10,000 Black Men Named George screening in Grand Rapids 2/26
On Tuesday, the group Left Forum, will be hosting a screening of the film, 10,000 Black Men Named George.
10,000 Black Men Named George is the powerful true story of the first black-controlled union, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
When the Great Depression struck America in the 1920s finding work was hard, but if you were poor and black it was virtually impossible. Working as a porter for the Pullman Rail Company was an option, but it meant taking home a third as much as white employees and working some days for free. You could forget about being called by your real name — all black porters were simply called “George” after George Pullman.
Philip Randolph, a black journalist and socialist trying to establish a voice for these forgotten workers, agrees to fight for the Pullman porters’ cause and form the first black union in America. Livelihoods and lives would be put at risk in the attempt to gain 10,000 signatures of the men known only as “George.” This is the true story of how a courageous leader came to be known as “the most dangerous man in America.”
Left Forum Film
10,000 Black Men Named George
Tuesday, February 26
7:00PM
Institute for Global Education
1118 Wealthy SE, Grand Rapids
This film is free and open to the public.
Management responds with business propaganda to IWW Star Tickets Workers Union efforts to organize in Grand Rapids
Last month we reported on an IWW union organizing effort at Star Tickets, here in Grand Rapids.
There have been two kinds of responses to this news. First, the community has communicated their support with messages on the IWW Star Tickets Workers Union Facebook page and lots of gifts, such as food and flowers. (Sounds like Bread & Roses).
The other response to the workers organizing effort has been from management and as expected it hasn’t been pretty. Star Tickets owner Jack Krasula has created his own business propaganda to share with workers to try to counter the pro-worker messages of the IWW Star Tickets Workers Union.
Krasula has been distributing his business propaganda to workers in the hopes of influencing enough of the workers to vote against a union on March 6. Here is a sample of what the company’s propaganda looks like.
The IWW Star Tickets Workers Union has a fairly methodical response to Star Tickets management, which you can read on their Facebook Page, but we also asked some of the workers for their reaction to the anti-union propaganda. Here is what IWW Star Tickets Workers Union member Evelyn Stone had to say:
My reaction to the propaganda is that it’s really off-base, focusing on dues and bureaucracy when the IWW is different from other unions in exactly that regard. It also liberally applies double standards, accusing the union of not being able to guarantee we’ll get our demands, without holding Jack to that standard. Obviously HE’S not going to guarantee us anything if we’re on our own. We’ve been trying that one-on-one negotiation he prefers for years and nothing’s changed. And their argument seems to be “Star Tickets isn’t going to give you your demands either way so vote ‘no'”??
And trying to frame the IWW as some kind of outside entity is ironic, considering, while the union is just a bunch of people who’ve been working in this office who decided to form their own union, the firm that’s putting out all the anti-union material IS an outside entity. They know so little about our specific situation that they tried to use the scare tactic, “you might lose the benefits you have,” when almost no one in the office has benefits to begin with. And they tried to scare people by saying their dues could be as much as $27 a month, which is laughable, because nobody in this office makes anywhere near enough money to qualify for that level of dues. I’m sure we’d all be at the minimum dues level of $9 (or maybe even the sub-minimum level of $5). The firm is either being intentionally misleading there, or they are just using boilerplate anti-union arguments without bothering to research our specific office at all!
As for the reaction of coworkers, I know even though the propaganda urges people to “ask questions and get answers” the intention is not actually to get them to do that, and indeed people have been pretty silent on the topic during work hours. Though that may just be that they were annoyed by it and didn’t even bother to read it.
What do you anticipate happening with the campaign?
What I expect to happen between now and March 6th is that the company will allow things to deteriorate further and try to blame that on us. One of our demands is for them to hire more people for the Client Services department because they are so ridiculously understaffed that there’s no way for them to finish their work, which is obviously bad for the clients and therefore the whole company, and also causes problems in the operations of the Call Center.
It’s a tactic to shift the blame onto the overworked workers there for any mistakes they may make instead of placing it where it belongs, on the management that put them in a situation where it’s impossible for them to succeed. Management is going to blame the union for this, saying their hands are tied until after the election (they’ve actually claimed it’s illegal for them to make staffing changes until the election) but hopefully people are able to see through that, since, first of all, it’s not true–that staffing change is easily, easily framed as something they have to do anyway for their own good, outside of any negotiations with us. And secondly, they haven’t been afraid to make staffing changes in the call center during the election period. Not to mention, if they really believed this, and wanted to fix the situation, we gladly would have agreed to a much earlier election date.
They were the ones that wanted the maximum amount of time to campaign. To me, making things worse and blaming it on us is a transparent (and stupidly self-destructive) tactic. But it may be the most effective one they have.
Still, I am confident we will win the election, so our focus is going to have to shift to how to deal with similar tactics in our negotiations with Star Tickets as the recognized union.
The IWW Star Tickets Workers Union welcomes your continued support and solidarity and are even encouraging people to send messages to the owner and let him know that there is lots of public support for their right to organize.
Jack Krasula
Phone – 248-945-1127
Fax – 248-945-1129
Farmer vs. Monsanto Before US High Court
This article by Lauren McCauley is re-posted from Common Dreams. Editor’s Note: Another useful article to put Monsanto’s power in context can be found at Open Secrets, where their team documents not only which candidates the company contributes to, but which members of Congress have stock in the company. It is worth noting that both Michigan Congressmen Dave Camp and Fred Upton own stock in Monsanto.
Indiana soybean farmer, Hugh Bowman, is taking his one-man-war against agriculture giant Monsanto to the Supreme Court on Tuesday where both sides will present their arguments (.pdf) to the high court. The suit calls into question essential patent rights and, more importantly, challenges whether anyone can legally “control a product of life.”
A Monsanto customer for years, 75-year-old Bowman devotedly bought and planted their genetically modified (gm) ‘Roundup Ready’ soybean seeds each year. He crossed the corporation in 2007 when they accused Bowman of infringing on their seed patents after he planted an unmarked mix of soybeans which he purchased from a local grain elevator that supposedly contained the Monsanto gene.
After being ordered to pay $84,000, Bowman is appealing the charge and bringing his case to the high court where he will present before the chief justices, including former Monsanto attorney Justice Clarence Thomas.
“Bowman vs. Monsanto Co. will be decided based on the court’s interpretation of a complex web of seed and plant patent law,” writes Debbie Barker, Program Director for Save Our Seeds (SOS), and George Kimbrell, staff attorney for Center for Food Safety (CFS), in an op-ed published Tuesday, “but the case also reflects something much more basic: Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life?”
They continue:
[Monsanto’s] logic is troubling to many who point out that it is the nature of seeds and all living things, whether patented or not, to replicate. Monsanto’s claim that it has rights over a self-replicating natural product should raise concern. Seeds, unlike computer chips, for example, are essential to life. If people are denied a computer chip, they don’t go hungry. If people are denied seeds, the potential consequences are much more threatening.
The case has garnered national attention as it touches upon an essential debate between corporate ownership versus essential rights and sustainability.
In a supporting brief filed by the sustainable food advocacy group, the Center for Food Safety (CFS), they argue that intellectual property rules have spurred the privatization and concentration of the world’s seed supply with only ten companies controlling nearly two-thirds of all commercial seed for major crops, effectively driving up prices and dangerously limiting the variety of seeds planted. 
Bowman’s pro-bono representation Mark Walters, from the firm of Frommer Lawrence and Haug, is reportedly prepared to argue on the principle on “patent exhaustion” that the second-hand seeds are lawfully owned by the purchaser, not by the original patent holder.
As Walters explained to NPR, if you buy something that’s covered by a patent, you own it, outright. “You’re allowed to put it on Craigslist and sell it, you’re allowed to use it for your ‘ordinary pursuits of life’ is the quote from some of the old cases that we’re relying on. Imagine how commerce would work if patents owners could come out of nowhere and surprise purchasers and tell them, ‘Oh, you need to pay me a royalty, because I own a patent on this thing that you just bought.'”
The ramifications of this argument are widespread, as evidenced by the numerous other industries which have come to Monsanto’s defense including the biotech and computer software industries.
According to the Indiana Star, the Department of Justice is also siding with the corporate patent holders, reportedly asking the Supreme Court not to hear Bowman’s appeal on the basis that “the court’s decision could have repercussions for man-made cell lines, DNA molecules, some nanotechnologies and other technologies that involve self-replicating features.” Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, CFS and SOS issued a report, “Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers,” (.pdf) which examines how the “current seed patent regime has led to a radical shift to consolidation and control of global seed supply and how these patents have abetted corporations, such as Monsanto, to sue U.S. farmers for alleged seed patent infringement.”
Some of the reports findings include:
- As of January 2013, Monsanto, alleging seed patent infringement, had filed 144 lawsuits involving 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 different states.
- Today, three corporations control 53 percent of the global commercial seed market.
- Seed consolidation has led to market control resulting in dramatic increases in the price of seeds. From 1995-2011, the average cost to plant one acre of soybeans has risen 325 percent; for cotton prices spiked 516 percent and corn seed prices are up by 259 percent.
“Corporations did not create seeds,” said the reports lead author Debbie Barker, adding that their assertion of seed patents threatens a resource “that is vital to survival, and that, historically, has been in the public domain.”
LadyFestGR returns to Heartside on March 22 & 23!
Eight years ago, Tami Vandenberg and Sarah Scott organized a Women’s Event at the DAAC during Women’s History month and had a blast. When they heard Jes Kramer wanted to put together a women’s festival last year, they contacted her to see if it made sense to collaborate. “We decided to work together on Ladyfest 2012 and it was fantastic and hugely successful,” Vandenberg says. “The reason I helped make this event happen is to showcase the extremely talented women in our community and beyond, and to give the microphone to voices that we do not hear from often. From the workshops to the performers to the sponsors to the media, we are hoping to build a strong, confident community of women that can work together and celebrate together and collaborate together.
Ladyfest 2013 will include free workshops, a variety show, vendors and concerts featuring local, regional, and national performers. While all performers and presenters must self-identify as female, anyone is welcome to attend. Proceeds from the event will benefit Our Kitchen Table.
Performances
Jean Grae and Invincible- March 22 @The Pyramid Scheme (late show). Jean Grae rose to prominence in the underground hip-hop scene in NYC and has since built an international fan base. From Detroit, Invincible‘s spitfire wordplay has received acclaim from fans all across the world.
Night Jewel – March 22 @The Pyramid Scheme (early show). Despite its unpolished aesthetic and Ramona Gonzalez’s professed aversion to more conventional ideas about glamour, her music exists in the realm of gauzy fantasy: it is a dream world made reality.
Doctors’ Wives, the Bermudas and Claire Fisher. – March 23 @The Pyramid Scheme.
LadyFest Workshops
Workshops of LadyfestGR 2013 will take place at 3 locations in the Heartside neighborhood near The Pyramid Scheme, where Ladyfest concerts are held. The Bloom Collective’s 5th Annual Empowered Womyn’s Health Workshop will be hosting its workshop series as part of the Ladyfest line-up. OKT will present a gardening workshop, as well.
All workshops are FREE, open to the public and lead by Michigan women. Children are welcome to attend, but must be accompanied by an adult. Some mature content will be expressed/shown in workshops, so do your homework first, loves. Here’s the line-up
HEARTSIDE GALLERY AND STUDIO, 48 S. Division Ave:
12-1:30pm
Let’s Make Books! Bookmaking workshop with Victoria Marcetti and Toni Bal. Learn basic book-stitches and binding techniques, and leave with 2 finished books! Beginner-friendly, and all over 8yrs old welcome!
1:30-2pm
Get yr Tits Outta my Comics- a history of women superheroes, taught by Elyse Wild.
2-3pm
Draw your own Heroine! with Alysha Lach. The group will create our own female superheroes together, then you can draw out a comic using books made in the bookmaking workshop just beforehand!
20 person max per class, so be sure to show up on time!
(106) GALLERY, 106 S. Division Ave:
Women’s Health Workshops
2-2:45pm,
Transhealth Info, Jena Lewis from GVSU (main floor)
2-2:45pm
Legislation and reproductive rights, Dani Vilella from GR NOW (downstairs space)
3-3:45
Menstrual health/sew yr own pads with Rachel Hamilton of Bloom Collective and Mandi Creveling from Our Kitchen Table (main floor)
3-3:45
Basic Sex Ed, fertility, birth control options with Kym d from Planned Parenthood (downstairs space)
4-4:30
Aromatherapy for womyn with Deirdre and Kathy Cunningham from Bloom Collective (main floor)
4:00-4:30pm
Food Gardening in Containers with Mandi Creveling and Roni Van Buren from Our Kitchen Table (downstairs space)
4:30-5pm Yoga Nidra for deep rest and intention with Stelle Marie from The Bloom Collective (downstairs space)
30 per max per class!
THE DAAC, 115 S. Division Ave.
3-4 pm Women in Rock, presented by Shelley Salant
4-5 diy event organizing with marlee grace
5-6pm Media and advertising to girls and women, with Julia Mason from GVSU
40 person max per class!
After the workshops head to the Women’s Potluck from 5:30-6:30pm at Bloom Collective’s new space at 8 Jefferson.
Please visit LadyFestGR.com for a full schedule!
Earlier today, Democracy Now featured a story on a somewhat hidden group known as Donor’s Trust, which has created another layer of influence peddling in US policy and elections.
The featured guest on the Democracy Now segment was John Dunbar, politics editor at the Center for Public Integrity and co-author of the group’s months-long investigation into Donors Trust.
The article by the Center for Public Integrity report identifies usual suspects that channel money through Donor’s Trust, such as the Koch Brothers. However, if one looks at the graphic created by the Center, you can see that the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation is the second largest contributor to Donor’s Trust, giving well over a million dollars.
The Center for Public Integrity documents that much of the funding from foundations like the DeVos Foundation are channeled to far right Think Tanks, such as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Here is what their report says about Mackinac:
Ten state-level think tanks got a total of $200,000 from Donors Trust to attend ALEC meetings in 2011 including the Michigan-based Mackinac Center and the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, which introduced a raft of anti-union model bills at ALEC’s spring 2012 conference.
The Mackinac Center has gotten $2.4 million from Donors Trust since 2008, according to the Bridge Project, a liberal think tank.
One Donors Trust grant to Mackinac Center was earmarked for “statehouse reporting” efforts. Mackinac put the money toward a media machine of blogs and research studies making the case for the state’s new “right-to-work” law.
The Mackinac Center works closely with other Donors Trust recipients, including the Franklin Center, which counts Mackinac’s “media” outlets in Michigan as affiliates.
The Franklin Center, Mackinac and another major recipient of Donors Trust cash, Americans for Prosperity, co-hosted a day-long training for “citizen watchdogs” featuring speakers on “school choice” and “union reform” from the Mackinac Center and Republican state Rep. Tom McMillin, who is also an ALEC member.
Besides the outright money that people like Richard DeVos give to candidates or the political parties to influence policy and election outcomes, they are finding other ways to channel even more funds from their foundations to an organization that is having a major impact on legislative policy across the country and right here in Michigan.
Fracking Alert: Shale Gas Bubble Looms, Aided by Wall Street
This article by Steve Horn is re-posted from DeSmogBlog.
Two long-awaited reports were published today at ShaleBubble.org by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI) and the Energy Policy Forum (EPF).
Together, the reports conclude that the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) boom could lead to a “bubble burst” akin to the housing bubble burst of 2008.
While most media attention towards fracking has focused on the threats to drinking water and health in communities throughout North America and the world, there is an even larger threat looming. The fracking industry has the ability – paralleling the housing bubble burst that served as a precursor to the 2008 economic crisis – to tank the global economy.
Playing the role of Cassandra, the reports conclude that “the so-called shale revolution is nothing more than a bubble, driven by record levels of drilling, speculative lease & flip practices on the part of shale energy companies, fee-driven promotion by the same investment banks that fomented the housing bubble…” a summary details. “Geological and economic constraints – not to mention the very serious environmental and health impacts of drilling – mean that shale gas and shale oil (tight oil) are far from the solution to our energy woes.”
PCI’s report is titled “Drill Baby, Drill,” authored by PCI Fellow and former oil and gas industry geoscientist J. Dave Hughes, while EPF’s report is titled “Shale Gas and Wall Street,” authored by EPF Director and former Wall Street financial analyst Deborah Rogers.
“100 Years of Natural Gas”? Uh huh…
In President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address, he repeated the fracking industry’s favorite mantra: there are “100 years” of natural gas sitting beneath us.
“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” he stated.
Hughes concludes that the “100 years” trope serves as a disinformation smokescreen and at current production rates, there are – at best – 25 years under the surface.
Industry proponents rely on a figure known as “technically recoverable reserves” when they promote the potential of shale basins. The figure that actually matters though, is production rates, or what the wells actually pull out of the reserves when fracked.
In the case of U.S. shale gas, the booked reserves are operating on what Hughes coins a “drilling treadmill,” suffering from the law of “diminishing returns.”
Hughes analyzed the industry’s production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale basins nationwide utilizing the DI Desktop/HPDI database, widely used both by the industry and the U.S. government. He sums up the quagmire he discovered in doing so, writing,
Wells experience severe rates of depletion…This steep rate of depletion requires a frenetic pace of drilling…to offset declines. Roughly 7,200 new shale gas wells need to be drilled each year at a cost of over $42 billion simply to maintain current levels of production. And as the most productive well locations are drilled first, it’s likely that drilling rates and costs will only increase as time goes on.
The reality, he explains, is that five shale gas basins currently produce 80 percent of the U.S. shale gas bounty and those five are all in steep production rate decline.
And shale oil? More of the same.
Over 80 percent of the oil produced and marketed comes from two basins: Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, both of which are visible from outer space satellites.
“[T]aken together shale gas and tight oil require about 8,600 wells per year at a cost of over $48 billion to offset declines,” Hughes writes. “Tight oil production is projected to…peak in 2017 at 2.3 million barrels per day [and be tapped by about 2025]…In short, tight oil production from these plays will be a bubble of about ten years’ duration.”
At current production rates, Hughes concludes, there is 5 billion barrels of shale oil located underneath the Bakken and Eagle Ford, which equates to a measly ten months worth of oil at current runaway climate change-causing U.S. oil consumption rates.
PCI accompanied Hughes’ report with 43 charts and graphs and a digital U.S. map with the production data of all 65,000 fracking wells in the lower 48.
Wall Street’s Complicity
Roughly 17 months ago, activists from around the country set up encampments outside of Wall Street, coining themselves Occupy Wall Street. As Rogers’ report demonstrates, they had the right target in mind.
Rogers opens the report on a defiant note.
“The recent natural gas market glut was largely effected through overproduction of natural gas in order to meet financial analyst’s production targets,” she wrote. “Further, leases were bundled and flipped on unproved shale fields in much the same way as mortgage-backed securities had been bundled and sold on questionable underlying mortgage assets prior to the economic downturn of 2007.”
In its early days operating in the U.S., the industry cloaked itself as a “mom-and-pop” shop start-up venture.
Rogers unpacked the reality behind this rhetorical ploy, writing that Wall Street firms are “intricately married to [shale gas and oil corporations]…With the help of Wall Street analysts acting as primary proponents for shale gas and oil, themarkets were frothed into a frenzy.”
In other words, there are two spheres of economics unfolding: day-to-day in-field shale oil and gas production economics and Wall Street high finance economics. It’s the insane economics of Wall Street investors fueling the economic decisions of those working in the field, in what Rogers describes as a “financial co-dependency.”
Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Are we witnessing another “Inside Job” of the sort Charles Ferguson portrayed in his Academy Award-winning documentary film by that namesake?
In his 1951 classic play, “Requiem for a Nun,” William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
These are the words of a sage, particularly given the past century of “The Great American Bubble Machine,” as Rolling Stone investigative journalist Matt Taibbi has documented of Wall Street’s behavior financing multiple economic spheres that have led to near system-wide collapse.
At the very least then, if it all “hits the fan,” we can’t say we weren’t forewarned.
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.
