We can’t let the people in power in Grand Rapids dictate the narrative about the 250th anniversary of the US

Last year Grand Rapids celebrated the 175th anniversary of it’s founding, where they got to dictate the narrative about how this city was founded on settler colonialism.

Since then Grand Rapids has created a committee called GR A250, which stands for the Grand Rapids America 250th anniversary of the US founding. I have written about this group, who makes up that committee and how they kicked off attempting to dictate the narratives about the founding of Grand Rapids and the US, with Doug DeVos and Mayor LaGrand giving talks about their sanitized version of the US.

The GR A250 group also has a Facebook page, where they primarily focus on celebrating the history of famous people and those in power. I have also written numerous critiques about what they are choosing to celebrate and contrasting that with a people’s history of Grand Rapids.

In one example the GR A250 wrote the following on their Facebook page:

The name “Grand Rapids” seems pretty obvious, but have you ever thought about what was here before our beautiful bridges and sleek skyscrapers?

It’s widely known we were called after the Grand River, now popular for fishing and tourism, which was vital for floating logs for the lumber industry in the early 1800’s. The area was dubbed “Grand Rapids” by the settler Louis Campau in 1831 when he purchased the land and the village was officially given it’s title in 1838.

Here was my response.

The point is that we cannot sit by and allow the likes of Doug DeVos and Mayor LaGrand to dictate our collective narratives about this history of Grand Rapids or the US, since we all know what kind of narratives they have already attempted to impose on us and will continue to impose on us if we don’t provide counter-narratives.

When it comes to the dominant narrative about the founding of the US, we all know what we were taught in grade school, particularly about the Revolutionary War. The Zinn Education Project has been working hard to provide teaching tools for educators and the community at large so that we can challenge the dominant narratives about the history of the US, specifically as it gears up for the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country.

The video below is a great example of how to create counter-narratives and the person who is speaking is the amazing Professor Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, founder and director of the African American Policy Forum.

Professor Crenshaw begins by saying:

The African American Policy Forum is proud to support Zinn Education Project’s Decolonize 1776 initiative. As our nation prepares to celebrate 250 years of the American Revolution, one thing is certain: however loud the fireworks are sure to be, the silences will be louder.

We’ve been reading from the same script for generations, a heroic story of brave colonists achieving liberty against all odds. But from the perspective of Black and Indigenous peoples, that script has always been written over a void.