Betsy DeVos selectively eulogizes Rev. Dwight Montgomery
Last Thursday, the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, released this brief statement:
“Rev. Montgomery was a steadfast advocate for equality and opportunity for all, especially for students and parents. He knew neither income nor address should determine the quality of education a child receives. Through his work in Memphis and with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, many students and families benefitted from opportunities, both educational and spiritual, they would otherwise have been denied.
We in the education community mourn the loss of his leadership, but most who knew him mourn the loss of their pastor. My prayers are with the faithful of Annesdale Cherokee Baptist Church as they will be the legacy of their shepherd.”
Such a statement begs the question, “why does the Secretary of Education eulogize a Black minister who is part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)?
According to a statement released by the President of the SCLC, Dr. Charles Steele Jr.:
Montgomery always believed in having a wide variety of educational alternatives available, Dr. Steele said, “because no single, educational approach works for every child.” “He was a charter school advocate, and was passionate about both public schools and alternative education,” he said. “Traditional schools shouldn’t just be a one-way street.”
The statement by the current SCLC president provides a window into why Betsy DeVos might eulogize the recently deceased Rev. Montgomery, but it still only provides a small window.
However, an article by Laura Faith Kebede on Chalkbeat, provides us with more details on why Secretary DeVos felt compelled to release a statement about Rev. Montgomery.
Kebede writes, Montgomery backed efforts that would support local Christian schools — including tuition vouchers, which set aside public money for children to attend private schools. Voucher legislation has failed to pass in Tennessee for at least a dozen years.
The writer of the Chalkbeat article goes on to say:
In Tennessee and Florida, chapters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have frequently partnered with the American Federation for Children, an organization that DeVos once chaired, to push vouchers as a civil rights issue. In 2015, Montgomery led a group of pastors affiliated with SCLC to the state Capitol to present a petition of 25,000 signatures supporting vouchers.
This statement underscores why Betsy DeVos would eulogize Rev. Montgomery last week. In demonstrates that the Secretary of Education will sing the praises of people who support school voucher programs and those that enter into an alliance with the American Federation for Children.
Not surprising, Betsy DeVos did not praise Rev. Montgomery for his recent efforts to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park, shortly after the White Supremacist violence in Charlottesville.
More importantly, DeVos failed to acknowledge Rev. Montgomery’s work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the national Poor People’s Campaign. The Poor People’s Campaign was really about radical redistribution of America’s wealth to the poor, particularly communities of color. Dr. King stated in an SCLC retreat in 1967, his vision for what the Poor People’s Campaign meant for the movement:
I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…[W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…In short, we have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.
Somehow, Betsy DeVos chose not to acknowledge Rev. Montgomery’s work against White Supremacy and Capitalism.
In Praise of Grand Action and its founders: The Pandering of MLive
On Friday, an entity created by some of the members of the West MI Power Structure, Grand Action, announced that the three founding members – David Frey, John Canepa and Dick DeVos – were leaving the group.
On Saturday, MLive reported on this announcement and then spent the rest of the article praising the three men and their work with Grand Action.
Here is an excerpt from the MLive article:
Grand Action was the catalyst for Grand Rapids major civic projects, beginning with the Van Andel Arena, followed by DeVos Place, Grand Rapids Civic Theatre, MSU College of Human Medicine Secchia Center and the Downtown Market.
More than a quarter of the $420 million price tag for the large scale projects was donated from the private sector. Deep-pocketed philanthropists such as Rich DeVos, Jay Van Andel, Fred Meijer and Peter Secchia picked up the bulk of those private contributions, helping to raise a total of $130 million.
The rest of the article is basically pictures and a few sentences on each of the “civic projects” that Grand Action has had a hand in, along with pictures of the three men, their involvement with Grand Action and a few quotes from each.
It is as if, the MLive writer was simply using a Media Release from Grand Action. There is not one single critical perspective provided and the praise of Frey, DeVos and Canepa is nothing short of pandering.
This pandering is also reflected in the excerpted comment above, when one considers that the emphasis is on how much private money was raised and not how much public money was used. Based on the numbers provided in the article, the public contributed $290 million and the private sector contributed $130 million.
Apart from the obvious difference in the amount given from private vs public, the other significant difference is that the public had NO say in these projects. These civic projects were not part of a millage or something that taxpayers could have a say in. These were decisions made by members of the West MI Power Structure at Grand Action, then vetted through meetings at the Downtown Development Authority, where promises were made on how much public money would be provided, without public input.
The MLive article is also pandering to those with power in this town, because there are no critical perspectives provided about any of the projects, about the use of public money with no public input and the fact that many of those who make up the committee on Grand Action, most clearly Dick DeVos, would financially benefit from these downtown projects. The DeVos family empire, with all the hotels they own downtown, would certainly profit from these Grand Action initiated projects, including the Grand Rapids Destination Asset Study, which Grand Action commissioned last December.
Betsy DeVos is the featured guest at the annual Acton Institute Dinner on October 18
Current Secretary of Education and former board member of the Acton Institute, Betsy DeVos will be the featured speaker at the 27th Annual Acton Institute Dinner on Wednesday, October 18 in Grand Rapids.
DeVos, who served on the Acton Institute Board from 1995 – 2005, will be speaking at the event, which will be held at the DeVos Hall in downtown Grand Rapids. The event is a mere $175 a plate per person or for the more ambitious members of the capitalist class, you can spend $7,500 for a table of 10 people, recognition in the program and an invitation to receptions before and after dinner.
The text that accompanies the invitation states:
A Grand Rapids native, Betsy DeVos is a proven leader, an innovator, a disruptor and an advocate. In education, in business and in politics, Betsy has been a pioneer in fighting to remove barriers, to enact change and to create environments where people have the opportunity to thrive.
No surprise that the Acton Institute describes a fellow member of the capitalist class and the religious right this way. Betsy DeVos has indeed been a pioneer in the fight to remove barriers, barriers to amassing more wealth for her family and other members of the West Michigan elite. Betsy DeVos is also a disruptor, a disruptor of the lives of the working poor, communities of color, the LGBT community, organized labor and public education.
She will share the stage at the Acton Institute Annual Dinner, by Acton founder Rev. Robert Sirico. Sirico is one of the most committed apologists of capitalism and believes that Christianity is completely compatible with the so-called free market. Rev. Sirico also acts as a sort of spiritual counselor to the brother of Betsy DeVos, Erik Prince.
The visit to Grand Rapids by DeVos for the Acton Institute’s Annual Dinner provides a perfect opportunity for people to engage in active resistance. For those interested in organizing some kind of action, send me a message jsmith@griid.org.
From Fighting Childhood Hunger to Economic and Racial Justice: A Response to Kids Food Basket Expansion plans
Last week it was announced that the non-profit food charity group, Kids Food Basket, was expanding its operation and kicking off a new funding raising component called, Feeding Our Future Campaign.
The announcement received news coverage in all the mainstream commercial news sources as well as community news sources and lots of social media. The narrative put forth was basically the same:
Kids Food Basket already serves 7,500 children each weekday in three counties with a sack lunch. Through the new fundraising campaign they will be able to provide the same services to up to 15,000 more children in West Michigan.
On the surface, this narrative sounds pretty wonderful. I mean, who could be against feeding children who are hungry? Well, that depends on how you ask the question or if you raise another question – why are so many families in West Michigan experiencing poverty?
I get that people want to do something to respond to child hunger in this community and putting together sack lunches is good form of triage when responding to larger systemic issues. However, if we continue to do the same thing and even do more of it, without having a strategy for dealing with poverty and economic inequality, then we will continue to make more and more sack lunches for children in this community.
In Andrew Fisher’s book, Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups, he makes the argument that the anti-hunger industrial complex ends up only perpetuating more hunger. The book offers some fresh insight into the anti-hunger industrial complex and makes it clear that food charity is a false solution. One major theme of the book is this:
In both allying themselves with corporate America and not pursuing labor-related issues, anti-hunger advocates tacitly exonerated businesses from their role in foster income inequality and, in various cases, of engaging in practices that perpetuated hunger among their own workers or subcontractors.
Kids Food Basket is a popular response to child hunger, precisely because it does not question poverty and economic inequality. One way you can determine this is based upon why sits on the board of directors and which companies are major supporters of the food charity project. 
The corporations that are major donors to Kids Food Basket; like Amway, Bank of America, Tyson and Walmart, all are involved in lobbying for economic policies that serve their own interests and/or provide funding to organizations that promote anti-union, privatization or other economic austerity measures that contribute to more and more families experiencing poverty.
Even the current Feeding Our Future fundraising campaign involves people who are part of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, people like Hank Meijer, Peter & Joan Secchia, Mike & Sue Jandernoa and David & Carol Van Andel. These people are millionaires or billionaires that have contributed to the wealth gap in Grand Rapids, which is the worst in the state.
So What is the Alternative?
What most Food Justice organizations recognize is that the issue of hunger is systemic and therefore need solutions that strategically combat this kind of systemic injustice. There are never any easy or simple answers when dealing with hunger and poverty, but here are a few suggestions of what we know have worked historically.
- It would be important for any and all groups who do food triage work to acknowledge that just providing food assistance on a regular basis does not solve the problem. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t practice mutual aid and assist people in a time of crisis. We absolutely should practice mutual aid when we can. However, it is not enough to just provide charity, we must work towards justice.
- Once Kids Food Basket can acknowledge that hunger is a much larger and systemic economic and racial problem, then they can with other like-minded groups begin to develop multi-pronged strategies to fight for economic and racial justice.
- Ending partnerships with corporations and families which are part of the power structure
- Promoting and participating in a Living Wage campaign at the city/county level. Currently, many groups around the country are calling for a $15 minimum wage. However, a Living Wage would go further, because it would force us to have a much more substantial conversation about economic policy.
- Wealth re-distribution in the form of reparations. Those families, communities and corporations which have exploited workers and communities for decades, should be required to pay back the communities, families and individuals they have exploited.
- Organizations like Kids Food Basket need to adopt clear racial justice policies that recognize historical racism and how it currently in manifested in West Michigan. How is it that the people who pick most of our food in West Michigan, migrant farmworkers, have a high rate of poverty?
- Part of the plan for the Kids Food Basket expansion is to grow food for their sack lunch program. What about allowing people to come to this newly acquired land and grow food together, specifically the families that are benefiting from the sack lunch program. Provide people with the skills, transportation and child care so they could chose to be involved in producing their own food. This could also be done by supporting more programs in neighborhoods that are experiencing poverty, by assisting those neighborhoods with urban food production, if that is something they want to do.
These are only just a few suggestions, but I believe that many more creative and powerful ideas could surface if we changed the narrative around how to respond to hunger from food charity to food justice.
Sifting through the bullshit: Acton Institute pontificates about Antifa
There have been all kinds of commentary, from both conservative and liberal sources, about what it means to be part of the group/movement known as antifa.
Part of the problem with how conservative and liberal responses to antifa, is due in part to the fetishization on non-violence. Too many people think that somehow non-violence is a superior moral strategy to embrace, yet more often than not those who advocate this position (in response to antifa) are usually people who do NOT want to practice a basic principle of non-violence.
One of the most basic points of non-violence, besides the call to not participate in harm, is the idea that one will not avoid having harm done to themselves. Most people who scream we need to be non-violent are people to will not do anything that will risk putting their ass on the line. Can you imagine during the Black Freedom Movement, if those who rode buses in the south, sat at segregated lunch counters or put their bodies on the line against police brutality had said, “sorry, we believe in non-violence, but we don’t want to take any risks.” Dr. King famously said, “we will wear you down with our capacity to suffer.”
Now, I think non-violence can be a useful strategy to engage in, but I also think we should never be limited to such strategies or tactics. In fact, we should never foreclose on the use of any tactic. We all need to stop fetishizing non-violence are start understanding the world in terms of power and oppression. I would highly recommend that people read the following books: How Non-violence Protects the State; Pacifism as Pathology and This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.
Acton Institute on antifa
Last Wednesday, the Grand Rapids think tank that defends the Capitalist Class, the Acton Institute, decided they need to share some facts about antifa.
The Acton blog post provides 5 facts about antifa, which are worth looking at, as they reflect many of the uninformed assumptions about antifa.
The first sentence of “fact 1” states: Antifa is a radical and often violent protest movement organized around “anti-fascism.” Again, there is that word violent. When the dominant culture gives us images and messages about cops, they don’t usually associate them with being violent. However, not only are cops always heavily armed, they more consistently engage in acts of violence and repression than any other domestic group in the country. Yet, we rarely see the description of cops as being “mostly violent.”
Antifa, does not hesitate to use force to defend people who are being targeted by fascists or to use force against those who come into communities to do actual harm. Those involved in antifa see this as providing real community-based security or creating safe spaces against groups that are white supremacists and fascists.
“Fact 2” from the Acton Institute is not necessarily an inaccurate point, but it is fairly simplistic.
“Fact 3” states: Almost all of those who align with Antifa are from the extreme political left, usually identifying as communists, socialists, or anarchists. Again, this statement is meant to marginalize those involved with antifa, since association with communism, socialism or anarchism is often seen as extremists. However, there are millions of people who identify with communism, socialism or anarchism. What the Acton Institute means by the extreme political left, is really meant to say that anyone who does not celebrate or act as an apologist of capitalism.
“Fact 4” is the most accurate of the facts presented about antifa, mostly because it relies on historian Mark Bray, author of the recent book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.
“Fact 5” begins with an accurate statement about antifa being decentralized, but then ends with this sentence:
The Department of Homeland Security formally classified Antifa’s activities as “domestic terrorist violence,” according to interviews and confidential law enforcement documents obtained by Politico.
The fact that the Acton Institute considers the Dept. of Homeland Security as a credible source, should tell us something. Also, if you participate in non-violent civil disobedience, the Dept. of Homeland Security also considers you to be violence. You are violent either way, not necessarily because of the tactics you use, but because you challenge and confront the dominant narrative about the state.
For anyone wanting to honestly try to understand what antifa is all about, then I would suggest a few sources:
Read the response from It’s Going Down to Politico’s awful post on antifa. https://itsgoingdown.org/taking-trash-fact-checking-politicos-antifa-attacks/
Check out a recent interview with Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, on Democracy Now https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/16/antifa_a_look_at_the_antifascist.
Better yet, you should just read Mark Bray’s book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, to have a more complete analysis of what antifa or anti-fascism really means.
MLive, Betsy DeVos and White Savior Politics
Last Wednesday, MLive ran an article that was based on a segment in a recent NPR edition of This American Life, entitled Vouching Toward Bethlehem.
The headline of the MLive article reads: Betsy DeVos’ history volunteering in Grand Rapids school featured on This American Life. One question to ask ourselves is, why did the MLive reporter use this particular headline? There were numerous themes within the 30 minute NPR piece. Producer Susan Burton talks a bit about the history of Betsy DeVos and school policies around Charter Schools and School Vouchers. The NPR segment also discussed the function and role that Kids Hope USA played in Betsy DeVos deciding to become a volunteer within the Grand Rapids Public Schools.
Kids Hope USA was created to provide an opportunity for Christians to “live out their faith. The mission statement of the group says, “KHUSA offers churches and schools a proven, award-winning model to meet the emotional, social and academic needs of children.”
This dynamic that Kids Hope USA engages in, is part of the NPR segment, with a representative with Kids Hope USA talking about how they area white group of people who were looking to have real life experiences in urban schools. The NPR segment even stated that someone from Kids Hope USA was even driving around in urban neighborhoods looking for a school that would provide mentors with a great opportunity.
The school that was picked was Burton Elementary School. Burton Elementary is a school that is made up of mostly Spanish speaking students, with parents from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.
The NPR segment focuses on what impact Betsy DeVos had on the lives of 2 particular families that had students attending Burton Elementary School.
In one case, Betsy DeVos bought the family a car and donated presents a Christmas time. In the other case, the current Secretary of Education hired the student’s mother to come work for the family cleaning their house in Holland. In both cases, Betsy DeVos and her husband Dick, took these students out of the public school system and paid for their tuition at private religious schools.
The NPR segment producer discusses this dynamic to some degree and even has an excerpt from a speech that DeVos gave at a recent ALEC conference. The NPR segment chose to focus on the private vs public school angle, but in many ways it seems that they were missing a major component of what was also happening. The very fact that Betsy and Dick DeVos took these students out of the public schools, paid for their tuition and then hired one of the mothers to clean their house in Holland, is nothing short of what is means to practice White Savior politics.
In a recent piece on Everyday Feminism, white savior politics is described this way:
In the simplest terms, it’s when a white character or person rescues people of color from their oppression. The White Savior is portrayed as the good one, the one that we’re meant to identify with as we watch or read these narratives. They usually learn lessons about themselves along the way. There are many problems with this kind of narrative, some of which I’ll go over.
For instance, it racializes morality by making us consistently identify with the good white person saving the non-white people who are given much less of an identity in these plot lines. It also frames people of color as being unable to solve their own problems. It implies that they always need saving, and that white people are the only ones competent enough to save them. This is very obviously untrue, and it’s a harmful message to relay.
In many ways this is the deeper message of what Betsy DeVos did with these 2 students and their families, while mentoring through Kids Hope USA. It is bad enough that MLive chose to make Betsy look like she really cares about students (as if there aren’t hundreds of volunteers who give their time to mentor kids in the Grand Rapids Public School), but the larger problem with the MLive piece is that it selects a conservative vs liberal narrative that plays well with the public. By creating this left/right dichotomy, the MLive piece conveniently misses the larger White Savior narrative that is the real story highlighted in the NPR segment.
Grand Rapids, Statues and White Supremacy
There has been a great deal of public conversation in the weeks following the White Supremacist violence in Charlottesville, around the issue of white supremacy and symbols of white supremacy.
In Charlotteville, the decision was made to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and now there are communities looking to take similar actions to remove statues that reflect White Supremacists leaders or values.
If Grand Rapids was to take inventory of statues that support white supremacy, what might we find?
Like most cities, there is no shortage of statues in Grand Rapids, most of which are to honor certain individuals or specific events in history. There have been several new statues added in recent years, based on a project that has been spearheaded by a member of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, Peter Secchia.
However, maybe a good place to start would be to look at the statue that resides in the little pocket park located at the intersection of Cherry, State and Madison streets. The statue is of a generic US soldier who fought in what is generally identified as the Spanish American Wars.
These wars began in 1898, and were for the purpose of US imperialist expansion, where the US militarily occupied Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. Here is what the plaque that accompanies the statue states:
Despite the idealistic rhetoric on the plaque, the US engaged in racist military occupations that resulted in the murder of communities of color in each of those countries, with the most violence taking place in the Philippines, because of the insurrection that ensued to fight the US occupation.
According to Alfred McCoy’s book, Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, the US killed 200,000 civilians in the Philippines. McCoy also cites a US General who commented:
It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.
In each case, the US military legacy has left a bloody path that continues to impact the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico today.
Another statue that should be considered for removal because it normalizes white supremacy, would be the statue that sits in Cathedral Square, by St. Andrews Catholic Church. The statue is that of Bishop Baraga and is part of the Community Legends project headed by Peter Secchia.
Bishop Baraga is credited with bringing Catholicism to Grand Rapids, but his real work was in his efforts to convert the Ojibway people throughout what is now called Michigan.
Baraga’s interaction with the Ojibway people also paved the way for genocidal policies that Europeans have implemented over the past 150 years in this area.
Those policies include the outright killing of Native people, stealing Native lands, forced relocation and taking Native children from their communities to put them in boarding schools, something the Catholic Church did in Michigan. The history of these boarding schools included denying Native children to speak their language, dress in traditional clothing, subjected to Christian teaching and also physical and sexual abuse, as is well documented in Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools.
This is the legacy of Bishop Baraga, however well intentioned he was, since his commitment to converting the Ojibway paved the way for the harsh policies that followed.
Another statue to consider for removal is the statue in front of the Van Andel Arena that honors Amway co-founder, Jay Van Andel. Van Andel, like his Amway co-founder Rich deVos, funded numerous rightwing groups, both religious and secular.
At the national level Van Andel funded the Heritage Foundation. They wrote the incoming Reagan administrations policy guide Mandate for Change that advocated the elimination of Food Stamps, Medicare, child nutritional assistance, farm assistance, legal services for the poor, and the repeal of a $1,000 tax exemption for the elderly.
Jay Van Andel was deeply involved in the largest pro-business lobbying group in the country, the US Chamber of Commerce. In fact, Van Andel was Chairman of the national group for a period of time. The Chamber, which often likes to present itself as a defender of the small business owner, is one of the largest electoral contributors in the nation. According to Open Secrets, the US Chamber has spent $1.2 billion on lobbying since 1998. 
In addition, the US Chamber of Commerce has been one of the most consistent climate deniers in the country and has fought hard against any policy that supports working class people. The Chamber has opposed efforts to get paid sick leave policy passed and numerous other pro-worker policies. As Chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, Van Andel made sure that whatever policies were being decided in Washington, they needed to benefit the capitalist class that he was a part of.
Maybe the least known of the groups that Van Andel was deeply involved with, was the National Endowment for Democracy, also known as NED. NED was created during the Reagan years as a mechanism to push neoliberal economic policies around the world and funding governments or political parties that would best serve the interest of the US. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
Jay Van Andel was on the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy and served in that capacity while the NED was funding death squad governments in Central America, funding opposition parties in Nicaragua and supporting pro-US dictatorships throughout Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
These are just three examples of statues that could be removed from Grand Rapids, because of their endorsement of White Supremacist values. Many more could be, and should be, considered for removal. However, what is more important than removing statues, would be for the dismantling of institutions that promote and practice white supremacy in Grand Rapids.
Aqui Estamos y No, Nos Vamos! Grand Rapids rallies against racist anti-DACA policy
Last night roughly 500 people marched, chanted and rallied to denounce the racist anti-DACA policy put forth by the Trump administration yesterday.
DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is a policy adopted under the Obama administration because undocumented youth had forced the previous administration to not add them to the more than 3 million who had already been deported.
The new position taken by the Trump administration will impact 800,000 undocumented youth and their families. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth will lose their jobs every month, hundreds of students will be forced to drop out of school, families will lose their main financial support. Everyone will feel the impact of losing young undocumented workers, whether we are aware of it or not.
The march led by DACA youth moved through downtown Grand Rapids last night, shutting down streets, taking over all traffic lanes, as you can see in this video of the march on Pearl Street.
Some allies who attended the march last night wanted to insert their own perspective on the new Trump anti-DACA policy, bringing American flags and wanting to name DACA youth as Americans. Such statements are always problematic. We cannot forget that US foreign policy – that it, US political, economic, and military intervention – is largely responsible for creating the conditions that have forced people to flee their homelands. Today, people continue to be criminalized, displaced, murdered and disappeared as a direct result of US-trained repressive security forces in their country of origin and transit, only to be confronted with a militarized border, racist laws, and an official xenophobic rhetoric.
The march ended up at the Calder Plaza, with the final chant being – Aqui Estamos y No, Nos Vamos! We are here to stay! We are not leaving!
After the march there were several DACA youth speakers and other members of the immigrant community. The Movimiento Cosecha Grand Rapids organized the action and invited people to continue to be engage and active, as this fight is just beginning. Members of Movimiento Cosecha also made it clear that they are not seeking immigration reform, instead they are demanding Respect, Dignity and Permanent Protection. For those of us who are allies, let us honor their demands and stand with them no matter the consequences.
Restaurant Workers don’t Need Private Fundraisers, they need support to organize and build worker-led movements
On Tuesday, September 12, Lilly Tomlin and Jane Fonda will be in Grand Rapids for a private fundraiser for the One Fair Wage campaign.
The One Fair Wage campaign is a project of the Restaurant Organizing Committee, which is based out of New York City.
The Restaurant Organizing Committee (ROC) is a movement that is made up of people who work in the restaurant sector – wait staff, people who bus tables and cooks. This 25,000 member movement is fighting for better working conditions, benefits and better wages all across the US.
I met several organizers with the ROC at the US Social Forum held in Detroit years ago and was immediately impressed with their understanding of the issues and their commitment to fighting with other restaurant workers who are some of the most exploited in the US.
The private fundraiser that features Tomlin and Fonda states the following:
Did you know that Michiganders who rely on tips only make $3.38/hour? We invite you to join us, along with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, to raise the minimum wage and ensure that all all Michiganders have One Fair Wage.
This awful disparity in pay is in part because the larger trade unions did not fight to include restaurant workers and migrant farm labor into the national minimum wage battles of the 1930s and 40s. The Restaurant Organizing Committee is trying to change this dynamic and is part of a larger movement in the country to fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage for all workers.
However, a fundamental problem with the private event that is being hosted in Grand Rapids is that it is not being organized by those who work in the restaurant industry. In fact, not only is this private event not organized by restaurant workers, the cost of the private event is such that it excludes the very workers it seeks to support.
The minimum ticket fee to be able to come and hang out with the stars of the show, Grace and Frankie, is $250 per person. For those who contribute $500 – $1000 per ticket will be able to be part of a much smaller event with Fonda and Tomlin and even get their picture taken with the long-time TV and Hollywood stars.
Such events are terribly problematic. First, these kinds of private fundraisers offer people with disposable wealth the opportunity to contribute money that is often a way for those with economic privilege to feel like they are contributing to “the cause.”
Second, movements like the Restaurant Organizing Committee and the $15 an hour minimum wage campaigns are effective precisely because they are led by those who are most negatively impacted. Restaurant workers can relate to other people who work in that industry and build the kind of relationships necessary to build unions and movements that can make a real difference in people’s lives.
Lastly, private events like these completely miss the point about the value of building grassroots movements. If the people who attend this event were really interested in supporting the Restaurant Organizing Committee, they would use their wealth to pay restaurant workers to be able to organize their fellow workers. Aside from paying workers to organize, they could be giving money to cover the cost of child care or other daily expenses that restaurant workers are often unable to pay because they cannot afford basic necessities with a $3.38 an hour minimum wage.
Working class people don’t need sympathy, charity or handouts, they need allies that will support their organizing efforts on the terms of working class people.
GR Bus Driver’s Union confronts Mayor Bliss during Labor Day walk
Earlier today, members of the Grand Rapids Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and supporters, gathered near the Ah Nab Awen Park in downtown Grand Rapids. Several hundred people were getting ready to participate in the annual Mayor’s Labor Day Walk with the ATU members wanting to make a statement about the failure of Mayor Rosalynn Bliss to honor the bus driver’s union contract.
Just last week, the ATU protested at The Rapid Board meeting, where an ATU member was arrested, while Mayor Bliss and other board members voted to give The Rapid CEO a raise.
ATU members and supporters led the walk and while crossing the Grand River on Bridge St, labor activists stopped moving and forced walkers, including Mayor Bliss, to go around them.
Forcing people to walk around them, the labor activists then were able to surround the Mayor, continuing to engage her about her union busting tactics. By the time the Labor Day walk arrived at the corner of Bridge and Front Street, the Mayor was so rattled by the presence of labor activists and their supporters, she stopped walking and waiting for GRPD officers to escort her away from those protesting.
ATU members and supporters stayed at the corner of Bridge and Front Street, where they engaged other people who were participating in the Mayor’s Labor Day Walk. Some people were clearly upset with what the labor activists were doing and didn’t understand why they were protesting the Grand Rapids Mayor. This writer overheard one person say that this was an inappropriate action for the activists to take. One activist responded by saying, “What don’t you understand? This is a labor protest on Labor Day!”
Here is some video of the ATU members and supporters confronting the Mayor on the corner of Bridge and Front Street.
After about 15 minutes, the Grand Rapids Mayor finally decided to give up and walk back to where the Labor Day walk began, instead of continue on the route that her supporters had taken.
Clearly, this was a victory for the ATU members and their supporters. The Mayor of Grand Rapids will not soon forget (as she walks away in the photo to the right) this display of labor solidarity, but it might take the proposed boycott of the Transit Millage this November to get the Mayor to actually agree to renegotiate the contract with the Grand Rapids Amalgamated Transit Union.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 