Foundation Profile: Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation
This is the second posting in our investigation into the Non-Profit Industrial Complex in Grand Rapids. A few days ago, we looked at the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation and today we look at the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation.
There are already some noticeable differences between the first generation of Amway owners to the second generation. Dick DeVos ran for political office in 2006 and the marriage between Dick DeVos and Betsy Prince strengthened ties between two of the most conservative families in Michigan.
While they have carved out their own niche, Dick & Betsy DeVos have also continued the commitment to conservative Christianity and Capitalism that Richard & Helen have served.
Again, we looked at the 990s for the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation from the online source Guidestar. The most recent years available for this foundation were 2008 through 2010.
There were certainly some similarities between whom the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation provided funds to and whom the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation provided funds to.
Both foundations have donated large sums to groups like the ultra conservative Christian organizations, the Haggai Institute ($2,250,000) and the Acton Institute ($110,000). The Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation have also generously donated to places like Norwood University ($200,000), which promotes global capitalism as an overt mission of the school.
However, the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation has also directed funds to groups that Dick’s parents have not. Some of these groups further the family commitment to conservative Christianity and free market capitalism, such as the mega-church, Willow Creek ($1.5 million). Willow Creek also is involved in sponsoring a major global leadership conference each year, which has features speakers such as former Bush Cabinet member Condoleeza Rice, school privatization icon Michele Rhee and CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz.
Another recipient of major funding from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation that promotes free market capitalism is the Thunderbird School of Global Management ($1.2 million). Dick DeVos sits on the school’s Board of Fellows, along with many other corporate leaders.
Other free market-focused organizations that have received large sums of funding from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation are the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women ($425,000) and the local group Grand Action ($235,000). Dick DeVos is one of the chairs of Grand Action and using his foundation money to fund Grand Action projects has financially benefited his family’s downtown businesses, as we have noted in a previous posting.
One of the political arenas that Dick & Betsy DeVos have distinguished themselves in is their interest in promoting private schools, charter schools and school voucher policies.
Schools and non-public school campaigns have received sizeable amounts of funding from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation between 2008 and 2010. Groups such as the Alliance for School Choice ($50,000), the Educational Freedom Fund ($305,000) and the Florida School Choice Fund are just some of the anti-public school groups to receive money from the couple’s foundation.
Researcher Rachel Tabachnick identifies Betsy DeVos as the Four Star General of the School Privatization Movement, in an article she wrote for the Political Research Associates. The article states:
Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State described Betsy DeVos as the “four-star general” of the school privatization movement shortly after DeVos announced the formation of the “new” American Federation for Children (AFC) in March 2010. As Boston noted, the American Federation for Children was not new, but a rebranding of an organization called Advocates for School Choice.
The American Federation for Children is now the umbrella organization for two nonprofits that have been at the center of the pro-privatization movement for over a decade. In addition to the renamed Advocates for School Choice, it includes the Alliance for School Choice, formerly known as the Education Reform Council. Both entities received extensive funding from the late John Walton, one of the Wal-Mart heirs. The boards of the two related entities included movement leaders Betsy DeVos–scion of a Christian Right family who married into the Amway home goods fortune–William Oberndorf, Clint Bolick, John Kirtley, Steve Friess (son of Foster Friess), James Leininger, John Walton, and Cory Booker.
These two nonprofits–Alliance for School Choice, a 501(c)(3) and Advocates for School Choice a.k.a. American Federation for Children, a 501(c)(4)– provided over $17 million in grants to 35 other national and state-level pro-privatization nonprofits from 2006 to 2010. These grants represented a significant portion of the total budgets for many of the state organizations. Today Betsy DeVos and John Kirtley are the chair and vice chair of both boards.
Dick DeVos has his own history with pushing for privatization of public schools, a subject we looked at in an article written after DeVos commented that the Grand Rapids Public Schools might need some attention.
The other distinctly different area of funding that Dick & Betsy DeVos have provided funds to, which is different than the first generation of Amway, is the area of arts and culture.
The Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation has provided a significant amount of funds between 2008 and 2010 to groups such as the JFK Center for the Performing of Arts ($581,755), the Grand Rapids Art Museum ($82,500) and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts ($1,143,000). Dick & Betsy’s son Rick DeVos sits on the board of both UICA and the Grand Rapids Art Museum, both of which have been major partners in the other major Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation funded effort, ArtPrize.
ArtPrize is run by their son Rick and has been bankrolled primarily through their foundation. The financing of their son’s project, ArtPrize, has also been financially beneficial to the DeVos family with all of its downtown businesses. However, even more important is to look at why the couple has decided to fund arts and culture.
Richard Kooyman, in a 2010 article, explores the motives behind the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation’s funding of art and culture. In that article Kooyman notes that we should all be concerned about what impact their funding has in this area, since they have been forward about wanting to inject the values of morality and free market capitalism into art and culture.
Much more could be said about the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation, but it is clear that they have continued the family’s commitment to conservative Christianity and capitalism that began with their parents Richard & Helen DeVos and Edgar & Elsa Prince.
Dramatic Protest Shuts Down Fracking Wastewater Facility in Ohio
This article by Lauren McCauley is re-posted from Common Dreams.
Anti-fracking activists in Ohio shut down operations at a wastewater storage facility Tuesday after one brave demonstrator ascended a 30 foot pole anchored to a truck in the process of unloading frack wastewater, hindering all other trucks from entering the site.
While Nate Ebert—a 33-year-old Ohio resident and member of Appalachia Resist!—clung to the ‘monopod’, more than one hundred supporters gathered at its base at the Greenhunter Water hydraulic fracturing waste storage facility in the town of Matamoros, protesting the company’s plans to increase capacity for toxic frack wastewater dumping in Ohio.
Part of Greenwater’s proposal includes an outstanding request to the US Coast Guard to permit frack wastewater to be shipped across essential drinking water source, the Ohio River, via barge.
During Tuesday’s demonstration, activists unfurled a banner on one of the halted trucks which read: “No Frack Waste By Truck, No Frack Waste By Boat, No Greenhunter Waste Down Ohio’s Throat #DrSeuss.”
“Our governor, legislature and regulatory agencies have all failed in their obligation to protect Ohioans from the predatory gas industry,” said Ebert. “Greenhunter wants to use our water sources as dumping grounds for their toxic, radioactive waste. We are here to send a message that the people of Ohio and Appalachia will not sit idly by and watch our homes be turned into a sacrifice zone.”
Reports confirm that at least ten protestors were arrested and will allegedly be charged with breaking and entering. Supporters can donate to the arrested demonstrators’ bail fund here.
Ohio has become a popular dumping ground for toxic frack waste. According to Appalachia Resist!, the waste is injected underground into over 170 wells statewide, contaminating water and causing numerous earthquakes across the state. Resistance, however, has been growing since the discovery of the intentional dumping of hundreds of thousands of gallons waste into the Mahoning River.
Other groups participating in Tuesday’s action include Tar Sands Blockade, Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival (RAMPS), a coalition of indigenous leaders including representatives from No Line 9 and the Unis’tot’en Camp, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, and Earth First!.
Bradley Manning Faces 1000th Day in Prison
This article by Alyssa Rohricht is re-posted from CounterPunch.
This Saturday, February 23rd, will mark the 1,000th day in prison without trial for PFC Bradley Manning, accused of releasing classified military documents to Wikileaks. Among the documents was the Collateral Murder video, which shows the 2007 murder of over a dozen people in Baghdad by a U.S. Apache helicopter. The murdered included civilians and two Reuter’s employees, photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh.
Manning was also alleged to have released the Iraq War Logs, comprised of nearly 400,000 military logs recorded from 2004 to 2009. The files revealed thousands of reports of prisoner torture and abuse filed against coalition forces in Iraq, including reports of people being hung from the ceiling on hooks, whipped with cables, sexually assaulted, urinated on, and having holes bored into their legs with electric drills. The logs also added an additional 15,000 civilian deaths to the known body count, totalling over 150,000 deaths, of which roughly 80% were civilian.
Furthermore, the leaks detailed allegations of child abuse and child trafficking by the U.S. defense contracting company in Afghanistan, DynCorp, a company which is estimated to make about $2 billion per year in revenue from the U.S.
For shedding light on these atrocities carried out in the name of the United States of America, Bradley Manning has been rewarded by spending three birthdays in prison without trial. Since May 29, 2010, Manning has been held in pretrial detention, the first ten months of which he was kept locked in solitary confinement, denied exercise, sunlight, social interaction, and a number of times was forced to stay completely naked, all in violation of U.S. military law.
So today, while the murderers and criminals that Manning’s alleged leaks have exposed go free, Manning’s imprisonment continues. The issue is not just that his right to a speedy trial has been violated—although that is no small infringement—but the very fact that a man who stood up to power, who did not balk in the face of danger, who saw something that was unquestionably immoral and decided to expose it, who made the choice to stand on the right side of justice and morality, is imprisoned at all. THAT is the true issue. Bradley Manning stood on the right side of morality, and for his good deeds, the U.S. Government has repaid him with the systematic stripping of his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and his right to a fair and speedy trial. They have met him with abuse instead of laudation. They have repaid his heroism not with the praise and commendations he deserves, but with the desecration of his name and a miscarriage of justice.
Blowing the whistle is not a crime. Exposing criminals is not crime. Truth-telling is not a crime. They have tried to silence Bradley Manning’s voice by hiding him away in a cell and hoping that we will forget. On Saturday, February 23rd, we need to make it very clear to those in power that would have us stay silent that we do not forget and we will not be silent. Those in power think that if they hide Manning from view we will dutifully hang our heads and not dissent. Join protestors around the country and around the world to let the government know that we support Bradley Manning and that his detention is immoral and illegal! From Cambridge, MA to Montrose, CA to Philadelphia, PA; from Berlin to London to Sydney – find an event near you and make your voice heard in support of this international hero. And, if you haven’t already, please sign Daniel Ellsberg’s petition to free Bradley Manning.
Michigan Legislature introduces bill to protect Enbridge Keystone tar sands pipeline that runs through the state
Last week, the Center for Media & Democracy posted an article showing that four states have recently introduced legislation to support the Keystone tar sands pipeline project coming from Canada.
Michigan, along with Minnesota, Missouri and Mississippi all have introduced legislation to support the Keystone XL Pipeline and are using language very similar to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and TransCanada, the two entities that have been pushing the pipeline project from its inception.
Here is a verbal comparison for the language that Michigan is using:
You can read the actual language in the Michigan bill, but some of the points they make are worth discussing here.
The legislation language operates on the assumption that “we” need to continue to consume high levels of fossil fuels, thus the Keystone pipeline is a necessity. The reality is that if “we” continue to consume high levels fossil fuels we will move past of level of climate change that will be catastrophic for the planet. This is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been saying for years.
The Michigan legislation also states, “The growing production of conflict-free oil from Canada’s oil sands and the Bakken Formation in Saskatchewan, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota can replace crude imported from countries that do not share American values.”
What exactly do they mean by countries that do not share American values? In addition, the claim that tar sands oil is conflict-free is just not true. Native communities in Canada have been directly impacted by the tar sands mining and have been fighting the extraction and pipeline construction from the beginning. This is the main reason for the rise of the Idle No More campaign.
The Michigan legislation goes on to say, “The Keystone XL pipeline project has been subject to the most thorough public consultation process of any proposed U.S. pipeline.” This is a joke. How has the government engaged the public on this issue? Any public involvement has been initiated by the public and primarily in opposition to the Keystone Pipeline.
Lastly, the proposed Michigan legislation says that, “Pipelines are the safest method for the transportation of petroleum products.” This is absurd, since Enbridge alone has had at least 806 instances of oil spills, leaks and contamination, as we noted last July. This information has been well documented in a Polaris Institute report that would scare anyone when hearing the name Enbridge.
This proposed legislation is indeed a reaction to public opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline that has been happening all across the US & Canada. However, the reality is that much of the Enbridge tar sands pipeline in Michigan is already constructed, with area in southeast Michigan still to be completed, as is evidenced by this map. Enbridge is moving forward on this despite public opposition and the current climate crisis, because they are motivated by profits and not by justice.
Decolonize the Consumerist Wasteland: Re-imagining a World Beyond Capitalism and Communism
This article by Arundhati Roy is re-posted from Adbusters.
Here in India, even in the midst of all the violence and greed, there is still hope. If anyone can do it, we can. We still have a population that has not yet been completely colonized by that consumerist dream.
We have a living tradition of those who have struggled for Gandhi’s vision of sustainability and self-reliance, for socialist ideas of egalitarianism and social justice. We have Ambedkar’s vision, which challenges the Gandhians as well as the socialists in serious ways. We have the most spectacular coalition of resistance movements, with their experience, understanding and vision.
Most important of all, India has a surviving adivasi (aboriginal) population of almost 100 million. They are the ones who still know the secrets of sustainable living. If they disappear, they will take those secrets with them. Wars like Operation Green Hunt will make them disappear. So victory for the prosecutors of these wars will contain within itself the seeds of destruction, not just for adivasis but, eventually, for the human race. That’s why we need a real and urgent conversation between all those political formations that are resisting this war.
The day capitalism is forced to tolerate non-capitalist societies in its midst and to acknowledge limits in its quest for domination, the day it is forced to recognize that its supply of raw material will not be endless, is the day when change will come.
If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.
The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.
To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars.
This article is excerpted from her recent book, Walking with the Comrades, in which Arundhati reflects on her time spent with Maoist guerrilla insurgents in India.
ACLU Obtains Emails That Prove ICE Officials Set Deportation Quotas
This article by Jorge Rivas is re-posted from ColorLines.
A set of e-mails obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina show U.S. immigration officials developed strategies to increase the number of deportations so they could surpass the previous year’s record deportation numbers.
Federal immigration authorities have claimed to target people who pose a threat to public safety but these email show officials targeted immigrants convicted of minor crimes.
“These recently reported documents suggest that ICE’s ‘targeted’ approach may have less to do with public safety or a focus on serious crimes, and more to do with the agency’s laser focus on meeting deportation levels,” said Seth Freed Wessler, Colorlines.com’s investigative reporter.
Wessler says the documents provide evidence to support what advocates have long argued: immigration enforcement as it’s currently practiced looks more like a dragnet than a harpoon.
Among those new tactics – detailed in interviews and internal e-mails – were trolling state driver’s license records for information about foreign-born applicants, dispatching U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to traffic safety checkpoints conducted by police departments, and processing more illegal immigrants who had been booked into jails for low-level offenses. Records show ICE officials in Washington approved some of those steps.
In April, officials told field office heads to map plans to increase removals, then instructed at least one field office that supervises enforcement throughout Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to go ahead with efforts to mine DMV records and step up their efforts to deport people who had been booked into county jails, among other measures.
ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen told USA Today in a statement that “ICE does not have quotas.” She said the agency sets “annual performance goals” that “reflect the agency’s commitment to using the limited resources provided by Congress.”
Immigration advocates say this news doesn’t come as a surprise.
“The revelations about the Obama Administration’s deportation quotas are shocking, but not a suprise” said Arturo Carmona, Executive Director of Presente.org. “Anyone who knows the hard working people that the Administration is calling ‘criminals,’ who are being jailed by the thousands and deported by the millions, knows that government officials have such internal quotas. Other officials do an injustice to us all when they repeat false claims that there is some sort of legal mandate to deport 400,000 people a year. There’s not. And now everybody can see the ‘bonuses,’ deceit and dirty politics behind the immigrant tragedy.”
Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network says the findings are offensive.
“Setting immigration policy by a deportation quota runs counter to every talking point the Obama administration has used in the past five years. It has endangered public safety. It offends both constitutional values and has led to grave civil rights violations,” Newman said.
“It’s the exact reason why the first step in immigration reform must be a suspension of deportations,” Newman went on to say.
Foundation Profile: The Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation
This posting is part of our investigation into the Grand Rapids Non-Profit Industrial Complex. We are beginning with a look at Grand Rapids-based foundations.
This is the first in a series of postings that look at foundations based in Grand Rapids. It seems obvious to us, to begin with the most powerful family in the area, the DeVos Family, specifically the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation. The following information is based on the foundation’s 990s, which you can access here.
We looked at the 990s for this foundation from 2009 through 2011, which provides us with which organizations they gave money to and what amount.
It should be noted that, the money donated through the foundation is different than the money donated in direct political contributions, even though foundation funding can have direct political consequences.
There were over 100 different entities which received funding support from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation in each of the three years (2009 – 2011) we looked at. There seems to be three broad categories that this foundation gives large sums of money; education, religious and political.
There are many social service agencies that also are recipients of this foundation, but those numbers pale in comparison to the large recipients of the oldest DeVos family foundation. Most of the non-profit groups receiving money are also overtly Christian.
Looking at the area of education, the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation has provided substantial financial support to Christian Schools. For instance, the Grand Rapids Christian School Association has received roughly $5.6 million from this foundation from 2009 – 2011. Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary combined have received roughly $8.5 million.
However, Christian schools are not the only recipients of funds from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation. Grand Valley State University has received $5 million from 2009 – 2011 and Norwood University has received $6 million. Norwood is a leading business school in the US, which states that its mission, “is to develop the future leaders of a global, free-enterprise society.”
When it comes to funding religious groups, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation give to conservative, evangelical Christian groups. For instance, the Alliance for Children Everywhere, which does Christian charity work, has received roughly $1.2 million from the foundation in recent years.
Another Christian organization that has received a significant amount from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation is Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by former Watergate criminal Chuck Colson. While Prison Fellowship Ministries deals primarily with prison ministry, Colson has not shied away from taking strong public stands against the LGBTQ community and other conservative causes.
Then there are groups like the Haggai Institute and the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association, both of which promote far right politics and develop future conservative leadership. The Haggai Institute has received $1 million and the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association has received $6 million.
The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation has also given Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church over $1 million and Focus on the Family has received an estimated $1.3 million between 2009 – 2011. Focus on the Family has a long history of supporting repressive roles for women and has taken strong stances against women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality. Their founder, James Dobson has been a leader in the religious right and even promotes a form of Christian Theocracy.
One last Christian group that has received funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation is the Grand Rapids-based Acton Institute. The Acton Institute, founded in 1990, believes there is a natural relationship between Christianity and Capitalism. The Acton Institute is anti-union and has even been the recipient of funding for climate denial.
Funding groups like Acton with a strong free market capitalist mission is no surprise, since this is something that Richard DeVos has been promoting for most of his life and is supported by the some of the groups his foundation has financially supported.
The Heritage Foundation has received millions of dollars from the DeVos family and the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation gave $6 million from 2009 – 2011. The Heritage Foundation was one of the leaders in the “new right movement,” and is credited with crafting the initial policy positions for the Reagan Administration.
Other think tanks that have received large sums from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation are the American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the Freedom Works Foundation and the Young America’s Foundation.
Some of these groups have had tremendous impact on public policy, such as ALEC funded policies, which have been disastrous for working class people and the environment. Americans for Prosperity is a front group for the Koch Brothers and played a large role in passing a Right to Work law in Michigan. Freedom Works also promotes public austerity measures, which transfers more public finds to private power and is closely connected to the Tea Party.
Young America’s Foundation is lesser known, but is equally dangerous in terms of the ideology it promotes, such as the free market and personal freedom. Young America’s Foundation was started to counter the left/activist influence of students on campuses in the US in the 1960s and 1970s.
It seems pretty clear that the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation supports ultra-conservative policies and the supremacy of the free market for solving social problems. Many of the groups they have funded have promoted various forms of discrimination and hate, along with merging of Capitalism with Christianity.
At the same time, there are many local social service agencies in West Michigan, which have also received funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, although to a much lesser degree. Providing funds to groups like ICCF, the Literacy Center of West Michigan and Home Repair Services. Such funding, it could be argued, is put to good use for people with specific needs.
However, what this funding also can do is not only redirect public attention away from the far right groups they fund and even cause justice minded people to become apologists for the DeVos family and its foundations. This is certainly a theme we will explore when doing interviews with local non-profits.
The next foundation we will profile is the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation.
Opportunity to get involved in Immigration Reform this Saturday
Last week we reported on a Press Conference held to kick-off West Michigan efforts to work for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
For those who want to become actively involved there is an opportunity this Saturday, February 23.
There will be a training available this Saturday at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church. The training will cover both the reasons why Comprehensive Immigration Reform is necessary and how people can become involved in the local campaign.
People who attend can get information in both English and Spanish. There is no cost for the training, which begins at 9:00AM.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Training
Saturday, February 23rd
9:00AM
St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church
Corner of Buchanan & 32nd in Wyoming
For more information go to http://www.facebook.com/events/219188784887106/
Pseudo-Protests and Serious Climate Crisis
This article by David Swanson is re-posted from ZNet.
Going in, I was of mixed views regarding Sunday’s rally in Washington, D.C., to save the earth’s climate from the tar sands pipeline. I still am.
Why on a Sunday when there’s no government around to protest, shut down, or interfere with?
And why all the pro-Obama rhetoric? Robert Kennedy, Jr., was among the celebrities getting arrested at the White House in the days leading up, and his comment to the media was typical. Obama won’t allow the tar sands pipeline, he said, because Obama has “a strong moral core” and doesn’t do really evil things.
As a belief, that’s of course delusional. This is the same president who sorts through a list of men, women, and children to have executed every other Tuesday, and who jokes about it. This is the guy who’s derailed international climate protection efforts for years. This is the guy who refused the demand to oppose the tar sands pipeline before last year’s election. If he had been compelled to take a stand as a candidate there would be no need for this effort to bring him around as a lame duck.
As a tactic, rather than a belief, the approach of the organizers of Sunday’s rally is at least worth questioning. For one thing, people are going to hear such comments and take them for beliefs. People are going to believe that the president would never do anything really evil. In which case, why bother to turn out and rally in protest of what he’s doing? Or if we do turn out, why communicate any serious threat of inconvenience to the president? On the contrary, why not make the protest into a campaign rally for the president through which we try, post-election, to alter the platform on which the actual candidate campaigned? The advantage to the expect-the-best-and-the-facts-be-damned approach is clear. Lots of people like it. You can’t have a mass rally without lots of people. The organizers of this event are not primarily to blame for how the U.S. public thinks and behaves. But, then again, if you’re trying to maximize your crowd at all costs, hadn’t you better really truly maximize it? Sunday’s rally probably suffered from being held on a bitterly cold day, but I suspect that most people who planned to come did come; and I’ve seen more people on the Mall in the summer for no reason at all, and many times more people on the Mall in the winter for an inauguration (which, in terms of policy based activism, is also nothing at all).
What if the celebrities generating the news with arrests at the White House were to speak the truth? What if they committed to nonviolently interfering with the operations of a government destroying the climate? What if they committed to opposing the Democratic and Republican parties as long as this is their agenda? What if they said honestly and accurately that the personality of a president matters less than the pressures applied to him, that this president can do good or evil, and that it is our job to compel him to do good?
Sunday’s rally, MC’d by former anti-Republican-war activist Lennox Yearwood, looked like an Obama rally. The posters and banners displayed a modified Obama campaign logo, modified to read “Forward on Climate.” One of the speakers on the stage, Van Jones, declared, “I had the honor of working for this president.” He addressed his remarks to the president and appealed to his morality and supposed good works: “President Obama, all the good that you have done . . . will be wiped out” if you allow the tar sands pipeline.
The pretense in these speeches, including one by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, was consistently that Obama has not already approved part of the pipeline, that he is guilty of inaction, that the government is failing to act, that what’s needed is action — as if our government were not actively promoting the use of, and using vast quantities of fossil fuels, not to mention fighting wars to control the stuff.
Van Jones ended his remarks by addressing himself to “the next generation.” And this is what he had to say: “Stop being chumps! You elected this president. You reelected this president. You gave him the chance to make history. He needs to give you the chance to have a future. Stop being chumps! Stop being chumps and fight for your future, thank you very much.”
Reading these words, one would imagine that the obvious meaning they carry is “Stop electing people like this who work for parties like this and serve financial interests like these.” What could be a more obvious interpretation? You elected this guy twice. He’s a lame duck now. You’ve lost your leverage. Stop being such chumps!
Nothing could be further, I think, from what Van Jones meant or what that crowd on Sunday believed he meant. This was a speaker who had, just moments before, expressed his pride in having worked in Obama’s White House. The fact that this crowd of Obama-branded “activists” had elected him twice was not mentioned in relation to their chumpiness but as grounds for establishing their right to insist that he not destroy the planet’s atmosphere. They would be chumps if they didn’t hold more rallies like this one.
Wait, you might ask, doesn’t everyone have the right to insist that powerful governments not destroy the earth’s atmosphere?
Well, maybe, but in Van Jones’ thinking, those who committed to voting for Obama twice, no matter what he did, and who have committed to voting for another Democrat no matter what he or she will do, deserve particular attention when they make demands. Paradoxically, those who can be counted on regardless, who demand nothing and therefore offer nothing, should be the ones who especially get to make demands and have them heard and honored.
Needless to say, it doesn’t actually work that way.
Our celebrity emperors attract a great deal of personal affection or hatred, so when I suggest an alternative to packaging a rally for the climate as a belated campaign event, it may be heard as a suggestion to burn Obama in effigy. What if there were a third option, namely that of simply demanding the protection of our climate?
We might lose some of those who enjoyed burning Bush in effigy and some of those who enjoy depicting themselves as friends of the Obama family. But would we really lose that many? If the celebrities and organizers took such an honest policy-based approach, if the organizations put in the same money and hired the same busses, etc., how much smaller would Sunday’s unimpressive rally have really been?
(And couldn’t such a crowd be enlarged enough to more than compensate for any loss, by the simple tactic of promising ahead of time to keep the speeches to a half-hour total and to begin the march on time? I’d pay money to go to that rally.)
The problem, of course, is that the celebrities and organizers themselves tend to think like Obama campaign workers. It’s not an act. It’s not a tactic aimed at maximizing turnout. And it’s not their fault that they, and so many others, think that way.
But imagine a realistic, policy-based approach that began to build an independent movement around principled demands. It would have the potential to grow. It would have the potential to threaten massive non-cooperation with evil. It would have the energy of Occupy. It would have the potential to make a glorious declaration out of what now appears to be self-mockery when oversmall crowds of hungover campaign workers shout “This is what democracy looks like!” as they plod along a permitted parade route.
No. It really isn’t.
The Non-Profit Industrial Complex Project in Grand Rapids
Over the years we have used the term, the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, to describe the economic and power dynamics that are at work with non-profits and their relationship to private and governmental power.
The term, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, was the focus of a major conference organized by the radical women of color group INCITE! and is the subject of a book they published several years ago entitled, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.
The book, and the work of many others in this area, asks important questions about the relationship between non-profit organizations and funders, particularly foundations. According to INCITE, “The non-profit industrial complex is a system of relationships between:
- the State (or local and federal governments)
- the owning classes
- foundations
- and non-profit/NGO social service & social justice organizations
that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements. The state uses non-profits to:
- Monitor and control social justice movements;
- Divert public monies into private hands through foundations;
- Manage and control dissent in order to make the world safe for capitalism;
- Redirect activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of mass-based organizing capable of actually transforming society;
- Allow corporations to mask their exploitative and colonial work practices through “philanthropic” work;
- Encourage social movements to model themselves after capitalist structures rather than to challenge them
We are just beginning a project that will investigate the Non-Profit Industrial Complex in Grand Rapids that will be in two parts.
The first part will be a series of investigations into Grand Rapids-based foundations, where we will post profiles of numerous foundations and how they are using their money.
The second part will be an investigation into local non-profit organizations, which include a look at where their funding sources are coming from, who sits on their boards and the results of an interview we plan to do with these non-profits about their history and how they navigate between mission and following the money.
We don’t have a rigid time frame for this project, but are looking to have the non-profit interviews/surveys and analysis completed by late May. Profiles of individual Grand Rapids will begin immediately.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 