Grand Rapids participates in statewide Solidarity Action, GRPD threatens activists with arrest
On Saturday, there was a solidarity action in downtown Grand Rapids, which coincided with actions across the state that was initiated by organizers in Detroit called Detroit Will Breathe.
The event took place right where the Rosa Parks statue is in downtown Grand Rapids, which information booths, sign holding a speakers. I was only there for the first hour, but there was plenty of activity and some tensions because of another “rally” that was taking place just south of the solidarity action, along Monroe.
The other “rally” was part of the Save the Children Movement, which, as the New York Times has pointed out, has been hijacked by QAnon followers.
I was able to interview someone who was doing crowd safety for the solidarity action, who talks about his interaction with some of the Save the Children people and then a brief interaction from a cop with the GRPD, who threatened to arrest people, specifically a young latinx organizer. Here is that interview.
The Solidarity action that took place across the state also had a list of demands, which continued to reflect how numerous movements have been working together since the pandemic hit and after George Floyd was lynched by a cop in Minneapolis. These demands are important and reflect a growing sense of urgency of not wanting to simply return to normal after the pandemic or after the 2020 elections.
Demands
1. No Federal Agents – We demand the immediate withdrawal of federal agents from our communities including DEA, CBP, ICE, ATF and all other vigilante federal law enforcement agencies. Federal agents act with impunity, violating our right to privacy through mass surveillance, and criminalizing poverty. Programs such as Operation Legend allow federal agents to terrorize immigrant communities with deportation under the guise of crime control by local police cooperating with ICE. In Black communities, the use of federal agents to address crime is a hollow response from the federal government that is intended to further incarcerate and impoverish Black people. We demand the federal government instead use the funds to support social and community services that lead to a higher quality of life and ultimate crime reduction such as public education, libraries, community centers, mental health services and more.
2. No School Re-openings until there are no new cases in the state – In Detroit, three students have tested positive for COVID-19 out of the 280 students who were tested in the summer school program. Now the district following guidance from the state plans to continue with in person classes. This is an experiment on Black and Brown children which puts their lives at risk for no other reason than to get their parents back at work and restart the economy. Black and Brown children must not be sacrificed for economic gain. The state legislature has consolidated control over the public school system in Michigan by defunding and marginalizing Black majority school districts since 1994. The push to open schools in Detroit is a result of the district being targeted by the state and insufficiently funded. Classrooms were overcrowded and inadequate for learning before COVID -19 and In a moment in which social distancing is imperative for preserving human life, children and their families are being forced to subject themselves to possible infection.
3. Defund the police and the DOC – The Michigan State Police budget will reach $726 million dollars in 2021. That is a $33 million dollar increase from 2018. This ever increasing investment into police forces has not made our communities safer. ¾ of a billion dollars for military grade equipment, surveillance technology, and the hiring of more officers has not solved issues of public safety in Black and Brown communities, it has only made them worse through police violence and the defunding of social and community programs needed to improve quality of life. Through the use of fusion centers, like those in Detroit and Lansing, the MSP has participated in a federal incursion into the state of Michigan. We demand the MSP halt its joint operations involving federal agents. We demand that the MSP be immediately defunded and those state tax dollars be used for housing, education, and social services. It is a blatant injustice that the MSP budget is $276 million dollars more than what the state spends on education.
The Michigan Department of Corrections has an annual budget of $2 billion dollars and Governor Gretchen Whitmer has proposed a $100 million dollar increase in 2021 and 2022. This continued investment in mass incarceration by the state of Michigan has devastated Black and Brown communities. We demand that the state halt investment into the 33 state corrections facilities and immediately release all those who have been convicted of nonviolent offenses. We demand that the state of Michigan reallocate these funds to the communities that mass incarceration has destroyed. These funds must be directed back into communities in the form of education, housing, and guaranteed employment for the formerly incarcerated.
4. No evictions in the state of Michigan-provide rent relief – As the statewide ban on evictions has been lifted 75,000 people across the state are facing eviction.The state’s poorest Black and Brown communities are facing massive evictions, such as in Detroit, where nearly 4000 evictions have been filed with the court and are awaiting hearings. This is an attack on Black and Brown communities and an attempt to further gentrification efforts which will ultimately lead to mass homelessness and devastation of Black and Brown families. We call for the suspension of rent until 60 days after the pandemic has cleared and the allocation of funds to pay the surplus of rent.
5. Immediately release of all undocumented immigrants and non violent offenders being detained in the state. Make Michigan a Sanctuary State – On June 7th, The Detroit Free Press Reported “There are currently 63 ICE detainees at three county jails in Michigan — St. Clair County, Morrow County, Calhoun County — who have tested positive for coronavirus, according to ICE statistics. There are 3,113 ICE detainees nationally who have tested positive.” The continued detaining of undocumented people and children is inhumane, and particularly disgusting during a pandemic.
4,037 prisoners in Michigan have tested positive, with 68 deaths reported. The continued detainment of Black and Brown people in unsanitary conditions without access to quality healthcare has led to an infection rate higher than that of the state. We see this along with the detainment of non-violent offenders as a furthered attack on the lives of Black and Brown people and demand their immediate release.
West Michigan Far Right Watch for August 14 – 21
Today we begin a new kind of post, where we look at the far right in West Michigan and what they are up to. These posts will be brief, with less analysis than what GRIID usually provides. However, we believe it is important that we keep tabs on the far right in this area and provide a summary of what they are up to and what kind of messages they are promoting in this community.
Within the last week, we wrote about a Students for Trump Rally that was held last Saturday in downtown Grand Rapids. Charlie Kirk, with Turning Point USA, was the keynote speaker for this rally and we provided some background on Kirk’s promotion of White Supremacy.
Last Saturday, we also saw the Proud Boys marching in Kalamazoo. We wrote a critique of how the commercial news media reported on the Proud Boys and how the police only arrested people who were there to confront the racist Proud Boys.
Then on Monday, the far right Think Tank known as the Acton Institute, posted an interview with the Executive Editor of Acton’s main publication, the Rev. Ben Johnson. Johnson was interviewed on the Lars Larson Show, which is a far right radio program that can be heard around the country. Listen to what Rev. Ben Johnson has to say about Black Lives Matter and how much he dismisses this movement.
We plan to post future installments of West Michigan Far Right Watch, so if our readers come across something about the Far Right in West Michigan, please let us know. It’s important that we know what those who seeks to do harm are up to, to provide an analysis of this harm and to encourage the community to actively resist the far right in this community.
Reflecting on lessons learned from offering Sanctuary to Central Americans in Grand Rapids in the 1980s
I was recently interviewed by a Doctoral candidate at Harvard, who has been interviewing people about the Central American Sanctuary Movement. Our conversation was lively and it got me thinking and reflecting on the the process and work of doing Sanctuary in the 1980s in Grand Rapids.
What follows is a recounting of the Sanctuary work of the Koinonia House, which I was a part of. A version of this post will also be included in the forthcoming book, A People’s History of Grand Rapids.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, US funded counter-insurgency wars were being waged in El Salvador and Guatemala. Activists along the US/Mexican border began to see a sharp rise in the number of political refugees entering the country.
As communities began to offer safety to these refugees, they realized that all of them had a similar narrative. Each of the refugees told them that they fled their country because they either witnessed the torture and murder of family members or they themselves were torture survivors.
The US financed death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala were the primary source of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people coming from Central America in the 1980s. US activists began to hear these stories in greater numbers and since the Reagan administration did not acknowledge Salvadoran or Guatemalan refugees as being political refugees, the Central American Sanctuary Movement was born.
The Central American Sanctuary Movement was begun by US faith-based communities that believed that they should offer sanctuary for their fellow humans who were fleeing violence, even if it meant violating US laws.
Beginning in the Southwestern part of the country, Sanctuaries began popping up, where faith-based groups began to house people fleeing violence and to provide them with a forum to tell their stories.
Soon there were hundreds of places declaring themselves a sanctuary for Central American refugee, with three places declaring in Michigan themselves a sanctuary – Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids.
The Grand Rapids Sanctuary was run by members of the Koinonia House, of which I was a part of. The Koinonia House was a housing collective that had begun in 1984 and did much of their organizing around resisting US Policy in Central America. We had participated in numerous protests, marches, letter writing campaigns and even engaged in civil disobedience at local Congressional offices. However, we all felt that something more needed to be done and we decided that we needed to use our collective privilege to practice radical hospitality for those who had fled their countries because of the US-backed repression in El Salvador and Guatemala.
The seven of us, who were members of the Koinonia House, decided in the fall of 1985 to be part of the Central American Sanctuary Movement and traveled to Chicago to meet with the national coordinator of the project, the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America.
One major aspect of becoming a Sanctuary was the need for those seeking to declare themselves a Sanctuary to obtain support from the community, especially in the form of letters. Such letters were a sign that Koinonia House would indeed be trusted with doing the work and it signaled to the federal authorities that those who signed the letters stood with the members of the Grand Rapids Sanctuary. After soliciting letters, Koinonia House received nearly two dozen endorsements from churches, community organizations, university groups, individuals and parents with whom we had developed a relationship with. Holy Trinity Episcopal Church was one of the organizations to endorse our efforts. Here is what they said:
We feel strongly this is the loving and compassionate response which the church should and must take in this situation, and sanctuary has long been established within the history and tradition of the church. So we support your compassionate and courageous stand, and are ready to support you in whatever way is possible.
Once the Koinonia House had significant community support for becoming a Sanctuary, we set a date to declare ourselves as a place that would defy the federal government and provide sanctuary to Central American refugees.
We declared ourselves a Sanctuary in the fall of 1986 on the steps of the Gerald R. Ford Federal building in downtown Grand Rapids, as it was custom to make this kind of a declaration public. Members of the Detroit and Lansing Sanctuaries were present, with Fr. Dick Preston leading a ceremony to honor the public commitment being taken by our community.
Several months later, the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America contacted us to let us know that they had 2 Indigenous families from Guatemala in need of Sanctuary.
In April of 1987, six adults and one child arrived in Grand Rapids at the Koinonia House. A few days later a press conference was held on the front porch of the Koinonia House and this marked the beginning of several years that the Grand Rapids Sanctuary offered a safe haven for those who were fleeing violence in Central America.
Once the families arrived, we gave them time to get settled in. However, after a few weeks of becoming acclimated to West Michigan, we began organizing speaking opportunities for the Guatemalans living with us in sanctuary.
The Central American Sanctuary Movement had two main goals. First, was the commitment to offer a safe place for people to live who were fleeing political violence. The second part of the work was to try to influence public opinion and eventually change the national policy around US support for the counter-insurgency wars in Central America.
We never fully knew how much we were under surveillance, but within the first month of offering Sanctuary to the Guatemalans that had arrived, two FBI agents showed up one day at our door. Not knowing who they were, the Guatemalans let them in. I was upstairs doing some work, when one of the Guatemalans came to get me. The FBI agents introduced themselves and then said, “So, what’s going on here?” I responded by saying, “Since you are FBI, we have to assume that you know exactly what is going on here. However, if you don’t have a warrant, then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Right at that moment there were several friends who had stopped by, so we invited them in and told said in a loud voice that the FBI agents were here to harass and intimidate us. Fortunately, the FBI agents left. This was a clear lesson about the importance of being public about the Sanctuary work and how being public and visible could prevent us from being arrested and the Guatemalans from being deported.
Over the next several years the families who were in sanctuary in Grand Rapids spoke on campuses, in churches and with community-based organizations. The Guatemalans shared their personal stories and discussed how US policy was creating more terror and violence in their country. Speaking publicly for those in Sanctuary in Grand Rapids was never an easy task. The Guatemalans who were in Sanctuary in Grand Rapids spoke Qanjobal, one of 23 Mayan dialects. Therefore, those who spoke did so in Spanish, which was their second language. Quite often the Guatemalans in Sanctuary would say that there are certain words in Qanjobal that didn’t translate well, which made it difficult for them to articulate their experiences completely.
Another lesson learned had to do with how those of us with privilege take little things for granted, especially when it came to the constant terror that the families in Sanctuary had experienced. For example, one day, after being at a local hospital with one of the families, we were walking outside to get to one of the surface parking lots. While making our way to the car, one of the hospital helicopters was approaching, and just like that, the Guatemalan family took off running. It did not dawn on me immediately, but I soon realized that their experience of helicopters was one of terror, since gun fire would come from the helicopters in their communities as part of the US counterinsurgency war.
After a decade, the families were eventually able to gain legal status with the assistance of some amazing immigration lawyers. The two original families that were part of Sanctuary, had more children and those children are now in their 30’s. In 1992, on October 12, Indigenous People’s Day, we signed the title over to the Guatemalan families as a small way of making restitution for the 500 years of genocide that we all have benefitted from.
One of the original Sanctuary families still lives in the house and often uses that space as a place for new Guatemalan families to come to, get settled and save up money that would allow them to find their own place. This family has has been practicing radical hospitality, demonstrating the very solidarity we had set out to practice in 1987 when our house participated in the Central American Sanctuary Movement.
Betsy DeVos Watch: Department of Education affirms its commitment to supporting religious education with public money
In early July, we posted an article about what the Supreme Court ruling in the Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which essentially rules that public money can be used for faith-based education, and what it could mean moving forward with Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education.
Last week, Betsy DeVos affirmed her department’s commitment to making sure that faith-based education programs and schools will benefit from this administration. DeVos stated:
This Administration will continue to protect the religious liberty and First Amendment rights of every student, teacher and educational institution across the country. Too many misinterpret the ‘separation of church and state’ as an invitation for government to separate people from their faith. In reality, the First Amendment doesn’t exist to protect us from religion. It exists to protect religion from government. Today’s guidance reaffirms our commitment to protecting our first liberty and ensuring that discriminatory restrictions on access to federal grant funding are no longer tolerated.
Such a proclamation from the Secretary of Education makes it pretty clear where she stands on this matter. The danger with this Supreme Court ruling was reflected in a recent ACLU position, which states:
The court’s ruling could effectively mean that, when states offer school vouchers or similar funding involving indirect aid — such as Montana’s tax credit scholarship program — they now must extend the aid to religious schools, too. This is despite the fact that millions more in government funds will be diverted from public schools as a result, and taxpayer dollars will be used to support religious indoctrination and training for future religious leaders and adherents. This also means that the government will fund discrimination against minority-faith and LGBTQ students and job applicants, as well as students and prospective employees with disabilities, whom many religious schools refuse to admit or hire. Indeed, earlier this year, the court heard arguments in two cases that could expand the ability of religious schools — the very same ones that often receive voucher funding — to discriminate in hiring and firing based on any ground the schools want, including race and ethnicity.
In her recent affirmation of Department of Education support for faith-based education, DeVos included a list of guidelines her department will use to guide faith-based educational systems. Those guidelines include:
• Affirms that religious organizations are equally eligible to participate in ED-administered programs as their secular counterparts
• Affirms that financial award decisions are made based on merit, not based on an organization’s religion, religious belief, or the lack thereof
• States that religious organizations receiving federal financial assistance under a Department program must comply with program-specific legislation and regulations, but clarifies that these organizations may continue to carry out their missions and maintain their religious character. However, direct federal financial assistance may not be used for religious worship, religious instruction, or proselytization
• Reminds states that they may not use discriminatory Blaine Amendments to deny faith-based organizations contracts or grants, as this violates Department regulations against discrimination on the basis of an organization’s religious character or affiliation
• Affirms that students and/or borrowers seeking to participate in Department loan programs and beneficiaries seeking to participate in Department social service programs will not be penalized or singled out for disadvantages on the basis of religion
• Clarifies the role of the Department’s Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives (CFOI) as a Department office that collaborates with faith and community leaders to maximize participation of religious organizations in Department programs while eliminating barriers in the grantmaking or regulatory process to safeguard religious liberty
These guidelines are highly problematic and it will be interesting to see if this ruling will increase the amount of faith-based educational programs/schools applying for public money. In addition, when we say faith-based educational systems, we really mean Christian, since we all know that Betsy DeVos and the DeVos/Prince families have a deep commitment to ultra-Conservative Christian values. This issue of using public money for faith-based schools and educational programs is not getting the attention it should be, but make no mistake about it that groups like the Great Lakes Education Project, are working hard to make sure that the candidates they are endorsing in Michigan (all of the GLEP-endorsed candidates won their primary in Michigan), will be committed to channeling public money to religious schools.
We were recently able to access the 2018 990 documents from the various DeVos family foundations, through GuideStar.org. These foundations include, the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation, the Doug & Maria DeVos Foundation, the Dan & Pamela DeVos Foundation and the CDV5 Foundation.
We have been tracking the DeVos family foundations for years, since it provides useful information on how the family strategically uses their money to influence the world around us. It is important to recognize that when people generally think of philanthropy, they think of money going from those with tremendous wealth to non-profits who provide needed services in the community. While there is some truth to this, what we will demonstrate in this series of articles, is that the DeVos family uses their foundation money to primarily wage ideological and class warfare.
In Part I of this series, we looked at how the DeVos family foundation funded and influenced educational institutions in West Michigan and across the US. In Part II, we looked at how the DeVos family foundations funded far right Christian organizations, and in today’s post we want to take a look at how these same foundation have funded Think Tanks and other groups that influence public policy, along with organizations that practice far right and Neoliberal policies.
American Enterprise Institute – $1,500,000 – AEI is one of the most influential Think Tanks in Washington, DC. The American Enterprise Institute has a long history of opposing an increase in the minimum wage, business regulation, being critical of Climate Change, supported the US invasion/occupation of Iraq, with strong ties to the Koch Brothers and Donor’s Trust.
Mackinac Center for Public Policy – $1,000,000 – The Mackinac Center is the most influential Think Tank in Michigan and has been working with the DeVos family for decades. The Mackinac Center was instrumental in getting Right to Work passed in Michigan, along with pushing privatization policies, anti-union policies and a whole host of prop-business policies. The Mackinac Center has also been aggressively pushing disaster capitalism policies during the COVID 19 pandemic.
George W. Bush Foundation – $2,000,000 – The DeVos family has always had close ties with the Bush family. The George W. Bush Foundation funds pro-capitalist projects across the US and around the world. The foundation’s foreign policy projects compliments US imperialism, particularly the economic aspects of US imperialism, such as supporting CAFTA in Central American and other Neoliberal economic practices in countries that the US has militarily occupied in recent decades.
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty – $228,500 – The DeVos family has long supporter the Acton Institute, with funding and with family members serving on the Board of Directors. The Acton Institute promotes the idea that Capitalism and Christianity are good bedfellows, but they also take a strong stance against the LGBTQ community, have supported attacks on unions, promotes xenophobia and has been very critical of the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Alliance for School Choice – $700,000 – The Alliance for School Choice has long received support from the DeVos family, since they advocate for the privatization of education and promote policies that undermine public education.
Talent 2025 Inc – $716,000 – Talent 2025 is a Grand Rapids-based entity that works with the business class to find inroads within the education system to recruit and promote the idea that education is fundamentally about developing talent for the business world. https://griid.org/tag/talent-2025/
National Review Institute – $150,000 – The NRI was founded by William F. Buckley to promote the benefits of Capitalism, particularly the way that the United States brand of capitalism.
Pregnancy Resource Center – $300,000 – The Pregnancy Resource Center is an anti-Choice organization that is based in Grand Rapids and provides “alternatives” to abortion.
Right to Life Michigan Educational Foundation – $125,000 – The RTL foundation is also an anti-choice organization that attempts to influence public opinion on reproductive rights and they lobby Michigan legislators to take an anti-Choice position.
Collectively, in just 2018, the DeVos family contributed roughly $6.5 million to these think tanks and public policy influencing entities to push and promote their brand of class warfare and ideologically far right policies. In Part IV of this series, we will look at the DeVos family created non-profits and what role they play in furthering the family’s legacy.
Most major Michigan news outlets reported on what happened in Kalamazoo on Saturday, with the Proud Boys violence. However, most news outlets also chose to frame the violence as equally distributed by the right and the left, or with no clear source of the violence with headlines like the one from MLive, Rally turns violent as Proud Boys met by counter-protesters in downtown Kalamazoo.
The problem with this reporting is that it is only reactive. It was known for at least a week that the Proud Boys would be coming to Kalamazoo to spew their White Supremacist propaganda, yet the news media didn’t really make an effort to report on who the Proud Boys are, what their ideology is and what their history of violence has been. Several of the news outlets that reported on this did mention that the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified the Proud Boys as a Hate Group, but this reference is vague and frankly, a lazy form of journalism. Sure, most news sources provided a link to the Southern Poverty law Center information on the Proud Boys, but they should have included at least an except within the coverage.
An additional source on the Proud Boys comes from Emily Gorcenski, writing for another group that monitors the far right, the Political Research Associates:
The Proud Boys, launched in 2016, had managed to stand apart from many of the other groups that attended and organized the fatal Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Compared to the White supremacists they sometimes marched alongside, the Proud Boys—self-declared “Western chauvinists” whose core ethos is that they won’t “apologize for creating the modern world”4—enjoy comfortable proximity to the conservative mainstream. Existing almost entirely to antagonize left-wing and Democratic opposition, they effectively serve as the Republican Party’s militant arm.
I would also recommend the recent book, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination by Alexandra Mina Stern, as a good source on unpacking who the Proud Boys are.
So, since the Proud Boys have a history of violence against marginalized communities, to not report on them ahead of the rally on Saturday, not only does a dis-service to the community of Kalamazoo, it makes the news media complicit in the White Supremacist violence.
One independent news source, Community Voices, did report ahead of time on the Proud Boys coming to Kalamazoo, with information about their planned rally and information to assist people in identifying far right White Supremacist groups.
However, most of the commercial news media ran headlines like:
Rally turns violent as Proud Boys met by counter-protesters in downtown Kalamazoo
Proud Boys, counter-protesters clash in Kalamazoo
Far right Proud Boys group clashes with counter-protesters in Kalamazoo
Violence erupts at Kalamazoo rally and counter-protest
Proud Boys, counter-protesters clash in downtown Kalamazoo
Far-right group, counter-protesters clash in Kalamazoo
You can see from each of these headlines that the news media frames the violence as stemming from all parties, without really acknowledging the fact that a far right White Supremacist groups came to Kalamazoo with the specific purpose to intimidate people, do real harm to people and to spread their propaganda.
The articles themselves don’t provide much insight into what happened and both the print and broadcast news included lots of short videos of interactions between Proud Boys and “counter-protesters.”
There was a fair amount of social media commentary from people who were there and were there specifically to force the Proud Boys to leave. One person commented:
“The police SPECIFICALLY PROTECTED the proud boys, CLEARED SPACE for them to leave, and then began ARRESTING Black counter protestors as well as the Media outlet reporting in this video. State police/Portage police/and Kalamazoo police are all complicit.”
Several other activists confirmed this observation about how the police seemed to be providing cover for the Proud Boys, which led to activists showing up outside the police station in a separate demonstration, as was reported on by WZZM 13.
Furthermore, the City of Kalamazoo, which included the Police Chief, held a press conference on Sunday, which was reported on by MLive, with the headline, Police chief says Proud Boys completed their mission by causing chaos in downtown Kalamazoo.
What is instructive about the Sunday Press conference by the Kalamazoo Police Chief was that they admitted that they knew that the Proud Boys were coming as early as July, that they had “a plan in place” and that the Police Chief said they, “had officers in an unmarked vehicle on scene and that the department was using aerial surveillance and deployed law enforcement officials immediately upon the initial clash occurring a half-hour earlier than expected.”
What is equally instructive is the fact that while there were 111 police officers present, they did not really prevent any violence, yet arrested 9 people, NONE of which were members of the Proud Boys.
It would be very interesting to submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to see exactly what the police knew and why none of the Proud Boys were arrested.
The fact that the police presence was massive and it resulted in no arrests of Proud Boys is consistent with what we have seen all across the US when White Supremacists come to communities and are met by resisters like antifa. In fact, a very similar situation happened in Kalamazoo in 2007, when White Supremacists came to Kalamazoo and were outnumber by anti-racist activists three to one. As someone who was involved in that action, the police not only created free speech spaces for the White Supremacists, they always faced those were were there to confront the White Supremacists and not the White Supremacists themselves, as was reported on by the indy news source Media Mouse.
Students for Trump Rally in Grand Rapids, will feature Charlie Kirk, known racist and founder of Turning Point USA
On Saturday, there will be a Students for Trump rally at Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids. Let that sink in for a moment…..a pro-Trump rally at Rosa Parks Circle.
The event is being hosted by the group Students for Trump, which is part of the the organization known as Turning Point USA.
Turning Point USA was founded by Charlie Kirk, and according to their own website:
Since its founding, Turning Point USA has embarked on a mission to build the most organized, active, and powerful conservative grassroots activist network on high school and college campuses across the country. With a presence on over 2,000 campuses, Turning Point USA is the largest and fastest-growing youth organization in America.
According to SourceWatch.org, Turning Point USA has ties to the Koch Brothers, the fossil fuel industry and the Trump family.
However, the most over aspect of Turning Point USA and its founder, Charlie Kirk, is there use of racist propaganda and its relationship to White Supremacists groups across the country.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in one article, documents several examples of Turning Point USA leaders making racist comments:
TPUSA’s flirtation with racists and racism is well documented. In a December 2017 expose in The New Yorker, reporter Jane Mayer was provided screenshots of a text message from TPUSA’s (now former) national field director, Crystal Clanton, that read, “i hate black people. Like f— them all… I hate blacks. End of story.”
Kirk himself has been criticized for his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tweets, and he habitually tweets out racist dog-whistles with statements like, “It would take 40 years worth of blacks killed by cops to equal the number of black [sic] killed by other blacks in one year.”
In an article for Newsweek, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk rails against Black Lives Matter and their unfounded use of rioting in response to the police murder of George Floyd.
In another public talk, Kirk said that there is no such thing as systemic racism in police departments. In fact, Kirk says, “cops are more likely to be shot by Black people,” as stated in this video.
In this brief exchange, Kirk talks about why he likes Immigration and Customs Enforcement and in yet another video Kirk defends building the Wall along the the US/Mexican border. In both instances Kirk uses false information.
These are the kind of comments one can expect to hear from Kirk, when he addresses people at the Students for Trump Rally in Grand Rapids on Sunday.
Lastly, it is worth noting, that according to the Turning Point USA Chapter Map, there are TPUSA chapters at Forest Hills Eastern High School, Forest Hills Northern High School, GVSU, Hope College and West Ottawa High School.
Setting the parameters for input by controlling the narrative: The GRPD Strategic Plan Survey
On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids Police Chief presented a draft of the new GRPD Strategic Plan. MLive reported on this dynamic, with the headline, Grand Rapids leaders praise police department’s strategic plan.
The article offers no insight into the GRPD’s Strategic Plan, something we did a few days ago.
What the article does do is to provide simplistic quotes from a few City Commissioners, without any real assessment of what they really think about the GRPD Strategic Plan and how it differs from previous plans, if at all.
The MLive story also provides a link for to the City’s website, where people can take a survey, by going to this link https://www.grandrapidsmi.gov/Government/Departments/Police-Department/Police-Strategic-Plan-Feedback-Form.
The survey begins with these words:
The Grand Rapids Police Department is here to serve you. We’re committed to ensuring all people feel safe and are safe at all times throughout our community. Through compassion, empathy and courage, we are driven to meet the public safety needs of our community. Our vision is to become the safest mid-sized city and most trusted police department in the United States.
We can’t do this without your support. Please take a moment to review our draft strategic plan and provide feedback. Your input is a valued part of this process. The questions on the following page are meant to provide guidance as you review the plan. We look forward to hearing from you.
How could anyone who actually pays attention believe any of what the GRPD is saying in this introduction to the survey? All the warm fuzzies in the world can’t undo the tremendous harm that the GRPD has done to individuals and families in this community, particularly the Black community.
In addition, the survey is carefully crafted to do two things. First, the survey wants you to respond to very specific and limiting questions, which means they want to control the parameters of what can be discussed. Secondly, the GRPD survey wants to dictate the narrative, by using language that is designed to elicit certain responses without allowing people to fully articulate their experiences of the GRPD.
I took the survey and what follows are the questions that are asked, along with my responses.
GRPD – The three main goals of the Grand Rapids Police Department’s strategic plan are Safety, Innovation and Engagement. How are these goals important to you?
These goals are not important to me, as they are just another version of the way that the GRPD does policing in this community, which has done tremendous harm to black and latinx communities. Does the Chief mean that Black people who feel the fear and dangers of White Supremacy and White Supremacist institutions will be safe? Does the Chief mean that those who identify as Queer or Trans should feel safe and never have to worry about homophobia and transphobia, or the spiritual violence that permeates Grand Rapids? Does the Chief mean that undocumented immigrants will feel safe with the GRPD’s Strategic Plan, never having to worry about ICE agents coming to kidnap them? Does the Chief mean that families who are facing eviction from rental properties, since they can’t afford the outrageous costs of housing, since they work in low wage jobs?
GRPD – What do you think the Grand Rapids Police Department needs to do better to effectively communicate and engage with you?
This is the wrong question to be asking. The GRPD should be under community control. If they want to communicate more effectively, then there needs to be complete transparency, which would happen under community control. According to the Movement for Black Lives, “Direct democratic community control of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, ensuring that communities most harmed by destructive policing have the power to hire and fire officers, determine disciplinary action, control budgets and policies, and subpoena relevant agency information.”
GRPD – After reviewing the strategic plan, what are your top three observations or suggestions?
1. The GRPD Strategic Plan does not address any systemic problems associated with policing in Grand Rapids.
2. It further legitimizes the function of the GRPD, since the public has NO say in the Strategic Plan, and
3. It doesn’t address Defunding the GRPD, which over 6,000 people have demanded in the past 8 weeks alone.
GRPD – Are there other action items you want to see included in the plan?
A plan to Defund the GRPD, have real community control over the GRPD budget and to re-direct existing funding for the GRPD to the Black community, where they would have control over the re-directed funding.
GRPD – We’ve also launched the Police Metric Dashboard. This provides up-to-date progress on various police metrics related to:
• Accountability
• Budget
• Community Engagement
• Crime Statistics
• Criminal Charge Statistics
• Staffing
What additional information do you want included in this dashboard?
A complete list of all weapons that the GRPD is in possession of, a list of private companies they purchase from and complete transparency on what military weaponry the GRPD is using from US military surplus.
I don’t expect that the Chief of Police will take seriously my comments, based on how he has dealt with the public to this point, especially those that have challenged him on how the GRPD functions in this community.
However, if you want to take the survey, you have until August 25th to do so.
We were recently able to access the 2018 990 documents from the various DeVos family foundations, through GuideStar.org. These foundations include, the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation, the Doug & Maria DeVos Foundation, the Dan & Pamela DeVos Foundation and the CDV5 Foundation.
We have been tracking the DeVos family foundations for years, since it provides useful information on how the family strategically uses their money to influence the world around us. It is important to recognize that when people generally think of philanthropy, they think of money going from those with tremendous wealth to non-profits who provide needed services in the community. While there is some truth to this, what we will demonstrate in this series of articles, is that the DeVos family uses their foundation money to primarily wage ideological and class warfare.
However, before we get to the data from the 2018 990 documents from the various DeVos family foundations, it is important to note that this family spends more money to directly influence public policy, based on the funding they provide to candidates and various Republican Party entities, as documented by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network (MCFN). Between 1999 and 2018, the DeVos family provided at least $93 million in contributions to political candidates and Republican PACs. However, this amount of money does not include Dark Money, such as the group known as Donor’s Trust. According to one source, the DeVos family has contributed $6.5 million to Donor’s Trust, which funds a variety of right wing entities throughout the country.
We argue, that the money the DeVos family foundations contribute ultimately compliments the direct political contributions they make. In Part II of this series, we look at the contributions the DeVos family foundations made for 2018 to Christian groups that would easily be considered part of the Christian Right – anti-LGBTQ, racist, practices White Saviorism, pull-yourself up by the bootstrap followers of Jesus.
Christian Leadership Institute – $837,000 – this group has as some of its content partners Focus on the Family and Foundation for Economic Education.
International Aid – $100,000 – Has a history of collaborating with dictatorships around the world, particularly those working with the US government. Oliver North wrote in his autobiography about his relationship to International Aid.
Luis Palau Association – $900,000 – Luis Palau and his activities have been reported in dozens of article in Christianity Today during the past 40 years. During that time Palau was in Somoza’s Nicaragua, where, unlike the community of Solentiname, a Nicaraguan Christian based community under persecution, he was welcome with open arms. In 1977, Palau was greeted and accompanied on his crusade by Colombian president Alfonso Michelsen, not particularly known for being a human rights advocate. Also in the 70’s Palau visited Bolivia with the help of an organization known as Food For the Hungry (FFH). According to Sara Diamond’s book Spiritual Warfare, FFH “argues that poverty is rooted in individuals’ belief systems and by extension, in cultures supposedly conducive to underdevelopment and poverty.” (Diamond pg 226) The founder of FFH, Larry Ward, was also with Palau on that trip. Ward, a former overseas director of World Vision “was known to have a close relationship with South Vietnamese and US military leaders.” In 1982, Palau brought his crusade to Paraguay, under the brutal dictatorship of Alfredo Stoessner. According to recently released documents there was massive execution of civilians during Stoessner’s reign. (see Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1994). Stroessner’s government gave Palau his approval to distribute 100,000 bibles and study courses to children nationwide. Luis Palau was also a close friend and supporter of the Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, who engaged in genocidal policies during his 18 months as President.
Partners Worldwide – $1,975,000 – this group believes that the only way to fight poverty is to make everyone an entrepreneur. Partners Worldwide embraces Capitalism to fight the affect of Capitalism, specifically poverty.
Campus Crusade for Christ – $10,000 – founded by Bill Bright, CCC was a campus-based Christian group that during the 1960s and 70s, was opposed to the anti-war, Civil Rights, LGBTQ and Feminist students groups that flourished around the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center refers to CCC as a Hate group.
Evangelism Explosion – $215,000 – founded by Dr. James Kennedy, former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and a longtime supporter of anti-LGBTQ campaigns. Over the years, Kennedy emphasized anti-gay rhetoric, particularly in his TV ministry. He recommended as “essential” the virulent work of R.J. Rushdoony, who believed practicing gays should be executed.
Prison Fellowship Ministries – $1,550,000 – founded by former Nixon staffer Chuck Colsen, who went to prison for Watergate. PFM is biased towards only working with those in prison who identify as Christian, plus they do nothing to challenge the Prison Industrial Complex.
Willow Creek Association – $1,000,000 – Is a Christian Ministry that has lost some credibility in recent years, because of the sex scandal that their leadership has been accused of. More importantly, Willow Creek hosts annual conferences that feature politically conservative and far right speakers from around the world.
Life International Inc. – $50,000 – an anti-Choice Christian group that works outside of the US.
One could also add to this list the millions that the DeVos family has contributed to the Christian Reformed Church in America, which has its own history of promoting Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, anti-feminist, anti-union and anti-LGBTQ messages.
In Part III, we will look at the Think Tanks and related groups that received funding from the DeVos family foundations in 2018.
GRPD Strategic Plan: Placates those unaffected by police violence, insults the rest of us
On Friday, the GRPD released a draft of their strategic plan. This news was announced on the City’s website, with the headline, GRPD’s strategic plan will transform policing in Grand Rapids.
A PDF version of the strategic plan is 18 pages long and the draft of the new GRPD Strategic Plan for for 2021 – 2023. The Strategic Plan begins with a Letter from Chief Payne, which states early on:
Your safety is our highest priority and, with this document as our guide, we will work together to ensure all people feel safe and are safe in this city.
Such a statement from Chief Payne is simply not true. Part of the problem might be with how Chief Payne defines what it means for people to feel safe. Does the Chief mean that Black people who feel the fear and dangers of White Supremacy and White Supremacist institutions will be safe? Does the Chief mean that those who identify as Queer or Trans should feel safe and never have to worry about homophobia and transphobia, or the spiritual violence that permeates Grand Rapids? Does the Chief mean that undocumented immigrants will feel safe with the GRPD’s Strategic Plan, never having to worry about ICE agents coming to kidnap them? Does the Chief mean that families who are facing eviction from rental properties, since they can’t afford the outrageous costs of housing, since they work in low wage jobs?
Chief Payne and the GRPD have no real idea what it means to really feel safe for thousands of people in Grand Rapids. What Chief Payne means by safety is really when people comply and submit to oppression and exploitation, especially if people do not disrupt business as usual and challenge the very systems of power and oppression that keeps people from feeling safe.
On pages 3 – 4, there is a timeline that begins in 2015 and brings us to the present, following a narrative that the GRPD wants us all to believe. The timeline completely omits any of the harm that the GRPD has committed against the Black community, against immigrants, against families in poverty, against queer and trans people or against those who have resisted oppression. The timeline does include May 30th from this year, uses the language Civil Unrest and Demonstration and includes a picture of Chief Payne kneeling during a Black Lives Matter protest (shown above). This narrative says nothing about the GRPD beating people, firing weapons into crowds, arresting people for curfew violations or spying, monitoring and intimidating people who have opposed police violence.
Page 5 includes a graphic that includes “stakeholders, with exclusively law enforcement agencies and city officials in 9 of the 10 categories. Under the category of community, the GRPD lists all the ways they have “engaged” the community with programs like Speed of Trust, Coffee with Cops or the Citizen Police Academy – all of which are designed to manage public dissent in ways that the cops can control.
On page 6 of the Strategic Plan, it lists the top 10 community feedback items. However, most of this “feedback” was based on comments from programs that the GRPD or the City had complete control of. The only unfiltered feedback was from the June and July town halls and commission meetings, where people flooded the meetings with calls to Defund the GRPD. And lets not forget that this happened all digitally, since these meetings took place during the pandemic, where people could not physically demonstrate their outrage, like what we have seen at City Commission meetings in recent years.
Page 7 lists the values of the GRPD, which is laughable and infuriating at the same time. Does the GRPD really believe any of this shit?
Much of the rest of the document lays out how the GRPD will implement their strategic plan, which is essentially a regurgitation of previous plans – community policing and beat cops. There is a section called “Innovation”, which is where the GRPD plans to “partner” with mental health workers and other social service agencies, which we have previously critiqued.
Page 13 has a section on police use of technology, such as unmanned ariel systems and drones. The GRPD planned to hold “community” sessions on this technology back in the Spring of 2020, but then the pandemic hit and those meetings were cancelled.
A great deal more could be said about the GRPD’s new and improved strategic plan, but the reality is that the GRPD is only making mild adjustments to the way they do policing. There is no evidence that the GRPD or the City of Grand Rapids is taking any of the calls for Defunding the GRPD and the redirecting of those funds to the Black community, as a serious and urgent call from the community. This Strategic Plan from the GRPD is at best designed to placate sectors of the public that still believes in the benevolence of the police, but to those on the ground fighting against power and oppression, this document is insulting.
