Resistance as an act of solidarity, resistance as an act of deep love in Kent County
Editor’s note – On Sunday morning I was asked to give the homily at All Souls Community Church. The theme I was asked to speak on was resistance.
Good morning everyone. Thanks for braving the cold. I was invited by Pastor Greta Jo to come and talk with you all this morning about resistance work, specifically resistance to oppression. I want to start off by reading some wisdom from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”
These words from Dr. King were spoken in 1967, in his Beyond Vietnam speech, but they could very easily have been spoken today, especially since the US continues to spend $1 trillion on militarism, which is more than the next 10 largest military budgets around the world combined, along with daily state carceral violence at the hands of law enforcement agencies against Black communities, Latinx communities , poor communities and increasingly against undocumented immigrants.
The theme of my reflection today is centered around the idea of resistance, specifically resistance to systems of oppression. Again, Dr. King can provide us with some insight. In that same 1967 speech I referenced earlier, Dr. King said:
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”
The system of oppression that Dr. King is referring to is the economic system of Capitalism, s system which primarily benefits the Capitalist Class, the millionaires and billionaires.
There is certainly no shortage of systems of oppression that we need to resist, like militarism, white supremacy, colonialism, transphobia, patriarchy and state carceral violence. These systems are structural and institutional, which means it will take a great deal to not only resist them, but to dismantle them.
Now in order to resist systems of oppression we need to determine what our goals are, meaning what do we want, and what kind of world do we want to live in. We then need to develop strategies and implement tactics in order to achieve those goals. As someone who has been organizing for nearly 5 decades in Grand Rapids, too often what people do when they are angered is they protest. They hold signs, they march, they have rallies and then they go home. The problem is that protesting more often than not is performative, it is symbolic and it rarely leads to change. Why, because protesting is not resistance. In fact, protesting more often than not is reacting to some atrocity, and when we react we tend not to think strategically.
Right now, what thousands of people are doing in Minneapolis, is resistance, which involves a general strike, shutting down commerce, blockading the ICE office, and people in the streets disrupting business as usual, so that ICE cannot kidnapped more undocumented immigrants. I’m not saying that protesting ICE is bad, but what if we redirected our energy in a strategic way, in a way that would directly benefit the very people that ICE is targeting – undocumented immigrants.
I am part of the core team with GR Rapid Response to ICE. We work directly with the immigrant-led group Movimiento Cosecha and do what they ask of us. As the Zapatista movement says, “We lead by following.” Right now, here is how GR Rapid Response is resisting ICE in Kent County.
- First we build relationships with undocumented immigrants, then listen to what they want, so that they could keep themselves and their families safe.
- Second, we respond to calls on our hotline for direct intervention when ICE attempts to kidnap undocumented immigrants in Kent County.
- Third, we accompany immigrants who have appointments at the ISAP office at 545 Michigan, the ICE office at 517 Ottawa and during court appointments, in order to reduce the chance of being taken by ICE during those appointments.
- Fourth, we are doing patrols in neighborhoods where immigrants live/work and where immigrants have told us that they have seen ICE operating. We do this on a daily basis in 6 different neighborhoods as a way to prevent ICE attempts to kidnap members of the affected community.
- We work with faith communities, community centers, non-profits and other entities that would declare themselves as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants and then provide safe houses for them to stay in when they no longer feel safe where they live.
- We work directly with Cosecha on organized campaigns to get local government bodies to adopt sanctuary policies that would make it harder for ICE to arrest and detain immigrants by not collaborating with ICE. We are currently doing this with Kent County and the City of Grand Rapids. The Kent County Sheriff’s office is conducting ICE holds at the Kent County Jail. Five of us were arrested for occupying the Sheriff’s office to draw attention to the fact that they are collaborating with ICE by conducting holds for ICE. At the City level there is a boycott of Mayor LaGrand’s businesses, since he refuses to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies that Cosecha has been demanding.
- We provide mutual aid to families that were directly impacted by ICE violence with transportation, material aid, financial aid and legal support for those being detained. Author and organizer Dean Spade says, “Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.” This is what distinguishes Mutual aid from charity.
For people to be part of this work they have to attend a training, so we are better prepared to show up in solidarity for affected communities and to make sure that we don’t practice white saviorism. We as volunteers do not arrive as protectors of the vulnerable, but as co-conspirators. The language of “defending immigrants” often reproduces the very hierarchies we aim to dismantle, casting some as saviors and others as saved. This reproduces the “false generosity” of liberalism, one that preserves systems of domination under the guise of aid. Instead, we align ourselves with an ethic of solidarity, not saviorism.
Resistance then should be seen as an act of solidarity and deep love.
So what can you do right now to resist ICE in Kent County?
- You can share and donate to the Mutual Aid requests on the GR Rapid Response to ICE Facebook page.
- You can sign up for a training.
- You can get your faith community to host a training and work to declare themselves a sanctuary.
- You can attend the Melt ICE concert at Fountain Street Church on February 15, with live music and ticket sales going to families affected by ICE violence.
- Attend or host a workshop we do on the history of US immigration policy, so we can better understand the historical context for what ICE is doing.
- Lastly, you can join Movimiento Cosecha’s campaigns to pressure Kent County and the City of Grand Rapids to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies that will make sure that the GRPD and the Kent County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t collaborate with ICE.
I am well aware of the fact that what ICE has been doing recently seems so outrageous, but the fact of the matter is that ICE has been arresting, detaining and deporting over 10 million immigrants since they were founded in 2003 and most of the people killed by ICE have been immigrants, either shot or died while in detention facilities. The biggest difference now is that the have a much larger budget to engage in brutally repressive actions primarily against affected communities. I also know that two non-immigrants have been killed in recent weeks in Minneapolis, but I want to emphasize again that there have been hundreds of undocumented immigrants that have been killed by ICE agents, either using lethal force or while they have been in detention centers. Where was the outrage when immigrants were killed?
I get that you might be afraid to get involved and to take risks, but no social movement in the history of this country has ever changed anything without taking risks. So let us be bold in our words and our actions, even if it means we take risks to our own well being. As the late Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero reminds us, “We must not love our lives so much that we avoid taking the risks in life that history calls for.” History is calling for it NOW!
GRIID Class on US Foreign Policy since WWII – Week #2
In week #1, I provided some foundational documents and a framework for how to look at no what country the US is engaged in. I also used the framework document to assess the history of Iraq, particularly the US relationship with that country.
For week #2 we began using William Blum’s book, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII, using a PDF version of he book. I had participants read chapters 2, 9 and 10, with how the US interfered with the elections in Italy in 1947-48, the CIA coup in Iran in 1953, and the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954.
1947-48 Italian Elections
The US embraced a virulent anti-Communist stance after WWII, which played a major role in US foreign policy until the collapse of the Soviet Union decades later. In fact, towards the end of WWII, US troops played a vital role in undermining anti-fascist efforts in Italy. Noam Chomsky notes in his book, Deterring Democracy, US and and British military forces actively removed the socialist, anarchist and communist movements that had defeated the fascists in Europe. Chomsky states that these antifascist forces were often replaced by fascists collaborators they had defeated, “to weaken unions and other popular organizations, and to block the threat of radical democracy and social reform.” The fascist collaborators were more inclined to embrace capitalism and the social order that came with it, which means that the US and British military ended up being complicit with fascism by putting fascist collaborators in charge of cities in France, Italy and Germany.
With Italy there were several political parties like the Popular Democratic Front (PDF) that included those who embraced both socialist and communist beliefs. The US feared that Italy would have a socialist/communist government after the elections, so they invested a great deal of money, propaganda and other tactics to prevent the PDF from winning. Here is a short sample of some of the tactics that the US government used:
These tactics and many more resulted in the PDF losing the election and the Christian Democrats won, the party that the US was backing.
Iran 1953
The Iranian people and the Iranian government as early as 1951 wanted to nationalize the oil that was being pumped from the earth on Iranian land. Such an action was a major no no, since the oil interests (both British and US) were not in favor of allowing Iranians to benefit from domestic oil production.
The British initiated an economic blockade on Iran once they announced that Iranian oil was for Iranians. However, the Iranian government under the leadership of the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was able to weather the economic blockade and continued to use oil production to benefit Iranian society. US strategists working with the CIA began developing a plan to oust the Mosaddegh government and put in his place the Shah, who would dismantle the law that said Iranian oil for Iranians.
In the summer of 1953, the CIA initiated a coup and then installed The Shah of Iran who became an important ally of the US in the Middle East until 1979. During the Shah’s reign he suppressed dissent, was very anti-Islam and created his own secret police known as SAVAK. According to Blum:
“The notorious Iranian secret police, SAVAK, created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel, spread its tentacles all over the world to punish Iranian dissidents. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had the “highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.”
The brutality of the Shah of Iran is what eventually led to the Iranian revolution in 1979, which was led by Islamic clerics who had nothing but contempt for the US, primarily because of the decades long US support of the Shah.
For more insights into the history of US/Iranian relations check out the US government declassified documents put together by the National Security Archives. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/iran-us-relations
Guatemala 1954
The third example we looked at for week #2 was the Central American country of Guatemala. Guatemala was historically one of the “banana republics” of Central America. The United Fruit Company had tremendous control in Guatemala that it was nicknamed El Pulpos – The Octopus, because they had their tentacles in everything.
However, with the elections of 1944 Guatemala was becoming more democratic, with the victory of Arevalo, ushering in what Guatemalans call Los dies anos de la Primavera – The ten years of Spring. A former military man, Jacobo Arbenz was elected in 1951 and sought to continue the reforms that began in 1944. Land reform was a major issue and the Guatemalan government appropriated land that the United Fruit Company was not using and paid them the same value the company had listed for tax purposes.
However, the United Fruit Company was not going to let the Guatemalan government to use land for the betterment of its own people. There were numerous people in the Eisenhower Administration that had a long history with the United Fruit Company, so they devised a plan to use the CIA to overthrow the government and did so in the summer of 1954. The CIA installed a Colonel named Castillio Armas that was willing to be a puppet for the US government and US interests.
After the 1954 CIA coup, the Guatemalan military ran the country with one dictator after another until there was eventually peace accords signed in 1995. However, to this day the 60% majority Mayan population still suffers from poverty and racism, with US interests still being a driving factor, especially after Guatemala signed on to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005.
For more on the CIA coup in Guatemala and the consequences of that coup check out the declassified US government documents from the National Security Archives. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/guatemala-project
The 5 arrested at Kent County Sheriff’s Office over ICE holds at the Kent County Jail plead not guilty at their arraignment
Editors note: I was one of the five that was arrested on January 5th.
On Wednesday, the five people who were arrested on January 5th for occupying the Kent County Sheriff’s office to draw attention to the fact that Kent County is holding immigrants at the jail for ICE, plead not guilty to the charge of trespass.
“We all plead not guilty because in our minds were engaging in an act of harm reduction, specifically to reduce the number of immigrants who end up in ICE custody in Kent County. The Kent County Sheriff’s Office through the Kent County Jail is holding people at the jail for ICE, which then transfers them to a detention center. Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young has refused to publicly acknowledge that her officers are collaborating with ICE to hold immigrants in the jail for ICE agents. This often happens after family members and supporters pay money to bond them out, but then are told that the jail will not release them, since they are holding then for ICE.
According to a recent report from the Prison Policy Initiative, “the federal government nonetheless relies heavily on state and local collaboration to enact its mass deportation agenda.” We have know for months now that the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the Kent County Jail, has been holding immigrants for ICE. ICE then sends them to the detention center in Baldwin, Michigan resulting in immigrant family separation and immigrant family trauma.
The five of us acted in solidarity with the affected community and were following the lead of Movimiento Cosecha to engage in a non-violent act by occupying the Kent County Sheriff’s office. The five of us acted to draw attention and to apply more pressure to Kent County officials to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies that Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have been demanding since the beginning of 2025.”
The six sanctuary policies are:
- Policies restricting the ability of state and local police to make arrests for federal immigration violations, or to detain individuals on civil immigration warrants.
- Policies restricting the police or other county workers from asking about immigration status.
- Policies prohibiting “287(g)” agreements through which ICE deputizes local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law.
- Policies that prevent local governments from entering into a contract with the federal government to hold immigrants in detention.
- Policies preventing immigration detention centers from being established in Kent County, which would include the use of the Kent County Jail as a detention facility for ICE.
- A policy that will not allow the Kent County Sheriff’s Department to share Flock camera images or any other information gathered by county staff with ICE or any other law enforcement agency seeking to arrest, detain and deport immigrants.
We are also inviting other allies/accomplices in the struggle for immigrant justice to be part of this movement and to take bold actions with us in the future to resist ICE in Grand Rapids and Kent County.
Movimiento Cosecha hosted a short online discussion with the 5 arrested, where they shared why they were willing to risk arrest. You can watch that discussion here.
It is always instructive to see how people in positions of power craft narratives in ways that benefits them. In a recent post on Facebook, State Rep. Phil Skaggs, who is running to become a State Senator, wrote the following narrative about what happened 6 years ago regarding the ICE contract that Kent County had, while Skaggs was a County Commissioner.
I will include comments and hyperlinks to GRIID articles that provides a counter-narrative to what Skaggs wants us to believe that will be in black. Here is a link to a People’s History of the End the Contract with ICE campaign, which provides an overview of all the things this campaign included. 
Also, before reading the narrative, Skaggs also included the following image of Dr. King and a quote from him, including a picture of Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young, thus equating her as modeling King’s comment, which I find rather insulting. Also, make sure you read Cosecha’s response to the post from Skaggs, which is at the very end.
Six years ago today, Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young announced a new policy to no longer honor federal immigration holds (Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers) without an arrest warrant signed by a federal judge. The new policy meant that the county jail would not hold people past their legal stay (the end of their sentence or release on bail) on local charges if ICE was not able to provide a valid judicial warrant. (The reason why the Sheriff made this decision was largely due the tremendous pressure that Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE had been putting on Kent County officials and the Sheriff that began in June of 2018.)
The move effectively ended the Sheriff’s 287(g) Agreement (“Contract”) with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that had been in place since renew. It became national news. This wasn’t a deep-Blue county, Kent County had a Republican sheriff and a Republican majority on the County Commission.
But, there is much more to the story. I’ve been reluctant to tell that entire story because it might inadvertently harm colleagues and limit opportunities to effectively cooperate on future issues. But, time has passed and, while the issue has gotten far worse, I think it’s a moment when it’s prudent to write what I saw and did. It isn’t the full story, that would take a fuller investigation by a journalist or historian, but I think it adds some information to this important reform.
The change in policy was sparked by the circumstances around the detention of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez. Ramos-Gomez, a United States citizen and Marine Corps veteran was wrongfully turned over by the Kent County Sheriff to ICE for deportation proceedings and was sent by ICE to the detention facility in Battle Creek. Ramos-Gomez, who suffered from PTSD as a result of his military service in Afghanistan, was arrested by the Grand Rapids police in 2018 after trespassing at a local hospital. Curt VanderKooi – an off-duty GR police captain – learned about Ramos-Gomez from a local news story and asked ICE to check his “status,” despite having no reason to think he was undocumented other than his name and appearance (I’m leaving out the entire GRPD part of the story, but it too led to policy changes after some really bad actions were uncovered) . Based on this tip, ICE issued a non-judicial immigration detainer request for Ramos-Gomez, resulting in the Kent County Jail placing him in federal custody. We’ll pick that story up later, but now is the time to place it in the context of the time. (Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were working directly with the ACLU and MIRC on the Jilmar Ramos-Gomez case, which you can read here. In addition Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were pressuring the Grand Rapids City Commission to fire GRPD Captain VanderKooi for engaging in racial profiling and calling ICE. I also wrote a story about the history that GRPD Captain VanderKooi had with ICE. VanderKooi was exonerated for any wrong doing, but then in May of 2019, the Grand Rapids Civilian Appeals Board reversed that decision on the grounds that VanderKooi engaged in racial profiling.)
About six months earlier, beginning on 28 June 2018 (narrative of what actually happened), Movimiento Cosecha began protesting at County Commission meetings, calling on us commissioners to end the contract with ICE. While Cosecha did succeed in dramatically bringing the issue to the public, their disruptive tactics alienated the majority of commissioners, especially Republican leadership. (When people who are directly affected by ICE terrorism aren’t taken seriously, they will use disruptive tactics to demonstrate the urgency of what they are facing. To the degree that County Commissioners were alienated, was a demonstration that they didn’t care that immigrant families were being separated. Here is an example of how the End the Contract campaign confronted County officials.) In addition, there belief that the commission could end the contract was legally mistaken. The elected Sheriff was the only official with authority. Still, those of us sympathetic to the issue began to work to see if we could accomplish the goals of the protest from behind the scenes. But, we ran into several obstacles. (Skaggs also leaves out important context here, especially about he behaved towards Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE members. Almost all of the Democrats on the County Commission fought the movement to end the contract. Skaggs in particular engaged in gaslighting of some of the latinx organizers and made no public effort to support our demands or work to End the Contract even after more than a year of demanding they work to end the contract. Skaggs even mocked the very organizers of the End the Contract Campaign, often referring to what we were doing as Bolshevik cosplay.)
First, the sheriff at the time was Larry Stelma, a hardliner on immigration who had signed onto a March 2018 letter from the National Sheriff’s Association which took a hardline in support of cracking down on undocumented immigrants in the American interior. There would be no opportunity at all to convince Stelma to exit a contract he had initially signed in 2012 and extended in 2017. However, among the Democrats on the Commission, it was well known that the 70-year old Stelma was on the verge of retirement and that Michelle LaJoye-Young was the likely successor. A strategy was devised to wait for Stelma’s retirement (which was announced in August and effective in November 2018) and try to lower the temperature in order to avoid a backlash that might lead Stelma or the Republican-dominated appointment committee to skip over LaJoye-Young and pick an immigration hardliner. The plan worked. LaJoye-Young was indeed appointed Sheriff in September 2018. Obstacle overcome. (Saying their plan worked is misleading. First, while the Democrats on the County Commission were buying time til Stelma retired immigrant families were being separated over and over again. Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young was not an improvement, since the same wealthy families that funded Stelma also continued to fund LaJoye-Young.
Second, the Chair of the Commission was still Jim Saalfeld, who was resolutely against Cosecha and, in control of the agenda, he was not going to allow any attempt to make an official call on the sheriff to end the special relationship with ICE. Thankfully, his term would end at in December 2019. Being the Vice Chair, it was widely known that Mandy Bolter would almost certainly be elected by the Republican caucus and then the full Kent County Commission to be the new Chair. Bolter was indeed nominated by her caucus in December 2018 and elected Chair at the 5 January 2019 board meeting. Obstacle overcome. (Just because the Republicans had the majority of the county seats during this campaign doesn’t excuse the Democrats for remaining silent, being antagonistic towards organizers, since they could have applied public pressure to the Sheriff and to the Commission chair to make ending the ICE contract a priority.)
Third, the County attorney was very clear with the Commission that we had absolutely no power to effect change. We could neither order the sheriff to change policy nor reduce the departmental budget in an attempt to leverage change (there was clear precedent of sheriffs successfully suing commissions that tried to use their budgetary power in an attempt to change policy). (This is the same bullshit answer that Kent County officials are using right now regarding the 6 sanctuary policies that Cosecha is demanding.) It’s extremely difficult to get a majority of a part-time commission to go against their in-house attorney (someday I’ll tell you about how I had to continually push to get Kent County to join the national opioid lawsuit until finally succeeding). In addition, the County had received a letter from the Trump administration threatening to withhold any and all funding from counties that did not “cooperate with ICE.” We had to take these threats seriously and consider the consequences for vulnerable members of our community if federal grants and funds were cut off for programs from rent and utility assistance to behavioral health supports. (Just more excuses instead of listening to members of the affected community and joining them is creating enough public pressure to end abusive policies and contracts.)
At this point, many commissioners were growing increasingly frustrated. We wanted to bring change, but we were dealing with a largely hostile Republican majority, a protest movement which was not interested engaging in strategic dialogues and which was demanding illegal actions from us, staff that was giving us legal advice that made reform impossible, and a Trump administration that was threatening important programs. (Much of what Skaggs is saying her is simply false, especially what he is saying about “the protest movement”. It was and is an immigrant justice movement and many of the members have conversations with County Commissioners, but those conversations always ended with them saying there was nothing they could do.)
At this point, I reached out to attorneys with the ACLU and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) who I knew personally. (Wow, he knew them personally. The fact is both the ACLU and MIRC were working with us from the very beginning and often accompanied us during commission meetings and speaking at those meetings saying that the county was under NO legal obligation to cooperate with ICE.) Those subsequent conversations changed everything. The attorneys were able to give us the legal arguments we needed to take to our colleagues to convince them there were legal viewpoints different from what our corporate counsel that allowed the sheriff to take action. Having built some consensus within the Democratic caucus, we went to the new sheriff in an attempt to convince her to end the contract (I had several three-ring binders full of court rulings, legal arguments and media stories on how other communities were working on the issue of disentangling themselves from ICE so they could concentrate on policing their community effectively – knowing me, there probably still down in the basement somewhere). By December, we had strong confidence that the sheriff would let the Contract with ICE lapse without renewal when it expired about a year later, on 30 September 2019. (Skaggs is claiming that the Sheriff’s office would not renew the contract, when in fact ICE chose not to renew it, which is exactly what Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young stated during a press conference in August of 2019. Her quote was, “The current contract with ICE will expire on September 30, 2019 as ICE is not seeking to renew the agreement.”) 
Because Republicans had a majority on the County Commission and their caucus was increasingly MAGA, letting the contract lapse was considered the only feasible way to end the sheriff’s special relationship with ICE. No one liked having to wait, but one has to understand constellation of forces (allow me to invoke one of my mantras – “election have consequences”). This opened us up to some painful criticism from some in the activist community, but we were determined to focus on the impacted community as a whole, especially protecting people from deportation because of minor infractions and ending cooperation with ICE that went beyond what was legally required. (Here Skaggs wants to show he was focus on the impacted community, yet the impacted community and allies had been telling him what changes they wanted and he made fund of them. When Skaggs says he wanted to make sure that minor infractions didn’t lead to deportation, this was also completely false. There is no evidence that he did a damn thing to benefit the immigrant communities that were being targeted by ICE while he was a County Commissioner, just like he and his fellow Democrats in 2024 failed to pass driver’s licenses for all.
Then, the event happened which significantly sped up the timeline. Ramos-Gomez was arrested on 21 November 2018 and handed over to ICE on 14 December (he was held in jail beyond his court-ordered release date because of an ICE detainer, despite GR police knowing he held a valid US passport). Ramos-Gomez’s mother hired a lawyer, gave ICE documentation that her son was a US citizen, and Jilmar was released on 17 December. Soon thereafter, the events came to my attention and shortly after that it went public, quickly gaining national attention.
Immediately, I reached out to Commission leadership and the Sheriff and there began a series of seemingly endless phone calls that ended in agreement that the sheriff should seize on the incompetence of ICE on the case and announce that she could no longer in good conscience trust ICE detainer holds and would stop accepting them. (It wasn’t so much the incompetence of ICE in the Jilmar Ramos-Gomez case, but the racial profiling of the GRPD that land him in jail.) At that point, a meeting was held and all Democratic members of the caucus supported the plan and were willing to publicly support the sheriff when she would make her policy change public. I then believed that it was wise to go public with a statement calling on the sheriff to “no longer blindly honor [ICE’s] non-judicial detainer requests” and “terminate the Agreement between the Kent County Sheriff’s Office and ICE.” It was all in the Sheriff’s hands, but we were confident she would do the right thing. (While Skaggs wants to take credit for what happened here, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were the ones that made this issue public and spent 14 months pressuring the county and the sheriff to end the contract and end ICE holds.
Concurrent with these talks and public demands, the ACLU and MIRC went public with the legal arguments they had been sharing with us privately. In a 16 January 2019 letter, they pointed out that immigration detainers are optional requests not mandatory arrest warrants signed by a judge, that nothing in Michigan law or the Sheriff’s oath of office required compliance with these administrative, non-judicial holds, and that it had become clear to all in during the Ramos-Gomez case that blindly following ICE detainers was a “recipe for disaster” due to ICE’s error-prone data. Cosecha too revived their demands to end the Contract. Everything was lining up. (Cosecha never revived their demands, they were still demanding an end to the contract and continued to do so until August of 2019, even holding an action outside of the Kent County Jail just days before ICE decided to not renew the contract with Kent County.)
A few days after the meetings and letter, the Sheriff made her statement that effectively ended the Contract by making moot the core part of the agreement – that ICE would pay the jail for the costs of detaining individuals for up to three days beyond their release date.
Immediately, ICE and the Trump White House criticized the Sheriff for promulgating what they called a “sanctuary” policy which they said threatened public safety by not holding immigrants for ICE beyond their release date without a judicial warrant so agents could pick them up and begin the deportation process. However, the Sheriff stood firm in her defense of due process. Nine months later, with little fanfare, the Contract officially lapsed on 30 September 2019, though it had been inactive since that January. (We were still pressuring, which didn’t go unnoticed by ICE, but Skaggs likes to make it about him)
It was a long process, but it effectuated real change for families in West Michigan.
Looking back, I’m filled with gratitude to the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and ACLU of Michigan for getting us the legal information we needed to make our case, to Cosecha who brought the issue forward and relentlessly urged action, to the individuals came to the meetings to tell us their stories, to my colleagues on the County Commission (especially Commission leadership) who each in their own way moved us toward a better policy, and to many others who helped make the success possible. And, of course, special thanks to Sheriff LaJoye-Young for her bravery and leadership.
Epilogues: I recently spoke with former attorneys for Ramos-Gomez and they tell me his mental health has dramatically improved since the difficult times he faced in 2018-2019. I was relieved to hear the news and wish him and his family all the best.
(Again, Skaggs wants to come across as an ally saying thanks to Cosecha, but we know how he treated them during this whole campaign. Interesting that the Sheriff gets to “special thanks” in his comments, which is why he equated the Sheriff with Dr. King instead of Cosecha organizers.
Of course, unfortunately, Trump is back in the White House and his administration (and Speaker Matt Hall) continues to malign Kent County, so many continue to fear punishment from Washington. We’ve seen Trump and ICE punish those they see as political opponents (of even just those that don’t fall in line) in Minneapolis. We all must remain vigilant to prevent such an invasion from coming to our door step. And we must continue to do all we can to stop family separation, racial profiling, the deportation of peaceful people, the attacks on due process for non-citizens and citizens alike, and the violence we’ve seen from an out-of-control agency. You can count on me to do my best and my part to fight back, defend peaceful families, and protect our Constitution. (Here Skaggs make it all about Trump and lets the Democrats off the hook. Skaggs says nothing about the fact that his hero Sheriff LaJoye-Young is again cooperating with ICE and engaging in ICE holds.
Movimiento Cosecha responded to the FB post from Skaggs with these parting comments:
No matter who is in the White House, immigrant families have been separated. Since ICE was created in 2003, the agency has expanded its harm through cooperation with local authorities.
Since the beginning of 2025, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE /Respuesta Rápida al ICE have put forward six clear demands to end city and county cooperation with ICE and to stop ICE holds at the Kent County Jail. Every local elected official has dismissed these demands, offering excuses that they “don’t control immigration law.” Our demands do not involve enforcing or changing federal immigration law—they are about local accountability and local choices.
We’ve seen this before. In 2018, when we demanded an “end to the ICE contract”, county commissioners including yourself Phil Skaggs were just as dismissive.
The Kent County Jail continues to carry out ICE holds without judicial warrants. This Sunday morning, a DACA recipient was taken to Kent County Jail during a traffic stop and placed on an ICE hold.
For the past 12 months more and more people are waking up to the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is fundamentally an instrument of state violence.
The ICE murder of Renee Good amplified this reality for a lot of people, although ICE has killed many more people over the years, along with their ongoing arrests, sending people to detention facilities, which often leads to deportation. ICE has been doing this since they were founded in 2003. A major difference this year is that ICE has roughly 7 times more money to operate than in pervious years. For details on the evolution of ICE funding see my previous post.
Rep. Hillary Scholten post a new video which is clearly a response to the ICE killing of Renee Good. You can watch the 4:37 video here.
What Rep. Hillary Scholten has to say about ICE is the standard liberal response for how the federal government needs to respond to federal agencies, transparency and accountability. Sounds nice, but not everyone is so naive as to believe that the US government will practice real transparency or accountability.
At about 1:20 into the video Scholten talks about the number of people who have died in detention in 2025, but fails to mention that people have died in detention in previous years, even under Democratic administrations since ICE was created, specifically 8 years under Obama and 4 years under Biden. The Detention Watch Network has been documenting the people who have died in ICE detention centers since ICE was created. The ACLU has also been documenting and reporting on ICE detention center conditions, which have also been bad for as long as ICE has been around. Rep. Scholten frames ICE abuses to suggest that this is new and that it is only happening under the Trump Administration.
Rep. Scholten then talks about the issue of oversight, which has rarely happened when it comes to federal law enforcement agencies such as ICE. (See Silky Shah’s book, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition.) Scholten continues to lay the blame at the feature of Republicans regarding ICE behavior in the video, but says she will do everything in her power to hold ICE accountable. This is standard political speak that translates into something like this – I can’t do anything because Democrats are not in power. The reality is that since ICE was created in 2003, the Obama and Biden administration, the years when Democrats also had a majority in Congress, did nothing to provide transparency, accountability or oversight of ICE.
Rep. Scholten concludes her remarks by saying that Congress has a responsibility to hold ICE accountable, which has never happened. More importantly, Rep. Scholten is not paying attention to polling which shows that a growing number of people in the US want to abolish ICE. ICE is only been around for 22 years and didn’t really have a significant problem with undocumented immigrants committing violence crimes prior to ICE being created, simply because immigrants don’t commit crime anywhere near the rate that US citizens do.
Lastly, Rep. Scholten fails to mention that she too has not been held accountable for her votes on immigration matters, such as voting for the Laken Riley Act at the beginning of 2025, legislation that further criminalized immigrants. In late January of 2025, Rep. Scholten voted for H.R. 30, which also criminalizes immigrants as I noted then. Then again in February of 2025, Rep., Scholten voted for HR 35, which also further criminalizes immigrants.
For as much as Rep. Scholten likes to remind us that she was an immigration lawyer, she continues to vote for policies that further criminalizes undocumented immigrants, and policies that the Republicans introduced. How could anyone take her seriously when it comes to accountability of ICE, especially with her voting record on immigration matters.
On Monday morning the group Together West Michigan held a Press Conference at a church in Grand Rapids to address an important topic – the violence that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is perpetrating against immigrant communities.
I was not able to attend this event, but I have read their statement and want to speak to that in particular.
The statement they released, and encouraged others to sign on to, is entitled, A Time for Light to Shine. Again, I am grateful that this group is making immigration, immigrants and ICE a public issue, especially since we have to examine and confront the non-stop terrorizing of immigrants by ICE in West Michigan and across the country.
Having said that I am a bit deflated and discouraged by their statement, which is rather vague and too tepid for what we know about ICE. I write this critique of their statement because I know that immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants need the faith community right now and right now they need to be bold.
Part of the Together West Michigan statement reads:
- We call on ICE and all of those working with ICE to be people of the light, operating in the daylight and removing masks.
- We call on ICE and all of those working with ICE to allow each person they encounter to shed light upon their status—those who have passed initial asylum interviews and await their day in court, those refugees who have resettled in this area, those who are black or brown and are subject to racial profiling.
- We call on ICE and all of those working with ICE to be caring light to families who may have one or more members who are undocumented.
These statements are not bad statements, but I believe that they are problematic in two ways. First, the call is to ICE and those working with ICE to be people of light. I understand the sentiment, but ICE and those collaborating with ICE are inherently systems of oppression, indeed they are an instrument of state carceral violence. This is why immigrants, immigrant justice groups and a growing number people across the country are calling for ICE to be abolished.
Second, the tone of these sentences centers ICE and their accomplices to be agents of change. It’s as if those who wrote this statement want ICE to simply be more humane and kind. This sentiment ignores the history of ICE, which was created after 9/11 with the specific intent to criminalize and terrorize undocumented immigrants.
Another section of the statement reads:
- We call on commissioners and legislators at the local, state and federal level to use their light to review and hold accountable actions that dehumanize our neighbors and fracture their families.
- We call on commissioners and legislators at the local, state and federal level to cast light on the racist actions that have extinguished the light of hope the United States’ resettlement program has provided to refugees around the world.
- We call on legislators at the state and federal level to remove obstacles to H1B (specialized workers) and F1 (student) visas so that these newcomers can shine their lights in ways that further not only their own skills, but advance our country.
Again, these statements are not bad statements, but they center politicians and not the affected communities. I acknowledge that there are some (few) elected officials at the local, state and federal level that have been appalled by the actions of ICE and other immigration policies, but the overwhelming majority of elected officials have voted for funding of ICE and bad and oppressive immigration policies.
A third section of the statement reads:
- We call on houses of worship to be the light they are called to be, casting light on evil and flooding our community with acceptance and goodwill.
- We call on houses of worship to be the light they are called to be, assisting those who are burdened, because of anti-immigrant propaganda and activity, with material, emotional, and spiritual support.
- We call on houses of worship to provide open doors and acceptance to those desperately in need of hope and sanctuary.
These sentences are more to the point, especially the last two lines, which provide concrete actions that houses of worship can take to practice solidarity with undocumented immigrants. Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have a sanctuary team that is meeting with local faith communities to talk about offering sanctuary and what that looks like.
What we need from faith communities is to adopt the same kind of commitment that the Confessing Church did in Nazi Germany, which took a strong public stance against state violence and offered sanctuary and safe houses to Jewish people and other communities that were being targeted by the Hitler regime.
I was also disappointed that the statement did not include or encourage people of faith to join the campaigns that Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have that is calling on the City of Grand Rapids and the Kent County government to adopt 6 sanctuary policies that would help reduce some of the violence that ICE is perpetrating in this community. These 6 sanctuary policies are concrete and come directly from the immigrant-led movement that Cosecha has been leading in this community since 2017.
The six sanctuary policies that Cosecha is demanding are:
- Policies restricting the ability of state and local police to make arrests for federal immigration violations, or to detain individuals on civil immigration warrants.
- Policies restricting the police or other county workers from asking about immigration status.
- Policies prohibiting “287(g)” agreements through which ICE deputizes local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law.
- Policies that prevent local governments from entering into a contract with the federal government to hold immigrants in detention.
- Policies preventing immigration detention centers from being established in Kent County, which would include the use of the Kent County Jail as a detention facility for ICE.
- A policy that will not allow the Kent County Sheriff’s Department to share Flock camera images or any other information gathered by county staff with ICE or any other law enforcement agency seeking to arrest, detain and deport immigrants.
In this existential moment, where ICE agents are terrorizing immigrants by kidnapping them, detaining them and deporting them, faith communities could play a vital role in being part of the resistance to state violence.
Again, I write these words not as criticism, but as an invitation to be part of the resistance work that is so necessary in this community. Let’s be bold in our words and our actions, even if it means we take risks to our own well being. As Archbishop Oscar Romero reminds us, “We must not love our lives so much that we avoid taking risks in life that history calls for.” History is calling for it NOW!
As the Trump Administration enacts brutal policies at home and abroad, it’s time that we learn from the radical Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Just to be clear, it has always been my contention that we should have been embracing the radical Dr. King, the real Dr. King all along, regardless of who sits in the White House. I say this because every administration engages in imperialism abroad, along with perpetuating state violence across the country. But now the curtain is pulled back even more, with the Trump administration being very candid about their use of state violence.
In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community (1967), King offered a sobering take on the white legal backlash to the racial progress achieved by the struggle for Black equality. Many white Americans, King wrote, “have declared that democracy isn’t worth having if it involves [racial] equality…[their] goal is the total reversal of all reforms with the reestablishment of naked oppression and if need be a native form of fascism” whereby the law is wielded to guarantee white supremacy.
Black people were experiencing fascism in the US in 1967 as they had been every year prior to that. Read Bill Mullen’s book, We Charge Genocide!: American Fascism and the Rule of Law, for details of that reality.
We have to begin to see a Dr. King as someone who evolved during his short lifetime of being in the struggle. Dr. King always promoted and practiced direct action as part of the Black Freedom Struggle, from risking arrest in order to expose the structural racism and structural violence that was inherent in the US.
We have to embrace the Dr. King who in 1963 (“Letter From a Birmingham Jail”) wrote that the primary obstacle to overcoming American racial oppression wasn’t the open racism of segregation’s brutal enforcers but the tepid incrementalism of white moderates who counseled excessive patience and discouraged the mass direct action required to overthrow the Jim Crow regime.
We especially need to read what Dr. King was saying and doing after he moved his operations from the south and brought his family to live in Chicago where he experience a more overt forms of white supremacy. Read the book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South, by Jeanne Theoharis and watch the documentary King in the Wilderness: The Last Years of MLK Jr.’s Life.
Dr. King organized people to challenge housing policies in Chicago, segregation and mobilized thousands to engage in direct action, such as taking over abandoned housing and turning it into housing for people, or the time that he led a march that shut down a major highway in Chicago, a disruptive tactic to pressure the City to adopt housing policies that would meet people’s needs.
We have to embrace the Dr. King who placed the primary blame for the US race riots of 1965-67 on a “white power structure…seeking to keep the walls of segregation and inequality intact” and a “white society, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change,” that told Black people “they must expect to remain permanently unequal and permanently poor.”
We have to understand the King who denounced what he called “the interrelated triple evils” of racism, economic injustice/poverty (capitalism) and war (militarism and imperialism, and who said that the “real issue to be faced” beyond “superficial” matters was “the radical reconstruction of society itself” – the King who argued that “only by structural change can current evils be eliminated, because the roots are in the system rather in man or faulty operations. For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.”
We have to embrace a Dr. King who spoke out against American imperialism, most particularly against the US War on Vietnam, and who said on April 4, 1967, in his famous speech Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence. King stated “that a society that spent more money on military empire than on programs of social uplift was approaching spiritual death.”
In that same speech, Dr. King said, I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.
During Dr. King’s 1963 I Have a Dream speech, he stated “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” Here is another quote on what the function of policing is in the US.
Dr. King was being monitored by the FBI for years and then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover said that Dr. King was “the most notorious liar in the country.”
Dr. King was received death threats for years and in the last few years of his short life he even recruited some members of the Deacons for Defense to act as body guards. See Charles Cobb’s book, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.
Months before Dr. King was assassinated he began to organize the Poor People’s Campaign, which involved people impacted by poverty across the country. The plan was to occupy DC with thousands of people and not leave until their demands were met.
In the midst of the Poor People’s Campaign Dr. King went to Memphis to support the garbage workers who were striking for better working conditions and better wages. Dr. King had been working with labor unions for years, which is well documented in Michael Honey’s book, All Labor Has Dignity.
On April 4th, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. However, despite the claim that King was killed by a lone assassin, the local police and the FBI were either complicit in Dr. King’s assassination or conspired to kill him, according to the book, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King.
All of is to say that if we really want to honor the legacy of Dr. King, we need to know how radical he was and that he was seen by the power structure as a threat. If we want to honor the real Dr. King then we need to practice direct action in service of collective liberation and stop making nice with those in power.
Deconstructing memes: Coming to terms with the fact for BIPOC communities the US has always been a police state
With everything that is happening in the US these days you have to expect that there will be lots of misinformation on social media, particularly content that is created by people with privilege.
The latest example is a meme that says, “They are not really after illegals. They are using illegals as an excuse to create a police state aimed at you.”
This meme is rife with problems, but lets start with the person who created it, Brian Tyler Cohen. I mean, look at his website, which features a big picture of him, along with lots of “merch” for people to buy, merch that promotes him. Brian Tyler Cohen also identifies himself as a Democrat.
Second, using the word “illegals” is insulting and it is just not accurate. Undocumented immigrants are not illegals, they came to the US out of desperation to flee political violence, poverty and climate disasters. In addition, coming to the US without papers is not a criminal offense it is a civil infraction that doesn’t require jail or being sent to a detention facility.
Third, saying that undocumented people are just an excuse to create a police state aimed at you completely dismissed the fact that millions of undocumented immigrants have been arrested, detained and deported since ICE was created in 2003. Every Administration since then has arrested, detained and deported millions. Drawing attention away from the lived experiences of millions of undocumented immigrants is some white supremacist shit, especially when Brian Tyler Cohen says undocumented immigrants are being used to create a police state aimed at you. You, of course, means other white people, primarily white people who haven’t given a shit about the millions of undocumented immigrants that have been arrested, detained and deported since 2003 by both Republicans and Democrats.
Lastly, the fact that Brian Tyler Cohen is saying that the current administration is creating a police state completely erases the history of what Black, Indigenous and other communities of color have lived under since the US was founded, which has been a POLCE STATE.
The US has been committed to using genocidal practices to murder, remove and wipe out Indigenous culture and spirituality ever since Europeans came to the Americas. Whether it has been through bounty hunters, the US Calvary, the FBI or local cops, all of the equates to a POLICE STATE.
Black people who were forcibly removed from their homelands and then bought by white people through the system of chattel slavery was because the state was policing the bodies of Black people. When Black people fled slavery they were rounded by men who were deputized by the state who had the legal support of the state to return Black people to their white owners, that is a POLICE STATE.
During the Jim Crow the state created laws to criminalize being Black in order to uphold structural white supremacy. That is what a POLICE STATE looks like.
During the Civil Rights era, it was mostly cops – state violence workers – who brutalized Black people for demanding equality and were jailed for it, or worse murdered. That was a POLICE STATE.
The US has had the largest prison population on the planet for several decades, with a disproportionately high percentage of Black and Brown people being incarcerated. That is a POLICE STATE.
To say that the Trump Administration is now wanting to create a police state not only ignores history, it lets all other administrations off the hook for their role in perpetuating a POLICE STATE against marginalized communities. Brian Tyler Cohen should get his facts straight or better yet, he should shut the hell up!
GRIID Class on US Foreign Policy since WWII – Week #1: Developing a framework for understanding
I am sharing the content of what all the participants read and what was discussed during each of the eight week sessions in the GRIID class on the history of US foreign policy since WWII.
Participants were asked to look over some of the following online resources before week #1.
Military Industry influence peddling
I also shared several documents for them to look at which provide more context and a framework for how we can look at US involvement around the world no matter what country it involves. Another document is a sample of US Military interventions since WWII under each US President/Administration.
Then we also looked at and discussed to quotes from US government and military insiders that are important in terms of thinking about what the function of US foreign policy is. This first quote is from former Major General Smedley Butler, who is the highest ranking US military person in US history. In his book War is a Racket, Butler 
wrote:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
The second quote comes from George Kennan who was Director of Policy Planning of the U.S. Dept. of State in 1948. Kennan stated:
“We have 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. . . In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about the raising of the living standards, human rights, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
After looking at these larger US foreign policy frameworks, we then applied it to the example of Iraq, with the following timeline and narrative:
Historical Context – WWI demonstrated to the British that oil was an essential strategic resource to power the war machines and the Middle East was rich in oil.
1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, between Russia, the UK and France divided up most of what is now the Middle East, which the UK controlling Iraq.
1919 there was an Arab independence movement and the British responded by convening the League of Nations to ratify their colonial control.
1920 – Arab nationalists then fought the British, but the British military was far superior and brutally crushed the uprising. T.E. Lawrence and Winston Churchill both argued in favor of using poison gas. Churchill stated at the time, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. IU am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes.”
1921 – Iraq was created by the British government behind closed doors. Iraqis were not fit to govern themselves. King Faisal was chosen by the British government to rule Iraq.
1925 – King Faisal was forced by the British government to sign a 75-year concession granting the foreign owned Iraq Petroleum Company all rights to Iraq’s oil.
After WWII there were 3 major things that happened: The US became the leading world power; oil became central to global power; and the US shifted from domestic oil production to global oil production.
In 1950 Persian Gulf Oil cost about 5 to 15 cents a barrel to produce, but sold for $2.25 a barrel.
1952 – massive demonstrations began against the British and the monarchy. It was violently repressed.
1958 – a military led uprising began, with the King and his son shot dead.Coup was led by Gen. Abdul Qasim. Iraq now wanted part of the control of Iraqi oil. The UK/US alliance would not budge, so in 1960 Iraq invited Saudi Arabia, Iran Kuwait and Venezuela to create what is now called OPEC – Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
By the late 1950s, the US began a covert campaign to destabilize Iraq, primarily led by the CIA. Part of this effort was to develop relationships with leadership in the Ba’ath Party.
There were attempts by members of the Ba’ath Party to assassinate Qasim, including a young Saddam Hussein.
1968 – Ba’ath Party takes control of Iraq through a military coup. At the time Saddam was head of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and by the mid-70s he was the most powerful figure in Iraqi politics.
In the 1970s, the US attempted to undermine the Ba’ath Party, since it was becoming to independent of the US. They attempted to use the Kurds against the Ba’athists.
1980 – 1990 the Iraq/Iran war took place, with the US arming both sides.
1990 – Build up to the Persian Gulf War
January 16, 1991 the US begins bombing campaign against Iraq. Less than 2 months later the war ended, without the removal of Saddam Hussein.
Beginning in 1991 the most brutal economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq, sanctions that lasted until months after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq began. 500,000 Iraqi children died as a result of the sanctions in combination with the devastation from the 1991 US bombing. Asked on TV, then US Secretary of State, Madaline Albright was asked if it was worth it for so many Iraqi children had died. She said, “It was worth it.”
2003 – US invasion of Iraq began
2009 – Soft US troop withdrawal began
Iraq in a constant state of instability – factions, ISIS, oil.
(Map above shows US military bases in Iraq.)
Geo-Politics
Arab Nationalism and anti-Colonialism was a major source of US geopolitical concern beginning in the 1950s.
1953 CIA coup in Iran, which ousted Mossadegh and put in power the Shah, who ruled until he was overthrown in 1979, by an Islamist movement, which the US had support decades earlier.
Turkey began a relationship with the US after WWII, military aid, etc because of their strong anti-Communist stance and the repression of an independent Kurdish state. US has had military bases since 1955.
US Saudi Arabia relations began prior to WWII, but increased after the war, allowing US troops to deploy, joint military training and deep relationship between the US and the Saudi monarchy.
Syria – US has had a difficult relationship with. Numerous CIA coups were attempted and it has always been contentious.
Jordan – has been an ally since WWII
Lebanon – has been an ally since WWII
1956 – Nasser comes to power in Egypt. There were tension between the US and Egypt, but when Sadat became president that changed, along with the Arab/Israeli war. Egypt became one of the top recipients of US military aid and a player against Arab nationalism.
Israel – the US has had a special relationship since its founding in 1948, but especially after the 1973 war with Egypt. Israel has been the number one recipient of US military aid since 1975 and acts essentially as the police of the region.
Economic Interest – oil, re-writing Iraqi Constitution and applying US Shock Doctrine to Iraq’s economy.
Human Rights/Human Cost – Iraq lost 200,000 during Iran/Iraq War
10 – 12,000 Iraqis died during the Gulf War.
Sanctions from 1991 – 2003 killed half a million children and 40,000 adults.
1 million Iraqis died during the US invasion/occupation of Iraq from 2003 – 2008.
US Troop loses during Gulf War – Gulf War syndrome, use of depleted uranium. 150 during invasion, undetermined from Gulf War Syndrome
US troop loses during 2003 – 2008 invasion/occupation 4,500, with 32,000 wounded.
US Military Complex – What US taxpayers spent on the war since 2003, includes US military Aid, US military bases, use of private military contractors, Defense Contractor profits.
US Media Coverage
Gulf War – First Cable News War/24 Hour War
2003 invasion/occupation
GRIID Study of 2003 US invasion
US Domestic response – 1991 Gulf War demonstrations, Teach-Ins, civil disobedience. Grand Rapids History.
2003 Invasion/Occupation – demonstrations before it started, Teach-Ins, civil disobedience, counter-recruitment organizing, targeting war profiteers, Iraq war veterans resistance. 10 part series on GR People’s History Project.
Doug DeVos re-introduces his dad’s book Believe, trashes socialism and thinks the country was founded on the principles of free enterprise
I recently listed to a December 2025 interview with Doug DeVos who is now re-branding his father’s book Believe! as a way to perpetuate the awful ideological principle that gave birth to Amway and made the DeVos family the most powerful family in West Michigan.
The interview is conducted by Aaron Renn who has his own show. Renn is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Research, which is a far right think tank, very much like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy here in Michigan.
The interview with Doug DeVos is just seconds shy of 35 minutes, which you can watch here on YouTube.
There are for me important parts of this interview that I was to highlight and comment on. This first section I want to talk about is where the interviewer quotes Rich DeVos talking about patriotism (8:40 into the interview). “At a time when flag waving is discouraged I don’t apologize for an old fashioned, hand over heart brand of patriotism. I believe that America is the greatest country in the world with the richest past, the brightest future and the most exciting present of any nation anywhere.”
Nothing of what Rich DeVos says in this quote should be surprising. DeVos, a white, wealthy, Christian man, who made his wealth on the pyramid scheme company Amway, originally wanted to call the company the American Way.
A second theme I wanted to look at begins at 19:30 in the video where the interviewer wants Doug DeVos to talk about why he thinks that socialism is appealing to people, particularly young people. Doug’s responses are interesting, first with the idea that people who don’t have a sense of themselves are more susceptible to the appeal of socialism.
The second generation Amway executive also tries to point out that socialism has been tried before. Of course DeVos provides no examples and doesn’t provide any analysis of socialism, because he has no real knowledge of what it means and how it has been applied around the world in various ways. Instead DeVos invokes this notion that people want to come here, so we must be doing something right. Really? Lets look at the millions of undocumented immigrants that have come to the US in recent years. They are coming because the US is so great, they are coming because they are desperate to flee political violence and poverty, which are realities that the US has helped to create in the countries just south of the border.
DeVos also attempts to claim that the US was founded on the principles of free enterprise, focus on the importance of family and people being able to celebrate their religious beliefs. I’m sorry, the US was founded on Settler Colonialist values of taking indigenous land, engaging in genocidal policies and profiting off the labor of Africans who were enslaved by white owners.
In the section on free enterprise (beginning at 22:20) Doug says that we have been fighting poverty for 60 years, which is likely a reference to the Johnson Administration’s war on poverty program. DeVos believes that hasn’t worked, but provides no analysis of why it didn’t work, so there is no discussion of how capitalism morphed into neoliberal capitalism, with increased state intervention and policies change to imposed austerity measures, push privatization, deregulation and create tax policies that would benefit families like the DeVos family. Doug’s solution is to create wealth, which sounds nice, but it means go into business for yourself, be an entrepreneur. The problem with the idea of wealth creation is that only a small percentage of people within a capitalist system will be able to create wealth, because it is always at the expense of the masses.
There are a few other sections where DeVos talks about the “regulatory state” and America vs China, but just like the rest of this interview Doug just repeats his father’s ideas and offers no substantive critique of what he doesn’t like and what he thinks works. For a decades-long critique of the DeVos family check out my 800 plus page document entitled the DeVos Family Reader.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 