GRIID weekly audio digest – #3
In the third installment of the GRIID audio digest, we bring you the following four stories from last week:
- Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids – Segment #4
- Rep. Scholten’s complete silence on ICE arrests of pro-Palestine activists and her weak statement regarding the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
- Senator Slotkin and Rep. Scholten continue to get behind legislation that are clearly designed to further criminalize foreign nationals and political dissidents
- From La Matanza to El Salvador’s prison: A century-long US commitment to El Salvador’s dictatorships
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Now is the time to be defiant and courageous: New anti-Immigrant bills in Michigan must be resisted, even if they become law
Michigan Legislators have now proposed bills that would not only further criminalize undocumented people, it would punish those who assist undocumented immigrants in any way.
The bills that are currently being proposed are in many ways mimicking federal legislation from 2005, known then as the Sensenbrenner bill, but formerly known as the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. I bring this point up, not just because of the previously proposed federal legislation, but mostly because this legislation led to some of the most massive immigrant-led demonstrations across the US in April of 2006. Even in Grand Rapids, an estimated 10,000 marched in late April of 2006, a march I reported on.
There are currently 7 different bills that have been proposed, all of which punish immigrants, punish those offering any kind of assistance to immigrants, and municipalities that would limit or refuse to cooperate with federal agents, specifically with ICE. The following info comes from the ACLU of Michigan.
House Bills 4336 & 4337 create criminal penalties for individuals and organizations who knowingly assist or encourage immigrants without legal status in entering, residing, or being transported within the United States.
- These bills create harsh penalties for many vaguely defined activities that would put many members of the community–immigrants and citizens alike–at risk of criminal penalty. Under this legislation for example, a landlord who rents a home to someone who does not present certain documentation could be charged with a felony, as could a rideshare driver who gives a ride to an individual without legal status.
- Instituting criminal penalties that have such vast implications is dangerous, and puts many more of us at risk of being charged with a crime.
- All Michiganders could be at risk of being charged with a crime simply for being good neighbors—offering a ride, sharing a meal, or providing shelter to someone without legal status would be criminalized under this legislation. This not only discourages acts of basic human compassion, but also threatens to turn everyday community support into punishable crimes.
House Bills 4338, 4339, and 4342 prohibit a local municipality from enacting or enforcing any policy that limits communication or cooperation with federal officials concerning immigration. Any existing policy that governs how a municipality cooperates with federal immigration enforcement would be voided. Any municipality that violates these laws would have their state funding withheld.
- These bills are another example of recent attacks on cities and counties that have what are commonly known as “sanctuary policies”. These are policies that seek to protect immigrant community members by limiting local collaboration with federal immigration enforcement agencies. Municipalities sometimes consider passing these types of policies to prohibit their city’s law enforcement funding and resources from being shared with federal officers. This is well within the rights of a municipality to do, as it is not the role of a city, township, or county to enforce federal immigration law.
- These bills are a clear example of state government undermining local control. Whether or not a city decides to limit cooperation with federal immigration is completely under their jurisdiction, as local governments have a constitutionally protected right to decide for themselves how and whether to enforce immigration laws.
- With this legislation, our state government is issuing a threat to cities, townships, and counties that tells them to comply with the president’s deportation machine or risk losing funding. We will not put up with this bullying.
House Bills 4340 & 4341 prohibit any “non-qualified aliens” from accessing social welfare programs such as MI-Child Program (providing medical assistance for low-income individuals), TANF (“Temporary Assistance for Needy Families”), State Disability Assistance, and more.
- Social welfare programs provide necessary and often life-saving assistance to families who need it the most. They can be the sole reason why someone has food on the table and a roof over their head. Targeting certain groups of people who will be denied these benefits is inhumane and inconsistent with the purpose of such programs.
- The term “non-qualified aliens” generally refers to individuals who are already ineligible to receive public benefits, which includes immigrants who do not have legal status. We already have state and federal laws that restrict who is eligible to receive public benefits. As such, this legislation is unnecessary and duplicative.
- Ultimately, this is a performative measure designed to discourage families with eligible children from seeking assistance that could help them put food on the table. The result will be that people, including US citizens who need help and could be receiving it, will not apply for assistance out of fear of retribution.
Now, the ALCU and other groups are encouraging people to contact state legislators and pressure them to vote against these bills, which you can do through this toolkit that they put together.
However, these bills might be difficult to defeat, since the GOP controls the Michigan House and the Democrats only have a slight 19 – 18 control of the State Senate. Of course, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer could veto these bills, but on matters of immigration Whitmer has not been much of a champion.
What we need is to be part of the existing immigrant-led movements like Movimiento Cosecha, which has circles (chapters) throughout Michigan, many of which have been around since 2017. We need to find out what the would like those of us who are allies, how we can best practice solidarity with them in the face of these newest threats.
What if these bills become law in Michigan?
In the event that these bills become law, what does this mean for undocumented immigrants and what does it mean for those of us who are allies/accomplices?
The reality is that the undocumented immigrant community has been living in an oppressive and brutal US immigration system for decades. If these new bills were to become law, it would not have a significantly different impact that the threat of arrest, detention and deportation that undocumented immigrants are already facing.
What is different with these bills is that it would have greater legal consequences for allies/accomplices. While I personally am disgusted by these bills, it will not change my commitment and the work of GR Rapid Response to ICE in this community.
What I believe, and what I have learned from the history of social movements across the globe and in Grand Rapids, is that when the carceral state increases the repression against immigrants and those who chose to stand in solidarity with them, allies/accomplices have always increased their resistance.
Lots of people these days like to compare what is happening in the US to what was happening in Nazi Germany. So what did the resistance look like from Germans in the late 1930s through 1945? You had groups like the White Rose Resistance group or the Confessing Church. What we need from so-called Christians is to adopt the same kind of commitment that the Confessing Church did in Nazi Germany, which wrote the Bareman Declaration, publicly condemned Nazi policies and offered to provide sanctuary and hide jewish people that were being targeted.
Or we could learn from the various Latin American resistance movements, like the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, as known as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, or the Zapatista movement in Mexico. In fact, many of the undocumented immigrants in the US are from the countries that have these robust resistance movements.
Whether we are talking about resistance movements in Nazi Germany or Latin America, one thing they had in common was their willingness to take risks. I have been hearing from people and politicians who have been hesitant about offering sanctuary to the undocumented community, often saying it would put a target on our backs. So, here is the thing, the undocumented immigrant community has had a target on their backs for a long time. If we are going to practice real solidarity, then we have to be willing to be the targets of repression just like those in the affected community. There is no way around this, not if we claim to be allies/accomplices. You can start right now be showing up to the Movimiento Cosecha GR actions on May 1st through May 4th, listed in the graphic above.
In the words of the great Liberation Theology practitioner, Oscar Romero, he said, “We must not love our lives so much that we avoid taking the risks in life that history calls for.”
Episode #1 affirmed stereotypes about Black people, thus perpetuating structural racism. The episode also demonstrated that this TV series will be a highly constructed show with the GRPD dictating the narrative about who they are and what they do.
Episode #2 once again centered on a criminal case involving Black people, where Police Chief Winstrom said people who don’t want to talk with cops suffer from “generational mistrust.”
Episode #3 begins with dramatic music and a 911 call from someone who hear shots fired near the corner of Broadway and 7th Street in northwest Grand Rapids. A white vehicle was spotted leaving the scene, which ended up going to the ER. This is the context of the episode.
The episode continues with cops getting access to commercial exterior cameras, where they see the white vehicle and a female appearing person running from the scene. Earlier that day, it was discovered that there was a domestic disturbance between the man who owned the white vehicle and a woman that the man was in a relationship with. Both the man and the woman were African American. The GRPD believes that this is the same couple that had a dispute, where gun shots were fired and the man drives to the ER.
The episode then cuts to another GRPD officer talking about how often they receive calls for domestic dispute. This comment was a set up for the next scene, where the GRPD responds to a domestic dispute, with a gun involved. In this case no one ends up injured and the boyfriend is taken into custody. One GRPD cops is heard on camera say that he doesn’t understand how any father could put his children in that kind of danger. A minute after we hear this comment, Chief Winstrom talks about both cases in the episode, stating, “This is unacceptable and we need to make it stop.”
Winstrom then announced that the GRPD was invited to be part of the Domestic Violence Specialty Court through Kent County. Viewers are meant to believe that the GRPD is in favor of all this and that they are against Domestic Violence.
The fact is that police and domestic violence cases are problematic, as cops don’t know how to deal with domestic violence, plus they often perpetrate more harm in domestic violence cases. Here is an except from an INCITE! toolkit, entitled, Police Violence and Domestic Violence.
Mandatory arrest policies — which require police to make an arrest when they respond to domestic violence calls — have led to arbitrary arrests of survivors of domestic violence, rather than their abusers, in many cases. Such arrests subject women to further violence from the criminal justice system, including use of force during arrest, threats to remove and removal of children into state custody,8 strip searches, and other violent and degrading conditions of confinement. As one survivor who was subject to a mandatory arrest described it: “[I] [g]ot arrested like two times… That’s traumatizing…the police officer…He pushed me inside the car! He pushed me inside, ‘Tell that to the judge!’ He sees me crying and trembling and stuff. He just pushed me … ‘Shut up back there!!’ And I was crying, I said, ‘it’s not fair’… ‘Shut up!!’…He pulled me out of the car…he pushed me against [a desk].”9 Such re-traumatization of survivors, immediately following an incident of domestic violence so severe as to prompt someone to seek law enforcement intervention, is unfortunately commonplace across jurisdictions.
The rest of Episode #3 brings viewers back to the original case, where they find the woman they believe shot her boyfriend. What makes matters worse in this episode is to have the camera crew on site where the GRPD is outside of the home of this Black woman. The GRPD compels her to come out and the camera zooms into her walking out of the house and towards the cops with her hands up.
The last 8 minutes of the episode, the Black woman is being interrogated in a room with two cops, where they keep working to get her to tell them what happened and if she shot her boyfriend or not. The GRPD then put cuffs on this woman and brings her to a holding cell until she is ready to talk more about what happened.
As the credits are rolling, one GRPD detective is talking to the camera, acting like he is sympathetic with this woman who is likely to be charged with murder. This is really some bullshit, since it is so damn performative. The last scene then cuts to the Black woman being led out of a court room, with text on the screen saying that she is now facing 17 years in prison for shooting her boyfriend.
Like the first two episodes, Episode #3 follows the case of a Black person charged with a shooting, which further normalizes the white supremacist belief that Black people are inherently deviant and violent. This HBO/MAX TV series with the GRPD is presenting Grand Rapids as a city with a bunch of violent Black people who prey on other Black people. This narrative is nothing more than a white supremacist’s wet dream.
We need to remove our partisan blinders on the matter of immigration policy, then practice radical solidarity with immigrants!
On Monday night I was in a room with 50 people who came to a GR Rapid Response to ICE training, a training that consists of how we can directly intervene to prevent ICE from taking immigrants and a broad spectrum of ways people can be part of Mutual Aid practices with immigrants who are living in fear.
Last week, some 200 people showed up at the ICE office in Grand Rapids to denounce the current administration’s policy of mass deportations and to say NO to the GEO Group’s recent purchase of the prison in Baldwin, MI, which they plan to turn into a n ICE detention facility.
Since the 2024 Election, I have witnessed people turning out for protests and marches organized by Movimiento Cosecha, I have seen hundreds of people go through the GR Rapid Response to ICE training, plus I have been part of trainings in other communities that want to develop their own Rapid Response to ICE system.
All of these activities are an inspiration for me, since I have been involved in immigrant justice work since the 1980s, when I was part of the Central American Sanctuary Movement here in Grand Rapids. When I meet people who want to practice solidarity and do accompaniment work with undocumented immigrants it fills my heart with joy.
However, I also have moments of despair and frustration when people ignore or forget about undocumented immigrants. The moments of despair and frustration I am referring to are generally when a Democrat sits in the White House or when the Democrats have a majority in Congress or the State Legislature. I say this, since the Democratic Party has been equally committed to the criminalization of immigrants for decades. Look at the graph above, which covers a period time beginning with the Clinton Administration through 2024, the end of the Biden Administration. You can see that deportations and the removal of immigrants is a constant, regardless of which political party is in the White House or controls Congress.
While the Clinton Administration was implementing NAFTA, they were also removing millions of undocumented immigrants. The Bush Administration used the War on Terror as a pretext to remove and criminalize undocumented immigrants. President Obama was referred to by the immigrant community as the Deporter in Chief, since his administration deported over 3 million immigrants. In 2017, the Trump Administration engaged in overt xenophobic and racist language when referring to undocumented immigrants, along with his plan to build a wall along the US/Mexican border.
As soon as Trump lost the election in 2020, the number of people that were involved with Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE declined significantly. Movimiento Cosecha’s first action after the election was really a plea to the community, where they hung a banner above the Monroe entrance of the Grand Rapids City Hall, a banner which said – Democrats deport us too!
There is a great deal of outrage right now regarding ICE arrests and the constant threat of mass deportations, as there should be. However, where was this same outrage when the Biden Administration was removing more immigrants during his 4 years than the first 4 years of Trump.
Here are a few examples regarding the lack of outrage during the Biden years:
Left to Die: Border Patrol, Search and Rescue, & the Crisis of Disappearance
Number of Immigrants Under Punitive Surveillance Quadrupled on Biden’s Watch
BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION RESUMES UNDER PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
Tragedy in Texas: 46 Found Dead in Suspected Smuggling Attempt Amid Biden’s Harsh Border Enforcement
Biden Is Locking Up Thousands of Immigrants in For-Profit Detention Centers
Biden FY 2023 Budget Maintains Trump-Era Spending on ICE and CBP
JOE BIDEN DETAINED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ASYLUM-SEEKERS IN THE LAST YEAR
Haitian Asylum Seekers Held Under Del Rio Bridge Now Face Inhumane Conditions in New Mexico ICE Jail
‘Vile’: Biden DHS to Turn Away Migrant Families Under ‘Expedited Removal’ Policy
Free the Children: Advocates Demand Biden Close Fort Bliss Detention Center Holding 800 Migrant Kids
ICE DISCUSSED PUNISHING IMMIGRANT ADVOCATES FOR PEACEFUL PROTESTS
THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS ROUTINELY SENDING MEXICAN CHILDREN BACK TO DANGER, REPORT FINDS
Despite Immigration Pledges, Biden Admin Detains Thousands of Unaccompanied Migrant Children
Lastly, where was the outrage when US Border Patrol Agents were caught beating Haitians seeking asylum, reflected in the image below.
I say all of this not to be petty or stuck in the past, but to make it clear to people that the US government assault on undocumented immigrants is a constant and we have to come to terms with that fact. Just because the Obama or Biden Administrations didn’t use the same rhetoric when talking about immigrants, doesn’t mean that were not engaged in the same harmful human rights abuses that we tend to associate with the Republican Party and the Trump Administration. We need to take off our partisan blinders, see that the immigrant community is living in constant fear, and then practice solidarity on their terms, regardless of who sits in the White House.
See you all at the upcoming Movimiento Cosecha actions, May 1st through May 4th. Aqui Estamos y no nos Vamos!
On March 27th, the House of Representatives passed H.R.1048, known as the Deterrent Act. The Deterrent Act is a Republican initiated piece of legislation that will amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, in order to to strengthen disclosure requirements relating to foreign gifts and contracts.
In reality, The Deterrent Act is part of a larger effort by the GOP and the Trump Administration to allow them to attack college and universities that are engaged in practices that the far right doesn’t support. Indeed, The Deterrent Act is part of the larger war against higher education and should be viewed as an effort to attack what can and can’t be taught at the university level.
The House passed this bill, with 210 Republicans voting for it and 31 Democrats, including Rep. Hillary Scholten. Rep. Scholten once again demonstrated that she is willing to vote with Republicans, especially on legislation that will appease conservative West Michigan. In fact, Scholten was the only Democrat in Michigan to vote for H.R.1048, as you can see at this link.
However, it gets worse.
Last week, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin announced that she was getting behind a bipartisan Senate bill called The Deterrence Act.
On April 15, Sen. Slotkin posted on her website:
Under the DETERRENCE Act, which unanimously passed the U.S. Senate last year, criminals working for foreign adversaries can be sentenced to longer prison sentences. The bill specifically increases criminal penalties for the following federal crimes when the crimes are committed under U.S. jurisdiction on behalf of foreign governments:
- Engaging in a murder-for-hire scheme
- Murdering or attempting to murder certain federal officials, including the President
- Murdering or attempting to murder certain former federal officials, or their families, because of their official actions
- Assaulting certain former federal officials, or their families, because of their official actions
- Kidnapping or attempted kidnapping
- Threats of violence using a dangerous weapon against certain current and former federal officials, as well as their families, because of their official actions
- Stalking
This legislation follows reports that foreign adversaries are increasingly turning to criminals in America to commit violent crimes against their critics, including those who reside in the United States.
Now, many people might read this as a good thing. I mean, “why shouldn’t we protect our elected officials who might be threatened by foreign adversaries?” In this political moment, we have to critically examine legislation like this and not be so easily swayed by their claims, for two reasons. First, there are already significant consequences for anyone, foreign and American, who would attempt to assault, kidnap or murder federal officials. Secondly, this kind of legislation is not so much designed to protect elected officials as it is designed to further criminalize foreign nationals who are critical of US policy.
Can you not see that this kind of legislation will be used to further punish people like Mahmoud Khalil and the Tufts student and Turkish national Rümeysa Öztürk, both of which were arrested by ICE. In fact, Drop Site news recently posted a story entitled, By Weaponizing Arrest Records and Suspending Due Process, the Trump Administration Has Targeted Over 1,000 Foreign Students.
Ultimately, legislation like the one that Senator Slotkin is endorsing, legislation that was crafted by Republicans, will be used to criminalize people who question and confront federal officials through public statements, during town hall meetings and other public appearances. If this kind of legislation were to pass, imagine what the federal government would have done to a student activist who pied Senator Carl Levin back in 2010?
From La Matanza to El Salvador’s prison: A century-long US commitment to El Salvador’s dictatorships
The US government’s decision to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador has received a fait amount of attention. The attention around the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is mostly due to the fact that the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump Administration should bring Garcia back, since he was wrongfully deported.
According to a recent article from Jacobin:
On March 16, 2025, El Salvador received a US deportation flight of 238 Venezuelans along with Salvadorans of various documentation statuses. They were incarcerated in El Salvador’s megaprison, the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), placing them in legal limbo. The conditions of those incarcerated in El Salvador are notorious and likely violate a number of human rights under international law. The United States is paying El Salvador a fee of $6 million per year to house some three hundred deported people.
After the US Supreme Court decision, some national news agencies asked President Trump, while he was entertaining El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele if he would be bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador. The exchange is rather instructive and is included in a recent Democracy Now! show from April 15.
Jeffrey St. Clair, co-editor of CounterPunch, wrote in a recent column:
Trump’s ICEtapo has sent 238 people to El Salvador. A Bloomberg analysis shows that more than 90% of them had no criminal record. And of those with criminal records, only five had been convicted of felonies. This hardly matters. To be sent to El Salvador means you are guilty. You are a terrorist in the eyes of the state that deported you, even if the state’s highest courts have intervened on your behalf. There will be no return. Even two self-proclaimed Autocrats say they don’t have the power to make it happen.
Many commentators have speculated that what President Trump is doing by sending supposed criminals to El Salvador is to test the waters in order to see how much public resistance there is to this practice, since this administration might begin to send political dissidents there as well.
It is always difficult to predict future policies, but it is worth looking at the history of US relations with El Salvador, which could give us a better understanding of what the US government will do and what the American public will tolerate.
History of US/Salvadoran relations
El Salvador gained its independence from Spain in the early part of the 19th century, but they became subject to the US Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine was an imperialist policy, which essentially said that all of Latin America was under the control of the US.
El Salvador, a country the size of Massachusetts, has been living under an oligarchy for most of the nation’s history. Europeans controlled most of the land in El Salvador, which was the result of Spanish colonialism in the region. The oligarchy began to utilize the best lands for coffee production in the late 1800s, thus making coffee exports the number one economic driver of El Salvador’s economy.
In the 1920s, the price of coffee dropped steeply, threatening the oligarchs’ export business. To make up for their loss of profits, the ruling families took over even more land from peasants and cut their workers’ wages in half. Following elections in 1932, in which the government refused to seat elected members of the Communist Party, Salvadoran peasants organized a popular insurrection to demand better living and working conditions. Most of these peasants were part of the indigenous population. The government responded to the strike by massacring an estimated 30,000 people, or 4% of the population, in one week.
This event became known as “La Matanza,” or “The Massacre.” The military government established following La Matanza went on to ban every vestige of indigenous culture, including language, traditional clothing, and music. To avoid further persecution and murder by government troops, the indigenous people began to hide all outward signs of their identity. During La Matanza, the US had warships off the coast of El Salvador in order to support the very government that massacred 30,000 Salvadorans.
La Matanza and the military rule which followed set the political tone of the next several decades in El Salvador, as military dictators followed one another into the 1970s, and all of these dictators had US government support, both militarily and diplomatically. In addition, the US government trained countless Salvadoran soldiers at the famous US Army School of the Americas.
In the late 1970s, an armed insurgent movement known as the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) grew in popularity and began to control part of the countryside in El Salvador. The US government’s response was to zealously support the Salvadoran dictatorship, which included massive amounts of US military aid, US military advisors, the sale of US military weaponry and US political pressure to prevent the Organization of the American States (OAS) or the United Nations from trying to intervene in what became a massive counter-insurgency war. What follows are some some details of the US/Salvadoran relationship during the counter-insurgency war from 1979 – 1992.
- March 24, 1980 – Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by Salvadoran government death squad members while he was saying mass. Just weeks before his assassination, Romero had sent US President Jimmy Carter a letter demanding he stop sending military aid and send humanitarian relief aid instead.
- December 2, 1980, four US Churchwomen working in El Salvador, were raped and murdered by Salvadoran government death squad members.
- In December of 1981, the Salvadoran Army murdered over 800 people in Morazan Department of El Salvador, which became known as the El Mozote Massacre. The Salvadoran army mostly killed women, children and the elderly in this massacre. The US government defended the massacre.
- During the US financed counter-insurgency war in El Salvador, there were an estimated 8 – 9,000 Salvadoran civilians that were “disappeared.”
- The 1992 UN Truth Commission in El Salvador determined that 75,000 civilians were killed, with the majority of those deaths being committed by the Salvadoran military or extra-judicial paramilitary groups that worked with the Salvadoran military.
- In November of 1989, the Salvadoran military murdered 6 Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter. Many of the soldiers involved were trained at the US Army School of the Americas.
- Several high ranking Salvadoran military officials that were directly responsible for the deaths of nearly 75,000 Salvadoran civilians fled El Salvador after the 1992 ceasefire agreement and found refuge in the United States. The irony of this is that throughout the years of the US-financed counterinsurgency war in El Salvador, thousands of Salvadorans sought political asylum in the US, but were denied.
- After the US financed counter-insurgency war in El Salvador, the US continued to support the ruling class in that country, even intervened to prevent a left Presidential candidate from winning the election there in 2004, got El Salvador to sign on to the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA – which created more poverty and exploitation).
This is the historical context to which we find the current Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. This history between the US and El Salvador should make it clear as to why Bukele is just the most recent iteration of the long-standing dictatorships that have run that country with full US support.
A recent article from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) provides some important insight into why those of us in this country should be concerned about what is happening in El Salvador. The WOLA article provides 4 good reasons for concern:
- Bukele negotiated and offered economic incentives to gang leaders in exchange for reducing homicides.
- The ‘Bukele Security Model’ is based on mass incarceration and human rights violations, but fails to provide any real access to justice or due process.
- The Salvadoran penitentiary system is marred with corruption, where there is no oversight, transparency or accountability.
- There is a generalized environment of fear as civic space is shrinking and human rights defenders and independent journalists are under attack.
While our current attention should be centered on the people that the Trump Administration has sent to the horrific prison in El Salvador, we should also understand that these brutal human rights violations have always been central to the longstanding US military support of El Salvador’s oligarchy, to the murder and disappearances of tens of thousands of Salvadorans during the US financed counter-insurgency war, the US denial of asylum to thousands of Salvadorans fleeing political violence, the US-provided safe haven status for former Salvadoran military officials, and US economic policies like CAFTA that have forced forced to many Salvadorans to become immigrants. This brutality did not begin with the Trump Administration, it is merely an extension of the century-long US commitment to El Salvador’s dictatorships, which translates as US Imperialism.
Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of April 20th
It has been more than 18 months since the Israeli government began their most recent assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel, has escalated to what the international community has called genocide, therefore, GRIID will be providing weekly links to information and analysis that we think can better inform us of what is happening, along with the role that the US government is playing. We will also provide information on local events and actions that people can get involved in. All of this information is to provide people with the capacity of what Noam Chomsky refers to as, intellectual self-defense.
Information
Extremist Zionist Group Sent List of Palestine Defenders to Trump Officials for Deportation
Rafah “obliterated” by Israel’s attacks
Israeli Policies and Settler Violence Are Driving Palestinians from the Jordan Valley
The Mask Has Fallen: Gaza and the Myth of Western Morality
Fed Up With Israeli Displacement Orders, Palestinians in Gaza City Refuse to Leave
WIZ ACQUISITION PUTS ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE IN CHARGE OF YOUR GOOGLE DATA
Gaza First Amendment Alert (April 18, 2025)
Analysis & History
Omer Bartov on Gaza: “It’s a Misnomer to Call It a War”
CHRIS HEDGES: ISRAEL IS ABOUT TO EMPTY GAZA
Media Censorship in the Age of Palestinian Genocide
Image used in this post is from https://www.rightsanddissent.org/news/gaza-first-amendment-alert-april-18-2025/
The lack of action and silence by most Democratic lawmakers on the arrest and deportation of immigrants and foreign nationals who have spoken out against the US financed genocide in Gaza should tell us something about the Democratic Party.
For example, Rep. Hillary Scholten has said nothing about the numerous students and faculty members throughout the US that are being deported because of their stance against the US financed genocide in Gaza. I checked Scholten’s social media and her Congressional page, and it is nothing but silence. In addition, Rep. Scholten has not be interviewed by the news media regarding these ICE arrests of people who have spoken out in support of Palestine.
Of course, I am not surprised by this, especially since Rep. Scholten has unconditionally supported Israel ever since she took office in January of 2023, something I have methodically documented. Additionally, Rep. Scholten supported the Biden Administration’s position on the pro-Palestine campus movement, which was to chastise them. Nearly one year ago I wrote an article entitled, It’s bad enough that Rep. Hillary Scholten has consistently voted to fund the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, now she wants to condemn students who are publicly opposing genocide. In that article I stated:
Rep. Scholten, the so-called liberal, once again is demonstrating her allegiance to US Imperialism, to Zionism and her commitment to the repression of free speech. Notice that the Congresswoman provides no evidence of antisemitism. You just have to invoke it to make it a fact, just like Zionists preach. On top of the unsubstantiated claim of antisemitism, Rep. Scholten takes it one step further by partnering with a Republican from Indiana to introduce legislation that in reality is meant to further silence critics of Israel and US policies that support Israel.
Now, in regards to the issue of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Rep. Scholten did release a statement, which you can see here on the right. The statement is weak and deeply problematic. First, as Scholten often does, she reminds us that she is an attorney and former member of the Department of Justice, like that really means anything when she supports criminalizing immigrants and genocide in Gaza. Second, Scholten only released this statement after the US Supreme Court ruling and did not condemn what happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia up until that point. Third, Scholten statement doesn’t center what happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, rather it is all about the Trump Administration. Fourth, Scholten ends the statement about how we need to stand united in defense of the rule of law. This is some shit, since the rule of law in the US has justified genocide, slavery, Jim Crow policies, mass deportations, mass incarceration, preventing people from having an abortion, criminalizing queer and trans people, and justifying an economic system that allows less than one percent of the population to expand their wealth while millions live in poverty.
Again, none of this is a surprise, since the Democratic Party has done virtually nothing to actually resist what the Trump Administration is currently doing, except make weak ass statements that urge us to defend the rule of law.
The anarchist writer Peter Gelderloos, in a recent article wrote:
It is insanely delusional to believe that the Democrat[ic Party is capable of changing in a meaningful way, and it is insanely delusional to trust them. They are guilty of genocide, mass murder, mass incarceration, impoverishment, bloody wars, and oppressive politics. The system they uphold, the system they promise can be reformed if we just trust them one more time, has condemned this generation and the next one and the next one to a future of unimaginable suffering, danger, and poverty.
I want to end with what I wrote in a recent article from last week, which is part 3 of a 3 part series:
Over the past few months, especially at the large rallies – those rallies that will not save us – I have seen signs that say things like, “defend our democracy” or “protect the constitution.” As someone who identifies as an anarchist, I in no way want to defend democracy or protect the constitution, especially since the Constitution and the so-called democracy in the US has been built on genocide, slavery, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy and ecological devastation. I don’t want to fight, to struggle, or to take risks, all for some 6th grade notion of what democracy is. I don’t want to pledge allegiance to some flag or give away my power to a government structure that was designed to benefit the wealthiest people in this country. As John Jay, a Founding Father and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, famously stated, “Those who own the country ought to govern it”. Our so-called democracy was designed the way that John Jay and the founders intended.
Episode #1 affirmed stereotypes about Black people, thus perpetuating structural racism. The episode also demonstrated that this TV series will be a highly constructed show with the GRPD dictating the narrative about who they are and what they do.
Episode #2 begins with a roll call at the GRPD, where one of the cops says, apparently some of the homeless people were raising hell at US 131 and Ann St. Viewers then see a GRPD cop in their cruiser and we hear this cop say that there is more crime at night, and that “nothing good happens after midnight.” No clarification or verification of the claims are made, since cops always tell the truth.
In the subsequent scene we hear gun shots being fired, a 911 call, with someone saying that gun shots happened in the street. This is followed by mostly bodycam footage, with a cop saying that they couldn’t find anyone who was shot.
We then see the GRPD in the same neighborhood, looking for clues and talking to residents about the shooting. A GRPD cop then goes to the hospital and talks to a Black woman who saw the shooting, since she brought someone to the hospital who had been hit by a bullet. This is also when we hear that the Black woman that the cop was speaking with said that they were on a “party bus”, which is the name of Episode #2.
Back at the scene of the shooting, where the cops find the party bus, they also find a gun and some bullet shell casings. Everyone the GRPD spoke to who were on the party bus, all appear to be BIPOC people.
Viewers are then introduced to a white female-appearing cop who says they were tasked with heading up the homicide investigation. The GRPD is back at the hospital, where the body of a Black man is on a stretcher and is pronounced dead. The GRPD cop “allows” the mother of the victim to pray over his body during a 30 second clip of the episode. Always important for a constructed TV show to demonstrate to viewers that the cops are compassionate.
About 10 minutes into the episode, the episode brings us back to the GRPD headquarters talking about getting the video footage from the party bus. Chief Winstrom then says that he has full confidence in the female officer. The female cop is attempting to speak with a Black person who saw what had happen, but refuses to give information without a lawyer. Chief Winstrom then calls this dynamic “generational mistrust.” Winstrom is followed by another GRPD cop who says that people who don’t come forward with information as a “societal problem.”
“Generational mistrust” and people not giving cops information as a “societal problem?” It is deeply unfortunately that the producers of this show do not unpack or interrogate these terms, terms which are politically and racially charged. A basic question that could be asked at this point is, do Black people have reason to not trust the police? This is a very basic question, but a critical one to think about and talk about. The All Access PD Grand Rapids show only provides the GRPD’s perspective on this matter. What if viewers heard from Angela Davis, Miriame Kaba, Andrea J. Ritchie, Ruth Wilson Gilmore or Marc Lamont Hill?
Back to the episode………
The cops then look at video from porch cameras and talk about the shooters. Chief Winstrom then talks to the camera saying the the Grand Rapids City Commission wants answers to the increase in shootings over the summer (summer of 2023). The next scene is in a City Commission meeting, with Winstrom addressing the commissioners. Winstrom then talks up Commissioner Knight, with the following scene including Lisa Knight and the mother of the shooting victim.
The episode then cuts to another day, where the GRPD get a call about another shooting, with a AR 15 rifle. The cops find the shooter who is in a vehicle and then takes off. The cops purse the vehicle onto Cesar Chavez Way/Grandville Ave, where the shooter is boxed in. A latino male gets out of the car with no apparent weapon, while the GRPD has guns pointed at him and then releases a police dog on the man. The dog bites the man, and then we see the man bloodied and in cuffs. Winstrom then says that the illegal use of guns is a problem.
The episode then pivots back to the party bus shooting, where the GRPD are now looking at the social media profiles of those who were on the party bus. The social media videos they show are primarily of Black people.
The next portion of the episode involves looking at the guns that was found and the bullet casings. The white female cop who was heading up the investigation received a photo of a Black guy in a white hat, the same white hat that was found at the scene of the shooting.
The potential suspect lives outside the city limits, so the Kent County Sheriff’s Department now gets involved, with them and the GRPD heading to the suspects home. Most of the cops arrive on the scene heavily armed and using an armored vehicle. For the next minute they use bodycam footage, in COPS-like fashion. Eventually, someone in the mobile home comes out and the GRPD begins to ask her questions.
A Black male witness comes in to speak with the GRPD. This witness had a gun and shot it into the air, but his brother also had a gun and fit the image of the photo that the GRPD had. The brother then came in (another Black man), but during the questioning the Black man’s face was not blurred, unlike other people in the episode. The female investigator continued the questioning and the man she was questioning stated he didn’t have a gun. The homicide investigator was “shocked” that this Black man denied having a gun.
The episode ends with the mother of the shooting victim coming in to the GRPD headquarters and talking to Winstrom on camera, praising them for all they have done on this case. The mother states, “You give off a vibe that you really care.” The mother then praises the female homicide investigator, with Winstrom and another cop smiling as the episode credits are rolling.
After watching two episodes, one could easily conclude that only Black & Brown people commit violent crimes and that the GRPD does the work to keep the public safe. However, the reality is quite different, where the GRPD is not preventing violence from happening, it traffics in racial stereotyping and celebrates cops as heroes. Anyone with half a brain is not buying this polished PR shit!
GRIID weekly audio digest #2
In the second installment of the GRIID audio digest, we bring you the following three stories from last week:
- At last week’s Town Hall meeting Rep. Scholten left early to avoid being held accountable and State Rep. Grant would not own up to questions on housing and immigration
- Copaganda: Deconstructing the GRPD TV series on HBO/MAX – Episode #1
- Politicians and rallies won’t save us: We need direct action, disruptions to systems of power and community care
GRIID invites our readers to share this audio digest and suggest platforms that we can share these weekly audio versions of our posts.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 