Believe in Our City: Just another iteration of the same old business as usual brand in Grand Rapids

Have you all heard of the group Believe in Our City Grand Rapids? It started this past April with 150 leaders from across Grand Rapids came together to officially launch the city’s A250 initiative.

The A250 initiative is the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, which is doing the same program across the county, using the same fundamental talking points and messages. 

The A250 Steering Committee for Grand Rapids are the following people:

• Dale Robertson – Grand Rapids Public Museum
• Mayor David LaGrand
• Doug DeVos – Continuum Ventures, the investment management company for Doug and Maria DeVos https://www.continuumv.com/about 
• Gleaves Whitney – Gerald R. Ford Foundation
• JD Loeks – Studio C Celebration Cinema
• Joe Jones – Hekiman Group
• John Tuttle – Acrisure
• Juan Olivarez – Community Leader
• LaSandra Gaddy  – Grand Rapids Community Foundation
• Mark Washington – Grand Rapids City Manager
• Peter Meijer – Meijer
• Philly Mantella – President of GVSU
• Ron Gorman – Kent ISD
• Tina Freese Decker – Corewell Health
• Senator Winnie Brinks – Michigan 29th Senate District

Looking at this list of people I see several who are part of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, along with government collaborators and other community partners that are interested in maintaining business as usual politics in Grand Rapids.

The April event launch featured several speakers and some video that featured Rich DeVos talking about the city when he opened the Amway Grand Plaza in downtown. (Video link is here, with Rich DeVos comments beginning at 8:04 into the video.)

The MC for the video is Joe Jones, who was followed by Doug DeVos, which you can watch here. DeVos talks about how his partner in this A250 endeavor is Mayor LaGrand, which tells us more about LaGrand than it does about DeVos. Doug DeVos does his usual bullshit talk about how great we are and how we can do better. As a billionaire who has made his money off of the labor of others, and as someone who buys politicians on a regular basis, his words are hollow, even hypocritical. 

DeVos was followed by Mayor LaGrand. LaGrand praises Doug DeVos in his comments and says that Doug’s commitment to community is what we need. LaGrand also uses lofty language like equality, democracy and loyalty, but after months as Mayor of Grand Rapids I don’t see where this rhetoric matches up with his actions.

There are also community partners that are involved in Believe in Our City, such as:

• The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
• The City of Grand Rapids
• Doug & Maria DeVos Foundation
• Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce
• America250MI

Seems like the usual suspects, which not only promote business as usual, they promote their own interests, especially when it comes to the DeVos family and the GR Chamber of Commerce.

It seems to me that the Believe in Our City project is just another version of Thrive and Prosper. Grand Rapids is synonymous with the phrase West Michigan Nice. West Michigan Nice is an ironic reference to the fact that while people and institutions might appear to be polite, in reality they look down on people with contempt or paternalism, especially those people made vulnerable by systems of power and oppression. Therefore, the label of West Michigan Nice could aptly be given to the recently created group known as Thrive and Prosper. Yes, Thrive and Prosper. Sounds like a get rich quick scheme or a cult or just simply the logical outcome of how Grand Rapids deals with everything.

Doug DeVos embraces this same ideology and has been at the forefront of the Thrive & Prosper groups as well. I wrote about a Doug DeVos video he did with Thrive & Prosper, which clearly exposes his class privilege.

Lastly, it is important to note that the A250 project is connected to the 175th anniversary of the founding of Grand Rapids, which I also wrote about with the headline, What are we really celebrating on the 175th Anniversary of Grand Rapids? 

Besides my critique, which is based on what the group has made available online, here is  an additional critique by Peter TeWinkle who has attended Believe in Our City project events.

I went into the 2025 session of Believe In Our City with a good bit of skepticism. The theme was entrepreneurship. It’s one of those initiatives that flows naturally out of an individualistic, market-driven worldview. Still, I went for two reasons. First, because all the people who pull the levers of power would be there and I think it’s important to know what they’re talking about. Second, because I was hopeful to hear about some initiatives that would help people start or find support to sustain their businesses.

Unfortunately, “entrepreneurship” was meant in a much broader sense in this case; a sense captured in our city motto, “strength in activity.” We were highlighting go-getters, over-comers, and problem-solvers who embodied something like an “entrepreneurial spirit.” Doug Devos began the conference by wanting us to recognize that we were not alone in our desire to make change; that we needed to put our ideas into action; and that we needed to challenge one another to think differently. He said that we’ll continue to get the same results if we keep making the same decisions. 

Upfront and behind the scenes were organizations like the American Enterprise Institute, Acton Institute, Koch Industries, and the Stand Together Foundation. I recognize that some of my impression is the result of a difference of opinion. For example, while more than one speaker called out racialized narratives of inferiority imposed on people of color. The culprit for these narratives was not white supremacy, as I see it, but those who poison young minds with their obsession on oppression. A lot of what was presented felt condescending and some of it was downright deceiving (i.e. disparities in infant mortality rates are NOT resolved by marriage). The reality is there was only one perspective being promoted. The message is quite clear. The call is not for a collective exchange of ideas. The call is for all of us to embrace conservative ideals. 

The implication is that it’s the people who disagree with the individualistic, market-driven world view who are the ones who need to have their thinking challenged. They need to stop complaining and start believing. The obvious irony here is that it’s the DeVos’s who are the ones who make the decisions in Grand Rapids. They are the ones who have been putting their ideas into grand action for decades. If the city is not yet a flourishing place for all people, then whose decisions are we to point to if not the people who hold all the wealth and influence city staff? Whose thinking is it that needs to be challenged if not the thinking of those who have been reshaping this city to the neglect of so many? If systems change when, as one speaker suggested, behaviors in the system change, then whose behavior needs to change if not those who designed the system?

There were certainly good people doing good work represented on the stage. There are good employers in our city who genuinely want to create easier pathways to higher wages for their employees. I was grateful for voices such as Christina Keller, from Cascade, and Shana Washington, from Trinity Health, who acknowledged the benefits cliff as well as barriers to higher-paying employment (e.g. high costs of transportation, housing, childcare, and job training). They saw the limitations of our current system and they have some interesting ideas that they are putting into action. But, at the end of the day, it’s hard for me to “believe” that the thrive + prosper brand has any plan to address these systemic barriers. All the while, the number of people who are constrained by their income grows and Grand Rapids remains the worst metro area for African-Americans. But, we don’t have to talk about those things. We just believe.