Mixed messages from a new Downtown GR Inc. video don’t reflect the economic and racial realities in Grand Rapids

There is a new 5 minute video about Grand Rapids, a video entitled GR Forward Together, and is hosted on the Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. YouTube page. 

The video is very well made, with great music, camera work and editing. Additionally, the video features primary BIPOC people in Grand Rapids, which is unusual, since Grand Rapids is such a white dominated city. The well made video is produced by ArtPeers.

The music that accompanies the video includes lyrics that talk about the marginalization and struggle of people, using lines like “from the wrong side of town” and “money for rent”, which reflects the reality of a large sector of the city, especially BIPOC communities. Last year I posted an article which used the ALICE data – ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – which said that in Grand Rapids 47% of the household in this city were living paycheck to paycheck.

At first view it was refreshing to see so many BIPOC people, several that I knew, in this video, but there were also a few people in the video that I found troubling. There was former Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss in a scene in the video, where she is getting on an elevator with Victor Williams. The irony of this is that while Bliss was Mayor she presided over the 2020 uprising, numerous demands from the community for more police accountability and calls to defund the GRPD, which I have documented. What is even more ironic, was that just weeks ago, Victor Willams was tased by the GRPD, then arrested for questioning why the GRPD had stopped several Black youth at gunpoint.

I also found it troubling that in three different scenes Rick DeVos, the sone of Dick and Betsy DeVos, is shown in the video also riding an elevator. Rick DeVos imposed ArtPrize on Grand Rapids, which has been detrimental to many artists and the art community, while at the same time it brought in tourists to spend money at hotels and other venues that are owned by the DeVos family and other members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure.

The video is also interesting in that it centers Black, Latinx and Indigenous contributions to the city, which is appreciated, but the video also centers downtown Grand Rapids, which has not primarily benefited BIPOC communities as a whole, unless members of those communities have decided to become allies with the local power structure to gain access to their funding. 

The reality is that in the last decade there have been billions of dollars invested in downtown Grand Rapids and much of those dollars have come from the public. The Amphitheater, the Soccer Stadium, Lyon Square and other developments have primarily benefited the already well to do members of the Capitalist Class in Grand Rapids, while the City has fundamentally ignored the plight of thousands of its residents. 

The wealth gap in this city is growing between the haves and have nots. Public demands around policing, affordable housing and sanctuary for immigrants living in fear of ICE violence have mostly been ignored by City officials. Thus, I am not sure this video honestly communicates the economic disparities and the systemic racism that is very much a part of Grand Rapids.