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

It has been a little more than 2 weeks since there were more than 100 people who spoke during public comment at the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting to demand that the City of Grand Rapids declare itself a Sanctuary City and not allow the GRPD to cooperate with ICE.

This effort also included an Action Alert that was begun 3 weeks ago, which you can still sign and share.

There have been two Grand Rapids City Commission meetings since January 28th and in both cases, the Agenda packets for those meetings included a list of names that signed the Action Alert. Based on the two City Agenda packets, there have been a total of 3204 people to have signed on the demand that the City become a Sanctuary and commit to not allowing the GRPD to cooperate with ICE. I created a document with the 3204 names that support Grand Rapids being a Sanctuary City, which you can find here.

As I noted in my article after the January 28th GR City Commission meeting, specifically addressing a point by Commissioner Belchak, who said, “there were probably as many people who would oppose GR being a Sanctuary City, they just didn’t show up.” I wrote,  Now, there is no way she could know this, but the fundamental difference is that what was on display last night was a demonstration of organized people getting behind a specific cause. 

Well, now we know how many people who oppose Grand Rapids becoming a Sanctuary City, since it was part of the Agenda Packet for the February 11th City Commission meeting. There were 16 people who signed onto the statement included here below.

You can see for yourself what a weak and simplistic statement this is, which not only refers to immigrants as “aliens”, it centers the rule of law. The 16 people who signed on to this statement would probably have said the same thing when chattel slavery was legal, when Jim Crow laws were legal, when women couldn’t vote, when LGBTQ+ people could not marry, etc. Just because something is a law, doesn’t make it right. In Germany, the Nazi Holocaust was legal, plus the US military dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, vaporizing several hundred thousand, was legal. 

In the graphic near the top of this article, you can see the list of names that signed the letter opposing Grand Rapids becoming a Sanctuary. It’s a 200-1 ratio of those in favor of GR being a Sanctuary City. The numbers don’t lie.