Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids – Segment #6: Downtown development projects are NOT made for us

One of the 10 principles of journalism is that it must serve as an independent monitor of power.

Now, I don’t claim to be a journalist, more of a media watchdog, but I do engage in movement media. Movement media is reporting and documenting what social movements are doing, which is what I have been trying to do with GRIID since 2009.

However, since I have been monitoring what I call the Grand Rapids Power Structure for nearly two decades, I thought I would start a new segment – Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids. 

The Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids segments will offer brief commentary on those who have power over others in this community. These segments will not replace my regular reporting on the Grand Rapids Power Structure, since those stories will offer more in depth writing. 

As we navigate a second Trump Administration it seems like a perfect opportunity to shed some light on the rich and powerful of Grand Rapids, or to frame it the way that radical media from the 60s and 70s would do regarding the Capitalist Class, using the phrase, “up against the wall motherfucker!”

GRIID has written about the group GR& Riverfront, which is essentially a platform to showcase development projects in downtown Grand Rapids, projects which have benefited from hundreds of millions in public money, but are primarily owned by members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure.

In a recent GR& Riverfront Email, they included a video with the title, August Construction Updates. 

This awful video, which has a bad 80’s-like song that accompanies it – which is probably AI generated – showcases the various development projects near the Grand River. Towards the end of the song the lyrics are:

The city’s growing,

yeah, we’re growing bold.

Turning dreams into stories

that will soon be told.

From the riverwalk to the sky so blue

It’s all coming together.

And it’s made for you!

I’m not really sure who the target audience is for this video, but it really is a poorly constructed propaganda piece. The main sell from this video, and what those who will profit heavily from the development projects that have used hundreds of millions in public money, is to convince people that all of these development projects are being made for us. That’s right, the Grand Action 2.0 crowd, the DeVos family and other members of the downtown business community all want us to buy the idea that all these new projects are for us.

Ok, ok, so let me get this straight. The members of the Capitalist Class, working in partnership with Grand Rapids and Kent County officials, using hundreds of millions of our tax dollars, are building the Amphitheater, the Soccer Stadium, improving Canal Park, upgrading the Gillett Bridge and giving the Public Museum a facelift are all supposed to be for us? Members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure are going to make a lot of money from these project, but they public is still going to have to buy tickets to concerts, tickets which will be managed by Live Nation, which is currently facing a federal lawsuit for price fixing. This means that tickets will not be cheap, as will tickets to attend professional soccer games at the Amway Stadium. 

So, I suppose that the powers that be asked us, the public, what it is that we want to see happen in Grand Rapids. No, so you didn’t get asked? Ah, maybe because those in the Grand Rapids Power Structure intuitively know what the public wants, so naturally they decided to build an Amphitheater and Soccer Stadium, using our money. Wrong!

I know a lot of people and most of the people that I know and have met over the past 45 years in Grand Rapids it that they want things like:

• Making a living wage. Recent data shows that 47% of Grand Rapidians are living paycheck to paycheck.
• Being able to live in a home or an apartment that they can actually afford.
• Not having to work two jobs just to survive.
• Not be harassed by the GRPD, especially when they come downtown.
• Live in a City that does not practice structural racism.
• Live in a City that does not welcome trans and queer people, especially those that do not embrace the entrepreneurial I can pull myself up by my bootstraps bullshit.
• Live in a City that doesn’t criminalize the unhoused.
• Live in a City that doesn’t shoot or beat Black people because they don’t comply.
• Live in a City that doesn’t criminalize those who engage in dissent.
• Live in a City that doesn’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and actually listens to immigrants who are demanding they stop collaborating with ICE.
• Live in a City that is more interested in attracting tourist than they are in supporting the people who actually live here.

Most people I know are tired of Grand Rapids City officials collaborating with the Capital Class to construct a a City that is essentially a playground for the Capitalist Class, a playground that will allow the rich to further expand their wealth. 

What is happening in downtown Grand Rapids is not for us and it never has been, from the first incursions of Europeans settler colonialists that stole the land from the Anishinaabe, right up to the present day with Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce-endorsed criminalization of the unhoused. And this reality will not change until we are collectively organized to change it, by any means necessary.