The Immigrant Justice Movement in Grand Rapids Part II
(Editor’s note: I am currently working on a book, tentatively entitled, A People’s History of Grand Rapids, which is related to this article.)
In Part I, we looked at the beginnings of an immigrant justice movement in Grand Rapids, specifically between 2005 and 2016.
The immigrant justice movement evolved significantly after the 2016 election, with the news that the new Trump administration would be escalating repressive measures against undocumented immigrants, with talk of building a wall along the US/Mexican border and adding 15,000 additional ICE agents across the country.
A group of people were invited to a meeting that was being hosted by the CRC’s office of Social Justice just weeks after the 2016 election. Some 40 people were at that meeting to discuss the possibility of doing sanctuary work, along with a whole range of ideas that would provide opportunities for solidarity with the undocumented community. However, there was one thing missing from this meeting……there was no one from the immigrant or the undocumented community.
However, people from this initial gathering continued to meet and form committees. The committee I was a part of, was a group that was looking to intervene when ICE agents were attempting to arrest and detain people.
There was a community forum held in January of 2017, at the Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church to talk about what could be done to respond to the anticipated anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of Washington. Some people met to talk about offering sanctuary, while others met to discuss the work of a group calling itself the GR Rapid Response to ICE project.
GR Rapid Response to ICE hosted its first training in February of 2017, with over 100 people attending, which did reflect that many people had a growing concern about the fate of immigrants under the Trump administration. In that same month, a march was organized by the immigrant community to draw attention to their concerns and fears about the increased repression they were feeling. Several thousand people showed up at that march in February, with a banner that read, Un Dia Sin Immigrantes – A Day Without Immigrants.
It was out of this immigrant-led march that Movimiento Coscha GR was born. Some of the organizers from that march traveled to Boston to participate in a training with the Cosecha national and came back determined to organize the immigrant community in Grand Rapids.
Cosecha GR continued its organizing work with other marches and an action at the local ICE office where three people were arrested to expose the bankrupt immigration policies of this country.
One focus of Cosecha GR has been to use boycotts to address systemic problems around immigration, by making it clear that without immigrants the US economy would come to a stop. The boycott campaign saw several thousand people marching and refusing to buy anything on May 1st, an action at Walmart that exposed the wages of migrant workers and the current Turkey Boycott Campaign.
In October of 2017, there was also a powerful display of solidarity, where Movimiento Cosecha GR had decided to support a contract dispute with the bus drivers union in Grand Rapids and the union in turn supported Cosecha GR and their push to get an Equal Services policy adopted by the City of Grand Rapids, which would prevent city employees from asking people about their legal status.
Unfortunately, the GRPD lobbied to not be included in the Equal Services policy and the City attorney revised the content to exclude them from the policy, which means the GRPD could ask people what their status is.
GR Rapid Response to ICE and Movimiento Cosecha GR continued to organize and offer trainings at the beginning of 2018. The first major immigration action took place in January, when Congress was debating whether or not to continue the federal policy known as DACA. People from Grand Rapids went to DC to take part in actions and then organized an action on January 19, where protestors shut down traffic at an intersection by the Grand Rapids Federal Building.
At that January 19 action, police officers did not act when motorists forced their way through the protestors on the street. Movimiento Cosecha GR held a press conference in response to this form of state violence in February. The GRPD showed up to intimidate the immigrant-led group and then waited in the parking lot to make sure that they could talk to the news media that came to the press conference.
Then in March, a church which was working with the group GR Rapid Response to ICE, publicly declared themselves a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.
Beginning in early April, Movimiento Cosecha GR began promoting their upcoming days of action, which would begin at the end of April. These four days of action were part of a larger strategy of getting to a seven day strike, where immigrants and allies would demonstrate the kind of economic power they have to force the country to come to terms with the unjust immigration policies that currently permeate the US.
Movimiento Cosecha GR also used these four days of action to kick-off their campaign to get drivers licenses for all in Michigan. On April 30th, the movement participated in an action at the Secretary of State’s office in Wyoming, MI.
On May 1st, an estimated 2,000 people marched in the streets of Grand Rapids to demonstrate the power of immigrants. The GRPD had increased their presence during the march and tried to dictated the route, but movement organizers would not comply, thus demonstrating their commitment to a truly grassroots politics that took its direction from the people most impacted by the unjust immigration policies.
There was an increase in the amount of calls that GR Rapid Response to ICE was getting, which led that group to look into the Kent County Sheriff Department’s relationship with ICE. It was discovered that Kent County had begun a contract with ICE in 2012. As GR Rapid Response to ICE was gearing up to protest the county’s contract with ICE, along with Movimiento Cosecha GR, the US was separating immigrant families near the US border and putting children in cages.
Capitalizing on the national outcry over the treatment of immigrants, GR Rapid Response to ICE and Movimiento Cosecha GR organized an action at the Kent County Commission meeting in late June of 2018, which turned out over 200 people on a Thursday morning. There were several people arrested during that action, but more importantly, that action led to a larger End the Contract campaign, where both Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE were calling for an end to the county’s contract with ICE.
Since the End the Contract campaign began in late June, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE have participated in over a dozen actions on the contract, including actions at various ICE offices, a march and rally held outside of the Kent County Jail, various actions at the regular Kent County Commission meetings, a No Business with ICE Action Day and even a disruptive action during ArtPrize to draw attention to the fear and terror that immigrants were experiencing in Kent County.
In addition, once the End the Contract campaign had begun, there was the development of Cosecha Allies trainings, as a way to bring more allies into the movement and to build capacity for the expanding struggle for immigrant justice. This was important, not just for working on the End the Contract campaign, but for the Movimiento Cosecha GR 5 day pilgrimage to Lansing for their drivers licenses for all campaign.
In early January of 2019, Kent County made national news with the revelation that Jimar Ramos-Gomez, a man born in the US, who later served in the US military in Afghanistan, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Shortly after this news went national, the Kent County Sheriff held a press conference, stating that the Sheriff’s Department, “will no longer honor federal immigration holds without an arrest warrant signed by a judge.”
This was a major victory, which Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE celebrated, because it demonstrated that the End of the Contract campaign was effective, since they believe that the constant pressure put on by both groups resulted in the Sheriff Department’s change in policy.
However, it was also discovered during the arrest and detainment of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, that the GRPD was involved. The ACLU and MIRC had called for an investigation of the GRPD’s role in the Jilamr Ramos-Gomez case and in the process obtained numerous documents that clearly demonstrated that the GRPD acted in a racist manner in their collaboration with ICE.
Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE had already begun to confront the City of Grand Rapids and make demands, but after they looked at the ACLU/MIRC documents they engaged in a larger action in late February of 2019, calling for Captain VanderKooi to be fired.
In addition to pressuring the City of Grand Rapids around immigrant justice issues, Movimiento Cosecha GR has been gearing up for the May 1st action, which again has Drivers Licenses for All as the main theme. For more information on the May 1st action, go to their Facebook event page linked here.
Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE continue to do important work in building a strong immigrant justice movement. In many ways this movement has been the longest sustained movement in Grand Rapids, since the anti-Iraq War movement some 15 years ago, and their is no evidence that this movement is going away anytime soon. Hasta La Huelga!
Kent County’s Immigration Focus group has little immigrant involvement, no transparency: Who are they accountable to?
When Movimiento Cosehca GR and GR Rapid Response was pressuring Kent County Commissioners and the Sheriff’s Department to end the contract with ICE, the best we could get out of some commissioners was that they would set up a “focus group” to look into the concerns of immigrant.
Of course, this had little to do with the demand to end the contract that ICE had with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department. First, calling for an immigrant “focus group” was dismissive of the evidence that was provided from the two groups demanding the end of the contract, which included testimony from the affected community.
Second, holding an immigration “focus group” is significantly broader focus than the demand to end the contract, which specifically impacted the undocumented immigrant community. Some members of the Kent County Commission kept saying that they wanted to invite people from the immigrant community to sit down and have a conversation with the Sheriff’s Department, so that they could build trust. Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE kept saying that those most impacted by current ICE practices live in fear of law enforcement and would not likely meet with law enforcement, especially since local law enforcement has been cooperative with ICE arrests and detentions in Kent County.
The other issue with the immigration focus group is the lack of transparency. When people attending a Kent County Commission meeting in January, we heard that they planned to begin meeting. I have yet to find anything online about the meetings, who is attending and what topics are being discussed.
I wrote to the Kent County Commissioner who represents my district, Stephen Wooden, and he responded by saying that he is happy to look into it. He also shared video from the March 28, Kent County Commission meeting and towards then end Commissioner Sparks did mention that the group has meet once.
Commissioner Sparks stated that those in attendance besides herself, were the Kent County Sheriff’s Department, Comm. Talen, Comm. Womack, Commissioner Antor, the County Administrator, someone from the County’s communication staff and members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Comm. Sparks stated, they had “a very inspirational meeting,” that it was a great discussion and “very positive.”
This was not much of a report back, it doesn’t inspire confidence in the county commission and it says that a conversation about immigration was mostly attended by people not from the immigrant community and not likely someone from the undocumented community, since the only non-governmental voices were from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The Hispanic Chamber of commerce is not exactly representative of the immigrant community (check out who sits on their board), especially those who live in fear of ICE and law enforcement.
In many ways this immigration focus group is what many of us expected and it has relatively nothing to do with what Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE had confronted the County Commission on since last June.
A Chicago-based firm Hillard-Heintze, LLC, presented their findings at the Grand Rapids City Commission Tuesday morning. Hillard-Heintze, LLC, was hired by the city to provided an assessment of whether or not the GRPD needed to hire more officers, which the department has been arguing for years. The report cost taxpayers just short of $100,000.
According to their website:
Hillard Heintze is one of the leading security risk management firms in the world. We are trusted around the globe to deliver innovative, prevention-oriented advisory solutions that help our clients improve performance and outcomes in protecting what matters: their people, performance, interests and reputation. Since our inception in 2004, more than 85 Fortune-ranked enterprises, 150 of the world’s most affluent families and 500 U.S. and international brands have gained insight, assurance and confidence through our services – and are better managing security risk.
The CEO and co-founder, Arnette Heintze, has decades of experience in law enforcement and used to work for the US Secret Service as security details for George & Barbara Bush and Bill & Hillary Clinton.
If one spends any time on Hillard Heintze’s website, you can clearly see that they are a pro-law enforcement agency that has a great deal of respect for police and other security agents. They have a blog, which shares regular insights and opinions about law enforcement, such as their recent piece entitled, 5 Major Law Enforcement Trends That Will Shape 2019.
The Report produced by Hillard Heintze can be viewed within the April 9, GR City Commission meeting of the Whole document, linked here. The report begins on page 53 and runs through page 110.
According to the firm of Hillard Heintze, they were contracted to review and assess the following.
- Current operational, administrative and investigative components to ensure alignment, efficiency and effectiveness.
- Current civilian staffing assignments, including classifications for appropriate personnel allocation, excluding dispatch assignments.
- Current patrol assignments for appropriate staffing levels as based on relevant computer-aided dispatch (CAD) data and other organizational priorities.
- Current policies and practices regarding employee stress, fatigue, overtime and succession planning.
In the letter that the CEO of Hillard Heintze LLC sent to acting Chief David Kiddle, Heintze states:
The GRPD is at an important juncture as your City continues its search for a new Chief. The budget and staffing decisions of the past continue to impact the department’s ongoing success, particularly as it seeks to address succession planning and effective allocation of resources. Our analysis has found that while sworn staffing is sufficient to meet current demand, limited administrative support and the absence of usable of data to direct resource allocation contributes to the pressures felt by officers and managers within the GRPD. Our observations and analysis identify that providing more support through increased administrative staffing will allow officers to engage in the proactive policing activities.
In many ways the report is tedious, with lots of details about work schedules and operational practices. However, the report does provide some very useful information about what the GRPD spends most of their time on.
The report states that, “most calls are not for emergency police services, such as immediate physical danger, but rather are service oriented. Seventy percent of calls for service in 2018 were categorized as “low priority.” For example, the most common calls for service included 4,982 for property damage-only traffic crashes and 4,050 calls for burglar alarms, most of which are false. On average, officers spend almost an hour on scene resolving calls for service, so a significant amount of patrol time is spent addressing non-emergency calls. This evolving demand for a variety of services from law enforcement is a trend that we see nationally, and many communities continue to struggle with identifying what, when and how they want police services delivered. This is of concern for many municipalities as police budgets are often the largest component of municipal expenditures.”
You can also see from graphic, the numerical breakdown of why people are calling the GRPD.
Based on this data, most of the calls the GRPD receives are non-emergency and low priority calls, often responding to traffic accidents and burglar alarms. The report recommends that more civilian staff could take care of more of the non-emergency calls to allow the GRPD officers to attend to other matters.
The Grand Rapids Police union has already responded to the report and has expressed frustration with the city officials who have already made the study public. This response from the police union is not surprising, considering that they have been antagonistic towards city officials in recent years over growing concerns and demands from the community over police brutality, specifically in communities of color.
The report does provide a list of recommendations on the last two pages of the report. Those recommendations are primarily organizational in focus and less on procedure.
While this report provides some useful information and data on the GRPD, it doesn’t address more pressing issues such as:
- How much of the City’s budget is consumed by the GRPD
- Recent examples of Police brutality, specifically within black and latino/latinx neighborhoods
- GRPD cooperation with Immigration Customs & Enforcement (ICE)
DeVos Family infographic #1
The infographic we provide here is based upon our documentation of the DeVos Family’s collective political contributions over the years, the 990 documents from the various family foundations and the state policies that have been passed by politicians that the DeVos Family has funded.
You can find all of this documented in our 460 page downloadable document, The DeVos Family Reader. For additional sources, please check out the Michigan Campaign Finance Network for election contributions from the DeVos Family or Guidestar for investigating the various DeVos Family Foundations and who they have contributed to.
The Immigrant Justice Movement in Grand Rapids Part I
(Editor’s note: I am currently working on a book, tentatively entitled, A People’s History of Grand Rapids, which is related to this article.)
I have been in Grand Rapids since 1982. During the past 37 years I have been involved in a variety of activist work and organizing efforts. However, it is important to state up front that activism is often not organizing work.
One thing that differentiates organizing from activism is that, activism is often done singularly and rarely does it have a larger goal. Organizing, on the other hand, is well thought out, with tactics, strategies and goals, especially when it is part of a larger social movement.
Activism can be part of organizing work, but activism by itself is insufficient for the long term goals of social movements. People can be motivated by a singular event or moment in history, like the moment last June when people became aware that the US government was detaining and separating immigrant families just inside the US border. People were outraged when they saw children in cages, and rightfully so. People maybe signed an online petition, donated to a group or attended a rally calling for the end of immigrant family separation.
However, many people didn’t know what to do to sustain their anger and eventually lost interest in what was happening or did not seek out organizations or movements that were addressing the issue of immigrant family separation.
I have participated in several social movements in the Grand Rapids area since the early 1980s, including the Central American Solidarity Movement, the Sanctuary Movement, the Disarmament Movement, the Anti-Globalization Movement, the Anti-Iraq War/Occupation Movement and the Food Justice Movement. I have learned a great deal from the people in those movement and it is what has inspired me to want to write A People’s History of Grand Rapids.
Immigrant Justice Movement
The roots of the current immigrant justice movement really began in 2005. Wisconsin Representative Sensenbrenner had introduced a bill, the the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. This bill would criminalize undocumented immigrants and even punish those who offered them any assistance. The proposed bill mobilized people all across the US, including in Grand Rapids.
There were meetings that were being held at the Burton Heights United Methodist Church (which has since been demolished), with 200 – 400 people coming to each meeting over the next several months to discuss what actions to take. In conjunction with a national effort, it was decided by the immigrant community to turn out in large numbers in opposition to the Sensenbrenner bill.
On March 26th, 2006 an estimate 10,000 people marched in Grand Rapids from Garfield Park to downtown Grand Rapids to protest the anti-immigration legislation. Some observers say that this was one of the largest marches in the history of the city, if not the largest. What is more important is that this march was made up of mostly people from the immigrant and undocumented community.
I was at that march in 2006 and wrote about it for an indymedia blog called Media Mouse. The story I wrote at the time, along with how the Grand Rapids Press covered it, is documented in a post on the Grand Rapids People’s History Project site.
There was another action organized as a follow up to this march, which took place on May 1st of 2006. This action also took place at Garfield Park, but it was much smaller, did not involve a march, but was being called Un Dia Sin Imigrantes – A Day Without Immigrants, which I also wrote about for Media Mouse. Unfortunately, after the May Day action, the moment was gone and organizers did not capitalize on the energy and numbers of those who took over the streets 5 weeks earlier.
There were still some meetings that were being organized, but primarily by those in the non-profit sector, religious people and immigration lawyers. These meetings took place primarily at the Hispanic Center and focused on policy rather than organizing the affected community.
By 2007, people began to rally around the idea of Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 and the 2008 Presidential Elections. There was a big push within the immigrant community to register people to vote. When it was clear that Barack Obama was going to get the Democratic nomination and if elected, he would make Comprehensive Immigration Reform a priority, which motivated a lot of people.
Barack Obama did become the President and promised to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform within the first 100 days. This however, did not happen and in fact, it never happened during the 8 years he was in office.
Many people in the immigrant community were disappointed by this outcome and many became disillusioned by electoral politics, especially when the Obama administration escalated the war against the undocumented community, deporting an estimated 3 million during those eight years.
A group that came together during the time, called the West Michigan Coalition for Immigration Reform, began to meet monthly. One of their main goals was to get Comprehensive Immigration Reform passed in Congress. They held a Press Conference in early September of 2009, to kickoff a new campaign to push politicians to embrace Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
The month before, GRIID agreed to conduct a series of interviews from people directly impacted from ICE raids and arrests or those who worked with people impacted, such as lawyers and social workers. Here is one of those interviews with an ALCU lawyer who shared her research on detention center across the US.
A week after their September Press Conference, the West Michigan Coalition for Immigration Reform held a public forum to kickoff their campaign to get Comprehensive Immigration Reform passed and in the minds of millions of Americans. The forum was held at GVSU’s downtown campus and co-sponsored by the Latin American Studies Department. The following month there was another rally held at Garfield Park, just prior to people traveling to DC to lobby Congress on Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
There was limited activity for a few years, until the 2012 Presidential Election, when the argument was made that “people needed to re-elect President Obama in order to achieve Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” However, at the same time there was increased ICE activity in West Michigan and more and more people were being arrested, detained and deported. At the monthly meetings of the West Michigan Coalition for Immigration Reform we kept hearing of arrests, raids and the growing fear that the immigrant community was feeling. There was even an attempt to create a Rapid Response to ICE project, but for a variety of reasons it never got off the ground.
However, in late 2012, there was also dissatisfaction with what was happening at the national level. In November of 2012, about 250 people went to Lansing to demand immigrant rights and Drivers Licenses for All.
In December of 2012, over 200 people showed up at a Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, mostly those from the immigrant community. Again, those who spoke were demanding that the city support their effort to get Drivers Licenses for the undocumented community. A Latino pastor addressed the Grand Rapids City Commission with a passionate plea for Drivers Licenses for All.
Young immigrants were especially disillusioned at this time and began organizing efforts to gain protections for themselves, which eventually lead to the Dream Act. Young immigrants were showing up all over the country whenever President Obama was scheduled to speak. They engaged in action that were disruptive and directly called out the President on his failure to push legislation that would be beneficial to undocumented immigrants.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform was eventually voted on in 2013, but it narrowly lost and there hasn’t been any attempt since then to get something like it passed.
However, there was a valuable lesson learned by these young immigrant organizers. They learned that putting their hopes into an electoral campaign was useless, unless there was a social movement that was organized by those who were most vulnerable to arrest, detention and deportation.
It was in 2014-2015, that immigrant organizers met to discuss and strategize around the importance of creating an immigrant-led movement that was calling for immigrant justice.
In Part II of this article, we will look at what has happened in Grand Rapids around immigrant justice, since Donald Trump was elected in November of 2016 and up until the present.
Acton Institute reports on Trump visit to Grand Rapids: Says Detroit and Flint should be like Grand Rapids
The March 28 visit to Grand Rapids by President Donald Trump generated a great deal of local and national attention. Some articles focused on the protest that greeted Trump and his supporters outside, while other journalists wrote about what was said inside the Van Andel arena.
Trump’s visit even received a blog post from the Grand Rapids-based far right think tank, the Acton Institute.
In a blog post from last week, Acton research fellow Dylan Pahman chose to focus on one specific thing that Trump said during his visit to Grand Rapids. The headline from Pahman’s article read, President Trump visits Grand Rapids, promises to turn it into Detroit.
It is an interesting topic to focus on, especially since there were so many other things that Trump has to say. However, if you spend any time on the Acton Institute blog, you realize that their writers go out of their way to focus primarily on the wonders of the free market, topped off with some theological justifications for the virtues of capitalism.
Pahman brings up the fact that Trump said that the auto industry is coming back, and then talks about the difference between Detroit and Grand Rapids.
We haven’t put all of our eggs in the basket of the auto industry, that’s why. For one thing, while there has been and still is auto manufacturing in the Grand Rapids area, we were once Furniture City, USA and are now proudly Beer City, USA. Grand Rapids can — and does — boast a dynamic, diversified economy.
There is a great deal to unpack in this statement, so lets begin by saying that the Acton Institute writer leaves out a whole lot of history.
First, Pahman leaves out a decades long history of the Big Three automakers constant attack of organized labor, an attack that is well documented in the book, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, A Study in Urban Revolution. Another dynamic well documented in Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, is the long-standing structural racism in Detroit that was exposed in the 1967 uprising and the massive white flight (people and investment) that ensued. Since the 1970s, Detroit has been struggling, in part because of the de-industrialization of the mid-west, but also because of the ongoing war being waged against the black community. These dynamics are well documented in the book, The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the US Political Crisis Began in Detroit.
However, the Acton writer wants to simplify Detroit’s problems around the protectionist policies applied to the auto industry. Pahman completely ignores the fact that White Supremacy and Neoliberal economic policies, including harsh austerity measures has devastated Detroit, particularly black Detroit.
Second, when Pahman says that Grand Rapids went from Furniture City to Beer City, he also ignores the complexities of what has happened over the past century. The Acton writer ignores the exploitative practices of the furniture barons, which gained national attention during the 1911 furniture workers strike. In fact, the capitalist class in Grand Rapids was so freaked out by the 1911 strike that they changed the City Charter, making Grand Rapids go from a 12 ward city to a three ward city, which allowed for the capitalist class to consolidate their control over the political and economic climate.
Third, the Acton writer also ignores the White Supremacy that has plagued Grand Rapids since the 1920s, a dynamic that is well documented in Todd Robinson’s book, A City Within a City: The Black Freedom Struggle in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Robinson argues that Grand Rapids adopt a form of “managerial racism” that was a more subtle and covert form of White Supremacy.
Fourth, while Grand Rapids did not experience the same level of de-industrialization that Detroit did, the wealth was, and continues to be, concentrated in the white community. In fact, Grand Rapids has the largest wealth gap in the entire state, based on a 2016 study. Economic development has primarily benefited the white community, with massive subsidies and other financial incites offered to developers from the City of Grand Rapids and the State of Michigan. This fact flies in the face of what the Acton writer claims about the market freedoms practiced in Grand Rapids, compared to Detroit.
Fifth, the Acton writer then quotes Experience Grand Rapids, which is nothing more than an entity that promotes the city through a Neoliberal economic lens. Here is what Pahman cities from Experience GR:
West Michigan’s global manufacturers supply customers with everything from circuit boards and medical devices, to personal care products, to bullet-proof composites for military and industrial vehicles, to smart rearview mirrors that automatically control a vehicle’s high beam headlights. Grand Rapids’ thriving craft beer industry has even driven manufacturing innovation, with one small startup designing and manufacturing a tool that allows breweries and cideries to can their own beverages for carry out directly from their taproom bars.
While these industries are thriving, they primarily benefit white people and those who are already economically well off. What Experience GR and the Acton Institute do not acknowledge is the profound realities of White Supremacy in Grand Rapids, which is profoundly reflected in the gentrification taking place in numerous parts of the city, coupled with the disproportionately high levels of poverty in the black and latino/latinx communities.
The Acton writer ends his piece with another criticism of Trump by saying:
Rather than promising to turn Grand Rapids into Detroit, the president would do better to encourage Detroit, Flint, and other former auto manufacturing centers in Michigan to reinvent themselves and adapt like we’ve done here.
What the Acton Institute writer is essentially saying is that what Detroit and Flint should do is adopt economic and social policies that benefit white people over communities of color. In fact, this is exactly what Detroit did. The major difference is that there has been more militant resistance from the black community in Detroit and more managerial racism in Grand Rapids. Both cities experience structural racism, its just that Grand Rapids hides it better.
This morning, MLive posted an article about two bill in the Michigan House of Representatives that would prevent local communities from limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
According to MLive:
The bills (HB 4083 and HB 4090) are sponsored by Republican Reps. Beau LaFave, R-Iron Mountain, and Pamela Hornberger, R-Chesterfield Twp., and are scheduled to be discussed in the House Military, Veterans and Homeland Security Committee – which LaFave chairs – at noon Tuesday, April 9. Previous versions of the legislation cleared a House panel last session but did not get taken up for a vote by the full House.
A useful summary of the two bills are provided by the House Fiscal Agency:
If passed, these bills would undermine local government autonomy and prevent actions taken like the recent Grand Rapids City Commission to suspend Captain VanderKooi for calling ICE while off duty to alert them to the incident involving Jilmar Ramos-Gomez.
The Grand Rapids based groups, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response was instrumental in pressuring the City of Grand Rapids on Captain VanderKooi, although they were demanding he be fired. These two groups were also demanding that the City of Grand Rapids end all cooperation with ICE, not allow any city resources to be used for cooperation with ICE and support the Drivers Licenses for All campaign.
House Bill 4083 was introduced by Rep. Pamela Hornberger from the 32nd District and House Bill 4090 was introduced by Rep. Beau LaFave from the 108th District. According to data provided by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, the DeVos Family is the top contributor to Rep. Hornberger’s campaign ($14,000) and the fourth largest contributor to Rep. LaFave’s campaign ($9,000).
Last week we kicked off a new series of articles that will look at how the economic system has transformed and co-opted language to the benefit of the capitalist class.
We mentioned the new book, Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, by John Patrick Leary, which provides a wonderful analysis of capitalism’s use of language, along with a list of words that this system uses.
Just think about the terms that capitalism has created or transformed in recent years to give it an edgy, almost counter-cultural feeling. Words like place making, robust, stakeholder, thought leader, creative class, human capital, curator, best practices and empowerment. All of these words used to mean something else, but now they are used by the capitalist class as the language that best describes what it is they seek to achieve.
Last week we looked at the term accountability in Grand Rapids. This week, lets talk about the word stakeholder, and specifically how it is used by the capitalist class here in Grand Rapids.
Leary says, “Stakeholder’s primary meaning in the OED is an independent person or organization with whom money is deposited, especially when a number of people make a bet or other financial transaction.”
Clearly, the term stakeholder is rooted in the financial world. The author notes that the word stakeholder transition during the 1930s depression, “when calls for economic planning and socialism reached a high point.”
The more contemporary way in which the term stakeholder is being used, combines the financial meaning, with the idea of planning. In Grand Rapids, I have noticed that since the 1980s, the term stakeholder is most often used by systems and structures of power to give the illusion that anyone who is a stakeholder can have a seat at the table. What this often translates to, is that those who are invited are primarily those from the business community, government officials and representatives of non-profit organizations. The “public” might be invited as well, but as we all know when the business community is invites, they take up a lot of space at meetings and they tend to have more power in conversations around issues like economic development.
The stakeholder dynamic is further explored in an article from If The River Swells, which states:
When speaking of development or gentrification in Grand Rapids, a constant refrain heard from city leaders, developers, and even many opponents is the need for more “community involvement” or “community engagement.” Development is presented as if it is a dialog or a process in which we are all on equal footing, rather than something done by those with considerable capital and political power. The appeals for participation are repeated over and over: the city and developers allegedly want to hear from the “community”, while always looking for more ways to get people involved.
However, what is actually being encouraged is a very specific and narrow form of “involvement” that centers around the process of attending city meetings, meetings with developers, and other such similar events. It’s presented as a type of civic duty akin to voting – if you don’t do it, you don’t have a right to complain. A sort of hyper-local version of “America, Love It or Leave It.” Often when these conversations happen, they involve a considerable amount of blame being placed on those who are critical. The assumption is always that they have chosen “not to be involved” and that because they allegedly aren’t participating their voices aren’t being heard, and therefore, their concerns aren’t being addressed. It’s a charge that has been leveled at us repeatedly over the past year: that if we participated in the allegedly “important meetings” that are happening, “our voice would be heard”.
Of course, our voices, the community’s voices are rarely heard. Instead, those in the capitalist class love to hold public meetings to gain input, even thought the real decisions are being made by those who have the most money (which also means the most power), which are developers. In this sense, using the term stakeholder is merely meant to lull the public into thinking that their voice matters and to present the illusion that private economic development companies want community engagement. In the end, economic development corporations make the decision, not matter who else is “at the table.”
There are numerous examples of entities that use the term stakeholder, but this week’s example of how capitalism uses the term stakeholder is the Rockford Construction Company.
It is widely known on social media how the TV show Fox & Friends put up a graphic that stated, Trump cuts aid to 3 Mexican Countries. The producers of the show later apologized, but not before the screw-up had saturated social media and even brought the wrath of other news sources who were appalled by the mistake.
One could say that the error is a reflection of the decline in US journalism, a decline that we have witnessed for decades now. However, there are larger (and I believe more important) issues at stake with the US State Department’s announcement that the US would no longer be providing foreign assistance to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
First, most of the mainstream commercial news media did not provide much information on current foreign aid to the three countries named. For example, the New York Times stated in an article on March 29:
“Currently, the United States spends about $620 million a year for gang prevention programs and other initiatives aimed at helping support civil society in the three countries. Advocates say that cutting the funds will only accelerate the migrant flows into the United States.”
This was the extent of any details on the amount of US aid that was going to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, not did the New York Times provide much information on how the US aid was being used.
Secondly. the New York Times article fails to provide much historical context, in terms of how much US aid has poured into those countries in recent decades and for what purposes.
Lastly, there was limited investigation into how ending foreign assistance to the three countries would limit the number of people who are seeking asylum in the US or what Trump called, an “invasion” of people who were nothing more than conducting a “big fat con job.”
Instead, most of the attention was focused on the error that the news show Fox and Friends made, rather than, 1) providing the public with substantive information on what US aid to Central America has looked like in the past; 2) what it looks like now; and 3) how it will achieve the goal of reducing refugees from seeking political asylum.
Historical Context
The United States has been giving massive amounts of foreign aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala for since the the early 20th Century. However, the bulk of the aid money was either military aid, funds to support drug war programs, corporate subsidies, free trade zones and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). For example, all throughout the 1980s, the US was contributing $1million a day in military aid to El Salvador, in order to fight a counterinsurgency war against a popular armed rebellion. In Guatemala in the 1980s and 90s, the US was providing millions in military aid, military advisors and military training to the death-squad government, which resulted in the deaths of roughly 200,000 people and the disappearance of some 60 – 80,000. In fact, the US counterinsurgency wars in El Salvador and Guatemala at that time were the major cause of displacement and a root cause of the refugee crisis that brought hundreds of thousands of Central Americans seeking asylum in the last few decades of the 20th century.
For more background information check out the following resources:
https://medium.com/s/story/timeline-us-intervention-central-america-a9bea9ebc148
http://umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects06/student_projects/usica/main.htm
More Recent History
Since the US sponsored counter-insurgency wars have ended in Central America, US aid to the region has decreased. However, the regional trade policy, known as CAFTA, along with free trade zones and an increase in drug trafficking, has resulted in further destabilization in the region, an increase in poverty and continues to force people out of the El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Check out the following resources:
https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/cafta-fact-sheet-aug-2018.pdf
Current US funding for Central America
US Foreign Aid to Central America has declined in recent years, towards the end of the Obama administration and now under the Trump administration. According to the Washington Office on Latin America:
The 2018 House bill would cut assistance to Central America by $40 million — all of which would come from the Development Assistance account, through which $279.5 million was funneled to the region in 2017. Development Assistance supports violence-prevention efforts, job-creation programs, and other non-security related programs mostly administered by USAID. For 2018, the House supports $235 million through this account, a $50 million reduction in funds to the Northern Triangle.
As the below tables show, this bill maintains funding levels for security assistance through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF), International Military Education and Training (IMET), Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, De-mining and Related Programs (NADR), and International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) programs. It also keeps funding for Attorneys General from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, for the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), and the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH).
House appropriators kept conditions attached to Central America assistance, putting a hold on at least half of funds until the Secretary of State certifies that countries are taking steps to improve accountability, transparency, justice systems, and security practices, among others. This year, the Committee went a step further and included $20 million for an “Incentive Award” program, which would be given to the single Northern Triangle country that has made the most progress on two or more of the conditions.
This analysis from WOLA tells us a great deal about US foreign assistance to Central America, since it provides not only a dollar amount, but a break down in what kind of programs the funding goes to.
Image if this is how the US news media reported on US foreign policy towards Central America. Not only would we be better informed about what US policy in that region is being used for, we would not be so easily manipulated by the government/corporate media propaganda and misinformation about the refugee caravans from Central America.
Lastly, while the 3 Mexican countries error was from Fox News, this issue of Central America, Central American refugees and US funding in that region have been created from bipartisan US policies and supported by both liberal and conservative news agencies that ultimately supports US foreign policy in Central America. Making fun of Fox & Friends might make us feel superior, but the real problem is that US-based journalism has primarily failed us around complicated and critical issues like the Central American Asylum Seekers, US Foreign Assistance in Central America and what impact US foreign policy has on that region.
West MI Policy Forum one of several groups who wants the minimum wage to only be $12.05 in 2030
The business class in the US has always understood that there is a real class war happening at all times, even if the working class is unaware of that fact.
In early December, the GOP-led Michigan legislature passed Public Act 368 of 2018, which would increase the minimum wage in Michigan at a grotesquely slow rate over the next decade, reaching a paltry $12.05 in 2030.
This incremental wage increase is insulted to working class people, who cannot live off these kid of wages or even afford the most basic resources in order to have a healthy life.
The Michigan Supreme Court is reviewing this issue right now, since Public Act 368 of 2018 is being challenged. The entities who have been most vocal about defending the legislation passed in 2018 – with a recent court filing – are the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Manufacturers Association, the Michigan Realtors Association and the West Michigan Policy Forum.
In fact, a few days ago, the West Michigan Policy Forum posted on their Facebook page a link to a Detroit News article and bragged about their organization being one of the groups aggressively seeking to maintain the absurdly low minimum wage increase over the next 10 years.
Some of the more prominent people who are the board of directors for the West Michigan Policy Forum are:
Doug DeVos, Peter Secchia, John Kennedy, Mike VanGessel, Michael Jandernoa, JC Huizenga, Steve Van Andel, Johnny Brann Jr, Jim Dunlap and Blake Krueger.
These men make up the Grand Rapids Power Structure, so it is no surprising that they do not support a living wage for working families. Despite their outright war against working class families, those who are part of the West Michigan Policy Forum like to present themselves are benevolent leaders who really care about the community. A week does not go by in the West Michigan news media where we hear about the wonderful things that Start Garden, Rockford Construction, Wolverine Worldwide, Amway, Meijer or Spectrum Health are doing for the little people in the greater Grand Rapids area.
Look, if these people are deliberately pushing state policy to keep wages low, then whatever charity or entrepreneurial shit they are concocting is nothing more than a con they are playing on families in West Michigan who are struggling to pay their mortgage, their rent, health care costs, utilities, transportation costs and other basic necessities.
Remember, that these rich, white men are regularly meeting to plan assaults against working class families and families of color and then turning around and dangling money in front of these same families with their get rich quick entrepreneurial schemes.
