits from ICE contracts to run detention centers where several people have already died in 2025 while in a GEO Group detention center.
- The GEO Group subsidiary BI Incorporated has a massive contract to run Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) offices all around the US and in Grand Rapids.
- BI Incorporated sells tracking devices like ankle and wrist bracelets, along with an app called BI SmartLINK, all of which allow ICE to track immigrants.
- Now BI Incorporated stands to make an additional $121 million in a contract with ICE to use Bounty Hunters to also track down immigrants.
This is how Capitalism functions, by profiting off of the cruelty inflicting by companies against immigrants. Welcome to America!
What accompanying an immigrant to their ISAP office appointment in Grand Rapids looks like
Editor’s note: For transparency purposes I was representing the work of GR Rapid Response to ICE in my capacity of accompanying someone to their appointment.
Two weeks ago I shared a story about a young man I had done an accompaniment with to a court appointment. Today, I want to share a story about someone whom we did accompaniment with to the ISAP office here in Grand Rapids.
There were two of us from GR Rapid Response to ICE that agreed to meet someone who wanted us to accompany them top their ICE contract appointment at the ISAP office, located at 545 Michigan, near downtown Grand Rapids.
The young woman who requested accompaniment also came with another woman whom they had befriended. However, there must have been some miscommunication, since while we walked to the office we saw someone on the 3rd floor of the building looking out at us and waving. We motioned to them to wait for us to come in but by the time we got there they were already buzzed into the office.
I say buzzed into the office, since the private company that has a contract with ICE to manage these appointments now has the door locked and the only way to get in is to be buzzed in by the office manager. It wasn’t like this before at the ISAP, but ever since GR Rapid Response to ICE has been offering to accompany people to their appointments at the 545 Michigan office, the company that manages the ICE contract has significant changes to which people they allow in.
In June I wrote about the ISAP office, saying:
What is instructive about the ISAP office in Grand Rapids, is that it is run by BI Incorporated, which is a subsidiary of the GEO Group. The GEO Group is one of the largest private prison entities in the world, which also runs prisons that are specifically ICE Detention Centers.
In addition, BI Incorporated also sells location tracking devices, such as ankle bracelets or wrist bracelets that people have to wear, so that ICE or other cops can monitor their whereabouts.
Since GR Rapid Response to ICE has been providing accompaniment for people going to their appointments, BI Incorporated has added a buzzer for people to get in and they included signage, which is reflected in the image included above, making it clear that they don’t even want people in the building who are there to support people who have appointments. If anyone else comes into the building the ISAP office will call the GRPD and have people removed from the building.
The Honduran woman that we provided accompaniment today told us that they left Honduras because someone with the drug cartels was pressuring her husband into getting involved in drug trafficking. This is not something that he wanted to do, but he also knew that it was risky to say no to them, so they fled their country and eventually came to the US. Her husband had applied for asylum, which means he is here until the courts decide whether or not he is worthy of being granted asylum. Being granted asylum seems unlikely, since the US has had cozy relations with Honduras for years, since the Obama Administration supported the coup. The coup created tremendous instability and corruption in the country, which is why so many people are fleeing, with many coming to the US.
The Honduran woman that we accompanied to her appointment came out after just 15 minutes, but told us that the ISAP office staff was very rude to her and was asking questions about us, like “who are those people with you?” She chose not to share information with the ISAP staff person, but did say that they had taken our picture from the 3rd floor window.
This woman was very upset by the interaction and also shared with us that the ISAP office staff wanted to see her work papers, since the Honduran woman had recently found a job. She told them that she would bring it to the next meeting in February, but then shared that she was just going to make a copy of her work papers, since the ISAP office people took her passport, and only gave her a copy of it, which we believe to be illegal.
This was also the first time that the Honduran woman had interacted with GR Rapid Response to ICE and was glad to hear about the Mutual Aid work we do, along with offering sanctuary to people who no longer feel safe where they are living.
I spoke with her briefly, since I have spent some time in Honduras and knew the area she was from. My sharing that bit of information helped her to feel a bit at ease for the few minutes we were talking. She then shared how grateful she was for our presence and will call us before the next appointment. She then gave us both a hug and went on her way.
The other GR Rapid Response to ICE person I was with said this experience was a bot intense and that she couldn’t imagine how undocumented immigrants are feeling when coming to these appointments. Most people we have done accompaniment with have a feeling of dread and are treated with suspicion. So much for the sentiment etched onto the Statue of Liberty.
”Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
This is just part of the work that GR Rapid Response to ICE does. If you want to get involved you can contact them through their Facebook page or by sending an Email to info@grrapidresponsetoice.org.
New Report released on sexual abuse by Catholic Priests in Grand Rapids, my own experience, and what the Bishop said and didn’t say
On December 12th, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel released a report that covered a 75 year period of reported sexual abuse by Catholic Priests in the Diocese of Grand Rapids.
The 336 page report is hauntingly difficult to read, especially since there were lots of names I recognized in the report. When I first moved to Grand Rapids in the early 1980s, I was a youth minister at St. James Catholic Church in Grand Rapids. The following year I went into the Catholic seminary and attended Aquinas College as part of the process of becoming a Catholic Priest.
The priest at St. James who invited me to work there was Fr. Charles Antekeier, one of the priests named in the report. Antekeier was a rather conservative priest who was part of the Catholic Charismatic movement, which adopted some fundamentalists religious views, but maintained a deep commitment to Rome and the church hierarchy.
I loved the work with the youth, both at the grade school and through the congregation, but I soon realized that Fr. Antekeier was a rather rigid leader and would not tolerate anyone who questioned him. A friend of mine at the time, who was head of the Peace & Justice committee at the church had organized an event to hear from two local priests who had just come back from Nicaragua to talk about the role that some catholic priests were playing in the revolution there. Fr. Antekeier was not pleased by this event and made it a point to invite Nicaraguans to speak at a mass the following week. However, the Nicaraguans he invited were part of the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, which was a reactionary group that supported the Nicaraguan dictatorship that had been overthrown in 1979.
I was then told by Fr. Antekeier that I needed to go to Ann Arbor and spend a week at the Word of God community, so I could be presented the real truth about what was happening there. I refused, saying that I already had work commitments with the youth of the church. Fr. Antekeier then told me to pack my stuff and leave that same day, as I was fired from my job.
In 2015, Fr. Charles Antekeier was permanently removed from doing any ministry work, since it was revealed that while he was pastor of St. James Church, he abused youth in the parish in the early 1980s. I remember seeing a news story about this and then read the formal statement from the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese.
I was not surprised by this revelation, since I always had a suspicion about Antekeier’s relationship to the families at St. James, especially since his authority could not be questioned. However, I do struggle with the fact that this priest was probably abusing children while I was working at the church and I had no idea it was taking place.
The details about Fr. Antekeier in this new report are deeply troubling. There are 30 pages alone of testimony from survivors in this report, with victims being abused by Fr. Antekeier as both children and adults.
Bishop’s Response
On December 15th, the Catholic Bishop for the Grand Rapids Diocese wrote a letter and made it public here at this link.
The two-page letter has some sincere comments, particularly regarding victims/survivors. At one point the Bishop writes:
All alleged conduct involving a minor occurred before 2002, the year the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops enacted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. While the report highlights the failings of priests over a 75-year period, it lacks proper context, especially in failing to acknowledge how the Church has supported victim-survivors and taken appropriate and immediate actions to address reports of clerical sexual abuse, especially since 2002. The AG report gives evidence that these safeguards are working.
While this comment seems reassuring, I don’t personally take comfort in it. There are two things that I find troubling from both the report and the Bishop’s response. First, there isn’t any real acknowledgment or exploration around the fact that Catholic priests have tremendous power in the communities they work in. Catholic priests are still seen by too many people as authority figures who often do not like to be questioned or challenged, especially in public. What I wrote about my experience with Fr. Antekeier was about the power he had and even though I was not sexually assaulted by him, he still wielded tremendous power over someone who dared to question him. The Catholic Church (and churches in general) need to address the formal and informal power that clergy have in this society, if we are serious about addressing abuses committed by clergy.
The second problem with I have with Bishop’s response is his comment in the last sentence, “The AG report gives evidence that these safeguards are working.” The Bishop provides no hard evidence that the abuse by priests isn’t continuing. If you say that there are no new reports then you are perpetuating one of the dynamics about the power that priests continue to have. Those who have a documented history of abuse are not the only problem, since there are likely priests who have not yet been caught or held accountable for their actions. Just because people are not coming forward doesn’t mean clergy abuse has ceased in the Grand Rapids Diocese.
Lastly, it is worth noting that in the Bishop’s letter he does not have any strong language condemning this history of sexual abuse by priests. The only language he uses is calling the abuse a “crime and a sin.” This kind of language is not forceful enough and the Bishop should make it clear that he condemns this kind of violence, both physical and spiritual, since priests can easily coerce and manipulate children and adults they mean to harm.
The Bishop also completely ignore the trauma caused by such abuse, trauma that has life-long implications for individuals and families who have been impacted. The Catholic Church has not responded adequately to this issue and too many priests have not been held accountable for their actions and abuse of power as priests. People who have been harmed deserve better, indeed they deserve more.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 