The Politics of Eggs and Eggs Producers: When Press Releases pass as journalism on MLive
On January 9th, MLive posted an article with the headline, Poultry farm donated 2.2 million eggs in 2022.
The article, which is short, cites a Herbruck’s family member and talks about how many eggs are donated to food pantries in Ionia. The MLive also says that Herbruck’s sent out a Press release about their eggs donation, so I decided to check their Press Release and compare it to the MLive article. It was is all to common with commercial news media, MLive pretty much just reprinted the Press Release from Herbrucks Poultry Ranch. You can compare the MLive article and the Herbruck’s Press Release, which are side by side at the bottom of this article.
It’s bad enough that MLive wasn’t honest enough with readers to tell that that their posting was essentially a slightly edited version of the Press Release, but MLive could have decided to use the opportunity to do a more investigative piece on the CAFO – Concentrated Animal Farm Operation. Doing a more investigative piece would also be timely considering that the cost of eggs has increased significantly over the past month, going from roughly $2 a dozen to more than double, at $5 a dozen. This increase in a staple food item, just adds to the already ridiculous cost of living for many families in West Michigan.
MLive also could have talked about the fact that Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch, like most large farm operations, has been the recipient of significant subsidies from the federal government’s Farm Bill. According to the Environmental Working Group, between 1995 and 2019, Herbruck’s received $583,391.74 in subsidies.
MLive also might have brought up the issue that got a fair amount of local news coverage in 2010, when the City of Grand Rapids held a public hearing on raising chickens within city limits. Most of the people who spoke at that public hearing were in support of people being able to raise chickens in their back yards, but there were a few exceptions. Here is what we wrote in 2010:
As we mentioned in a previous article, one of the largest egg producers in the state, Herbrucks was opposed to the ordinance change and 3 of the Herbruck’s grandsons addressed the commission. They all spoke about the potential for diseases in an urban setting, but mostly they focused on wanting to protect the profitability of their businesses. After members of the Herbruck’s family spoke, the vice president of production got up and painted a grim picture about avian caused diseases, even though he never cited any documentation to support his position.
Then there is the issue of what the average worker makes at Herbruck’s. Many of the workers who tend to the chickens in jobs that are referred to as crew members start off at $10.40 and hour and on average make $12.25 an hour. Considering how much rental costs are or what a monthly mortgage payment is for people people, $12.25 an hour would not cover the cost of rental fees or monthly mortgage payment. In fact, for those living in the area, they probably need to get food assistance from food pantries, maybe even some of the food pantries that Herbruck’s has donated eggs to.
This is the harsh reality for so many individuals and families in the Greater Grand Rapids area, that the cost of basic necessities, whether that is food, utilities or hosing costs are on the rise, while wages remain stagnant and woefully inadequate.
We don’t need more services for the unhoused, we need real policies and practices that will end housing insecurity in Grand Rapids
During last week’s Grand Rapids Committee of the Whole meeting, there was a presentation by City staff, which provided a brief history on homelessness in Grand Rapids, along with a bit about what the federal government was doing beginning in the 1980s. However, just before the presentation, it is worth sharing some comments from City officials.
Mayor Bliss stated, “Today was an important conversation that we needed to have publicly as we talk about, what is the state of the current system, what is working well and what is not working, and how does the city play a role in improving services for individuals experiencing homelessness?”
The Mayor’s statement was then followed by a few comments from City Manager Mark Washington, who said, “We know that this can be an issue that polarizes people based on your perspective. So what we hope to do is just call it like it is, balls and strikes, and share the facts about what’s happening in our community in terms of the people that are partnering in this work, and to look for opportunities in the future to improve on the work that’s going on.”
Beginning at 2:50:40 into the video for the City meetings last week, is when Grand Rapids City staff did their presentation on a history of homelessness and government response. What follows is a critique of that presentation.
Before we get to the critique, I think it is important to stop using terms like homelessness. Homelessness is too limited a term, since not everyone who is facing eviction ends up being homeless. Many people go live with relatives or friends when they are housing insecure. Housing insecurity is a more accurate term, since it doesn’t limit the discussion to just those who are homeless, but those who can’t afford rental costs and those that are facing eviction.
One of the first things that a city staffer said that is worth thinking about, was the City’s 3 pronged approach in dealing with the unhoused: investing in facilities, investing in services and systems, and investing in enforcement. The first two do not address root causes, thereby perpetuating a system of charity and other social services that will never end housing insecurity. The fact that enforcement is the third prong, makes it clear that the City of Grand Rapids will not hesitate to use or involve the GRPD. This third prong in the City’s approach could more accurately be termed the use of force within a larger carceral system.
A second Grand Rapids City staffer then presents some history. They do mention that Mel Trotters has been around since 1900, but fails to critique the White Savior institution that is not interested in ending housing insecurity, rather they want to continue to provide people of faith with an easy opportunity to donate money to an institution that ends up perpetuating inequality and housing insecurity.
In addition, this history of housing insecurity misses so much of the history that needs to be talked about, beginning with the original housing insecurity and housing displacement act, the settler colonialism of indigenous people. See the GRIID article entitled, Housing Justice through a Historic and Intersectional Lens: Looking back, imagining forward and fighting right now.
The City Staff presenter then talks about the 1980s and the various federal government responses, such as creating a task force on homelessness in 1983 or passing the first legislation in 1987 to respond to homelessness. What is painfully missing in this history lesson, is the fact that the Regan administration did everything it could to roll back social policies going back as far as the new deal, to attack unions, to perpetuate systemic racism, and to escalated the war against working families. All of these factors are what contributed to housing insecurity in the 1980s.
Next the presenter talked about policies beginning in 1995 called Continue of Care. These policies were about directing funding to communities that saw an increase in the number of unhoused people. Ironically, the very next year, the Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which essentially ended welfare as we knew it. Coupled with the Crime Bill in 1994, the Clinton Administration escalated the war against working people that the Reagan administration had made a priority in the 1980s.
The City staffer then shifted to talking about Grand Rapids and the unhoused, beginning with groups like to Coalition to End Homelessness, which has been around for nearly three decades. What was not discussed is that the unhoused population and housing insecurity has increased during the past three decades in Grand Rapids. This tells me that what groups like the coalition are doing are ineffective or worse, they are perpetuating the problem.
Since the Coalition to End Homeless has been created there have been other groups like the Essential Needs Task Force at the county level, and more recently the Housing Stability Alliance and Housing Kent. While there have been some positive evolutions with these institutionalized groups/efforts, they have by enlarged failed to address the root causing of housing insecurity.
Certainly one of the largest factors in perpetuating the housing crisis and housing insecurity is the massive wealth gap that has been happening for decades all across the country, but has increased since the 2008 economic disaster. In 2016, Grand Rapids had the largest wealth gap of any city in Michigan, according to research done by the Economic Policy Institute.
Another factor that contributes to housing insecurity is how so many people do NOT make a living wage. In the last ten years the cost of buying a home and the cost of rent have gone through the roof. Therefore, one solution to ending housing insecurity would be to pay people a livable wage. From all the research I have done on a living wage, there is no consensus on what that would mean in Grand Rapids, but $25 an hour seems to be the minimum to make a living in this city. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, people need to earn $20.02 an hour to afford the average cost of rent in Grand Rapids. What is the City of Grand Rapids, all of these groups like to Coalition to End Homelessness and the Essential Needs Task Force, plus all of the shelters like Mel Trotters, along with groups like ICCF, what if they all publicly declared that a great step towards ending housing insecurity would be to pay people no less than $25 an hour? These groups have not made such a public declaration, which leads me to believe that they really don’t want to end housing insecurity.
Next, we need to talk about the need to challenge the power of the Real Estate industry and the Rental Property Owners Associations. Both of these entities have powerful Political Action Committees and make substantial campaign contributions to elected officials, as we documented in 2022.
One concrete policy action that the City of Grand Rapids, the shelters and other non-profit housing groups could support would be to re-institute rent control in Michigan. Rental control can be a useful tool to limit the rental property owners from raising rental fees too high and too fast.
Grand Rapids likes to think of itself as a city with lots of people of faith. If that is the case, then why are congregations not providing radical hospitality – temporary housing – for people who are housing insecure? How many families who identify as religious have empty bedrooms that could be used by people who are currently housing insecure? Faith institutions could also be about the business of creating housing co-operatives, which would not only make it less expensive for people, but also more options for housing that would counter the housing market narrative.
Other options/solutions would be to limit large corporate property management companies of real estate investors from operating in Grand Rapids. This would also be a useful policy for Grand Rapids to adopt, along with matching funds for affordable housing to that of the amount of money that developers get as tax incentives or Brownfield development benefits.
When the City of Grand Rapids says they want to invest in services, invest in facilities and enforcement, they are acknowledging that they do NOT want to end housing insecurity, they only want to do triage and put a bandaid on the problem. These bureaucratic responses are not acceptable and we must make demands, demands that are rooted in justice and social transformation. Here Dr. King had something to say about making demands: “We are now making demands that will cost the nation something. You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with the captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism.”
Legal briefs, the use of force laws, the function of policing, and media framing in the ongoing case of an ex-cop who murdered Patrick Lyoya
On Monday, the lawyers who are representing the former GRPD cop who shot Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head while he was face down on the ground, Christopher Schurr, are asking Kent County Circuit Judge Christina Elmore to dismiss the case.
The lawyers representing Schurr submitted a 45 page brief, which people should read. Reading the brief is important, not because I agree with their arguments, but because we have to come to terms with the fact that laws in the US and in Michigan have primarily been created by those with political/financial power and those who benefit from the current system of Racial Capitalism. Let us not forget that the law in US history has endorsed the theft of Indigenous land, the enslavement of Black people, the exploitation of workers, the destruction of the environment, the lack of bodily autonomy, the criminalization of people who are LGBTQ, people with disabilities, the unhoused and undocumented immigrants. In fact, if the US wanted to use nuclear bombs, which indiscriminately murder, that would be perfectly legal.
We have to cone to terms with the fact that police unions make significant campaign contributions to elected officials and have their own lobbyists, so that they can have a say in how laws are crafted and passed, laws that provide them with all sorts of justification to killed people, particularly BIPOC people. We have to be familiar with the Use of Force Laws in Michigan, and we have to come to terms with ideas such as fleeing felonies, which is one of the main arguments used by the lawyers representing the ex-GRPD cop who shot Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head while he was face down on the ground.
People I have met and have had conversations with since Patrick Lyoya was murdered on April 4, 2022, all have the capacity to reason that the decisions that then Officer Schurr made that day was not necessary at all. In fact, if we come to terms with the basic functioning of policing, particularly the policing of Black and Brown neighborhoods, then we will see the real purpose of Schurr being in that southeast neighborhood in the first place. Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, states:
Well trained police following proper procedures are still going to be arresting people for mostly low level offenses, and the burden will continue to fall primarily on communities of color because that is how the system is designed to operate, not because of the biases or misunderstandings of officers.
Having said that, what is Schurr had waited for other cops to show up, making it less likely that Lyoya would try to avoid cops, thus significantly reducing the possibility that Patrick would have been shot in the back of the head that day. Schurr didn’t wait because cops are always right and the public should always obey them no matter what. At least this is the mantra of police departments, elected officials, police apologists and most commercial media.
Speaking of the media, it is interesting that all three TV stations in Grand Rapids – WOODTV8, WZZM13 and WXMI 17 – framed the story from the perspective of the lawyers representing Schurr. MLive also tended to frame the story around the arguments submitted in the brief by Schurr’s lawyers. For example, here is how WOODTV8 began their story:
The attorneys for a former Grand Rapids police officer charged with murdering Patrick Lyoya last spring have asked the court to throw out the case. The 45-page motion to quash Chris Schurr’s bind-over to Kent County’s 17th Circuit Court and dismiss the second-degree murder charge against him argues that a lower court was wrong to move the case forward.
However, if we look at how this story was covered outside of Grand Rapids, we tend to get a different kind of coverage. Here is how the Detroit Free Press began their story:
A former Michigan police officer who shot a Black motorist in the back of the head during a struggle over a Taser should not have to stand trial, the defendant’s attorneys argued as they urged a judge to dismiss the case. Ex-Grand Rapids Officer Christopher Schurr is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Patrick Lyoya. On Monday, Schurr’s attorneys filed a motion seeking to toss out a ruling that a jury trial should be held in the case, news outlets reported.
There is a fundamental difference in how it was framed and their use of language. The WOODTV8 story doesn’t say that Lyoya was Black in the opening comments, nor do they say he was shot in the back of the head. Framing the story can make the difference in the world, since it can have an impact on public perception. In addition, most of the local commercial news media used a picture of Schurr in the court room and only WXMI used a picture of Schurr in his orange jail jumpsuit juxtaposed with a picture of Patrick Lyoya. However, what if the local news used a picture of what actually happened to bring this case to court, a picture of Schurr on top of Lyoya just before the ex-cop shot him in the back of the head?
In the end, the lawyers representing the ex-cop who shot Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head filed their brief, in part, as a public relations stunt, since they are well aware of how important it is to control the narrative in these cases, especially since policing has come under greater scrutiny in recent years, with 2022 being a year where the police have killed more civilians than in any year previously recorded in the US.
Again, local news doesn’t provide adequate coverage of changes the Ottawa County Government are implementing
Last week we reported that much of the coverage of the political takeover in Ottawa County did not provide the public with much contextual reporting or background information on the group Ottawa Impact.
We made the point in that article, that none of the changes that elected officials who were vetted by Ottawa Impact made would have been a surprise, had the news media reported on the very clear far right ideological positions that these elected officials have taken, especially since they signed a contract with Ottawa Impact to do exactly what they are doing.
This week, the Ottawa County Commissioners voted to hire the Lansing-based law firm, the Kallman Legal Group. WXMI 17 reported on this, but the only background information they provided was that the Kallman Legal Group had filed lawsuits for people regarding COVID mandates, particularly in 2020.
MLive also reported on the Ottawa County Commission decision to hire the Kallman Legal Group, but also failed to provide much background information on their support for far right clients. MLive did mention some of the COVID shutdown clients they represented, along with a few businesses that wanted to deny services to people who identified as LGBTQ, but this information was near the end of the article.
In October of 2022, there was a wedding venue on the westside of Grand Rapids that refused to rent to an LGBTQ couple and the lawyer that represented the business was David Kallman, with the Kallman Legal Group. In fact, this was not the only omission on the part of local news media, when it came to the Kallman Legal Group a law firm that has a history of representing and supporting far right organizations and issues throughout Michigan.
If the local news media were to scratch the surface a bit more on who David Kallman is, they would not have to look very hard to find out that he is one of the preferred lawyers for those in the far right camp. For instance, this is not the first time that Kallman has defended people or organizations that are anti-LGBTQ.
David Kallman is also legal counsel for the Great Lakes Justice Center, which has a long history of defending religious groups that are anti-LGBTQ. GRIID wrote about the Great Lakes Justice Center in 2020, when they sued Gov. Whitmer for the Stay at Home orders. At that time we wrote:
The Great Lakes Justice Center, which filed the lawsuit, has a long history of defending religious groups that actively discriminate against the LGBTQ community. A Lansing-based news source, City Pulse, reported on one example and the ACLU has documented other cases against the Great Lakes Justice Center. The Great Lakes Justice Center is part of group Salt & Light Global, which was founded by William Wagner. Salt & Light Global embraces a far right political and religious worldview. The “Resources” section on their homepage is a who’s who of far right religious groups, including the Federalist Society, Hillsdale College, Wall Builders, the Discovery Institute and the Acton Institute.
Kallman has represented numerous businesses that sought to challenge the Stay at Home orders that were put in place as a response to the COVID 19 pandemic, beginning in late March of 2020, cases that are sourced here.
In The Center Square article sourced in the previous paragraph, Kallman is standing with a business owner in front of a backdrop put up by the group Stand Up Michigan. Stand Up Michigan has been a group that came into being in response to the COVID 19 pandemic and believes that, “COVID was weaponized to rip away our constitutional liberties, close our businesses and fundamentally alter our psyches.”
Some of the leadership of Stand Up Michigan host a podcast known as Live with Stand Up Michigan. Here is a sample of one of their shows where David Kallman was the guest.
The last important piece of background information on the Kallman Legal Group, is the issue of abortion. Again, the local news media wouldn’t have to look far to find information showing that David Kallman was representing two Republican County Prosecutors in Michigan regarding the 1931 Abortion Ban law that the courts have said are not enforceable. An MLive article from August 16 states:
Oakland County Circuit Judge Jacob Cunningham quashed the subpoena and David Kallman, a Lansing lawyer representing prosecutors Jerard Jarzynka of Jackson County and Christopher Becker of Kent County, appealed to the higher court. Becker and Jarzynka previously said they would charge providers under the law, which makes procuring a miscarriage illegal except to save a mother’s life.
The fact that Kallman was representing Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker, should have been relevant background information, especially since the issue of abortion has been front and center over the past year in Michigan.
There was one news example that was pretty good, in terms of exploring deeper issue that the frustrations of some people in Ottawa County over the recent government changes. On January 10th, Michigan Radio did a pretty good story on the contract Ottawa County signed with the Kallman Legal group. The focus of that ration story centered around the connection between the Ottawa County Board Chair and the Kallman Legal Group. Now other news outlets did make this an issue, but they only provided comments from both sides.
The Michigan Radio story actually investigated the connection between the Kallman Legal Group and the Ottawa Impact members. Michigan Radio found out that a Kallman Legal Group relative had raised money for the Political Action Committee that Ottawa Impact was running.
One of the main functions of news agencies is to report on people who have financial and political power, along with the decisions they make. When the local news fails to do that and only provides us with superficial coverage, not only is the democratic process weakened, but real harm is being done, most often to the most marginalized people in our communities. Good journalism can counteract that.
There were plenty of people who despised Dr. King while he was alive, both poor white people and those with political and economic power.
Once Dr. King’s birthday became a US holiday in 1983, those with economic and political power began to figure out ways to abuse and misuse his legacy. Even those on the far right have misused Dr. King, particularly a quote from his 1963 speech in Washington, in what is referred to as his, “I Have a Dream” speech. One example of how Dr. King’s words from his 1963 speech have been abused is from a document by the group Ottawa Impact.
Last week, we wrote about how the commercial news media has failed us when it came to investigating the group Ottawa Impact and their ideological statements that were known since March of 2022. In their Position Statement when talking about “Diversity/Critical Race Theory”, the groups writes:
We agree with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that people “should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
This sentence by Dr. King is not only taken out of context, it is used to justify a White Supremacist ideology, an ideology that has real world consequences.
However, far right ideologues are not the only ones to misuses or abuse the legacy of Dr. King. Liberal politicians will misuse the legacy of Dr King, making speeches about the great Civil Rights leader, while at the very same time justifying the largest US Military Budget in US history (President Biden), or local politicians who will justify increased police budgets or their sanctioning of the GRPD to target local activists who are part of the Black Freedom Struggle, just as Dr. King was.
There are also non-profit organizations who will misuse and abuse the legacy of Dr. King. For example, The Urban League of West Michigan, will be hosting its 23rd Annual Corporate Breakfast on Monday for MLK Day 2023. Business leaders will be invited to participate in the Corporate Breakfast, with networking at 7am, followed by a 7:30am breakfast. The Urban League Corporate breakfast has the following description:
Every year our Breakfast is an opportunity to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of service and be inspired to live out his dream today in our homes, the community and throughout the world. It is also a time to celebrate and honor trailblazing leaders in business and throughout the community who personify the Urban League’s mission of a more just, peaceful, equitable and thriving Grand Rapids.
Now, I am not picking on the Urban League for providing relief to families around housing needs or other social services. This kind of work is always important to minimize the harm being done to families within a White Supremacist, Capitalist system. However, Dr. King was not content with just doing charity work or social service work. The Civil Rights leader wanted to confront the very system(s) that perpetuated racism and poverty.
In Dr. King’s famous 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech, he states:
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
In concrete terms, Dr. King was all about action, particularly Direct Action to confront systems of power and oppression. When he was organizing in Chicago in 1966, specifically around housing issues, he and a few hundred activists shit down the Dan Ryan expressway as a tactic to get City officials and landlords to meet their demands. Of course, beginning in 1967, Dr. King’s team of organizers began working on the Poor People’s Campaign, which would take place in 1968, with hundreds of thousands of people setting up a tent city in Washington. DC and demanding things like housing, a livable wage and food security, in what King referred to as an Economic Bill of Rights.
Therefore, if the Urban League of West Michigan wanted to honor the legacy of Dr. King, they might consider inviting the families that benefit from their social services to a breakfast for MLK day, instead of Corporate leaders. However, inviting people who are victimized by White Supremacist Capitalism isn’t enough. Instead, inviting them to a breakfast provides an opportunity for people to be organized to make demands and, in the words of Dr. King, dismantle the “edifice that produced beggars.” This strategy, would be a true revolution of values, and it would be a way to truly honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On Saturday, MLive posted the following story, See which Grand Rapids-area projects got $17.3M in congressional earmarks.
The article, which essentially provides a list of the projects that will receive funding from the federal spending bill. Some of the projects, like the one with the United Methodist Community House are important for the community, but several of the others listed are questionable in terms of who they really benefit.
However, the reason why I wanted to talk about the MLive article, was not so much about what the article said, but what it didn’t say.
The MLive article did mention that the $17.3 million for projects in Grand Rapids was part of the, “$1.7 trillion spending bill signed by President Joe Biden last month.” The massive spending bill for fiscal year 2023, known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus, provides $772.5 billion for non-defense, domestic programs and $858 billion in defense funding. It includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies and roughly $40 billion to respond to natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and flooding.
Therefore, the first major omission in the MLive article, is the fact that more than half of the $1.7 trillion spending bill goes to the US Military, which will receive $858 Billion.
At the end of the article, it mentions that information about the funding for the Grand Rapids projects came from Senator Debbie Stabenow. Senator Stabenow has consistently voted for the US Military portion of the country’s annual budget, which is always more than non-military related budget items. While Senator Stabenow’s office provided MLive with information on which projects in Grand Rapids were receiving federal dollars, it is deeply problematic that MLive fails to mention that Senator Stabenow also signed off on more than 50% of the spending bill would go to the US Military, which is the second major omission.
A third major omission in this MLive article is the fact that they failed to report that more federal tax dollars leave Grand Rapids than what comes back. In this $1.7 trillion spending bill, just $17.3 Million is earmarked for Grand Rapids. According to the National Priorities Project, in 2021, Michigan taxpayers paid out $19.35 Billion for the US Military alone, with $370.66 Million coming from Grand Rapids and going to the US Military. It seems to me that when Grand Rapids taxpayers had $370.66 Million of their tax dollars go to militarism, but only getting $17.3 million in federally funded projects, that is deeply unjust and not equitable at all.
The last major omission in the MLive article is all about missing out on possibilities. If the MLive reported had decided to look at the bigger picture of the federal spending bill and fleshed out for MLive readers how little money comes back to Grand Rapids and how much money goes towards the US Military, imagine the possibilities for Grand Rapidians.
People who constantly talk about funding disparities in Grand Rapids would have been great resources for the MLive reporter to further discuss funding priorities. Grassroots organizers in the Black community could have talked about how federal spending ultimately perpetuates structural racism, housing advocated could have talked about how federal funding could provide enough money to end the affordable housing crisis, and climate activists could have talked about using federal funding for mass transit and more renewable energy options. We desperate need this kind of journalism, a journalism that stretches our imagination and challenges official narratives.
According to the site Mapping Police Violence, 2022 saw the highest number of people killed by the police in the US since this data has been collected.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, 26 year old Patrick Lyoya was shot in the back of the head by a Grand Rapids cop, after Lyoya had been stopped for having expired tags on his license plate. The police murder of Patrick Lyoya shocked the Grand Rapids community, even though activists had been predicting this for years and calling for the defunding of the GRPD since June of 2020.
Christopher Schurr, the cop who shot Lyoya in the back of the head, was fired from the GRPD and charged with second degree murder a few months after the killing. According to Mapping Police Violence, since 2013, in 98.1% of cases where a cop killed a civilian, a police officer was NOT charged with a crime. Considering how much of a public outcry has happened over the Patrick Lyoya case, where the ex-cop was charged, imagine how most of the other communities in the country have felt when no cops were charged with a crime after they killed someone.
Then there is the issue of police killings that are not reported. As researchers showed in a study published in The Lancet in 2021, about half of killings by law enforcement agents go unreported, so the true number of people killed by the police last year may be double the figure reported by Mapping Police Violence. Double the number of people killed by police in 2020, would put it just under 2400.
The high rate of police killings of civilians is not an aberration, it is systemic. Samuel Sinyangwe, a data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence, recently said, “These are routine police encounters that escalate to a killing. What’s clear is that it’s continuing to get worse, and that it’s deeply systemic.”
The data on police killings of civilians for 2022 is certainly alarming in and of itself. However, considering that there were millions of people globally who took to the streets and engaged in open rebellion in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd, one would have thought that police departments would have reduced the number of times they killed people. This has not been the case, for two main reasons.
First, there is a lack of real accountability of police departments, due in part to how powerful their unions are. The second reason has to do with the fact that there has been a bi-partisan effort to increase the amount of police funding across the country since the 2020 uprising. This increase in funding for police was made painfully clear by President Biden when he unveiled his “Safer America Plan,” which would provide $37 billion in funding for policing and a commitment to add an additional 100,000 more cops across the nation. With the lack of real accountability and consequences for cops who kill people, along with the commitment to increase funding for cops coming from the highest office, we should expect the number of people killed by cops to stay at a high level or possibly even increase.
Boycott Campaign targets downtown businesses over GR Chamber of Commerce proposed ordinance to criminal the unhoused
In early December, when we began reporting on the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce’s proposed ordinance, which they sent in a letter to the City Commission on January 6th. You can read the proposed ordinance from the GR Chamber of Commerce here.
One week later, 120 business people, many of who are members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, sent another letter to the Grand Rapids City Commission, which they all signed. You can read that letter, with all 120 signatures at this link.
Shortly after the GR Chamber announced their proposed ordinance, the Grand Rapids Area Tenant Union, along with a coalition of groups and individuals called for a boycott of all downtown businesses until the GR Chamber retracts their proposed ordinance and makes a public apology for proposing a policy that would criminalize the unhoused. On December 12, about 25 activists went to the GR Chamber’s downtown office to protest the ordinance proposal and to make their demands known. The GR Chamber of Commerce responded by calling the GRPD.
The following week activists went to make similar demands at Mel Trotter Ministries, which was one of the signatories to the letter that endorsed the GR Chamber’s ordinance proposal. At the same time, this group, working through the Grand Rapids Area Tenant union, created an electronic letter campaign, which as of today generated nearly 13,000 letters to Grand Rapids City officials and the GR Chamber of Commerce.
This boycott campaign also has created a toolkit of sorts, providing people with a list of downtown Grand Rapids business to boycott, along with the idea that people can go to reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, & Trip Advisor and tell others why we cannot in good conscience patronize them. All of this information is on the Grand Rapids Area Tenant Union Facebook page.
Just yesterday, so people involved in the boycott made a short video, using caution tape, to demonstrate how the ordinance would criminal the unhoused and severely limit their ability to even have a presence in downtown Grand Rapids.
Lastly, as with all boycott, in order for them to be effective, the campaign will need to grow and get more people involved in doing the necessary work to inform the public as well as to resist the repressive ordinance proposal from the GR Chamber of Commerce. If you want to be involved in the campaign, you can leave the Grand Rapids Area Tenant Union a message on their Facebook page or you can send them an e-mail gratunion@gmail.com.
Rachel Ferguson, a professor and contributing writer for the Grand Rapids Far Right Think Tank, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, believes that Christian Landlords would make the best kind of landlords.
Her article from January 4th, Why Christians Should Be (the Best) Landlords, is based upon a social media argument she had with Kevin Nye, who is a Housing Director at an organization addressing youth homelessness in Minnesota.
In the typically condescending language that Acton writers engage in, Rachel Ferguson demonstrates her own by writing:
I have a real soft spot for people who put their money where their mouth is and do the hard work of helping people whose issues can be incredibly hard to face. At the same time, sincerity and effort don’t make up for ignorance. In fact, as we’ve seen in cases like Prohibition, sincere, God-fearing, hardworking people who believe in radical action for the marginalized can create outcomes that are far, far worse than if they’d done nothing at all. So, with real respect to Mr. Nye for his personal intervention in the lives of the homeless, we’ve got to review what’s wrong with his views on landlords, rent, and eviction—not to “own the libs” but for the sake of the homeless themselves.
Now, it is important to note that Professor Ferguson has no direct experience with the issues surrounding tenants, tenant rights, eviction, predatory landlords and property management companies. Her opinion and her knowledge background is in the area of her own theological interpretation of Christianity and her deep commitment to free market Capitalism.
I’m not really interested in for or against arguments about whether or not Christians should be landlords or would be the best landlords, but the arguments that Professor Ferguson uses are weak and rather misleading. This was the case the last time an Acton writer addresses tenant evictions in an article from September of 2021. Another Acton writer, Noah Gould, in an article entitled, Banning evictions poses harm for low-income renters, argues that the eviction ban was bad because it was some liberal scheme. Gould cites President Biden’s decision to extend the eviction moratorium, but fails to mention that it began under President Trump, because the CDC decided it was cruel and inhuman to evict people in the middle of a pandemic.
I agree, that evicting renters in the middle of a pandemic is a brutally cruel practice. The Acton writer in the 2021 article opposing a moratorium on evictions also fails to mentions that lots of property management companies and landlords received federal funding in the form of PPP loans, in which most did not have to pay it back. One Property Management Company that the Grand Rapids Area Tenant Union is currently dealing with is KMG Prestige. KMG Prestige owns numerous rental properties in this area and in other communities. Interestingly enough, KMG Prestige applied for a PPP loan during the COVID pandemic and was given $7,845,514, which was forgiven. So, the idea that landlords weren’t making any money during the pandemic, is simply false.
Radical Hospitality
As a counter to the narrative from the Acton Institute about tenant evictions and Christian landlords, I think it is important to talk about a long practiced tradition within religious and non-religious traditions, where Radical Hospitality is practiced.
When I was younger and studying to be a Catholic Priest, I learned about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. Day, who was a young adult during the Great Depression, co-founded the first Catholic Worker houses with Peter Maurin. Catholic Worker Houses were houses of hospitality, that provided a safe place for people to sleep, meals and a case by case time frame for people to get back on their feet economically to get their own apartment of house. In addition, Catholic Worker houses practices simple living and were actively involved in opposing US involvement in war and the amount of money the US government spent on the annual military budget. The Catholic Worker Movement argued that money that is being spent on militarism should be spent on housing and other basic necessities for the millions who are housing insecure.
In Grand Rapids, the first Catholic Worker Houses began in the 1970s. The first was the Grimke House, named after the abolitionist Grimke sisters. Then in 1984, I was part of creating a place called the Koinonia House, which was modeled on the Catholic Worker. We provided hospitality to over 300 individuals and families during a 20 year period. Koinonia house was our home and we treated those who were housing insecure as our guests for however long they needed. We also opposed war, US military intervention and US military spending. In the summer of 1990, many of us were involved in a Homes Not Bombs campaign (pictured here), where we built shanties in front of the US Federal Building in Downtown Grand Rapids to make a point about the disparities in spending on weapons of mass death versus spending on housing for people in our communities. We even created fact sheets to distribute to people, showing the huge disparity between money for bombs as opposed to money for housing. (See below)
For Acton Institute writers, like Rachel Ferguson, who want to spend their energy arguing that Christians make the best landlords, we think it is more effective and more important to talk about housing justice and why it is important to think about and create housing justice outside of the For Profit framework.
What the commercial news media isn’t telling us about the group behind the firing of several Ottawa County officials
On Tuesday, the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners fired the County Administrator and replaced him with John Gibbs, a candidate who ran for the 3rd Congressional District in last years election, but was defeated by Hillary Scholten.
This news, which has been reported by most of the West Michigan commercial news media, is presented as shocking news. And while I agree that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners decision was abrupt, none of what happened is in any way shocking or a surprise. Look, within the past 2 years, we have seen millions of people denying the election results from the 2020 Presidential Election. In January of 2021, there was an attempted insurrection at the nation’s capitol, where only a few people have suffered any real consequences for their actions. In the 2022 Elections, there were hundreds of candidates running for local, state and federal positions, all of which were election deniers, with many of them winning their races. (Check out this new resource by the Center for Media & Democracy, Insurrection Exposed.)
With this recent history, we should not be shocked or surprised that people in Ottawa County embrace the same ideological positions that those who participated in the failed insurrection. What I find most instructive about the local news coverage, especially the articles coming from MLive (there have been 3 articles, listed below), which mentioned the group Ottawa Impact, is that none of the articles or the other coverage has bother to link to or explore their ideological and political beliefs. The rest of this article will explore their political ideology.
The Ottawa Impact group is a 501c4 group, which means they can endorse candidates, plus they have their own Political Action Committee. Their PAC is registered with the State of Michigan, but they have yet to file any fundraising data from 2022, according to the Michigan Secretary of State.
Their mission statement reads:
We are committed to defending the constitutionally protected rights of parents to make health and education decisions for their own children. We desire to preserve and pass on the blessings and heritage of Ottawa County to future generations.
We recognize our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage and celebrate America as an exceptional nation blessed by God. We oppose indoctrination of our county’s youth and the politicization of public schools.
We believe civic engagement, ground up, is critical to preserve a healthy, moral society. We seek to educate, encourage, and support local leaders who fight to preserve Ottawa’s values and work to eliminate policies which oppose them.
The last sentence makes clear that the firing of the of the current Ottawa County Administrator, shows exactly what they will do when anyone opposes them.
The Ottawa Impact group has a contract for those running for County Commission and for the Ottawa County School Board. The contract for the County Commission is 8 pages and the one for the School Board is 9 pages. People should read them and not just dismiss them as lunacy, since these contracts will do very real forms of harm to people.
These documents were created in March of 2022, and their policy agendas are very clear. For example, the fact that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners announced that they were doing away with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office is because they say very clearly in the contract, “I will support removing Ottawa County from the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (“GARE”) membership, and discontinuing Ottawa County’s promotion of divisive teachings aligned with Critical Race Theory such as; racial equity, privilege vs oppression based on skin color, intersectionality, implicit bias, systemic racism, and revisionist history.”
In addition, the contract for Ottawa County Commissioners running as Ottawa Impact candidates also must be committed to removing any and all Planned Parenthood-aligned resources, view civil liberties as rights the government takes away – such as during COVID restrictions – but not civil liberties as in right for BIPOC, queer, immigrants or other marginalized groups, and parental rights, specifically as it relates to education curriculum.
With the candidates who run for Ottawa County School Board, they must commit to opposing curriculum that is seen as applying Critical Race Theory, protect religious freedom, promote teaching “America’s True History”, oppose controversial materials, which they define as “containing controversial sexuality and racial teachings.” This contract also includes a commitment to support censorship of materials, like library books, plus they must take a hard anti-trans stance, which denies trans students from using bathrooms that are gender specific. The anti-trans commitment is framed as protecting women and children.
Under the Documents section of the Ottawa Impact page there are numerous links, with the first being one that is used to vet candidates. This document has some of the same language as the other contracts, but also includes language about protecting the 1st and 2nd Amendments, being Pro-Life, in support of the freedom of businesses, churches and individuals to not be subjected to what they call Health Freedom, which is basically to oppose any further government restrictions like what has happened under COVID. Then there is language under law and order stating that candidates must oppose defunding of the police and must support an America First ideology, of closed borders, undocumented immigrants, “as well as refugee influx from areas/countries hostile to America.” Lastly, candidates must oppose labor unions of any kind. Some of the other documents under this section, have more details on the contract commitments that candidates must take.
There is also a News section on the website banner, which has only about a dozen since this group was founded. Speaking of founders, Ottawa Impact was founded by Joe Moss and Sylvia Rhodea, which you can follow on Facebook. Ottawa Impact also has a Facebook page.
None of this information was presented by the local commercial news, which it seems to me is vitally important if we are to understand what Ottawa Impact stands for, what they believe and how to organize to reduce the harm they clearly want to do.
