Who has been behind Michigan’s 3rd Grade Reading Retention Policy?
In 2016, the Michigan Legislature passed a law that requires schools to identify learners who are struggling with reading and writing and to provide additional help. The law states that third graders may repeat third grade if they are more than one grade level behind beginning with the 2019-2020 school year.
This law has been controversial ever since it was introduced and during Gov. Whitmer’s State of the State address last Wednesday, she proposed an alternative to the 3rd Grade Reading Law passed in 2016. Her plan is to have the State of Michigan work with foundations across the state to invest in early child literacy and to help families understand the retention mandate.
Background on the 3rd Grade Reading Law and who has been pushing it
Before the 3rd Grade Reading law was introduced with House Bill 4822, there were numerous entities pushing for the this type of policy. At the state level groups like the DeVos-created Great Lakes Education Project and the far right think tank, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, were zealously in favor of the 3rd grade reading law. On the local level, the West Michigan Policy Forum has been the primary champion.
HB 4822 was introduced in 2015 by then Rep. Amanda Price, who was then replaced by Rep. Jim Lilly. Other major backers of this legislation were Lisa Lyons, Lee Chatfield, Jim Runestad and Daniela Garcia. Most of these politicians have received major funding from the DeVos family, like Lee Chatfield, while others have moved on to the Michigan Senate, and in the case of Daniela Garcia, she is now a staff person at the Department of Education, working for Betsy DeVos.
The vote on HB 4822, was pretty much along partisan lines, with 54 Republicans and 3 Democrats voting for the legislation. After a significant amount of deliberation, then-Gov. Snyder approved the legislation in October of 2016, nearly a year after it was introduced. For a substantial articulation of what this law means, read the analysis provided by the House and Senate Education Committees.
The Michigan Education Association opposed this legislation, mostly on the grounds that it could result in, “large numbers of children being held back from advancing to fourth grade—especially in high-poverty and urban areas where proficiency rates were lower than elsewhere.” Below are provisions in the new reading law.
There are currently 19 states that have adopted the same 3rd grade reading retention policies, which began in 1998, when California adopted a 3rd Grade Reading Retention policy. According to an NPR report late last year, forcing children to repeat a grade is stigmatizing and can damage their self-esteem. Multiple studies have found that flunking a grade makes it much more likely students will fail to graduate from high school. Some parents and educators have organized against mandatory retention and advocate for children to sit out high-stakes exams. A group of parents in Florida unsuccessfully challenged the policy in court.
On the blog Education Dive, writer Naaz Modan writes:
Across the board, retention can increase the likelihood of a student dropping out of school, and many educators and organizations have criticized the growing policies for this reason.
The National Council of Teachers of English says that the laws are “ill-advised” and perpetuate a “cycle of punishment” that disproportionately affects students of color, impoverished children, English language learners and special needs students.
And Kathy N. Headley, the president of the Board of Directors for the International Literacy Association, pointed out that the retention of 3rd graders without providing the support necessary for educators and students is meaningless.
Last week, Bridge Magazine posted a story about Gov. Whitmer’s attempt to challenge the 3rd grade reading law. The first source cited in the Bridge article, was Michael Jandernoa, who is a board member of the West Michigan Policy Forum, one of the groups that lobbied hard to get it pass in Michigan. Jandernoa states:
“The teachers and schools have been totally unable to help these kids who are behind in third grade graduate in high school and go on and get any kind of trade job or [attend] community college, or any consideration of a four-year university.”
Jandernoa and the West Michigan Policy Forum are very clear about their anti-teacher union positions, their advocacy for Charter and private education, along with their general view that students are nothing more than talent to be developed to fill employer needs.
The Grand Rapids Public Schools was one of the first districts in the state to push for this legislation when it was first introduced, according to a recent WZZM 13 story. This begs the question as to why the GRPS was so eager to adopt the 3rd Grade Reading Retention policy, a policy that was primarily promoted by the Great Lakes Education Project, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the West Michigan Policy Forum.
Lastly, so much of the issues that are raised with the 3rd Grade Reading retention policy have to do with funding and resources for education. The public schools are grossly underfunded in this state, with large funding disparities with districts that have a high percentage of students of color. In addition to low school funding, there is also the issue of teachers being paid a justice salary and having access to classroom resources. This is not to suggest that the problem is all about money, but we know that funding for schools when compared to funding for prisons demonstrates where our priorities are.
Normalizing White Settler Colonialism at the Super Bowl
I work in an adult foster care home and a couple of weekends ago, residents were watching the AFC playoff game between Tennessee and Kansas City, a game which was played in Kansas City.
During the game I could hear the hometown fans doing a chant that was essentially an stereotypical chant or song that indigenous people might use. In addition, Kansas City fans were also doing the tomahawk chop, something that the Atlanta Braves baseball team also does.
There were also fans dressed in native regalia, like the person shown here in the right. This use of dress or song and even the tomahawk chop is all rather offensive and more importantly it is racist.
This Sunday, the Kansas City team will be playing in the biggest game in the NFL and the most viewed sports event in the US, the Super Bowl. What this means is that the Kansas City team, known as the Chiefs, and their fans will most certainly continue to use and abuse indigenous dress and spiritual practice, thus further normalizing a White Settler Colonial narrative.
If you watch the game, listen to see if the people doing the game commentary will bother to bring up this issue. It’s not likely to be addressed and it is not likely that there will be much news coverage of the protests that are likely to take place outside the stadium.
Native American groups are opposing the use racist stereotypes and the fact that the Kansas City team actually plays a “war drum” before their games.
This is not a new issue, but it is something that those of us who are not part of First Nations need to seriously examine and not participate in.
In West Michigan, there has been a battle to get rid of the racist use of the name Redskins by the Paw Paw High School. In Grand Rapids, Ottawa Hills High School used to be the Indians, but through organizing, the name was changed to the Bengals.
The bottom line is that we need to listen to and respect the wishes of the Native America community about what names, logos or mascots are offensive and inappropriate.
There are lots of great resources on this topic that have produced by indigenous people. Check out the documentary entitled, More Than A Word.
Read a powerful essay by Ward Churchill, who talks about how Nazi Germany racist images of Jews and how that relates to racist images used by sports teams.
Become educated and find out how white settler colonialism is being played out in your community.
Ottawa County Commission resolution on refugee resettlement is adopted, but it is a far cry from immigrant justice
Yesterday, I sat through a little over 2 hours of comments from people who came to speak to the Ottawa County Commission about their proposed motion to adopt a resolution (see pages 124 – 126) in response to the Trump administration’s Executive Order 13888, regarding refugee resettlement. The commission chambers was packed with no empty seats and at least another 100 people standing during the meeting.
The Republican and Democratic Parties in Ottawa County were encouraging people to come out and speak to this issue, both using social media. I did not do a methodical count, but it is safe to say that more than half, and maybe as much as two-thirds, of those that spoke, were in favor of supporting a resolution to continue to welcome refugees.
Those opposing the increase in refugees coming to Ottawa County were using arguments that were right out of the playbook of groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Heritage Foundation. Many of those opposing the resolution also made claims that immigrants and refugees don’t pay taxes and are a burden on American society. One person even claimed that the US would be over run by Muslims and we would all be living under Sharia Law.
The racist and White Supremacist claims were repeated by those opposing the resolution in support of refugee resettlement. One additional argument was that “these people” would have to be assimilated into America culture. None of the people making this argument ever made clear what exactly American culture is, but based on their comments it meant white, Christian and patriotic.
For those who supported the resolution, some of them based it on their experience of working with refugees, either within non-profits or because their church had sponsored a refugee family. The overwhelming argument was based on Christian bible passages, like welcoming the stranger. Many people used the famous Matthew 25: 31 – 46 passage, where Jesus is separating the sheep from the goats. Some people read the entire passage, which ends with those who don’t welcoming refugees being sent to hell.
I get that people of faith were using their religion to support a pro-refugee position, but some of it left a bad taste in my mouth. There was no discussion or articulation that US foreign policy was, in many cases, the cause of displacement. US military and economic policies are a major reason why hundreds of thousands of people, especially for people from Latin America, have fled their countries of origin and often come to the US seeking a better life.
In addition, there were too few responses to the racist and classist claims made by those presenting an anti-refugee/anti-immigrant position. Those supporting the resolution were often appealing to the county commissioner’s Christian heritage, instead of making a more robust argument for what was driving displacement globally. Many of those who supported the proposed resolution were also using the argument that refugees are hard workers, that they contribute to the economy and that they do learn English. While it may be true that many immigrants and refugees have a significant impact on the economy or are hard workers, such arguments are problematic. Refugees and immigrants are often fleeing political persecution, have suffered torture, experienced profound levels of poverty and other brutal circumstances. We should be very careful about using arguments that “they work hard” or “contribute to the economy,” since these arguments often perpetuate a Neo-Liberal Capitalist framework.
Lastly, it is worth noting that in the summary of the proposal from the Ottawa County Commission, it states:
Secondly, I reminded the community and Presidential political base that this refers to Adjudicated Refugees that the Trump Administration has admitted into the country and wants us to accept, so we don’t confuse our constituents that this is somehow making Ottawa County a sanctuary county for illegal refugees.
I include this point, because it also speaks to the larger issue about what the Ottawa County Commissioners think and feel about immigration in general. If immigrants or refugees are admitted to the US through channels that they have sanctioned, then the commission seems to be supportive. However, if immigrants are coming into the US without government sanction, meaning those who are undocumented, then the Ottawa County Commissioners will in no way support those who are undocumented.
The Ottawa County Commission did vote unanimously on the resolution to continue refugee resettlement. The vote is certainly a win for those who are committed to immigrant/refugee justice, but based on the comments from everyone who spoke yesterday, there is a great deal of work to be done to move from welcoming refugees who are admitted to the US, to practicing immigrant justice, where immigrants will not be criminalized, regardless of documentation.
Acton Institute writer puts faith in the market to solve the housing crisis, is dismissive of rent control as a solution
Last week, Acton Institute writer, Dan Hugger, wrote an article headlined, Sen. Bernie Sanders tweets a blueprint for a housing crisis.
The Acton writer acknowledges that there is a housing crisis, but frames the solution around the market, instead of policy or grassroots organizing. Hugger goes on to cite Kevin Erdmann’s book, Shut Out, but omits the critique of gentrification that is in the paragraph right after the one the Acton writer cites.
The Acton writer then goes on to say:
Senator Sanders’ call for national rent control does nothing about this underlying shortage but rather exacerbates it.
The Acton writer is correct to point out that rent control by itself would be inadequate, plus it would take too long in most states to get rent control passed. However, grassroots organizing by tenant unions across the country have demonstrated that it is more effective to pressure landlords/property management companies, than to wait for states to pass rent control policies.
The Acton writer concludes with his own solutions to the housing crisis. He offers a vague comment about having fewer barriers for developers and one concrete suggestions about flexible zoning, citing Oregon and California’s ban on single family zoning. I agree that more flexible zoning would be important, but if the Acton writer looked beyond the tweet from Bernie Sanders, he would actually see there is a pretty robust plan for dealing with the housing crisis.
Here is what Senator Sanders’ campaign is calling for:
- End the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly 10 million permanently affordable housing units.
- Protect tenants by implementing a national rent control standard, a “just-cause” requirement for evictions, and ensuring the right to counsel in housing disputes.
- Make rent affordable by making Section 8 vouchers available to all eligible families without a waitlist and strengthening the Fair Housing Act.
- Combat gentrification, exclusionary zoning, segregation, and speculation.
- End homelessness and ensure fair housing for all
- Revitalize public housing by investing $70 billion to repair, decarbonize, and build new public housing.
This platform is what housing advocates, like Right to the City and Hones for All national, having been calling for for more than a decade.
The Acton writer should get their facts straight instead of primarily calling for the market to solve all of our problems. The market approach to problem solving is what the Acton Institute always promotes, which is no surprise to those who have read this blog before. In addition, it seems that the Acton Institute was clearly picking on Senator Sanders, considering their contempt for the ideals of socialism and anybody who espouses them, which I suspect was the real motivation for this post, the housing crisis was merely a mechanism to be dismissive of socialist policies in favor of Neo-Liberal market policies.
We need Food Justice, not Food Charity: The urgency of finding real solutions to food insecurity, poverty and structural racism
Over the years, we have posted numerous articles that challenges a food charity approach to hunger. In those articles we have challenged groups like Feeding America and Kids Food Basket.
Now, when I say we challenged these groups, I mean to challenge the strategies they employ to end hunger. It is not a bad thing for organizations to provide food relief to people who are food insecure. However, food charity is ultimately a false solution that only perpetuates food insecurity, plus it often makes the people who engage in food security work to feel better about themselves, rather than to seriously investigate the root causes of hunger.
Kids Food Basket (KFB) is a prime example of an organization that practices food charity. They provide food to elementary age children through their sack supper program. This program has received tremendous support over the years, so much so that Kids Food Basket has grown so fast, they have had to move numerous times to accommodate that growth.
Last September, KFB opened their new $7.5 million facility on Leonard St. and just last week they announced another expansion plan to provide more sack suppers to children in Ottawa and Allegan counties.
This continued expansion is ultimately an expansion in charity and does nothing to address the root causes of hunger. On the website of Kids Food Basket, under their FAQ section, one question asks:
How is Kids Food Basket addressing the root causes of hunger? Their answer is that they will continue to practice a false solution, by making sack suppers. In fact, they state, “We meet immediate critical needs with our Sack Suppers and we also need organizations that do work like corner store reform, lobbying at the state and national levels for legislation that encourages universal access to food, and in other areas such as housing, transportation, and employment.” What KFB is suggesting only addresses food access, but there is no discussion about how to fight poverty and hunger.
What are the alternatives?
- It would be important for any and all groups who do food triage work to acknowledge that just providing food assistance on a regular basis does not solve the problem. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t practice mutual aid and assist people in a time of crisis. We absolutely should practice mutual aid when we can. However, it is not enough to just provide charity, we must work towards transformative justice.
- Once Kids Food Basket can acknowledge that hunger is a much larger and systemic economic and racial problem, then they can, with other like-minded groups, begin to develop multi-pronged strategies to fight for economic and racial justice.
- They should end partnerships with corporations and families which are part of the local power structure, which supports candidates who pass policies that create more poverty.
- Promoting and participating in a Living Wage campaign at the city/county level. Currently, many groups around the country are calling for a $15 minimum wage. However, a Living Wage would go further, because it would force us to have a much more substantial conversation about economic policy and the larger wealth gap in this community.
- Wealth re-distribution in the form of reparations. Those families, communities and corporations which have exploited workers and communities for decades, should be required to pay back the communities, families and individuals they have exploited. This is especially the case in the African American community, which has been exploited for centuries and where reparations should begin. Kids Food Basket should call for reparations.
- Organizations like Kids Food Basket need to adopt clear racial justice policies that recognize historical racism and how it currently in manifested in West Michigan. How is it that the people who pick most of our food in West Michigan, migrant farmworkers, have a high rate of poverty?
- The Kids Food Basket location on Leonard St. sits on several acres that they are using to grow food. What if part of that land was used to allow people to come to this newly acquired land and grow food together, specifically the families that are benefiting from the sack supper program. KFB could provide people with the skills, transportation and child care so they could chose to be involved in producing some of their own food. This could also be done by supporting more programs in neighborhoods that are experiencing poverty, by assisting those neighborhoods with urban food production, if that is something residents want to do. This would require the use of more urban land specifically for food production.
These are only just a few suggestions, but I believe that many more creative and powerful ideas could surface if we changed the narrative around how to respond to hunger from food charity to food justice. In fact, GVSU is hosting a Food Summit this Friday, and it would be the perfect place for these kinds of conversations could be had about the need to address the root causes of hunger and to practices food sovereignty.
The local group Talent 2025, is an entity that seeks to influence the education systems in West Michigan and to develop talent (code for students) that will be ready to fill the employment needs on area businesses.
Their most recent blog post is, Teacher Retention and the Future of the Education Workforce. In that blog post, the author recognizes and acknowledges a serious problem in the very first sentence:
Between the years of 2008 and 2016, enrollment in teacher preparation programs within the state of Michigan decreased by 66 percent.
One of the main reasons for the decrease in teacher preparation programs and teacher retention in Michigan and across the country, is low and inadequate salaries. Teacher salaries have been one of the fundamental issues that has led to teacher strikes in the past three years in states like California, Illinois and West Virginia.
Unfortunately, the Talent 2025 blog post does not acknowledge teacher salaries as being a key issue in teacher retention. Instead, the Talent 2025 article focuses on tactics that some school districts in West Michigan are employing to address the shortage of teachers.
When talking about the Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS), Talent 2025 writes:
In Kent County, Grand Rapids Public Schools identified a significant shortage of bilingual teachers and a subsequent lack of local candidates sufficient in the language skills they desired. Through research and conversations with other local school districts, GRPS officials learned of an opportunity to hire bilingual teachers from Puerto Rico. With support from the community, designees from GRPS headed to Puerto Rico to identify candidates with the potential to thrive at Grand Rapids Public Schools.
According to an article in School News Network, the GRPS sent four people to Puerto Rico for 5 days in early November with the intent of getting letters of intent from a half a dozen teachers. According to the same article, “Their trip will be partially funded by a $6,000 grant from the Grand Rapids-based Jandernoa Foundation.”
Since the article states that the trip was partly funded by the Jandernoa Foundation, we can probably assume that the rest was paid for by the GRPS, which means public money was used for this trip. The decision to try to recruit teachers in Puerto Rico to come to Grand Rapids and teach in the Grand Rapids Public Schools raises all sorts of questions that we would like to address.
First, it should be noted that the Grand Rapids Public Schools has the lowest teacher salaries in the area, according to data provided by MLive in 4/2019. The MLive article provides a searchable database, which shows the following teacher salaries by school districts:
- West Ottawa $69,518
- Byron Center $69,271
- Forest Hills $69,219
- East GR $68,960
- Cedar Springs $60,910
- Coopersville $59,276
- Allendale $57,302
- Godfrey Lee $56,892
- Grand Rapids $54,844
If the GRPS was committed to teacher retention and want to attract news teachers to come to this community, then they need to increase the teacher salary.
Second, what else is the GRPS doing to retain and attract teachers, particularly bilingual teachers that they so desperately need because of the growing latino/latinx student population? The GRPS should be working groups like the Hispanic Center or the Latino Coalition to begin the process of cultivating greater opportunities for local latinos/latinx people who want to become teachers. The GRPS could provides incentives for people from this community to return to Grand Rapids after obtaining an education degree and commit to teaching within the GRPS.
Third, it is instructive that Puerto Rico is the place that the GRPS went to recruit teachers. It is critical that we understand that not only have teachers been deeply affected by hurricane Maria in 2017, but that the public school system in Puerto Rico has also been under attack. According to Naomi Klein’s book, The Battle for Paradise, “between 2010 and 2017, roughly 340 public schools were shut down; arts and physical education programs were virtually eliminated in many elementary schools; and the board announced plans to slash the University of Puerto Rico’s budget in half.”
In addition, Puerto Rico’s financial struggles began way before hurricane Maria. The island was facing massive Neo-liberal forms austerity measures, which included the defunding of public education. In fact, Julia Keleher, who was appointed in 2016 to be the Secretary of Education, by the now deposed Puerto Rican Governor, Rossello. Keleher, right after the hurricane, created an education reform bill with the assistance of US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. This new education reform package included exactly what DeVos has imposed on the mainland, which is expanding charter schools and school-voucher programs. (See Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm, edited by Bonilla and LeBron.)
Finally, the Jandernoa Foundation (which provided $6,000 for the GRPS trip to Puerto Rico) is the foundation of Michael Jandernoa, one of the people who makes up the Grand Rapids Power Structure. Jandernoa is connected to Talent 2025 and the West Michigan Policy Forum, both of which support and promote policies that seek to undermine public education and to develop students (talent) to fill jobs within the West MI business community. Jandernoa has also contributed significantly to the Student Advancement Foundation and he has contributed to several current and former Grand Rapids Public School Board members. If Jandernoa funded part of the trip, then people should be very suspicious of his influence in this process.
Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that the Department of Education was updating rules on 
prayer in schools and a proposed rule on faith-based education institutions.
None of this has received much attention in the mainstream commercial news media, but we believe it is important for people to be made aware of any new or proposed policies, particularly that rely on public tax dollars. This is especially the case with this issue, particularly since Betsy DeVos identifies very publicly as a Christian and as someone who embraces a very conservative theological framework.
In the announcement from the Depart of Education, Secretary DeVos says, “The Department’s efforts will level the playing field between religious and non-religious organizations competing for federal grants, as well as protect First Amendment freedoms on campus and the religious liberty of faith-based institutions. I proudly share President Trump’s commitment to religious freedom and the First Amendment.”
It is well know that Betsy DeVos and the DeVos family support a form of Christian Reconstruction, which essentially means that society should be run by biblical values, rather than secular values. DeVos has continued to inject her faith-based values since she became the Secretary of Education in 2017, something we have been documenting in our Betsy DeVos Watch articles and it is the main topic of a well researched article that appeared in Mother Jones in 2017, entitled, Betsy DeVos Wants to Use America’s Schools to Build “God’s Kingdom.”
The updated prayer guideline can be found at this link, which was originally part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and further strengthen in the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). The Every Student Succeeds Act was an extension of the No Child Left Behind Act, with some modifications.
The proposed rule that was announced last week and is not yet policy, is what DeVos and the Department of Education have been working on since the US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. In that ruling, which we reported on in 2017, which basically means that the State of Missouri must give taxpayer funding to a house of worship.
In the new proposal, announced last week by the Department of Education, it would pave the way for allowing faith-based institutions to access more federal funding and it would provide more opportunities for faith-based entities to discriminate against vulnerable populations. The ACLU reaction to this new proposal from the Department of Education is instructive:
The Trump administration proposed multiple new regulations today that will roll back critical legal protections under the guise of religious liberty.
The proposed regulations would revoke key protections for beneficiaries of government-funded social services, eliminating requirements that religious providers refer individuals who ask to a secular alternative and notify individuals of their rights. Agencies affected touch nearly every area of life, and include: Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Labor, Agriculture, Education, Justice, Homeland Security, and International Development.
The regulations also would make it more difficult for some individuals to access critical social services funded by the government. Specifically, the new rules would ease certain restrictions that have prevented federally-funded religious social service providers from imposing religious requirements on individuals seeking help or turning them away just because they are LGBTQ or follow a different faith, in situations where no secular alternative provider is available.
Again, it is important to note that this is only a proposal, but it could become formal policy unless there is organized opposition.
New Medicaid Work Requirements are just one aspect of the class war that the West Michigan Policy Forum is waging throughout the state
The new Medicaid work requirements are set to begin this week in Michigan. The new law, which was signed by former Governor Rick Snyder, will require those receiving medicaid benefits to work at least 80 hours a month in order to continue to receive those benefits.
This policy has been promoted by the West Michigan Policy Forum for several years and they recently wrote the following on their Facebook page:
Michigan’s new Medicaid work requirement will boost the state’s economy and help guide able-bodied participants in the Medicaid expansion program on a path to economic self-sufficiency.
The Michigan Chamber of Commerce cites a state “workforce shortage and talent gap” that leaves as many as 100,000 jobs currently unfilled.
Work requirements “could help employers with their labor shortages and create a pathway for independence for enrollees,” Wendy Block, the chamber’s vice president of business advocacy, told Bridge Magazine.
It is no surprise that the Michigan Chamber of Commerce would also endorse this policy as they are always seeking to reduce government spending that benefits working class people. The West Michigan Policy Forum argument is that these new Medicaid work requirements will help people become “economically self-sufficient.”
Of course, the notion that economic self-sufficiency only applies to those who are suffering from the exploitative and brutal economic policies of Neo-liberal capitalism, which punishes the poor and rewards the rich. Never mind that the tax systems benefits the wealthy and never mind that corporations in Michigan also receive tax breaks and massive subsidies, otherwise known as corporate welfare.
This most recent policy further demonstrates the cruelty of those who promote these policies, the West Michigan Policy Forum, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Each of these entities have been pushing policies, like Medicaid work requirements, all in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Recently, Senate Majority leader Mike Shirkey has said that health officials have had enough time to let the residents of Michigan know about these new requirements. Shirkey, who sponsored the 2018 work rule law regarding Medicaid, says “the implementation can’t happen fast enough.”
It is no surprise that Senator Shirkey is bankrolled by the some the wealthiest individuals and large corporations in Michigan. In fact, two of the top three contributors to Mike Shirkey from 2011 to the present are both from Grand Rapids and members of the West Michigan Policy Forum. John Kennedy, the CEO of Autocam has contributed $200,000 to Shirkey and the DeVos family has contributed $71,000, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.
There are already legal complaints that have been submitted in the Michigan courts over this policy, and according to a recent article from the Michigan Advance, most of the states that have implemented Medicaid work requirements have either, “suspended or delayed them as a direct result of litigation or as a way to avoid it.”
This policy is not only cruel, it contributes to further undermining government safety nets for the most vulnerable people in our society. The Medicaid work requirements are consistent with what the West Michigan Policy Forum promotes in terms of labor policy, which includes:
- Maintain Michigan’s Freedom to Work Status
- Repeal of the Prevailing Wage mandate
- Grow Michigan’s Labor Participation rate – Addition of Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied adults
- Paid Sick Leave Reform (Defense)
- Minimum Wage Reform (Defense)
The West Michigan Policy Board of Directors is made up of the wealthiest and most powerful powerful people in the area, including Doug DeVos, Mike VanGessel, Michael Jandernoa, John Kennedy, Peter Secchia, J.C. Huizenga and Rick Baker, just to name a few. These people are waging a class war on communities of color, working class people and other vulnerable members of society. These people have addresses and must be stopped!
I’m sorry to have to say that the vast majority of White Americans are racists, either consciously or unconsciously
The title to this post is a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech entitled, Which Way Its Soul Shall Go. The speech was given at the annual American Psychological Association convention in September of 1967, just 6 months before he was assassinated in Memphis.
Dr. King would go on to say:
If the Negro needs social sciences for direction and for self-understanding, the white society is in even more urgent need. White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism and the understanding needs to be carefully documented and consequently more difficult to reject. The present crisis arises because although it is historically imperative that our society take the next step to equality, we find ourselves psychologically and socially imprisoned. All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life but with the product of these conditions-the Negro himself.
White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro’s desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come.
These words are not what many of us white people are accustomed to hearing, since we too often prefer to hear kind and affirming words from black people. However, after King had moved his operations to Chicago in 1966, King began to see that the “liberal” north was in fact as deeply committed to White Supremacy as they were in the south.
What Dr. King is telling us in this 1967 speech, is that white people are racists. It’s true, we are racists, whether we are conscious of it or not. We can deny it and we can sit in shame of this fact, or we can accept it and then work towards ending our racism or at least our complicity in racist structures and systems that govern our society more than 50 years after King’s death.
How to Be An Anti-Racist?
First, we must accept the fact that for those of us who are white, we engage in racist behavior and are the beneficiaries of structural racism. Second, we need to come to terms with the fact that the problem with racism is not black people, it’s white people. Think about it this way. The problem with sexism isn’t women, it’s men. However, we often think that sexism is a woman’s problem, since men become the absent referent. Often a headline will say, “Woman is sexually assaulted on campus.” The problem with the way this is framed is that the male perpetrator is completely absent from the headline, thus sexual assault is a woman’s problem.
The same is true with racism. Too often, we think that racism is the black community’s problem, when in fact racism is really the white community’s problem. This doesn’t mean that black people shouldn’t do anything about racism, especially since the black community has taken on the primary responsibility of racism. What we need to do as white people is to acknowledge that racism is our problem and then work to dismantle it.
A third thing white people need to do is to not expect black people to hold our hands and show us how to be anti-racist. White people cannot put that burden on black people and make them responsible for showing us how to be anti-racist. We, white people, have to do the work ourselves, to invest emotionally and intellectually in doing the work to dismantle racism. This doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t learned from the lived experiences or the organic intellectualism of black people. We should read and study and expose ourselves to the rich tradition and history of lack liberation struggles and black resistance.
Fourth, once we have accepted that we, as white people, are racist, that we benefit from structural racism, that we must invest in doing the work of becoming an anti-racist, then we have to actually work to dismantle systemic racism. This doesn’t mean that attending another MLK Day event will get us off the hook. There is a big difference from being seen as an anti-racist and actually doing anti-racist work.
Practicing anti-racist work can look like this:
- Confronting systemic racism in our neighborhoods by not participating in gentrification and by fighting against those seeking to gentrify.
- Demanding that our faith community publicly acknowledge that they perpetuate and benefit from systemic racism.
- By acknowledging that we are living on stolen land and are the beneficiaries of white settler colonialism…..and then doing the work to dismantle white settler colonialism.
- White people need to give political power to black people……..period.
- White people need to pay reparations and make the institutions in our society pay reparations for the past and present harm that has been done to the black community.
Notice, that I am not using the words diversity and inclusion when talking about how white people can practice being anti-racist. That is because diversity and inclusion are Neo-Liberal terms used by white people to get black people to think we give a shit about their condition. Remember, Dr. King said, “The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come.”
To my fellow white people, what are we going to do to practice being anti-racist?
In Part I, we looked at some of the more radical and less-known positions that Dr. King had, particularly in the last years of his life. In Part II, we explored one of the systems of oppression that Dr. King challenged, one of the evil triplets, militarism.
In Part III, we thought it would be interesting to look at how the local news media reported on the 1963 march on Washington, the murder of the four girls in Alabama and how Dr. King’s death was covered by the Grand Rapids Press. We base this post on articles that have appeared on the Grand Rapids People’s History site, which began in 2011.
The first article looks at how the Grand Rapids Press reported on the Civil Rights marches in Detroit and in Washington DC in the summer of 1963. Dr. King and other leaders decided to do the march in Detroit a few months before going to DC as sort of a test run for what to expect in the nation’s capital.
The GR Press article (on page 5) states that the UAW, the NAACP and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), were all sending people to participate in the historic march. The same article in the also mentions that the AFL-CIO, the Grand Rapids Urban League and the Human Relations Commission (City of Grand Rapids), did not send their members to the historic march in Washington.
One final article from the Grand Rapids Press coverage of the 1963 March on Washington, was written after the marchers had returned from DC. The photo that accompanies the article shows 5 people, 4 with the NAACP and one from the UAW, looking at newspaper coverage of the march.
The article that accompanied the photo, provided some basic reflection from the 5 featured in the article, about what they liked and what they were impressed by. Unfortunately, the article did not reflect any sense of urgency that the marchers had brought to DC that day, not much of a sense of the efforts put into making the march happen or the larger historical context of the 1963 march on Washington. Besides Gary Younge’s book, The Speech, another excellent resource is, Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington, by Charles Euchner.
There was also an editorial that ran in the Grand Rapids Press about the march on Washington in 1963. The editorial demonstrates what one might call a form of white paternalism
Just weeks after the march on Washington, racists bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four African American girls. People all across the US were outraged, including in Grand Rapids. This post from the GR People’s History site looks at the march that took place in Grand Rapids, where 3000 people came out to march against the racist violence that had taken place in Alabama, like the family pictured here.
Two things stood out to this writer, when reading that Grand Rapids Press article. First, the Rev. W. L. Patterson, with True Light Baptist Church, made this comment to the white people who marched that day. He said, “You have marched with us today, but please march with us tomorrow because we need jobs and places to live right here in Grand Rapids.”
Patterson’s comment made in clear that what the black community was asking the white community was for them to stand with them in the struggle for economic equality and housing justice, which the black community had been struggling to achieve, based on reports from the Urban League in 1940 and 1947, which we have cited in previous postings
The second comment cited in the article that stood out was a comment from Rev. Hugh Michael Beahan, a Catholic priest. Beahan stated, “Those of us who are accidentally white must be a little careful about our righteous indignation. We should see if our hands are clean – maybe too clean because we never lifted a finger.” Essentially, Beahan was calling out his fellow white community members for not doing anything to fight against segregation, institutionalize racism and white supremacy.
Lastly, it is worth looking at how the Grand Rapids Press reported on Dr. King’s assassination in 1968. There were several reaction from residents in Grand Rapids, one of which stated:
Reggie Gatling, referred to as a black power militant, said, “Members of the black community had a meeting last night and decided we would not give out a public statement that would be reflective of feelings. We’re in mourning for Dr. King, but to say anything further would only give comfort, or possibly discomfort, to white racists.”
In another Press article, “Grand Rapids officials recognized, however, that the situation still was touchy Saturday, and denied a request for a permit to hold a peaceful, silent march in tribute to Dr. King.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 