Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids – Segment #10: Riverfront development and hosting far right speakers

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, it seems like a good idea to do a Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids segment.

There are three issues in this segment of Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids that I want to draw attention to.

First, is the issue of the Grand River Revitalization project, which just received $11 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as was mentioned in a recent Crain’s Grand Rapids Business article. The only people cited in this article are Mayor LaGrand, Rep. Hillary Scholten and Matt Chapman, executive director of Grand Rapids Whitewater.

Grand Rapids Whitewater has been leading the charge on this issue, so it is important to know who these people are. The people involved in the project are mostly connected to or are part of the business community, which makes sense since this primary function of the Grand River Revitalization project is about development along the Grand River and ways to financially capitalize on the new businesses, along with attracting tourists. Plus, their financial backers are primarily made up of those in the Grand Rapids Power Structure.

Then there is the connection to Grand Action 2.0, which produced a study back in 2021. The study also centers the development aspect along the Grand River. With this most recent study, we could discuss what is fundamentally wrong with the process and how it will disproportionately benefit the business class. However, instead to going down that path, I think what we all need to come to terms with is that the land that they are talking about developing along the Grand River, was taken from the Indigenous communities who had been living along the river long before Settler Colonialists arrived.

Maybe we need to start talking about how White Europeans who came to the area we now call Grand Rapids and how they: 1) disrespected Indigenous spiritual traditions by trying to convert them – the earliest Settler Colonialist were Catholic and Baptist Missions; 2) used legalized violence, also known as treaties to take land, such as the  Treaty of Washington in 1836, which allowed Settler Colonialists to acquire an additional 13,837,207 acres of land; and 3) to displace most of the Indigenous population through force, coercion and attrition.

In addition to taking this land, Settler Colonialists have been doing serious harm to the Grand River in this area over the past 2 centuries, by polluting the river with industrial waste, constructing damns, using the river for logging purposes during the heyday of the furniture industry and constructing a highway system that crisscrosses over the river. Now, Settler Colonialists want to re-develop the area along the river, despite the decades of harm we have done.

A second example to look at is that the West Michigan Policy Forum will be hosting a representative from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in May as part of their Freedom Series Luncheon. Jonathan Williams is President and Chief Economist of ALEC and used to work for the Tax Foundation, another pro-capitalism entity that also works closely with ALEC and the State Policy Network.

ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALECexposed.org.

The third and final example is a video that is posted on the Facebook page of GR& Riverfront, which is a page created by the following entities: City of Grand Rapids, Experience Grand Rapids, Grand Action 2.0, Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority (CAA), Grand Rapids Public Museum, Grand Rapids WhiteWater, Kent County, Pioneer, Progressive Companies, RDV Corp. and  Rockford Construction. GR& Riverfront posted another awful video, with bad lyrics that names the soccer stadium and the Amphitheater.