Reflections on the Climate Strike Action in Grand Rapids
On Friday, I joined the Climate Strike action in Grand Rapids, which began at 10am at at a small park in the southwest part of town.
There was maybe 200 people there just before they began to walk downtown. The crowd was probably 75% youth and it was led by youth. Seeing so many young people with concern over climate change was a refreshing site and as people who are no longer in our youth, we should do whatever we can to affirm and support young people who want to organize and take action.
However, it would be dishonest of me to not address what I believe to be a seriously flawed strategy that the Climate Strike in Grand Rapids was employing. The primary goal of the action I attended was for people to walk over the Senator Peters office and demand that he not accept money from the fossil fuel industry. The irony is that earlier this year, Senator Peters agreed to do just that, but then accepted $5000 from Consumers Energy, which the representatives from the Sunrise Movement said was unacceptable.
Despite the fact that Senator Peters had already violated this agreement, those who organized the Climate Strike action on Friday felt that it was best to go back to his office to demand that he again commit to not taking money from anyone of the fossil fuel companies.
Along with way, as people were walking from the westside to downtown, there were honks from motorists, but it was clear that this action was designed to NOT disrupt business as usual in Grand Rapids. As we are facing record heat, tornados, draught, flooding, increased soil erosion, the death of species on a daily basis, why would we not want to disrupt business as usual. It’s not just the fossil fuel companies that are to blame. We can’t deny that other business sectors have failed us, like the agribusiness sector, the transportation sector, the military industrial complex, etc. In fact, it should be made clear that capitalism – increased profits, constant growth and the pillaging of the planet – is to blame. Add to that local, state and federal governments, which not only have failed us miserably on Climate Change, they have protected and coddled the very system of capitalism that is causing this disaster.
On the Need for Disruption and Direct Action
Going to Senator Peters office and demanding that he not accept money from the fossil fuel industry, while seeming like an important step, in many ways is a inadequate tactic. First, demanding that any politician doesn’t take money from the fossil fuel sector is a drop in the buckets, when so so much of our society is based on the consumption of fossil fuels. For instance, Senator Peters sits on the Armed Services Committee and he voted again, along with most members of Congress, to support the $750 Billion military budget for 2020. The US military is one of the largest non-country entities in terms of their fossil fuel consumption. Going after Peters for supporting the US military industrial complex would not only be more effective, it would bring US militarism’s contribution to Climate Change.
Second, saying that you are going to demand that Senator Peters not take money from the Fossil Fuel industry and then not using tactics to force him to do so, just won’t make it happen. If people chose to occupy his office, yesterday, today and tomorrow, he would eventually agree to their demand. Politicians and systems of power do not make policy decisions that are in the best interest of the public, rather they make policy decisions that benefit those who have the power. We have to be willing to take risks if we want change to happen, especially if we want deep, systemic change to happen.
Just think of what people on the front lines of the climate justice fight are doing. When I say people on the front lines, I mean communities of color – Indigenous, black, latinx – who are fighting for climate justice and fighting in such a way as their life depended on it….because it does. Think about what indigenous people did at Standing Rock. Indigenous people at Standing Rock weren’t asking something of the government, so much as putting their bodies on the line to stop the pipeline company from putting yet another oil pipeline through their lands. This is called direct action and it means taking great risks.
Another example is what Indigenous people in the Amazon are doing now and have been doing for decades, which is to confront loggers, confront cattle ranchers, oil companies and the Brazilian government from harming the Amazon. The indigenous people in the amazon are also not always using non-violence, since they are literally fighting for their lives.
At this point however, it must be acknowledged that maybe it is my generation of activists and organizers who are to blame for the current crisis. Maybe we have not been bold enough or taken enough risks in order to avoid the climate crisis we now face. Maybe we were too comfortable. Maybe we did not recognize that capitalism was the root of the problem and we thought that we could just make it nicer. Maybe we didn’t see how US militarism, the food system, the transportation system and so many other sectors were part of the problem. Maybe we were seduced by representative democracy, thinking that all we needed to do was to vote for the right people and all would be well. Maybe we thought that if we just recycle and eat locally that this would all go away. For the failures of my generation, I apologize. I apologize to the young people today who are now having to fight for their very lives and for the future.
However, together, we can fight the climate crisis. Together we can organize and resist and engage in direct action to actually disrupt business as usual. Together, we can create new ways of living that doesn’t rely on capitalism. Together we can create a world where we are truly alive and not spending our time as idle consumers, stuck in jobs we despise or thinking that we don’t have the power to change our circumstances.
Let’s do what the Puerto Ricans did recently and just shut things down until we get what we want. Let’s disrupt this filthy, rotten system. Let’s use Direct Action. Let’s practice Mutual Aid. Let’s believe in the power of Collective Liberation!!! Climate Justice NOW!
A solid resource for those organizing against Climate Change and for Climate Justice, is the booklet, Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate The Climate Crisis, by Hillary Moore & Jaoshua Kahn Russell. https://climateaccess.org/system/files/Moore%20and%20Russell_Organizing%20Cools%20the%20Planet.pdf This booklet offers great organizing tools and put an emphasis on Direct Action as a primary strategy to for achieving Climate Justice.
On the Defensive: New ICE propaganda statement demonstrates that they are feeling all the public opposition
Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a statement to The American Public.
The ICE statement acknowledges that there is growing opposition to ICE practices on immigration issues, but in the first paragraph ICE says, “we want to set the record straight.”
The statement is nothing short of government propaganda, designed to misinform and attack those who are publicly opposed to the violence and abuse that ICE is imposing on the immigrant community across the country.
In the second paragraph, they use a tactic, which is meant to undermine the credibility of the massive public opposition to ICE. ICE states that two of their facilities, “have been the target of lawless gunfire.” By saying there have been gunfire at two ICE facilities, they are hoping that people will ignore the fact that there has been hundreds of demonstrations against ICE in the past two years, often with civil disobedience, sometimes at ICE facilities and sometimes at corporations who have contracts with the government agency. ICE also wants the public to ignore the fact in several hundred communities across the US people have organized to do things like offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants, created bond funds for immigrants in detention and fought to end ICE contracts with local governments and law enforcement agencies. The intention of identifying incidents where gunfire was used at ICE facilities also is designed to get the public to ignore or minimize the tremendous harm that ICE has perpetrated against the immigrant community.
After the initial framing of the work that ICE does, the statement then presents 4 major talking points, talking points which we will deconstruct:
ICE makes targeted arrests every day; ICE does not conduct “raids”
No need to get into a semantics fight here, whether ICE calls it targeted arrests or raids is irrelevant. The fact is that ICE makes hundreds of arrests everyday in the US, primarily against people who are undocumented. ICE claims under this heading, “ICE focuses its limited resources first and foremost by targeting those who pose the greatest threat to public safety and border security.” This is patently false, most of the arrests are people who are undocumented but pose NO serious threat to public safety. And most of the undocumented people who end up in ICE custody are those who commit petty misdemeanors like driving without a license.
ICE does not need a warrant to make an arrest
Most people are aware of this fact. In Grand Rapids we share information with the undocumented immigrant community about what to do if ICE comes to your home and we ALWAYS say that ICE does not need a warrant. ICE can come into your home, even break down the door if they want to, which we have documented in several instances. In this section, the ICE statement also makes it a point to say, “Obstructing or otherwise interfering with an ICE arrest is a crime.” GR Rapid Response to ICE is well aware of this threat of obstruction, but they defy this type of intimidation tactic and will actively obstruct ICE in order to prevent them from arresting and detaining an immigrant.
ICE officers treat detainees with dignity and respect
This point is simply a straight up lie. Community groups, like GR Rapid Response to ICE have documented the lack of respect that ICE agents have when interacting with the immigrant community. In addition, there have been numerous groups that have published reports on the poor, often brutal treatment of immigrants at the hands of ICE agents and those that they contract with. Here are just a few of those reports:
Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention
Recent Reports Documenting Abuse and Corruption in U.S. Immigration Jails
ICE Raids on US Immigrant Families Risk Serious Abuses
ICE officers are aware of the real and emotional impact of immigration enforcement
Again, it is irrelevant of ICE officers are aware of the harm, especially since there is no evidence that stop the arrests, stop the detentions and stop to violence against the immigrant community. Just saying that ICE officers are aware is nothing more than a weak attempt to humanize the ICE agents. However, I don’t think for a moment that ICE officers have any idea of the REAL emotional trauma that their officers perpetrate against the immigrant community. Groups like the American Psychological Association, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the National Council of La Raza and Community Psychology have all documented the emotional trauma that ICE causes the immigrant community.
For ICE to say that they are aware of the emotional impact that their agency has on the immigrant community in nothing more than insulting.
The ICE statement concludes by attempting to once again argue that their actions are rooted in public safety. The fact is that there is a movement all across the country that doesn’t buy into this bullshit propaganda. This movement is growing by the day and is exposing the lies perpetrated by ICE and resisting the harm they cause when they arrest, detain and deport immigrants. La Lucha Sique!!
Fair Food Project in West Michigan: Does it promote Food Justice or West Michigan Nice
On Saturday, MiBiz published an article announcing that the Non-Profit Migrant Legal Aid has a new program called the Fair Food Project.
According to the Migrant Legal Aid website:
The Fair Food Pledge is a partnership between Migrant Legal aid, food entrepreneurs and agriculture dependent retailers in which vendors and employers are jointly monitored for fair and ethical treatment of farmworkers. If farmworkers are unlawfully treated, this whistleblower program responds to the violation by alerting vendors and agriculture dependent retailers of the violation.
However, the language of the project is rather vague, without specifics about what it means to be treated ethically or fairly.
The Executive Director of Migrant Legal Aid, Teresa Hendricks, who is quoted in the MiBiz article, states:
“The workers have a limited season to make the bulk of their money and the growers have a limited time to get their products to market. Neither one of them would prefer to be in a lawsuit. This is a way that we offer voluntary compliance, immediate action and a market-based remedy.”
A market-based remedy? That simply will not work. Market-based solutions simply do not work. For instance, the farmers can continue to pay farmworkers whatever they want, since there are no minimum wage requirement for farmworkers. This means that workers will continue to be exploited. The Director of Migrant Legal Aid admits this in the MiBiz article saying of migrant farmworkers, “They remain the poorest of the working poor.”
Check out this video produced by Migrant Legal Aid, which briefly explains the Fair Food Project.
The video states that Migrant Legal Aid will be monitoring for unfair treatment, but never says how they will be able to do that. Migrant Legal Aid also states on their website that. this project is inspired by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers located in Florida. However, what the non-profit fails to say is that the Coalition of Immoklee Workers is a worker-based human rights organization that is made up mostly of migrant farmworkers who use boycotts and strikes to hold farmers and the food industry accountable for exploitation and other abuses, unlike the model that Migrant Legal Aid is proposing. This could be because there are no existing unions for migrant farmworkers in West Michigan, which has allowed farm owners to take advantage of farmworkers for decades, despite the fact that West Michigan has some of the highest concentrations of migrant workers in the country.
At the end of the MiBiz article, Hendricks states that the growers benefit from the program by “avoiding strikes and boycotts.” The fact is that historically, the only way that farmworkers have won any form of justice, it is exactly because they have engaged in boycotts and strikes.
Lastly, the Director of Migrant Legal Aid frames this partnership as a way of practicing West Michigan Nice, stating:
“The Fair Food Project is a Midwest-designed program to work the way companies and cultures work here. We’re working with their corporate responsibility departments instead of against them and they’re voluntarily cooperating with us. It’s Midwest Nice: Tell us how to fix it and give us an opportunity to fix it first.”
The reality is that corporations don’t fix it unless they are forced to. This is the entire history of social movements in the US, where workers have forced companies and corporations to agreeing to safer working condition, better wages, benefits, worker safety standards, etc. None of these things were ever a gift from corporations, but only through the struggle of workers.
My fear is that West Michigan retailers will sign the pledge, which is great PR for them, but it will do virtually nothing to fundamentally improve the lives of migrant farmworkers.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos began her “Back to School” tour at a closed-to-public-school-parents meeting at a religious private voucher school in Milwaukee
On Monday, US Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, kicked off her “Back to School” tour at St. Marcus in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While there was plenty of news coverage about this Back to School tour, numerous media outlets failed to acknowledge that DeVos chose this school because Milwaukee was the birth place of the School Voucher movement, a movement that Betsy and her husband Dick DeVos have been part of from the very beginning.
DeVos acknowledges in her speech that she came to Milwaukee for this very reason, to honor those who were part of the School Voucher movement at the start. DeVos uses this opportunity to to talk about freedom in education and how poorly the US is doing, but she was primarily using this forum to promote her department’s program, the Education Freedom Scholarships.
In March, we documented how the Education Freedom Scholarships was just the most recent part of the Neo-Liberal education model. The Education Freedom Scholarships is a program to allow people and corporations to donate to a designated scholarship granting organization (SGO) and be reimbursed in the form of a tax credit. With the DeVos plan, states would designate the eligible SGOs, but the federal government would fund the tax credit reimbursement, up to $5 billion total. In her speech, Betsy DeVos also refers to the Education Freedom Scholarships as, “the most transformative idea for American education in decades.”
There isn’t much else in DeVos’ speech worth critiquing, since she sticks to the same talking points over and over again. However, despite the fact that her visit to St. Marcus’s was closed to the public, this did not stop people from protesting DeVos and her department’s attacks on public schools, as was reported on by a local TV station in Milwaukee.
In addition to the protest outside of St. Marcus School, there were other groups voicing their objection to the Secretary of Education’s decision to kick off her “Back to School” tour at a private school that has benefited from the voucher program.
The Wisconsin Public Education Network released this statement the day before DeVos spoke at St. Marcus.
On the eve of a visit to Milwaukee by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, public school parents and advocates from across Wisconsin wondered why Secretary DeVos’s visit and policies neglect public school children. Secretary DeVos’s visit is occurring as parents in the Palmyra-Eagle School District attempt to save their kids’ school system from closure, and as voters across Wisconsin approved a record amount of school referenda to enhance aging facilities and/or maintain programming. Despite the calls nationwide for targeted support aligned with the needs of local students, Secretary DeVos proposed to cut $7.1 billion in federal funding from America’s public schools, while dramatically increasing funding to private and privately-operated schools.
While Secretary DeVos launches her “Back to School” tour Monday with a closed-to-public-school-parents meeting at a religious private voucher school in Milwaukee, advocates all over the state express frustration with her focus on expanding a program that has failed to deliver results in Wisconsin, diverting funds from public schools statewide and putting children at risk.
As we have noted in previous Betsy DeVos Watch postings, the Secretary of Education has been confronted by parents, students and community organizers across the country since she joined the Trump administration in early 2017.
Rally in Grand Rapids confronts GRPD’s complicity with ICE, organizers release major statement
Last night, about 25 people participated in an action that was specifically in response to the recent decision by the City of Grand Rapids to only give Captain VanderKooi a 20 hour suspension for his egregious behavior, where he contacted ICE on Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a US citizen and former Marine, using racist language and racial profiling.
The action was designed to confront the GRPD directly, so protestors marched around the GRPD headquarters, most carrying signs and using chants like, “Cops and ICE go hand in hand.”
The organizers of the action timed their protest during the GRPD’s shift change and greeted roughly a dozen patrol cars that were exiting the station garage around 6:45pm, as seen here in the photo below.
After greeting GRPD officers outside the exit that police cruisers use, the rally then moved to the front on the GRPD station, where organizers attempted to get into the station itself, but were limited to only accessing the main entrance, where they continued chanting to send the message to those inside in the station.
Besides engaging in a public demonstration over the 20-hour suspension of Captain Kurt VanderKooi, the action organizers released a statement, which they read in both English and Spanish in front of the GRPD headquarters. The statement not only addressed the VanderKooi situation, it also addressed the ongoing harassment and intimidation that Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE has experienced at the hands of the GRPD over the past two years while organizer for immigration justice. The full statement can be read here below:
In December of 2018, Captain Curt VanderKooi was off-duty and saw a news story about the arrest of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a U.S. citizen and a Marine veteran, after Ramos-Gomez had trespassed on the helipad of a local hospital in the midst of a post-traumatic episode. VanderKooi notified ICE asking about Ramos-Gomez’s status, and though GRPD had several forms of ID for Ramos-Gomez verifying his citizenship, ICE detained him for three days. This is after the officers working the case had already clearly identified Ramos-Gomez as a U.S. citizen and a veteran living with PTSD.
After months of delay, having been found guilty of biased policing by the Civilian Appeals Board, VanderKooi was allowed to choose 20 hours of unpaid suspension as his consequence – less time than Ramos-Gomez was wrongfully detained by ICE. Although other GRPD officers were complicit in the wrongful detention of Ramos-Gomez, no other officer has received any consequences for their actions.
Yet in response to VanderKooi’s suspension, the police union issued a statement that never acknowledges the harm that was done to Jilmar Ramos-Gomez or his family or close community in any way, instead centering the person who did the actual harm, Captain VanderKooi. In addition, the police union statement makes false claims about the lack of due process and places the blame on the members of the community who have raised their voices in concern, accusing them of doing so for some nebulous “political gain.” In fact these people, particularly those from vulnerable communities, are simply speaking up in an effort to reduce harm to themselves and others.
The police union has shown no interest in accountability, but instead acts with impunity and continues to hide behind the shield in a cowardly way when it comes to taking responsibility for the harm done. Unfortunately, the police union has shown us time and time again that hiding behind the shield is what cops do – it’s part of their structure. If they had any interest in truly protecting the community, this would include taking responsibility as any community member would when they have caused harm. The evidence shows they are interested only in protecting themselves from any criticism, and they work outside of and against the community by doing so.
It has been the experience of organizers and volunteers with GR Rapid Response to ICE and Movimiento Cosecha GR that the GRPD has monitored and attempted to suppress our efforts toward immigrant justice – they show up at our public actions in numbers that are meant to be intimidating, though we always provide our own crowd safety at our actions. Police officers have also physically intimidated our participants and have attempted to dictate what the movement for immigrant justice can and cannot do. Our participants, particularly our vulnerable and affected folks, do not feel safe with the presence of police.
We know that not only do Cops and ICE go hand in hand, but that cops are more interested in protecting institutions built on white supremacist values than in truly reaching out for needed social change and community connection. This is why GR Rapid Response to ICE, in solidarity with vulnerable communities, advocates not only an #AbolishICE strategy, but an #AbolishPolice strategy.
The largest part of both city and county budgets go to police instead of to communities who, given the same funding, could find proactive and healing solutions to the root causes of neighborhood violence, family separation, and more. A police system based on incarceration is not helping our neighborhoods heal – it is destroying them and destroying the pillars of support that should be in place for them. We call on all communities to come together and claim these resources for building better neighborhoods without police and without relying on police for enforcement of human rights.
Condemning Drag Shows is not an aberration: Spiritual Violence as a foundational part of West MI
“Normally I’d never put myself in such a spiritually toxic environment. But I wanted to do my due diligence so my reporting on it would be accurate. I asked my guardian angel for protection and some of the Christian protestors outside the event were kind enough to pray that God would keep me safe. So I went in.”
The above quote is the opening comments of an article written by Stephen Kokx, an article entitled, I went to a Down syndrome drag show. What I saw horrified me. Kokx is the Assistant Director of Digital Marketing for LifeSite, a Christian non-profit organization that promotes homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, anti-choice and anti-immigrant values.
The article by Kokx is instructive on so many levels, plus it wreaks of white saviorism, along with a smug pompousness that is all too familiar with religious zealots, as is evidenced by a video that accompanies the article by Kokx. However, what the LifeSite contributor had to say was nothing out of the ordinary in West Michigan. For as much as we like to think that Grand Rapids and West Michigan are becoming more and more tolerant, the truth is that this area is rooted in spiritual violence.
In the book, Gathered at the River: Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Its People of Faith, written by James D. Bratt, it begins with the Protestant and Catholic Missions that were both established along the Grand River in the early 1820’s. These early missions were used to manipulate the Indigenous people who inhabited West Michigan, so that White Settlers could move in and take over the land.
This type of spiritual violence is repeated and normalized through the past 200 years in West Michigan, whether it was used to repress African Americans, women who didn’t buy into the patriarchy, the LGBTQ community that would not submit to heteronormativity or workers who didn’t comply with the capitalist robber barons. Hell, lets face it, the brand of Christianity that is practiced in West Michigan by a lot of people, particularly those with power, has caused a great deal of harm in this area.
Now, I know that there are people resisting the intolerance, but the fact is that West Michigan is still greatly impacted by a Christian Spiritual Violence that is so normalized, we often don’t even recognize it. Sure, the Christians who were protesting the drag show at Wealthy Theater are often seen as extremists, but therein lies the problem. There are likely thousands of people in West Michigan who agreed with those who protested the drag show at Wealthy Theater, even if they stayed at home or only commented on social media. Those protesting the drag show were not some rogue group, rather a microcosm of the ethos that many in West Michigan embrace.
Let’s stop and think about how normalized Christian Spiritual Violence is in the Greater Grand Rapids area. Here is a short list of the ways in which it is practiced:
- Most of the Christian Churches in West Michigan are not welcoming to the LGBTQ community.
- Most Christian Churches in West Michigan do not actively oppose White Supremacy.
- Most Christian Churches in this area have not resisted US Wars, nor are they opposed to US militarism.
- Most Christian Churches do not oppose the Prison Industrial Complex, which disproportionately impact black and brown communities.
- Most Christian Churches embrace some form of charity, but do not condemn the economic system of capitalism.
- Most Christian Churches in West Michigan do not practice the biblical imperative of welcoming immigrants to this community, especially those who are undocumented.
- Most Christian Churches are silent on domestic violence, sexual assault and rape.
- Most Christian Churches in West Michigan are complicit in ongoing environmental destruction and climate change.
- Most Christian Churches in West Michigan are not involved in promoting housing justice, offering hospitality to those who face eviction, those who cannot afford the cost of rent and those who are homeless.
Another problem with thinking that the people who protested the drag show at Wealthy Theater are just marginalized extremists, is that it takes away our ability to see how institutionalized Christian Spiritual Violence is in this community. Think about the influence of the most powerful families in West Michigan, what I have identified as the Grand Rapids Power Structure – DeVos, Van Andel, Kennedy, Secchia, Jandernoa, etc. These families overtly identify with a Christian denomination, some CRC and some Catholic. They all have contributed millions to the Republican Party, which means they support policies that do tremendous harm to communities of color, working class families and the LGBT community. At the same time, they all have foundations that providing funding to non-profit organizations that promote charity or serve individual family needs. What we rarely see is any criticism of the fact that these wealthy families are creating the very inequities that exist, all in the name of God, then turn around and fund programs which are designed to take attention away from these inequities, so we don’t see these wealthy families as major contributors to harm (spiritual violence).
Then there are entities like the Grand Rapids-based Acton Institute, which has global reach within the Catholic community, which provides theological justification for the same kinds of policies that the Grand Rapids Power Structure promotes. In a sense, the Acton Institute acts as an apologist for those within the local power structure to continue to do harm and perpetuate spiritual violence.
What we have are the most powerful families who use Christianity to justify their spiritual violence, which then involves numerous non-profit Christian agencies to acts as a cover for the various types of spiritual violence, justified by groups like Acton Institute, with lots of complicity by the Christian Churches in the area that either take an active role in promoting this process or are silent in the face of all of this.
For anyone who is involved in doing organizing work to challenge systems of power and oppression in West Michigan, it is impossible to effective do this work without acknowledging the role that Christian Churches play in perpetuating the various forms of injustice that plague this area. This is not to say that there are no Christian Churches who do the important work of fighting systems of power and oppression, but they are the exception and not the norm.
Tell us what to write: Once again, MLive acts as a stenographer for the Amway Corporation
On Tuesday, MLive posted a story about the 60th anniversary of the Ada-based global corporation known as Amway. Amway, is short for The American Way, according to founders Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos.
Actually, it isn’t terribly accurate to say that MLive posted a story, rather was more like, “tell us what you want us to write.” Now, I’m not suggesting that Amway actually told MLive what to print, but it doesn’t matter, because the story that MLive published essentially reads like they wrote just what the Amway leaders wanted them to say.
The text of the article has no real new information about the pyramid scheme corporation and the two videos posted by MLive are also consistent with a style of journalism known as stenography.
The two videos posted by MLive are here below. This first video focuses on what the new CEO of Amway, Milind Pant, is saying, while the second video only has Amway co-Chairman Doug DeVos speaking. In both cases we don’t know what the MLive reporter asked them, as the questions are not included.
This news story about Amway is indicative of the kind of journalism that has been practiced more and more over the past 20 – 30 years, especially with the consolidation of news media ownerships has taken place.
There is nothing investigative about the story, there is no evidence that any serious questions were asked, and no where do we see other perspectives included. The story that MLive posted could have included a comment from the Chinese government, since that was one topic raised in the article.
Other questions that could be asked are:
- How does Amway impact local communities around the world, specifically how does it undermine local economies?
- How do the millions of dollars that Amway contributes to candidates influence public policy that would be beneficial to the Amway Corporation?
- How does the even larger sums of money that the DeVos and Van Andel families contribute to the Republican Party benefit the Amway Corporation?
So, how is it that the only daily newspaper in Grand Rapids, would fail to practice good journalism when it comes to the most powerful corporation in West Michigan, a corporation that is still run by two of the most powerful families in West Michigan, the DeVos and Van Andel families?
Deconstructing the Rule of Law and Undocumented Immigrants
On Tuesday, MLive reported on a proposed resolution in Muskegon County to make that county a Welcoming Community. The proposal was specifically referring to immigrant being welcomed, whether they were documented or undocumented.
The reaction, from mostly white Muskegon County residents, was one of shock and disgust. Most of the people cited in the story made mention of the fact that “this is a nation of laws,” implying that those immigrants who were here without documentation, should not be allowed to be in Muskegon County or the rest of the country for that matter. If you read the comments section on MLive for this story (which I do not recommend), you can see that words like illegal and phrases like “a nation of laws” are used quite a bit. There is also a great deal of racist and White Supremacist language used in the comments, which is a more honest reflection about how people really feel. However, I wanted to take some time to deconstruct the notion that the US is a nation of laws and what people mean when they say the US shouldn’t allow “illegals” in the country.
A Nation of Laws
When politicians, law enforcement officials or just regular folks use language like, “we are a nation of laws,” to justify discriminatory treatment of undocumented immigrants, what does that really mean? There are several reasons why, reasons we want to look at and deconstruct, specifically around laws and immigrants (although, we will use other legal examples as well.)
First, the idea that nations create laws to make sure that society is kept in check, is an idea we are taught in 9th grade civil class. However, the reality is that laws are generally created by people in power, people who have specific interests at stake. For example, from the founding of the US up until 1865, slavery was legal, mostly because those who made the laws were white men, some of which owned slaves and many of them benefited economically from the institution of slavery. (see Edward Baptist’s book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.) Slavery was eventually abolished, primarily because of the abolitionist movement’s efforts, which culminated in the Civil War.
The example of slavery being abolished in not an unusual example, since it highlights how most laws are changed in order to minimize harm, namely when social movements force lawmakers to change the law. This has been the case with all social movements in the US, whether it was the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the suffrage movement, the civil right movement, the environmental movement, etc.
Second, when people say the US is a nation of laws it is important to distinguish between laws and morality. Just because a law exists, doesn’t make it a just law. The US has been replete with laws that were unjust. It was legal to kill indigenous people, make money by scalping them and then taking their land.
Even today, there are all kinds of laws that are unjust or social norms that are legal. Here are just a few:
- It is legal to manufacture and drop nuclear bombs, weapons that by their very nature kill indiscriminately.
- It is legal for corporations to pollute when they extract resources from the earth and in the process of manufacturing create waste and pollution.
- It is legal for a small group of people to make billions of dollars, while billions of people live in poverty.
- It is legal for development companies to profit from housing, while so many people are homeless or live in horrid living conditions.
- It is legal for the capitalist class to spend millions of dollars to influence elections.
- It is legal for a handful of corporations to control the majority of news media sources.
- It is legal to discriminate against people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender of Queer.
- It is legal for corporations and other businesses to pay workers wages so low that they can’t afford basic necessities, often resulting in people having multiple jobs to make ends meet.
- It is legal to incarcerate millions of people in the US, mostly black and brown, for non-violent offenses.
Just because we have laws, doesn’t mean we have to abide by them, especially if they are unjust. In fact, how many people do we revere because the deliberately broke the law in order to defy or change those very laws? How many of us celebrate the likes of Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Silvia Rivera, Fred Hampton, the Berrigan Brothers, Dorothy Day, etc. These are all people who purposefully broke the law in order to make change.
Third, when people argue that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into the US because we are a nation of laws, how else can we respond? Besides acknowledging that laws are made by those in power who have economic interests and that many laws are inherently unjust, it is also important to recognize that laws have evolved over time as a reaction to various social dynamics.
Historian Aviva Chomsky states in her book, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal:
“Explicitly national manifestations of control of movement emerged in the late nineteenth century, imbued with racial ideas. The first restrictive immigration laws in the United States conflated race and nation. Chinese exclusion in 1882 was based on race: as racially ineligible to citizenship, the Chinese should be excluded from entering the country as well.”
What Chomsky makes clear in her book is that the US has always deliberately discriminated against certain people from coming to the US, first the Chinese, then Japanese, Germans during WWI, Jews who were fleeing Nazi Germany, Mexicans and Central Americans – increasingly since the late 1970s and Haitians since the 1990s, just to name a few.
US immigration policy has always been race based, but it has also always been about country of origin and what relationship the US has had with those countries. For example, since the 1959 Cuban revolution, Cubans have been generally allowed to come to the US, because the US has had an antagonistic relationship with Cuba. At the same time, Haitians who were fleeing political violence or abject poverty, were not as easily granted legal status or asylum, since the US has mostly had a favorable relationship with the Haitian government, from Papa Doc Duvalier up to the present.
There are plenty of other arguments we can use when people say that the US is a nation of laws, so undocumented people should not be allowed here, but these three main arguments are important.
Lastly, it is worth noting that the current immigrant-led immigration justice movement is not advocating lawlessness. What those involved in this movement are arguing is that the federal immigration laws are unjust and racist in nature. The immigration justice movement believes that through non-violent direct action they can not only demonstrate how unjust the current immigration laws are, but they can demonstrate how economically dependent the US economy is on the labor of the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in this country.
Senator Peters votes for the $750 Billion US Military Budget, but doesn’t want the US Military to use firefighting foams containing PFAS at military installations
Editor’s note: Today, marks the 18th anniversary of 9/11 in the US. Amidst all of the commemorations for what happened eighteen years ago, ask yourself why the US continues to spend more on militarism than any other country in the world?
Last week, Michigan Senator Gary Peters posted a press release with the headline, Peters Blasts White House Objections to Bipartisan PFAS Provisions in Defense Bill.
The statement from Senator Peters was based on his effort to:
“….address the PFAS crisis in Michigan and across the country, including requiring the Department of Defense (DOD) to phase out the use of firefighting foams containing PFAS at military installations.”
While I am all in favor of getting corporations and the US Military to stop using PFAS producing products, the larger issue here, which is that Senator Gary Peters, along with the majority of Congress, voted in favor of the $750 Billion US Military Budget for 2020, known as the National Defense Authorization Act. In other words, if you really wanted to do something to address environmental contamination, then you wouldn’t vote to fund the largest military budget on the planet.
The US Military, which includes roughly 1,000 military bases worldwide, all of the planes, tanks, trucks, submarines, missiles, guns, bullets, etc, makes the US military one of the worst environmental polluters on the planet. (see the book, Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism)
On top of all of the fossil fuels used by the US military and all of the other ecological devastation they perpetrate, one of their main functions is to protect the economic interests of multinational corporations, which are also wreaking havoc on the environment around the globe. Therefore, it seems to me that asking the US military to stop using PFAS producing products while simultaneously voting for the $750 Billion US Military Budget is like Nazi Germany practicing composting at the death camps they operated throughout Europe. If such a comparison seems too outlandish to you, then how about this – Senator Peters calling for the US military to stop using PFAS producing products while voting to fund the largest military in the world is like former Chilean dictator Pinochet calling for the end of the use of styrofoam, while he slaughter political dissidents during his reign of terror.
Now, the point here is not just to point out the blatant contradiction in Senator Peters’ actions, but to challenge all of us to think about the very real and daily harm that the US military perpetrates against the environment and against human beings around the world. Noted scholar Noam Chomsky has repeatedly made it clear, along with numerous other researchers and writers, that the US military has cumulatively caused more harm in the past century than any other military on the planet – US military invasion, weapons sales, US military training, direct support of dictators, militarily supporting proxy forces, etc.
This is a sobering reality. However, equally as sobering, is the fact that entirely too many people in the US either have never heard this fact or won’t accept it as fact, which should tell us something about how we all internalize imperialist thinking in the US.
Foundation Watch: The Peter & Emajean Cook Foundation
Peter Cook is the former Chairman of Mazda Great Lakes, where he made millions off the labor of others and the sale of cars. Cook has funded numerous groups on the religious right, such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Michigan Family Forum, the Mackinac Center, the Acton Institute, Teach Michigan and Gospel Films in Muskegon. Like Richard DeVos, Cook also served as a member on the board of the Council for National Policy. Cook was a major funder, along with Richard DeVos, for the new GVSU health sciences building on Michigan St. in Grand Rapids. During the fund raising efforts in 1995 for the proposed health sciences building, Cook and DeVos threatened to withdraw funding for the building if the university passed domestic partner benefits for faculty and staff. Money won out and domestic partner benefits were denied until 13 years later in 2008, as is documented in the film, A People’s History of the LGBTQ Community in Grand Rapids.
In addition, Peter Cook was a major contributor to the Republican Party for years, funding that has supported candidates and policies that have benefited the wealthiest people at the expense of the working class and communities of color.
We looked at the 990 documents for the Peter & Emajean Cook Foundation between 2014 and 2017. What follows are the larger contributions from those four years.
Hope College $1,750,000
The Potter’s House School $550,000
Davenport College $466,000
GVSU Foundation $400,000
Grandville Academy of the Arts $400,000
Western Theological Seminary $350,000
YMCA $327,000
Van Andel Institute $325,000
Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital $250,000
Reformed Church in America $250,000
Meijer Gardens $200,000
Habitat for Humanity $200,000
Ada Christian School Education Foundation $150,000
Boys & Girls Club of Grand Rapids $150,000
Camp Geneva $150,000
Children’s Assessment Center $150,000
Safe Haven Ministries $150,000
ArtPrize $120,000
Grand Rapids Catholic Central $100,000
Next Step of West Michigan $100,000
Freedom Alliance $80,000
Camp Rogers $50,000
Calvin Theological Seminary $50,000
As you can see, the bulk of funding has gone to Christian entities, particularly Christian educational entities like Hope College and The Potter’s House. There is also funding to entities that were started by families who make up the Grand Rapids Power Structure, like Meijer Gardens, the Van Andel Institute and ArtPrize.
Then there is more targeted funding, particularly in the Grandville Avenue/Roosevelt Park area, such as the Grandville Academy of the Arts, Habitat for Humanity (specifically for new housing in the Grandville Avenue corridor) and the Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association (not listed here, but still receiving a substantial amount).
Part of the slight shift in funding in recent years has been after Peter Cook died in 2010. While there is still significant funding from the foundation that goes to conservative Christian entities, the groups in the Roosevelt Park area represent somewhat of a move to support non-profits that are more rooted in that neighborhood.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 