Victory! – for the Non-Resistance
This article by Glen Ford is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
“Get Away Sandy – God and Obama Will Save Us” read the graffiti, scrawled man-high on a cinderblock wall in the majority Black town of Plainfield, New Jersey. It is an apt articulation of African American politics as we descend into the First Black President’s second term.
Black folks may or may not have a prayer, but they certainly don’t have any earthly influence on the direction of the nation or on a president for whom they gave near-unanimous support, while asking nothing in return.
Wait a minute! I’m hearing echoes of…a familiar voice:
“We have learned that Black politicians and activist-poseurs have an infinite capacity to celebrate not having engaged in struggle with Power, and that the Black masses can be made drunk by the prospect of vicariously (through Obama) coming to power.” – Black Agenda Report, “The Obama ’08 Phenomenon: What Have We Learned?” November 4, 2008.
As Marx said, history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” Independent Black politics, rooted in the historical African American consensus on social justice, racial equality and peace, definitively collapsed, after a long illness, with the first Obama presidential campaign. The tragedy was compounded, exponentially, by the timing, coinciding with capitalism’s greatest crisis since the Great Depression. The autumn of 2008 was an historical juncture for the nation and the world. Either the people would erect structures to protect themselves from being crushed under the dead weight of a system in terminal decay, or the Lords of Capital would swallow the State whole, and buy themselves some time.
African Americans, the most politically volatile and left-oriented U.S. constituency – a people specifically targeted by Wall Street’s machinations – had an historical role to play. “The man STRUCK,” said Frederick Douglass, “is the man to cry out.” But Black folks had already been struck silly with Obama’Laid.
The rulers had, at long last, found our Achilles Heel, the weakest spot in African Americans’ political armor. Our reflexive racial solidarity (actually, an aspect of Black nationalism), which had served us so well, for so long, short-circuited our progressive political instincts. We became fodder for Obama, the slicker-than-Slick-Willie corporate guy with the brown face.
Despite his background, Obama knew enough about African Americans to pay us no attention and less respect. There would be no penalty. Black folks had convinced themselves that Obama needed our protection; it never occurred to most of us that we needed protection from him – not during the primaries, when he praised Ronald Reagan’s reaction to the “excesses” of the Sixties, or when he refused to endorse even a voluntary halt to home foreclosures (while Hillary Clinton and John Edwards endorsed “voluntary” and mandatory moratoriums, respectively); not in the last weeks before his inauguration, when Obama announced that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and all “entitlements” would be “on the table” for chopping under his administration.
Instead, a million Black folks gathered on the National Mall for what we at BAR called “The Great Black Hajj of 2009,” a pilgrimage, as if to Mecca, in celebration of Obama’s ascension. There, he proclaimed to the multitudes: “In the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
Dutifully, Black folks set aside the last vestiges of their vaunted distrust of Power. Henceforth, African Americans would consider themselves as a Palace Guard – the antithesis of independent political actors. Thus was Obama empowered to become the “More Effective Evil.”
With little resistance on the Left, and virtually none from organized Black America, Obama has worked miracles for the resuscitation of the Lords of Capital and their imperial apparatus – feats that only a Black corporate Democrat could accomplish. After saving George Bush’s bank bailout in October of 2008 (it passed only after candidate Obama’s intervention), Obama undertook the historic mission of placing the U.S. State at the total disposal of finance capital. Under Obama’s watch, the Treasury Department and, especially, the Federal Reserve have funneled at least $16 trillion to Wall Street and its foreign annexes – a sum greater than the national GDP. The “free money” window at the Federal Reserve has become a permanent fixture of the global financial order, permanently blurring the lines between the U.S. state and international finance capital. Obama has embedded the state into the banks, and vice versa, in ways that cannot be undone without causing the system to collapse. In a very real sense, the “good faith and credit” of the United States has become a collective corporate asset of the Lords of Capital – an outcome that fits the classic structural description of fascism. No Republican could have delivered the state apparatus so effectively to the banks – there would have been fierce resistance from within the Democratic base, as well as libertarian Right. But Obama has proven to be the more effective facilitator of the bankers’ state.
Social Security was untouchable – until Obama laid his hands on it. Beginning with his pre-inauguration pronouncements on entitlements, Obama has been the guiding hand of an austerity offensive that did not exist on Election Day, 2008. Instead, Obama made deficit reduction his own priority, at a time when pundits were saying obituaries over the GOP. (Much as they are, today.) The Black Democrat appointed the Right-weighted Deficit Reduction Commission to promulgate a $4 trillion blueprint for austerity, a formula that matched Republic proposals in 2011. The blueprint would have been the basis for Obama’s cherished Grand Bargain had the GOP not balked at “modest” taxes on the rich – levies that are irrelevant to those who will lose their programs under the axe. Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.
Imperial aggression has never fared better than under the opposition-less Obama. At one point, he was bombing five countries simultaneously, pretty good work for a Nobel Peace Prize winner – or did the prize help empower him to such heights of bellicosity? His ever-evolving “Kill List” includes not only individuals of all nationalities (including our own) but also any country whose government is inconvenient to the United States. With “humanitarian” jargon as his only justification, President Obama has attempted to render international law a dead letter. No nation has any rights that he feels bound to respect. Obama, with his drone armadas and multiplying Special Forces troops, represents a far greater threat to global civilization – which must be rooted in law! – than the failed conquerer George Bush (who actually negotiated the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq). Unlike Bush, Obama has promulgated his own, novel doctrine of war, which declares that wars only exist when sufficient numbers of Americans become casualties. Under this construct, Libya was not a war, and the possibilities for U.S. non-war depredations are endless.
Preventive detention is the crown jewel of Obama’s presidential exceptionalism. Statutory authority to imprison Americans without charge or trial was beyond Bush’s reach, and he knew it. But Obama guided a bill through the Congress with very little Democratic opposition. He is the more effective secret police warden.
Now Obama has won another “mandate,” which he will use to finish the projects he started: wider wars, a more profound government subservience to finance capital, and that “new legal architecture” on national security that he warned about on the Daily Show, a few weeks ago. He looks forward to fulfilling his austerity dreams early in his new term: “I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time.”
The non-resisters have won a non-victory against an unimpressive enemy, while the more effective evil plots new atrocities.
You will note that I have not specifically mentioned Black folks since the beginning of this article; that’s because African Americans have made themselves irrelevant – not just for the second Obama presidency, but possibly deep into the future. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” and Black folks have failed to demand even elementary respect from this president, much less concrete programs, or peace. Obama isn’t the only one who has noted Black ineffectuality. Until an independent African American politics and political movement can be rebuilt, there is no reason for a president or Congress to pay “the Blacks” any more attention than Obama did.
Anti-fracking forum to be held in Allegan on Monday, November 12
Several organizations are hosting an informational forum on Monday to address the growing problem of fracking in Michigan.
Michigan Land, Air, Water Defense & Citizens Against Drilling on Public Lands with support from FLOW and Food & Water Watch are hosting the forum with speakers who will address a variety of tactics people can use to stop and possibly ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing in Michigan.
Calling the event “Michigan Fracktivism,” the organizations want people to not only know what the consequences of fracking will be for Michigan, but how they can be part of an effort to stop it.
The Facebook event page says:
Please join us for an evening focused on the topic of fracking and how we can stop it here in Michigan. Hear from experts in law, media and organizing for a workshop-meets-forum-meets-presentation event!
Attendees will have the opportunities to hear about legal strategies, media & organizing your community from renowned speakers!
Michigan Fracktivism
Monday, November 12
6:30 – 8:00PM
Griswold Auditorium – 401 Hubbard Street, Allegan, MI
This event is free, light refreshments will be served.
Where did the GR elite spend their money in the 2012 elections?
Well, it’s finally over. One thing we can say about the 2012 elections is that they were the most expensive ever, with roughly $2 billion dollars spend on the Presidential race alone and that is without the last few weeks of the spending being accounted for yet.
Billions more were spent on Congressional and Senate races, with nearly $20 million spent in the race in Michigan between Debbie Stabenow ($14 million) and challenger Pete Hoekstra ($5 million).
However, what is interesting to look at is how the economic elite from Grand Rapids spent their money in the most expensive US election ever. When we say GR elite, we are referring to some of the same people identified in a September posting that provided what we called a Grand Rapids Power Analysis.
Many of the local elites have residence in the 49503 zip code area and according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the 49503 zip code also set a record for money contributed to candidates or political parties in the 2012 Election cycle. The total money spent from the 49503 zip was $1,556,252.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics this amount contributed from zip code 49503 was 28 times as much as the average zip code area. The average for zip code areas spent on buying influence is $54,969.
The top contributors from 49503 are people we have identified as part of the local ruling class, people with economic wealth who also influence policy is a variety of ways. Most of them own businesses, are CEOs, sit on board(s) of directors or are part of organizations such as the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, the Econ Club of Grand Rapids, The Right Place Inc., Grand Action and the West Michigan Policy Forum.
The top financial contributors from zip code 49503 are several members of the DeVos family, such as Doug DeVos, President of Amway/Alticor. According to the data Doug DeVos contributed $68,300 to several Republican National committees and some directly to Mitt Romney’s campaign.
Another member of the DeVos family, Dick DeVos contributed $82,300 in 2012, mostly to the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Michigan. Combined with other members of the DeVos family who claim residency in the 49503 zip, the collectively gave over half a million dollars, mostly to the Republican Party or candidates like Mitt Romney and Justin Amash.
Another resident from 49503 who is part of the local elite is Peter Secchia. According to Open Secrets, Secchia contributed $66,600 in the 2012 election cycle. Like the DeVos family members, he also gave to the Republican National Committee and Mitt Romney.
Another member of the local elite is Michael Jandernoa, business owner who sits on the boards of the Van Andel Institute, Grand Action and the West Michigan Policy Forum. Jandernoa contributed $160,000 to the Republican Party and Republican candidates in this most recent election cycle.
In the 49506 zip code area Crystal Flash owner Tom Fehsenfeld contributed $40,800 to the Democratic Party and Debbie Stabenow. Another 49506 resident Mark Murray (Meijer), contributed $71,100 to the Republican Party, Mitt Romney and Fred Upton.
From the 49546 zip code there was a sizeable amount contributed. For example, former Calvin College President Gaylen Byker, contributed $44,300 to the Republican National Committee, the Michigan Republican Party and Justin Amash.
Another member of the local elite, CEO of Autocam John Kennedy, was a major contributor. According to Open Secrets, Kennedy contributed $323,850 is the 2012 election cycle to CatholicVote.org, Restore Our Future, the Republican National Committee, Republican Party of Michigan, Pete Hoekstra, Justin Amash and Mike Rogers. Kennedy also sits on the boards of the Right Place Inc., the Van Andel Institute and the Acton Institute.
David Frey, with the Frey Foundation, contributed $92,550 during the 2012 election cycle. He directed his money towards the Republican Party, Mitt Romney, Justin Amash, Tim Walberg and Pete Hoekstra. Frey is also part of Grand Action.
This is just a sampling of the local power elite and how they try to influence electoral politics. While one could argue that the Republicans did not win the White House, they did retain control of the Michigan House of Representatives and the 2nd and 3rd Congressional districts are still held by Republicans. Also, it should be noted that all of the state ballot proposals in Michigan opposed by the reactionary right and the business community were defeated, except for Proposal One. Either way in the two-party dominated system we have big money wins, since the Democrats also relied on wealthy individuals and corporations to win or maintain the seats they held in the 2012 election.
PR stunt from Ford can’t hide their role in Climate Change
In their weekly e-newsletter, Michigan Loves Manufacturing included a Press Release from the Ford Motor Company announcing its donation to the Red Cross for Hurricane Sandy disaster relief.
Like many news agencies, this business journal doesn’t question such an action from one of the world’s largest auto companies nor do they see the irony. The irony is, one of the largest contributors to climate change, which is the real cause of Hurricane Sandy, wants to provide some “relief” to the victims.
Ford, like the other auto companies, has a long history of contributing to pollution and climate change. The company has made massive profits from imposing a means of transportation on the public, particularly in the US, that has been one of the major contributing factors in climate change. The resource extraction necessary for the manufacturing cars/trucks is massive, the fossil fuels used to make cars/trucks is massive and the fossil fuels necessary to operate cars/trucks has all been a major reason why humanity is faced with the climate crisis we have today.
In 2001, the Ford Motor Company acknowledged that, “it was responsible for releasing approximately 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases annually, which amounts to a whopping 1 to 2 percent of all man-made emissions.”
The company also has a long history of climate denial. In 2006, there was a leaked memo stating that GM and Ford were both financing an ad campaign by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that was denying global warming.
In addition, the Ford Motor Company has aggressively fought any regulations or higher emissions standards that the US government has sheepishly tried to impose on the auto industry. For example, in a January 12 letter to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Ford Motor Co. complained that California and 13 other states adopted stringent CO2 tailpipe emissions standards.
Ford states:
The enforcement of the state-specific standards would have a detrimental impact on the auto industry, and the 8 million jobs it directly supports, by forcing manufacturers to comply with incompatible state and federal [greenhouse gas] regulations… The potential impacts and costs of such standards include the following:
- Adversely impacting automotive-related employment in states not adopting the California standards
- Forcing dealers in affected states to restrict, ration or eliminate sales of selected models
- Forcing manufacturers to reduce or eliminate production of selected modelswell
- Reducing the selection of vehicles available to consumers in affected states
According to Open Secrets, the Ford Motor Company has spent $107 million lobbying Congress on industry regulations and has contributed almost $10 million to candidates running for office since 1990.
Some environmentalist groups have been bamboozled by the Ford Motor Company’s claim to be adopting green policies. The Sierra Club not only runs ads for the Ford Motor Company is its national publication, they even have been running a joint promotional campaign with the company touting their latest SUV the Mercury Mariner, which has a reported fuel efficiency of 33 city, 29 highway miles per gallon.
Greenwashing attempts aside, the Ford Motor Company would in a sane world be tried for major environmental crimes and be listed near the top of the list of individual companies that has made billions off of environmental destruction and climate change. Then again, this should not come as a surprise, since the Ford Motor Company has a strong relationship with Nazi Germany and profited immensely from doing business with the Germans almost til the end of WWII.
This article is re-posted from Earth First News.
McKenna, Long and Ostridge on K st is the main law firm representing Transcanada, the builder of the Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline. On the 5th of November, a march of about 50 protesters from Chesapeake Earth First! and Occupy DC stormed their building. Four were arrested when they staged a sit-in and refused to leave.
Secondary blockade to defend the blockade inside by delaying the cops
This protest was in solidarity with the Tar Sands Blockade in Texas, on the 43 day of the blockade. It was in solidarity with the Lakota people defending their lands from Keystone XL pipeline itself, and with all Native people resisting the tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada, It was also in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street folks bottom-lining Hurricane Sandy relief in NY, and the people who were hit by this climate-change driven storm.
The entire building targetted by the protest bears McKenna, Long and Ostridge’s name, and they have an office on the first floor, accessable from the lobby. The civil disobediance blockade was across that locked doorway inside the building.
Originally protesters controlled the doors from the inside as a precaution against anyone being trapped if security locked the doors. The cops were very slow to arrive,
When cops had pushed enough protesters out of the building to get control of the doors, security locked them from the inside, violating DC fire codes. In a real emergency these doors will yield to being body-slammed from the inside if they work the same way as the doors at Bechtel, but that’s still a fire code violation.
When more cops showed up to arrest the 4 people sitting down(and escort out the two standing behing them with the banner), protesters set an secondary, arm-locked blockade across the front doors to delay the police.
In the end, 4 people were arrested, and a loud message was sent to McKenna, Long and Ostridge that those who represent the builders of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline risk receiving the same treatment that TransCanada themselves does. It’s like doing business with Huntingdon Life Sciences, only worse.
Already the Alberta tar sands mining project is killing Indigenous people, especially children, by poisoning the water they drink. Already Lakota people are being killed by being driven off the road by overloaded trucks crossing Pine Ridge. Already children living near the mine sites are being poisoned and some are dying, Already Transcanada is using eminent domain in Texas to force farmers out of the way of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Already we are being hit by climate-driven superstorms, with Katrina and Sandy only 7 years apart, plus that furious “derecho” storm this summer. If all 4 segments of this project are ever finished, the killing of the Lakota and other Indigenous people will accelerate, and the climate will get worse fast. Since the pipeline has been called ‘the fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet,” it is doubtful the rest of us would outlast the Lakota by very long.
Who Will Stand Up to Obama Now?
This articleby Jeffrey St. Clair is re-posted from CounterPunch.
Barack Obama is a technocrat and he just won a technocratic victory. His reelection campaign, lacking any kind of arching philosophy or defense of his own disturbing tenure as president, became a bland exercise in political calculus, targeting individual precincts, swing counties and fractionated demographic sectors.
Obama’s victory, at the cost of $2 billion, is about as thrilling as completing a game of Sudoku. Obama was propelled to his slender popular vote win by those that the Republicans almost ritually abused: women, blacks, gays and Hispanics. Ironically, these are people that the Obama administration has also ruthlessly strafed for four years. But Obama smiled as he cut the lower-classes adrift in the midsts of a cratering economy, while Romney expressed only contempt for them.
Mitt Romney ran an inept campaign. As a candidate, he was even more aloof, arrogant and emotionally distant than Obama. If Obama’s campaign lacked any unifying message, Romney’s resembled a kind of political Brownian Motion of constantly drifting themes in a tank of rancid and racially-charged sludge. He doomed his chances with his peculiar choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate, who personified the budgetary cruelties of the Republican right and alienated aging white voters who otherwise might have wandered into his camp.
Where does Obama go now? The House remains firmly in the hands of militant right-wingers. The Senate will continue to be paralyzed by the filibuster-happy minority and a spineless Democratic majority. Stalemate? Probably not. Second terms are almost always about polishing a presidential legacy, already being harped upon by the withered likes of Tom Brokaw. Obama will be desperate for some signature legislative victories.
So what to expect from Obama? An aggressive new plan to combat climate change? A real federal jobs program aimed at full-employment? Liberalization of immigration policies? Decriminalization of marijuana? Deep cuts in the defense budget? Rollback of the Patriot Act? A ban on assassinations by drones? Movement toward single-payer health care? Sure.
No. Clinton will be his template: the Clinton who pushed for the elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act, the gutting of welfare and the war on Serbia. Obama will pursue bi-partisanship with a vengeance. Obama has always been a committed neoliberal, a closeted agent of austerity. Now he no longer needs to even play-act for his political base. He can openly betray their interests.
In a few months, the president will reach out to his old pal Paul Ryan to take a stroll across that tragic terrain known as the common ground in pursuit of those twin obsessions of the elites: deficit reduction and entitlement reform. In the name of political conciliation, Obama will piously move to slash away at Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the last frail fabrics of the federal social welfare programs. These savage cuts will be enthusiastically cheered by the mainstream press, Wall Street and the Washington establishment.
Who will stand up to challenge him?
That is the real question posed by this enervating election.
The local group Mutual Aid GR is hosting a meeting this Saturday to talk about next steps in resisting the fossil fuel industry.
According to the facebook event posting:
Next steps – after organizing the anti-fracking action on September 21 and participating in the DNR protest in Lansing on October 24, Mutual Aid GR wants your input on where we go from here.
Some of us want to keep focusing on anti-fracking actions, but need your input and ideas on what those actions might look like. Also, do we organize to fight the tar sands pipelines that are planned to go through Michigan? and what can we do collectively to fight climate change?
If you have ideas, anger and want to make a difference, please join us for this discussion/meeting in the lower level of the Steepletown Center building. Also, feel free to bring food and drink to share.
Mutual Aid GR meeting on Resisting the Fossil Fuel Industry
Saturday, November 10
3:00PM
671 Davis NW, Grand Rapids
Lower Level of the Steepletown Neighborhood Center
Michigan companies Dow and Kellogg fund the defeat of food labeling proposal in California
One outcome of the 2012 elections was the defeat of Proposal 37 in California, a proposal that sought to require that food sold in the state included labeling, particularly if there were any GMOs – Genetically Modified Organisms.
It was an issue that generated a ton of money, particularly from the corporate forces in opposition to complete transparency about what is in the food that people are eating.
The most recent data shows that groups wanting food labeling in California raised a few million dollars, compared to the nearly $50 million raised by food corporations opposed to telling people what they are really eating.
According to an article by Jill Richardson:
Coca-Cola might not want to label the genetically engineered corn used to make the high fructose corn syrup in its sodas, but it also owns organic and “natural” brands like Honest Tea and Odwalla. Likewise, PepsiCo, owner of Izze and Naked Juice, donated $1.7 million to oppose Prop 37 – more than every other donor except Monsanto and DuPont, and even more than the other four major biotech corporations (Bayer, BASF, Dow, and Syngenta).
Other brands owned by Prop 37-opposing corporations include Lightlife and Alexia (owned by Conagra); Kashi, Gardenburger, Bear Naked, and Morningstar Farms (Kellogg); Cascadian Farm Organic, Muir Glen and Larabar (General Mills); R.W. Knudsen Farms and Santa Cruz Organic (Smucker); and Silk and Horizon Organic (Dean Foods).
Looking at the list of corporations named, one can see that there are two based in Michigan – Dow and Kellogg. Monsanto was by far that largest contributor to the defeat of Prop 37, but Dow contributed $2 million and Kellogg chipped in $790,700.
This is just one more example of how companies like Dow and Kellogg, despite all their claims to be environmentally and socially responsible companies are simply committed to making a profit.
The defeat of the public’s right to know what it is eating is just one more reason to not financially support companies like Kellogg, Dow and Coca Coal by boycotting them. However, boycotting these companies is not enough, they must be confronted by a resistance movement that can put them out of business since they continue to demonstrate that they do not care about the public well being.
Ride the Taco
This video by subMedia is re-posted from Dissident Voice. subMedia’s video collection is a fabulous mix of satire, analysis and presentation of global political resistance.
On tap this week:
- Ride the Taco
- Romney and Obama’s climate silence
- Chinese Resistance to Civilization
- You are not in Mexico S.A.
- Athens Anarchist Anti-Fascist Motorcycle Club
- Severed Heads of State
- Dawn Paley‘s “Drug War Capitalism”
Panel discussion on homeless LGBTQ Youth held at GVSU today
The GVSU School of Social Work hosted a panel discussion this morning at the downtown campus on the topic of LGBTQ Youth and homelessness.
The panel included Susan Sheppard with Arbor Circle, Mary Alice Walker with Heartside Ministry and Colette Seguin-Beighley with the GVSU LGBT Resource Center.
Colette began the discussion by telling a story about a gay youth whom Colette had correspondence with. The young man said that his mother hated the church that Colette was part of, because it was an open and affirming church, which is why the gay youth decided to continue correspondence with Colette.
The young man had faced homelessness because his family did not accept his identity, so Colette and her family took him in for the next 6 months. It was her first encounter with a homeless LGBTQ youth.
In a time where Marriage Equality is becoming more acceptable, homeless LGBTQ youth is not really on the radar screen for both progressive sectors and many LGBT organizations across the country. Colette said it is a much more difficult issue to tackle and that it is one that needs to dealt with through an intersectional lens.
Mary Alice Walker, who works at Heartside Ministry, talked about how their organization has recently designated their space as a safe space for the LGBTQ community. She told a story about a 21 year old Black bisexual man who has used the services at Heartside, but how his identity and the fact that he is now 21 has limited the kinds of services and safe spaces for him, since he is no longer a youth.
Mary Alice also talked about how LGBTQ youth are often bullied in a variety of circumstances. She also addressed the lack of services available to LGBTQ youth, particularly Trans youth, since most shelters will not allow them to stay since they do not identify as male or female. Mary Alice also talked about how those in the social service profession needed to not only become familiar with the terminology and identifying language that LGBTQ youth use, so that greater sensitivity can be part of the services offered.
Susan Sheppard, who works for Arbor Circle, talked about the gaps in the community. She talked a bit about the history of federal policy on homeless youth in the US, a policy, which has never included any language specific to LGBTQ youth.
In Grand Rapids there is The Bridge, Homeless Youth Services and the Street Outreach Program, which is all part of Arbor Circle. Susan talked about a variety of issues that contributed to the homelessness of LGBTQ youth, but that her staff tries to focus on providing a safe space and building relationships with these youth.
During the Q&A part of the program, most of the questions focused on issues of parental involvement, church involvement, federal funding or other social service focused questions. The conversation clearly demonstrated that this is a complex issue that includes basic social services such as housing, counseling, food assistance, transportation needs, health care and HIV/AIDS services. It seems clear that there are inadequate amount of services available to homeless LGBTQ youth in Kent County, plus a lack of understanding from some service providers about LGBTQ youth and homophobia.
What was lacking in the discussion was looking at this issue through a much bigger lens and outside of the social service framework. The panel was asked by this writer about the importance of looking at root causes of LGBTQ homelessness and the benefits of social movements to address this problem instead of just social services.
Susan Sheppard acknowledged that having a strong social movement would be important in addressing root causes, but she also suggested that the emphasis be on legislation. Colette Seguin-Beighley agreed that social movements would be important to not only reframe the issue of LGBTQ homeless youth, but could also get people to think about how the work could be done specifically by folks in the LGBTQ community. She said that there are people talking about starting a housing collective that would assist homeless LGBTQ youth, but not in a non-profit model. She also stated at one point that funding is always an issue, but not because the money doesn’t exist, it’s what we spend it on. Beighley noted that federal funding has been cut for some of the projects for homelessness, while at the same time millions have left this community to funds the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and that these are connections that need to be made.
