The uses and abuses of International Women’s Day in Grand Rapids: From Bread and Roses to Corporate sponsorships
On Wednesday, March 8th, people around the world will celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). However, there is a growing tendency to ignore the origins of IWD and merely use the day or Women’s History Month as a marketing opportunity or to acknowledge the accomplishments of women, even if they conflict with the spirit of International Women’s Day or simply promote a vague notion of identity politics.
International Women’s Day evolved out of a growing effort amongst women’s and working class groups to fight for more equality for women at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1908, 15,000 women marched in New York City demanding shorter work hours, better wages and the right to vote. In 1909, the Socialist Party of America designated February 28 as the first National Women’s Day, which was to be celebrated on the last Sunday of every February.
In 1910, at the Second International Conference for Working Women, there was a proposal to have an international women’s day, where women around the world would press for their demands on the same day. The proposal was not adopted until the following year and International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated in several countries around the world. However, something happened just one week later that would galvanize this new international movement.
On March 25, a fire began at the Triangle factory in New York City. It was common practice for factory owners to lock the workers inside until the work day ended and because of that practice 140 women, most Jewish and Italian immigrants, burned to death in that fire. The international women’s movement, labor and socialist movements mobilized around the world to mourn these women and to organize for worker and women’s rights.
For years after the first, the Triangle factory fire became the focus of International Women’s Day and gave birth to the Bread and Roses Campaign. The Bread and Roses Campaign was begun by workers (mostly women) who went on strike at a textile factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This strike was organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) with the slogan, “We want Bread, but we want Roses too!” In other words, the history of International Women’s Day is rooted in the working class struggle, not in some nebulous notion of gender equality.
Unfortunately, International Women’s Day is often celebrated or acknowledged by organizations and entities that are NOT rooted in the same history and the same struggle that IWD was founded on. For instance, MLive posted an article on Tuesday about a Wednesday march and rally to commemorate International Women’s Day.
The MLive piece says that the nonprofit group SowHope is hosting the rally and march for International Women’s Day. SowHope’s approach to dealing with women’s issues, appears to be rooted in the usual non-profit world framework, which is to offer support without challenging systems of power and oppression, based on their history.
What is worse is that the only two speakers that have been identified for the rally are GVSU’s President Philomena Mantella and WGVU Public Radio personality Shelley Irwin. If SowHope was interested in honoring the history of International Women’s Day, they would be inviting women who are fighting economic, social and political justice, such as workers being exploited or women led movements, like Movimiento Cosecha GR or women who are part of labor unions fighting against exploitation.
Instead, we can see from the event, which has its own Facebook page, there are opportunities for corporate sponsorship. Corporate sponsorships are the exact opposite of what International Women’s Day has historically been all about. Then again, this is just another manifestation of West MI Nice!
As an alternative, there is an event at the corner of Fulton and Division for International Women’s Day, which is being hosted by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which also has their own Facebook event page.
The Grand Rapids Business Journal invited a front group for the Koch family to speak in Grand Rapids recently
Last Friday, the Grand Rapids Business Journal posted a Guest Column by David J. Bobb, who is president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute.
Bobb’s guest column was not particularly compelling, but it was based in part on his visit to Grand Rapids on Election Day in November 2022. The president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute was speaking to “business and community leaders” (none were identified) on the importance of civics education.
In the article, Bobb talked about why it is important for business owners to hire people who have what he called are “soft skills,” such as having a functioning understanding of how government works and the basic principles and values that the United States was founded on. In fact, most of the article provided information about a, “2021 report from the Association of American Colleges and Universities asked employers which education skills they highly value.”
In many ways, the column by the president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute seemed odd and just left me with lots of questions. Within minutes, my suspicions about the Bill of Rights Institute were confirmed. What the Guest Column in the Grand Rapids Business Journal did not reveal to readers, was the fact that the Bill of Rights Institute was founded and financed in 1999, by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, which is a Virginia based nonprofit launched by Koch Family Foundations that promotes a teaching a conservative interpretation of the Constitution in schools, according to the site SourceWatch.
Now the Guest Column from the president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute begins to make sense. Of course it makes sense for far right groups like the Koch Family Foundations to create a fund groups like the Bill of Rights Institute, because it provides a great cover to share a slanted view of civics and promote aspects of US history that fit a particular ideology framework.
If you look at who makes up the three member Board of Directors for the Bill of Rights Institute, you can see how how deeply involved the Koch Brothers are. The three board members are:
- Mark Humphrey, Senior Vice President of Koch Industries
- Ryan Stowers, Director of higher education programs at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
- Todd Zywicki, Professor of Law at George Mason University
It should be noted that Todd Zywicki, besides being a board member of the Bill of Rights Institute, also is involved in other far right institutions such as the Federalist Society, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Goldwater Institute, and the Hoover Institution.
In many ways, one could argue that the Bill of Rights Institute is an Astroturf organization. Astroturf refers to apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.
It’s unfortunate that the Grand Rapids Business Journal was not transparent about the fact that the Koch Brothers are using the Bill of Rights Institute as front group to promote their own ideological agenda. However, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Grand Rapids Business Journal even invited the Bill of Rights Institute to present to an audience of business owners, since Capitalism and a right-leaning/conservative worldview go hand in hand.
Police collaborators and apologists: The Acton Institute provides a platform for iCI Nation to promote their agenda
I have been monitoring the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty since the early 1990s. Most of what they talk about is a defense of Capitalism, the Judeo-Christian tradition, with a regular critique of all things that are politically left.
It is rare for the Acton Institute, their writers, or those who host their podcast, the Acton Line, to address issues or topics that are specific to Grand Rapids or West Michigan. This was not the case with their most recent Acton Line podcast for March 1st, which has the following text included as a narrative to compliment the guest on the show.
When people think of interactions between the police and the public these days, for many, the first thoughts that come to mind are of horrific incidents like the deaths of George Floyd or Brianna Taylor. Here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Acton Institute is headquartered, a police officer is currently awaiting trial in the shooting death of 26-year old Patrick Lyoya.
These incidents, and the rifts they have created between members of the community and members of law enforcement, highlight some of the challenges of modern policing. How can we bridge the divide between the police, who serve and important and necessary function in our society, and the public, to whom they are ultimately responsible.
Enter iCI Nation, an organization based here in Grand Rapids that brings communities together by uniting citizens, law enforcement & community organizations to foster a healthy environment for community to build trust with law enforcement. iCI is lead by founder and executive director Jennifer Franson, who in just two years has facilitated over 100 connections with law enforcement and community building new relationships and trust. This momentum has continued to snowball as her membership has quadrupled in size and now has the FBI coming to her to ask for help building relationships with their community.
GRIID has written several article about iCI Nation in recent years, specifically because of their role as apologists for the GRPD, plus the fact that the local news media doesn’t question or challenge the role they play and the racist nature of their work. 
The interview that the iCI Nation founder had with the Acton Line host wasn’t terribly engaging. Jennifer Franson talked about how she was going through a divorce 10 years ago, and that is when she decided to get involved in support cops. Franson also said that she wanted to organize activities to say “Thank you” to the cops and other acts of appreciation.
The Acton Line interviewer also didn’t ask challenging or engaging questions. In fact, his questions were so superficial that it almost seemed that he recognized that Franson didn’t have the capacity to articulate any of the complexities about the function of policing in the US. What follows are some of the questions posed to the iCI Nation founder and her responses.
Acton Line – What are some of the activities that you do to support cops? Franson talked about hosting events at the 4 largest police departments in the county, prayer meetings, connecting people with cops, and promoting all the good that cops do in the community. Like most of Franson’s responses she did not have any real evidence to support her claims, only anecdotes.
Action Line – What are cops concerns? Franson said that Cops just want to connect with people. She also acknowledged the death of Patrick Lyoya, but used the phrase, “Officer involved shooting here in Grand Rapids,” without even mentioning Lyoya by name. She thinks that the cops get a bad rap in the news media, again without any imperial evidence. GRIID has been documenting how the local news media has been reporting on the GRPD, which is overwhelmingly positive, especially when the GRPD sends out Media Releases, where the local news media just parrots what the GRPD has to say. There was one thing she did say that was instructive. Apparently there are 35 Chiefs of Police in this area and they meet monthly to work to, “keep me blissfully ignorant of how they keep me safe,” said Franson. Franson also said that these Chiefs are already planning for how to respond to the outcome of the trial for the former cop, Christopher Schurr, who shot and killed Patrick Lyoya.
Acton Line then asked about the current sloganeering, like defunding the police. What are communities in Grand Rapids asking from cops? Franson claimed that people in the communities she has talked with (she doesn’t name specific communities) if they want to connect with cops. Franson believes that they want to connect with cops. She then went on to say that the Defund groups don’t sit down with cops, they stay at odds because they don’t want to move forward.
Acton Line – How are communities changing and how is policing changing? Franson believes that the police are much more into community engagement, that they are truly community based. She also stated that current policing efforts are more wholistic and valuing the life of everybody, even through she once again provided no evidence to support such claims. It is certainly true that the GRPD has been emphasizing more community engagement, but that is a direct response to the Movement for Black Lives, especially after the George Floyd uprisings and the GRPD shooting of Patrick Lyoya. In fact, cops always do the “we want to connect with the community” mantra when more and more of the public is questioning or challenging their functions as violence workers. Franson did say that the FBI has a “community outreach specialist,” which she met, who said they are interested in having the iCI working with them to build relationships. This is something that should concern activists and organizers who have been challenging the GRPD and the Kent County Sheriff’s Department in recent years.
Acton Line – Are we asking for too much from cops, by dealing with social and economic issues? Franson said that more staff is definitely needed. She then said that the cops play basketball with kids on the street, as if that addresses socio-economic issues. In fact, cops playing basketball is about two things. First, by playing basketball with them, cops want to normalize with marginalized kids that they too are just like them, which is of course ridiculous. The second benefit of cops playing basketball with kids is to win their trust, specifically so that they can get kids to share information, to snitch and assist cops in surveillance work.
Acton Line – What is one thing you wish from people, who have not had a positive experience of the cops, for them to see cops differently. Franson says she does ride alongs with the cops regularly and then said “real live violence is ugly. “People lie or act crazy when interacting with cops. I can’t believe how calm and respectful cops are when interacting with people who are lying or being crazy.”
Acton Line – How did Clergy on Patrol come about in Grand Rapids? Franson said that Clergy on Patrol came about because of iCI Nation, who visited a similar program in Kalamazoo, and then bringing that information back to the GRPD. She said there are 5 Pastors and 2 Rabbis who serve as Clergy on Patrol.
Acton Line – What is the biggest thing you have learned from doing this work? Franson said she is a “big faith girl, so I just keep my eyes on God. Doors keep opening, like with the FBI.”
Acton Line – For people in the community, people who are skeptical, what is one thing you want them to know and understand to change how they view cops? Franson said that she thinks that people need to know that they have a voice at the table. You have to be willing to put yourself out there in order to be at the table. People need to be moving forward and not just yelling. This last line, was of course a dig at the defund the GRPD types and those who have been in the streets in recent years either demanding greater police accountability, defunding of police budgets or calling for the abolition of policing.
What we can learn about this Acton Line interview with a police apologist and collaborator with state violence workers, is that it is consistent with the anti-Black Lives Matter stance that the Acton Institute has taken in recent years. In addition, we should see the Acton Line interview as further evidence that they have a commitment to business as usual worldview and will support any group that normalizing state repression that comes from cops. Providing the founder of the iCI Nation a platform on their podcast means that will increase the likelihood that Franson’s group will not only gain moral support from the Capitalist Class members who make up the Acton Institute, it could lead to additional funding for the work that Franson does through collaboration with cops in Kent County and the FBI.
What the end of COVID Food Assistance benefits means for millions in America and in West Michigan
As of March 1st, the emergency allotment for individuals and households enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will end in 32 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
That means recipient households will see their monthly grocery allocations reduced by at least $95, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In daily terms, that equates to trimming the roughly $9 per-person average to about $6.10. And the change comes when food prices in January increased 10% over the same month last year.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also reported that the pandemic-related SNAP increase kept millions out of poverty.
The temporary benefits pushed back against hunger and hardship during COVID. A study estimated that EAs kept 4.2 million people above the poverty line in the last quarter of 2021, reducing poverty by 10 percent ― and child poverty by 14 percent ― in states with EAs at the time. The estimated reduction in poverty rates due to EAs was highest for Black and Latino people.
This data shared by the center on Budget and Policy Priorities is sobering, but it also omits the fact that millions of Americans are food insecure and that number will only increase with the reduction in SNAP benefits as of March 1st. This means that more people will have to rely on food banks and pantries in order to be able to feed themselves and their families.
On Wednesday, WOODTV8 interviewed Ken Estelle, the president and CEO of Feeding America West Michigan to get his thoughts on the reduction in SNAP benefits. Estelle said:
“People have been relying on this for the past three years. Unfortunately, we think there are going to be some folks that are surprised by this. Even going back to what it was before, food costs more. So even what they used to get may not go as far as it used to. And over the last year, 2022, the inflation impact has really hit us. And so we’ve seen a continual month-on-month increase of the number of people coming for help, I think mainly driven by the inflation element. Recently, we’ve done an analysis and we’re actually able to take $1 and make 12 meals out of $1 now. So, we’ve really been looking at how can we stretch our dollars to feed as many people as possible? We know we’re actually helping more people today than we were a year ago.”
The President and CEO of Feeding American West Michigan acknowledges that the reduction in SNAP benefits is a bad thing. However, most of what he has to say, which is centered on the increase in people relying of food pantries and the increase in food costs due to inflation – both of which are true – are rooted in a food charity model.
Estelle invites people to be involved in supporting emergency food programs and food pantries, but he says nothing about the root causes of the national food insecurity problem. The President and CEO of Feeding American West Michigan doesn’t say anything about the national food insecurity problem because he advocates a Food Charity response instead of a Food Justice response.
While I support people being able to access food pantries and other forms of food assistance, it is not a long term solution. In fact, Food Charity is a false solution, both because it doesn’t address root causes of the problem of food insecurity and because it can deceive people into thinking that volunteering at a food pantry or supporting the latest food drive is enough.
What food charity organizations need to start doing is address root causes of the problem of food insecurity and offering up more than “just donate your canned goods.” Here are a few suggestions for how groups that do Food Charity work can move in the direction of doing Food Justice work:
- It would be important for any and all groups who do food triage work to acknowledge that just providing food assistance on a regular basis does not solve the problem. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t practice mutual aid and assist people in a time of crisis. We absolutely should practice mutual aid when we can. However, it is not enough to just provide charity, we must work towards transformative justice.
- Once organizations can acknowledge that hunger is a much larger and systemic economic and racial problem, then they can, with other like-minded groups, begin to develop multi-pronged strategies to fight for economic and racial justice.
- Food Charity groups should end partnerships with corporations and families which are part of the local power structure, which supports candidates who pass policies that create more poverty.
- Food Charity groups should participate in a Living Wage campaign at the city/county level. These groups should call for people to make a Living Wage. In Grand Rapids, the average cost of rent in this market is such that people would have to earn at least $20.02 per hour if they were working full time. Therefore, it seems that Food Charity groups should be advocating that people earn $25 an hour, which would not only allow people to afford the food they need to feed themselves and their families, it would force us to have a much more substantial conversation about economic policy and the larger wealth gap in this community.
- Wealth re-distribution in the form of reparations. Those families, communities and corporations which have exploited workers and communities for decades, should be required to pay back the communities, families and individuals they have exploited. This is especially the case in the African American community, which has been exploited for centuries and where reparations should begin. Food Charity organizations should call for reparations.
- Food Charity organizations need to adopt clear racial justice policies that recognize historical racism and how it currently is manifested in West Michigan. For instance, how is it that the people who pick most of our food in West Michigan, migrant farmworkers, have a high rate of poverty?
If Food Charity groups began to move towards a Food Justice model and then take these kinds of stances collectively, they would be a formidable force that could create the necessary changes needed to address longterm solutions to food insecurity. However, until these things happen, thousands of families in West Michigan, particularly in BIPOC communities, will continue to experience food insecurity. If Food Charity groups are unwilling to move in the Food Justice direction, then we have to pressure them into doing so, plus we need to create our own models for how to practice and promote Food Justice and Food Sovereignty.
Why is the State of Michigan using public money to subsidize the production of electric vehicles?
On March 1st, MLive reported that the Michigan Senate approved $629.7 million for the Ford EV Project. If you add to that the $1 billion in subsidies (although the State of Michigan likes to call it “incentives”) that the State of Michigan provided to General Motors last year for EV production, that puts the total at $1,630,000,000 in public money that has gone to two of the largest US multinational corporations.
Now, politicians, businesses and others will say that this “investment” by the state of Michigan is important and necessary, since it will create jobs. Now I always thought that Capitalism and Capitalists didn’t like the government interfering in the economy. The so-called Free Market will make the investment, since they will make it back many times over in sales.
Last year, when The Guardian wrote a piece about the $1 Billion going to GM in subsidies, they addressed the issue of job creation. In that Guardian article, GM claims that the new investments in EV vehicle production would result in 4,000 new jobs.
The article goes on to say:
But what’s good for GM may make less sense for state taxpayers, a Guardian analysis of the deal finds. Once again large corporate subsidies – paid for by taxpayers – look set to benefit the corporations while leaving taxpayers out of pocket.
Michigan has effectively agreed to compensate GM more than $310,000 for each job created, but during the next 20 years, the positions are unlikely to generate more than $100,000 in tax revenue in the very best case scenarios.
Collectively, the plants’ jobs will probably return less than $300m of the state’s $1b investment when contributions to state income, sales, property and other taxes are factored in.
The question then becomes, where does the rest of the public subsidy go? We know exactly where it goes, it goes into the coffers of GM.
Now, let’s compare the amount of public money that is going to GM and Ford to say affordable housing. In January, Governor Whitmer announced that the State of Michigan would contribute $176.6 million to build or improve nearly 700 affordable housing units across 17 projects from Cheboygan to Detroit. However, let’s be clear here, the housing money will not go to people to purchase housing, it will go to developers, both private and non-profit, for them to build or rehab 700 housing units. Those who would be moving into these 700 housing units would still be paying rent or a mortgage.
Wouldn’t it be a more direct benefit to people who are housing insecure, to give public money to families to be able to purchase a home. For instance, if we used the $1,630,000,000 in public money that has gone to GM and Ford and gave it to families to purchase say a $200,000 home, which is a moderate cost for a house these days, how many families would be able to buy a house? For the amount of public money given to GM and Ford over the past 12 months, 8,150 families could buy a $200,000 home. This would also mean that these families would have no mortgage, since the house would be paid for and they could then spend money in other areas, which would also stimulate the economy.
Just imagine, what a fundamentally radical shift this would be in how public money could be used. Plus, this is just public money that the State of Michigan could provide in one year, based on the subsidies to just two corporations. It is never a question of whether or not there is enough money to fund housing for all or a single payer health care system, but it is a question of priorities. We all need to radically imagine other possibilities and then organize to win those possibilities.
32 years ago, the US committed a major war crime in Iraq, which led anti-war activist to take action in Grand Rapids
On February 27th, 1991, the US military committed war crimes against Iraqis in what is famously known as the Highway of Death.
The highway I am speaking of was Highway 8, which went from Kuwait to Iraq. At the very end of the US military assault on Iraq in what the US military referred to as Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi troops were retreating on Highway 8.
Baghdad radio had just announced Iraq’s acceptance of a cease-fire proposal and, in compliance with UN Resolution 660, retreating Iraqi troops were ordered to withdraw to positions held before August 2, 1990. Then US President George H. W. Bush, was not happy about this announcement, so after consulting with military personnel, he gave the green light to what was to happen next.
As Iraqi soldiers were beginning to retreat on Highway 8, US fighter pilots began to carpet bomb the caravan of vehicles that were on the road in retreat. In a post-Operation Desert Storm report on US War Crimes, the Lebanese-American journalist Joyce Chediac, reported, “U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” said one U.S. pilot.
Chediac went on to write:
“Every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.”
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who was also involved in the US War Crimes documentation, made it clear that Iraqi soldiers were not the only ones killed in the US bombing of Highway 8 that day. Clark wrote, “Many of those massacred fleeing Kuwait were not Iraqi soldiers at all, but Palestinians, Sudanese, Egyptians, and other foreign workers.”
The murder of civilians is always a War Crime, according to the Geneva Convention, but so are the murder of combatants, if they are not actively engaged in fighting.
“Persons taking no active part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.” (Common Article 3 to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions of 1949)
The photo I included above, with the Iraqi soldier burnt alive in his vehicle, was an image that was widely shared after the Highway of Death incident. My friend and comrade in the resistance to Operation Desert Storm, Karen Henry, put that picture on foam board and took it whenever she spoke about the US War in the Gulf or US policy in the Middle East.
Another war crime that received attention later, was the revelation that the US military was putting snow plows on the front of Abrams M1 tanks and burying Iraqi soldiers alive in the desert. The independent media had reported on this earlier, but here is a link from a New York Times article later that year. It was this crime that got the attention of several anti-war activists in Grand Rapids.
In late June of 1991, the Grand Rapids Press announced that George H.W. Bush would be coming to town to celebrate the 4th of July. It was also reported that the same kind of tanks that were used to bury Iraqi soldiers alive in the desert just months earlier, would also be in a parade that Grand Rapids would be having for President Bush.
Three Grand Rapids anti-war activists decided that they would protest not only Bush’s visit, but the tanks that were used to violate international law, which would be in the parade. You can see from a GR Press photo below, that the three activists tried to lay down in front of the tanks, but were quickly stopped by Secret Service and local cops.
The three activists decided to challenge their arrest by using International Law as a defense. The group went to trial in November 1991 and defended themselves. The day before the trial the court change the judge, who would no longer allow them to use International Law as a defense, despite the fact that they had submitted a 40-page brief.
Judge Christensen would not allow them to use an International Law argument, so the three activists just tried to get the jury to hear their side of the story. The three activists were charged with blocking a roadway. However, the jury did not find the three activists guilty, since the cops dragged them out of the way so fast that the parade never missed a beat.
The Grand Rapids City Attorney was so upset, since he was beaten by three young activists who defended themselves. Unfortunately, there was no other resistance to the Gulf War or its aftermath, like the ongoing US bombing of Iraq in the No Fly Zones that took place during the entire 8 years of the Clinton Administration, right through the first two years of the George W. Bush administration, until another war/invasion of Iraq took place in March of 2003.
On Friday, Michigan Senator Gary Peters announced that he has re-introduced bipartisan legislation to help American businesses combat human rights abuses.
The Combating Human Rights Abuses Act, SB4101, the bill would also direct the Commerce Department to offer guidance to U.S. exporters to help them avoid doing business with foreign entities that may be implicated in forced labor or human rights violations, according to a Press Release by Senator Peters.
At first glance, the idea seems solid, but after reading the language of the bill I have lots of questions about The Combating Human Rights Abuses Act, SB4101.
First, the language of SB4101 only names one country that violates human rights or labor rights, which is China. Most countries on the planet violate some form of labor or human rights, such as Israel, which violates the human rights of Palestinians on a daily basis. (See reports from the Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem) If one spends any time on the websites of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International you will find dozens and dozens of human rights and labor abuses in countries that US business have dealings with.
Second, in Senator Peters’ Press Release he names China and Russia as human rights abusers. This is instructive, since the Biden Administration has been ramping up anti-China and anti-Russian rhetoric over the past two years. Again, why only identify these countries and not countries that the US has close relations with such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, etc.?
Third, at the end of SB4101, “the language states, make clear that the guidance is for advisory purposes and that the Department of Commerce is not responsible for certifying the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in the guidance.” Therefore, there will be no enforcement or certification, it is mere an information sharing mechanism for US business that do business abroad. In other words it is just for show or a performative piece of legislation that has no teeth.
Fourth, why doesn’t the proposed legislation include US businesses that violate human rights or labor abuses abroad? We know that most apparel companies utilize sweatshop labor abroad, as do sneaker companies such as Nike, which United Students Against Sweatshops have been documenting for years. What about US corporations that engaged in harmful environmental degradation abroad, whether it is toxic waste, clearcutting rainforests or fossil fuel pipelines that have tremendous negative impact on ecosystems and humans in countries across the globe? Why isn’t Senator Peters speaking out or proposing legislation that prevents US businesses for human rights and labor abuses abroad?
Fifth, why are there no real standards on how US businesses violate human rights here in the United States? Look at the harm done by companies like Norfolk Southern in Ohio recently, or US businesses that use prison labor, discriminate against the LGBTQ community, or have a legacy of racial discrimination.
Like so much of US policy, the legislation that Senator Peters has introduced only blames other countries for human rights abuses, doesn’t have an enforcement mechanism, doesn’t name countries the US has cozy relationships with and doesn’t apply the same intended scrutiny on US businesses in general, whether they do business abroad, within the US or both, this legislation appears to be both biased and meaningless in its execution.
Acton Institute writer claims that the Reagan Administration was the embodiment of the Sermon on the Mount phrase, Blessed are the Peacemakers, in new book review
Last week, editor of The American Spectator, Paul Kengor, who has written numerous books about former US President Ronald Reagan, reviewed a new book for the Acton Institute’s blog, entitled, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.
In his book review, Kengor makes the claims that the Reagan Administration peacefully won the Cold War, embracing the principle of “peace through strength.” Kengor concludes his book review by writing:
All along, Clark, like Reagan, was buoyed by a strong sense, literally a spiritual sense, of what he and Reagan called “the DP,” the Divine Plan. They believed that they had established a policy and plan to peacefully end the Cold War—a plan that they hoped and prayed was God’s will. It worked, and the rest is history.
The Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union was anything but peaceful. If the Acton writer thinks that US military build up during the Reagan years, the “peace through strength” principle didn’t have any negative consequences, then Kengor is either ignorant or more likely, ideologically compromised.
The massive US military build up during the Reagan years (which has been a constant right up to the present), meant that the US was deciding to make weapons of war instead of investing in the country’s infrastructure, education system, health care, housing and renewable energy, just to name a few. However, the more absurd notion that Kengor puts forward is that the US won the Cold War peacefully.
From the late 1940s through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, both countries invested heavily in militarism, while their domestic populations suffered. And while the US and the former Soviet Union didn’t directly engage in warfare with each other, especially during the Reagan years, the US government certainly engaged in proxy wars, support for dictatorships, Low-Intensity Conflicts, massive weapons sales abroad, the use of CIA, Green Berets and DEA agents to undermine foreign governments or to help facilitate narco-trafficking on a global scale.
Here is but a brief summary of the US militarism and Imperialism during the Reagan years:
Afghanistan – the Reagan Administration provided billions of dollars in US military aid in the form of training, advisors and weapons, to a group of Islamic insurgents that became the Afghan Moujahedeen. Amongst the Afghan insurgents was Osama bin Laden, along with several other future members of the Taliban and other fanatical right wing groups. The Reagan Administration wanted to undermine the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and force the Soviet government to get caught up in a Vietnam – like protracted war.
Iran/Iraq war – The US was providing weapons and military aid to both Iran and Iraq during the 1980s in an attempt to destabilize the region. Some of the weaponry provided to Iraq WMDs, specifically chemical weapons, used against Iranian civilians and the Kurds.
Israel – The Reagan Administration continued to policy that began in the mid-1970s, which was to provide Israel the largest amount of US military Aid to any single country annually. The Israelis used the US military aid to brutalize the Palestinians and displace them from their lands, thus making way for the expansion of Israeli Settlements. In addition, the US provided key diplomatic and military support to Israel for their invasion of Lebanon, resulting in an estimated 23,000 civilian deaths.
Grenada – The Reagan Administration invaded Grenada to get rid of a leftist government, killing 400 Grenadians and 84 Cubans, mostly construction workers.
Cuba – The Reagan Administration maintained the decades long US embargo of Cuba, along with numerous attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro, a massive disinformation campaign and the ongoing US occupation of Guantanamo, Cuba, where the US maintained a military base.
Nicaragua – The Reagan Administration was incensed by the Sandinista Revolution that took power in 1979. The government provided US military Aid to the former Somozan National Guardsmen, known as the Contras, which regularly attack civilians, farming cooperatives, health clinics and Christian-base communities. When the US Congress cut off aid to the Contras, the Reagan Administration engaged an illegal drug and weapons trade that also involved Iran, in what later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
El Salvador – The Reagan Administration continued what began during the Carter years, which was to provide $1 million in US military aid on a daily basis to the death squad government, which was run by the Arena Party. Tens of thousands of Salvadoran civilians were murdered during the Reagan years, including numerous Christian clergy and other religious workers.
Guatemala – The Reagan Administration supported a series of military dictatorships, most notably Rios Montt. According to Amnesty International, the Rios Montt regime engaged in a genocidal campaign against the Mayan people of Guatemala, with thousands murdered, tortured, disappeared and displaced.
Honduras – The Reagan Administration deeded to expand the US military presence in Honduras in the 1980s, turn that country into a US military base providing more immediate US military support for the wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The US also supported the Honduran death squads known as the 316 Battalion during the Reagan years.
South Africa – The Reagan Administration supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa during the height of the global anti-Apartheid movement.
Angola – The Reagan Administration supported the brutal government of Jonas Savimbi, who was head of the UNITA Party in Angola.
Libya – The Reagan Administration engaged in numerous tactics to destabilize the Qaddafi government.
Philippines – The Reagan Administration supported the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who allowed the US military base to operate freely for military interventions in the region.
These are just some of the examples of how the US was using the pretext of the Cold War for military interventions, proxy wars and weapons trafficking in the 1980s. Several million civilians were killed during the Reagan years, plus millions more who were displaced and countless people who were tortured. The fact that the Acton Institute writer referred to the Reagan Administration as peacefully winning the Cold War, not only demonstrates how ideologically compromised he is, but how heartless he could be for not acknowledging the mountains of bodies of dead civilians that took place during the Cold War years.
Editors note
Books used as source material for this article:
- The Cold War and the New Imperialism: A Global History, 1945 – 2005, by Henry Heller
- The Violent American Century: War and Terror since World War II, by John Dower
- Overthrow: America’s Century of regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
- Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, by William Blum
- Boomerang: How Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America, by Mark Zepezauer
- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, by William Blum
- Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes With a Straight Face, by David Model
- War Made Easy: How Presidents And Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, by Norman Soloman
A more honest assessment of the GRPD 2023 Strategic Plan
In addition to the GRPD introducing their plan to purchase and use drones on Tuesday, Chief Winstrom also presented the latest GRPD Strategic Plan to City officials.
Both WOODTV8 and WXMI 17 reported on the release of the updated GRPD Strategic Plan. Like the MLive article we critiqued yesterday, the channel 8 and channel 17 stories only cited Chief Winstrom and offered no critical assessment or challenging questions about the GRPD’s 2023 Strategic Plan.
The 2023 GRPD Strategic Plan is 17 pages long, although there are lots of graphics and images to fill those pages. One could critique each page, but for our purposes, the most important page is page #4 (shown here above), which lays out their primary goals. The rest of this post will focus on critiquing the nine points on page 4, along with offering some alternative views and links to resources that come out of an abolitionist view of policing.
Point #1 – Prioritize building a police and community partnership founded on trust. This point borders on insulting. How can the GRPD claim to want to build trust with residents, when they disproportionately have a presence in Black and Brown neighborhoods, and they disproportionately detain, arrest and brutalize Black and Brown residents? Here is a list compiled by the Bridge:
- In March 2017, police officers pulled over and aimed guns at a group of five young unarmed Black boys. The incident was followed by heated community discussions at City Commission meetings. Former Chief of Police Dave Rahinsky, who has since retired, apologized to the boys, their families and the Black community, but he maintained that officers followed protocol.
- The next month, a traffic study was released that showed Black motorists in Grand Rapids were twice as likely to be pulled over as white motorists despite the fact that the city’s Black population was around 14 percent at the time.
- As a result of the traffic study, the department hired consulting firm 21st Century Policing to evaluate its policies and procedures and find and remove examples of implicit bias. Some of the recommendations the firm made were to increase cultural competency training for officers and host discussions between the community and police.
- In December 2017, the police faced scrutiny when an officer pointed a gun at an unarmed 11-year-old Black girl before searching and handcuffing her. This incident led to the department adopting a new youth interactions policy that was implemented to protect other children from unnecessary police force.
- In 2018, there were two more incidents of police officers either pointing guns at or handcuffing unarmed Black and Brown children, prompting the department to update its youth interaction policy just a year after it was created. Police made changes to how youth would be handcuffed, when a child would be put in a police cruiser, and when officers should draw a firearm.
- In November 2018, citizens criticized the department after a police captain called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on U.S. citizen and Marine combat veteran Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, even though he was carrying multiple forms of identification that proved he was an American citizen.
- In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union and Michigan Immigrant Rights Center filed civil rights complaints against police for the situation with Ramos-Gomez and an unrelated incident where police officers pulled over two unarmed teens, one of whom was a 15-year-old of Mexican descent.
- The complaints led the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to host two public hearings during which residents voiced concerns about the way Grand Rapids police treat Black and Brown people. The state opted against opening an investigation.
- In late 2019, a city-sponsored survey found 3 in 10 Grand Rapids residents didn’t trust the police department. Unlike the traffic study from 2017, this was an anonymous online survey only.
- In May 2020, the police budget was increased by $700,000 to $61 million despite calls from some activists to decrease funding to police. (Budgets to many other police agencies nationwide also increased around this time as well.)
- Later that month, the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis led to several days of protests in Grand Rapids, including some that resulted in property damage, broken windows and police dispersing crowds with tear gas and flash bangs.
- Following the protests, Grand Rapids officials said they are willing to make police reforms to make the department more accountable and safer for residents. At the time, many activists were still calling for the department to be defunded to better invest in community services.
- On the morning of April 4, 2022, 26-year-old Congolese immigrant Patrick Lyoya was shot and killed by a Grand Rapids police officer. Chief Eric Winstrom said the investigation, which is being handled by the Michigan State Police, is ongoing. Winstrom wouldn’t give the name of the officer who killed Lyoya, but said the officer was “in shock” following the incident.
I would add to this list the ongoing harassment, monitoring, intimidation and arrests of activists who have been challenging GRPD practices of targeting Black and Brown residents.
Point #2 – Seek full staffing, recognizing the need for diversity, to ensure optimum public safety for the people of Grand Rapids. The GRPD are continually calling for more cops, which means a bloated budget that is rarely questioned. More importantly, the GRPD uses the oldest myth about what there function is, which is to prevent crime and create public safety. I would encourage people to read the report put out by Interrupting Criminalization, entitled, Cops Don’t Stop Violence, which deconstructs the whole notion of crime, how crime data is misused to serve policing interests and how police consistently engage in their own crimes against people they stop, detain and arrest.
The report is well researched and full of data, that is presented in a very readable fashion. The report concludes with the following statement:
It’s time to recognize that decades of pouring more money, resources, and legitimacy into policing in an effort to increase safety have failed — because policing is functioning as it is intended to: to contain, control, and criminalize Black and Brown communities rather than to prevent and reduce violence. It’s time to invest in meeting community needs and building non-police community safety strategies. It’s time to invest in just recovery.
What an increasing number of people are demanding across the country is based in the principle that when more resources are spent on meeting the basic needs of communities, cops become obsolete. Here is an excellent graphic with 5 evidence based strategies to reduce violence and crime, also from Interrupting Criminalization.
Point #3 – Focus on crime prevention and reducing violent acts throughout the community in creative and innovative ways. Cops do not and cannot prevent crime, they only show up after the fact. As was stated in the previous point, if communities are fully resourced, police become unnecessary. The GRPD wants to justify their work with youth or clergy as doing violence prevention, but the fact remains that the needs of youth or other marginalized communities are best served by the communities they come 
from. In 2019, the study done by Hillard Heintze LLC (beginning on page 53 of the link), determined that 70% of calls to the GRPD are non-emergency calls. You can see here on the right, the breakdown of types of calls that the GRPD responds to. With 70% being non-emergency, wouldn’t it follow that conflicts or complaints could be dealt with, without the need of police officers.
Point #4 – Educate, engage, and communicate how GRPD services and enforcement are delivered; provide ongoing, meaningful opportunities for community dialogue as policing practices evolve. Point #4 assumes that the GRPD has something important to offer the public in terms of education. The reality is that Point #4 would impose a narrative on the public, as opposed to educating them. What the public really needs is education/training on Knowing Your Rights, so that we can be less intimidated and less bullied by cops when they show up in our communities. Here are some useful Know Your Rights links:
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/stopped-by-police
https://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights/
https://icasa.org/docs/legal%20forms/kyr%20when%20encountering%20law%20enforcement_aclu.pdf
Point #5 – Ensure transparency and accountability. Police Departments are inherently not transparent and there is little accountability. When the public files a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA), it is common practice for the GRPD to black out the majority of the documents requested. In 2019, the undocumented immigrant justice group, Movimiento Cosecha, submitted a FOIA request (which cost $551) most of the information was redacted, as you can see at this link. The GRPD’s argument for not revealing information about how they were monitoring the immigrant justice group was, “ It is the City’s position that the public interest in the disclosure of this information is outweighed by the public interest in keeping this information private.”
Point #6 – Partner with crisis intervention, mental health, housing, and healthcare specialists to better match resources with calls for service to improve outcomes for those in crisis and help keep the focus of patrol officers on crime response, proactive policing tactics, and community engagement. There is absolutely no need for cops to be involved in most of the calls that the public makes, based upon the 2019 study we cited in Point #3. Instead of having cops “partner” with community-based resources, how about we simply inform the public about the resources available, similar to what the group Defund the GRPD has done with their refrigerator magnets that have community resources and contact information that would completely bypass the GRPD. 
Point #7 – Increase youth outreach. The GRPD has made it clear in recent years, that their youth outreach work is fundamentally a recruiting mechanism for future cops. If communities have financial and other resources necessary for providing healthy, safe and creative spaces and opportunities for youth, then the GRPD would never have to craft programs which are completely unnecessary.
Point #8 – Focus training for new and veteran officers on de-escalation techniques, recognizing and overcoming implicit biases, and understanding cultural differences that can impact police interactions. Alex Vitale, author of the insightful book, The End of Policing, has this to say about more training for cops:
“Many advocates also call for cultural sensitivity trainings designed to reduce racial and ethnic bias. A lot of this training is based on the idea that most people have at least some unexamined stereotypes and biases that they are not consciously aware of but that influence their behavior. Controlled experiments consistently show that people are quicker and more likely to shoot at a black target than a white one in simulations. Trainings such as “Fair and Impartial Policing” use roleplaying and simulations to help officers see and consciously adjust for these biases. Diversity and multicultural training is not a new idea, nor is it terribly effective. Most officers have already been through some form of diversity training and tend to describe it as politically motived, feel-good programming divorced from the realities of street policing. Researchers have found no impact on problems like racial disparities in traffic stops or marijuana arrests; both implicit and explicit bias remain, even after targeted and intensive training. This is not necessarily because officers remain committed to their racial biases, though this can be true, but because institutional pressures remain intact.”
Point #9 – Increase efficiency and processes to optimize neighborhood policing strategies and provide cost-effective service delivery. Kristian Williams, in his book, Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, examines the history of community policing and the disastrous impact it has had on communities of color and poor communities.
In Williams’ book, he looks at the research done by the RAND Corporation, which studied community policing. The Rand Corporation says this about community policing as its paradigm for counterinsurgency:
Pacification is best thought of as a massively enhanced version of the ‘community policing’ technique that emerged in the 1970s. Community policing centered on a broad concept of problem solving by law enforcement officers working in an area that is well-defined and limited in scale, with sensitivity to geographic, ethnic, and other boundaries. Patrol officers form a bond of trust with local residents, who get to know them as more than a uniform. The police work with local groups, businesses, churches, and the like to address the concerns and problems of the neighborhood. Pacification is simply the expansion of this concept to include greater development and security assistance.
More to the point of what community policing really is, Williams states:
Community policing, meanwhile, helps to legitimize police efforts by presenting cops as problem-solvers. It forms police-driven partnerships that put additional resources at their disposal and win the cooperation of community leaders. And, by increasing daily, friendly contacts with people in the neighborhood, community policing provides a direct supply of low-level information (Rosenau 2007). These are not incidental features of community policing; these aspects speak to the real purpose.
If we had a real oppositional form of journalism in Grand Rapids, this is the kind of critique they would provide of the GRPD’s 2023 Strategic Plan. Instead, they simply act as stenographers for the GRPD, without questioning the real function of policing in Grand Rapids.
MLive article about the GRPD’s proposal to use drones presents the issue as a done deal
On Tuesday, Police Chief Eric Winstrom presented to both the Committee of the Whole and the Public Safety Committee, his department’s intention to purchase and use drones.
MLive wrote about the GRPD’s proposal to use drones in an article headlined, Rules for police drones to be considered by Grand Rapids.
For me, the headline suggests that the issue of the GRPD using drones is not in question, only what they will be used for. If one reads the MLive article it becomes clear that the GRPD’s desire to use drones is presented as if whatever the City Commission needs to decide, is simply a formality.
First, Police Chief Winstrom is the only person cited in the MLive article, thus readers do not get to hear other perspectives on the matter.
Second, the arguments that Chief Winstrom is making in the article allows him to control the narrative. Maybe this is what Winstrom was saying during his presentation to the Public Safety Committee, when he said that the local news has said to him that he has been available to do more interviews than the previous police chiefs. (Go to this video of Tuesday’s Public Safety Committee meeting) Winstrom even had the audacity to use traffic congestion during ArtPrize as a justification for the department to use drones.
Third, the MLive article states, “The Grand Rapids City Commission would still have to approve the department using drones. Before that consideration, a public hearing on using the new technology would be required.” If the City Commission needs to approve the GRPD’s use of drones, why did MLive not ask Commissioners what their initial thoughts were on this matter?
The MLive article also states, “In addition to that public hearing, Winstrom said he also foresees a community meeting in each of the city’s three wards that at the very least would communicate, explain and answer questions around how the department would use the drones.” Again, MLive allows Chief Winstrom to control the narrative, since there are no community meetings scheduled at this point – which makes the Chief look as if he is community minded – plus he would share how the drones would be used, which is fundamentally different from the question of whether the GRPD should be even allowed to use drone. Once again, Chief Winstrom got to dictate the narrative.
Fourth, there is the issue of cost. Chief Winstrom does mention the issue of budgeting at the end of the MLive article, but no dollar amounts are provided as to the cost of drones that the police department would use, nor how many they want to purchase. In addition, there would be the cost to operate these drones, which means that GRPD personnel would be paid to operate the drones, go through all of the data that would be gathered, and present said information to the department. Therefore, the use of drones by the GRPD might be another justification to increase the GRPD budget. This is what Naomi Murakawa names as one of the Three Traps of Police Reform, where police reform translates into increased budgets. (Cited in the book, Abolition for the People) Whenever there is push back against police departments, cops always use the opportunity to say that they need more money for training, technology or additional officers, which is how Chief Winstrom is framing the issue of drones, when he says it would make the GRPD more “efficient.”
A fifth, and final reason why the MLive article is so problematic, has to do with what was not said in the article. The MLive reported didn’t talk to other people in the community, particularly organizers that have been challenging the practice of policing in Grand Rapids in recent years.
In addition, there are no references to what national groups have ben saying about drone technology, surveillance and civil rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an important post from 2022 on this topic, as does the ACLU from 2020, just weeks after the country erupted with protests following the police murder of George Floyd.
Lastly, it is worth noting that the MLive article did mention that the GRPD had considered acquiring the technology known as ShotSpotter, but the reporter failed to acknowledge that it was defeated because of the organized opposition in 2020. With Police Chief Winstrom acting as though the departments purchasing of drones sounds in just a formality, it seems like the perfect opportunity to oppose the GRPD’s use of drones, which would add to their already bloated budget and eliminate another way the GRPD could monitor the public.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 