This Day in Resistance History – The Chicago Eviction Riots
The Great Depression hit working people hard all over the country, especially in industrial cities like Chicago.
By 1931 there were roughly 750,000 unemployed living in Chicago and many municipal workers and public school teachers were not getting paid on time or at all beginning that spring.
With unemployment so high and people not getting paid for their work, landlords began giving out eviction notices all over the city. Some people left quietly, but many people started to resist the thought of being homeless and began to stay in the rental property they inhabited.
The landlords began to use the legal system and the Chicago police to physically force people out of their homes, but the more that people witnessed this kind of brutality the more it caused people to want to resist this injustice.
At times people would pile up their furniture near the entrance of the door so that it was nearly impossible for landlords or the police to get in. Other times people would stack their furniture in front of the house near the sidewalk as visible sign of protest. Often this kind of resistance was spontaneous, where people would get an eviction notice and then walk around in their neighborhoods telling people what would happen. This sometimes would lead to a march and clashes with cops.
People also took action that was more organized and in early August of 1931 an estimated 60,000 people marched to protest the new eviction laws in Chicago. The march turned ugly when police began attacking protestors. At least 3 protestors were killed and several cops injured, but the eviction uprising also led to the creation of unemployment councils and unions in Chicago and around the country.
From eviction riots to foreclosure crisis
Today, millions of Americans are faced with very similar circumstances with thousands of people being evicted daily across the country and millions confronted with home foreclosures.
Like the first Great Depression some people are responding to the foreclosure crisis by protesting and refusing to leave. There have even been stories where local law enforcement has refused to evict people as they see it as an inhuman act.
There are also organized groups that have sprung up all over the US since 2008 as a response to the foreclosures. Groups like Detroit Moratorium Now have organized homeowners and tenants to fight to keep their homes and they have engaged in organized resistance to the banks and other lending institutions that have profited from the foreclosure crisis.
This kind of a movement does not exist in Grand Rapids, but there is the group Foreclosure Response. Foreclosure Response connects people facing foreclosure to resources and advocates for change to stop foreclosure, which is important work. However, the local group doesn’t seem to be engaging the power structure or the banks that are the cause of the foreclosure crisis, nor are they advocating direct action as a response.
Maybe we need to reclaim the spirit of resistance that people engaged in after the 1929 economic crash, take to the streets, demand housing rights for all and organize tenant unions to counter the power of contemporary landlords.
Last Thursday, Milk for Thought’s “Latch On America Tour” Big Pink Bus brought together a host of breastfeeding advocates from across Kent County. Participants included area doulas, midwives, childbirth educators, La Leche League leaders and lactation consultants. The Kent County Health Department and Healthy Kent Breastfeeding Coalition provided information on the benefits of breastfeeding and various programs supporting breastfeeding mothers.
“It was a fun way to bring together our communities’ many breastfeeding resources. The event gave each an avenue to reach out to families so that more people may find the help and support they need,” said midwife, Shannon Pawson. “Breastfeeding isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it!”
“I really appreciated the idea of coming together as a community to show there is a support mechanism for breastfeeding moms,” added Kelly Grieve, a Grand Rapids La Leche leader.
Also on hand, the “Free to Feed” campaign invites businesses to place the Free to Feed logo in their windows so that breastfeeding mothers know they are welcome to openly breastfeed in their establishments.
Speaking of openly breastfeeding, it is totally legally to expose the breast when breastfeeding. Indecent exposure laws do not apply to breastfeeding women. That’s one of the messages that Afrykahn Moon shared with the crowd. Moon was kicked off a public bus in Troy Michigan for breastfeeding her two-week-old son. The municipality has since “reminded” its 600 drivers that women are indeed allowed to breastfeed babies while on board public buses.
The Michigan Breastfeeding Network handed out flyers about Section 4207 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which state that “employers shall provide breastfeeding employees with reasonable break time and a private, non-bathroom place to express breast milk during the workday, up until the child’s first birthday.”
Ryan Comfort, CEO of Milk for Thought, rallied the crowd at the close of the event as a big pink star was placed on the large map on the side of the bus, indicating Grand Rapids had hosted the Pink Bus. When GRIID asked him why he, a man, was involved in the cause, he said, “My hope is to serve as an example. Breastfeeding is so much more than getting nutrition. It empowers women to meet their personal goals. I provide my skills in business and technology to a cause that has such an impact on women and families. We’re here to shine a big spotlight on breastfeeding.”
Another of the many males in the audience, Josh Dunigan shared that he was breastfed and, as the son of a midwife, had learned much about breastfeeding’s benefits. “The scientific research is in. Children who are breastfed do better in school, are more likely to go on to higher education and contribute to society. Breast milk or nurturing should be important to every living human being because of the way these affect society.”
10 – 11 a.m. Saturday Aug. 6 The Grand Rapids BIG LATCH ON
This Saturday, a follow-up event, “The Grand Rapids BIG LATCH ON, will be one of many across the country setting a new record for the most mothers latching and breastfeeding simultaneously. “We have chosen Rosa Parks Circle as a venue because we felt that nursing in public was an important issue to address,” says organizer, Juliea Paige. “We feel that the more people see nursing in public, the less of a big deal it will become. More than this, though, is the idea of society learning how to breastfeed through exposure such as this. It is known that breastfeeding is far more successful among cultures where it is not hidden and widely accepted. In response to the Surgeon General’s call to action, we believe that supporting not only breastfeeding, but breastfeeding in public, could serve as a strong start in getting new mothers to establish and continue nursing their babies successfully.”
12 Top Reasons to Breastfeed:
- Always fresh, clean, safe and at the right temperature, plus it’s free.
- Most nutritious –breast milk changes overtime to adapt to a growing baby’s needs.
- Breastfed babies are less likely to develop ear infections, Crohn’s disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma, SIDS or allergies.
- Breastfed babies have higher IQs.
- Breast milk contains endorphins that suppress pain and comfort a sick infant.
- Breastfed babies have better speech development.
- Helps moms shrink uterus back to pre-pregnancy size and lose pregnancy weight, especially off the thighs.
- Reduces mom’s risk of breast, endometrial and ovarian cancer.
- Can provide natural birth spacing for the first six months (with exclusive breastfeeding and no return of menstrual periods).
- Breast milk tastes better and doesn’t stain. Breast milk poop doesn’t smell bad!
- Release of prolactin allows mother to relax.
- Nights are less stressful for both mother and baby.
This article by Neil deMause is re-posted from the August issue of Extra!
The analysis provided in this article contrasts with a recent MLive story, which acknowledges warmer temperatures, but also provides significant space to WOOD TV8 meteorologist Bill Steffens who continues to deny there is global warming.
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history—but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the 2011 Super Outbreak that spread more than 300 tornadoes across 14 states from April 25 to 28 (including an all-time one-day record of 188 twisters on April 27), killing 339 people, including 41 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN, 5/1/11).
Ensuing weeks saw Texas wildfires that had been burning since December expand to consume more than 3 million acres (Texas Forest Service, 6/28/11; CNN, 4/25/11), plus record flooding along the Mississippi River, which couldn’t contain the water from April’s storms on top of the spring snowmelt. On May 22, a super-strong F5 tornado killed 153 people as it flattened a large part of Joplin, Missouri (National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, 5/22/11) ; in the first two weeks of June, a heat wave broke temperature records in multiple states, and the Wallow fire became the largest in Arizona state history (Washington Post, 6/14/11).
It was an unprecedented string of severe weather: By mid-June, more than 1,000 tornadoes had killed 536 people (NOAA, 6/13/11), nearly as many deaths as in the entire preceding decade. And it was only natural to ask: Were we seeing the effects of climate change?
Most scientists would say yes, or at least “probably.” The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, a global scientific body that has been a target of conservatives despite a record of soft-pedaling its findings to avoid controversy (Extra!, 7/8/07), warned on February 2, 2007, “It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.” (In science-speak, “very likely” refers to a certainty of greater than 90 percent, and is as near as you get to a definitive conclusion.) Other forecasts (e.g., Environment America, 9/8/10) have projected that wet regions will receive record rainfall thanks to increasing evaporation, while dry ones get record drought, as climate patterns shift to accommodate the new normal.
Yet despite these dire predictions, U.S. media were hesitant to investigate the links between climate change and this spring’s extreme weather. Much coverage settled for the cheap irony of contrasting extreme phenomena, as when NBC’s Saturday Today show meteorologist Bill Karins (6/11/11) quipped:
Feast or famine’s been the rule this spring. The northern half of the country, we’ve dealt with the heavy rain, the record snow pack that’s now melting in the northern Rockies. That’s causing the flooding. The southern half of the country, you would love some of that rain.
Even news reports that probed deeper into the causes of the spring’s extreme weather, though, often stopped short of looking at climate factors. A Chicago Tribune story (4/29/11) headlined, “Why April Record for Twisters? Experts Call It Random, Say Nature Varies,” noted that “some meteorologists” blame the periodic weather pattern known as La Niña, but then cited other scientists as saying the tornado outbreak was just random variation, with University of Illinois meteorologist Bob Rauber saying, “Global warming is occurring, but this is not a manifestation of it.”
On the CBS Evening News (6/9/11), meanwhile, John Blackstone noted, “Perhaps the biggest weather troublemaker has been in the Gulf of Mexico, where sea surface temperatures have been almost 2 degrees [Fahrenheit] above average. That warm, moist Gulf air meeting the powerful jet stream created the string of tornadoes that killed 525 people.” Yet, asked by anchor Scott Pelley why the Gulf of Mexico is hotter than usual, Blackstone replied only: “Well, it’s related to the drought in the South—in the South-Southwest, with little clouds, lots of sunshine, the waters warming up and those warm waters could add energy to this hurricane season as well.”
But while La Niña is a natural cyclical variation, the warming Gulf is not—at the very least, it’s exacerbated by the global warming trend, which has pumped at least four times the heat energy into the oceans that it has into the atmosphere (NPR, 3/19/08). As National Center for Atmos-pheric Research climatologist Kevin Tren-berth explained to Extra!, the air over oceans now averages 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer and 4 percent wetter than it was before 1970. “So there is more warm moist air from the Gulf flowing into all spring storms that travel across the U.S. That destabilizes the air, provides fuel for thunderstorms and converts some thunderstorms into supercell storms, which in turn provide the environment for tornadoes to form.”
The easiest connection for most reporters to make was with heat waves, probably because they match best with the popular image of “global warming.” “Intense hot conditions will increase dramatically over the next 30 years,” ABC News’ Jim Avila (6/8/11) reported after June’s record-setting heat wave. “Climatologists say it’s clear: Global warming is beginning to show itself in plain sight.”
For other extreme weather events, though, climate change only merited occasional mention. The wildfires that raged out of control across the Southwest in May and June were mostly covered as an unexpected natural disaster, without much thought of causes; in one exception, the Arizona Republic (6/12/11) fixed the blame squarely on the state having too many trees—a charge also brought up by the New York Times (6/11/11), which reported that, among other things, “Some [residents and experts] complained that it was environmentalists who had caused the forests to become tinderboxes by preventing the thinning of trees as they sought to protect wildlife.”
This common conservative claim, Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm noted (6/12/11), was refuted in a 2006 paper (Science, 8/16/06) that found that fires were increasing the most at higher elevations, where forest restoration is less of an issue, but where warmer temperatures have a huge impact by melting winter snows earlier and increasing summer drought.
In fact, scientists have long predicted that one result of climate change would be a dramatic increase in Western wildfires, as Pete Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor explained in a rare article making such connections (6/9/11). The National Academy of Sciences projected (7/16/10) that a 1-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures—just half the best-case scenario in most climate models—could more than triple the acreage burned by wildfires in the U.S. West. Washington Post blogger Jason Samenow (6/14/11) reported on this study, but it went unmentioned in the newspaper’s wildfire coverage.
Similarly, a NASA wildfire model released last year (10/27/10) projected that climate change would lead to an increase of fires in the U.S. West of between 30 and 60 percent by 2100. “I want you to think a little bit of fire as a metaphor for the many things that climate change holds for us,” NASA earth sciences director Peter Hildebrand told a conference in Colorado in early April—though the only reporter to note this statement was environmental journalist Brendon Bosworth on his self-titled blog (4/8/11).
As for tornadoes, news coverage was openly dismissive of their connection to climate change. A New York Times Q & A following the Joplin tornado (5/25/11) asked: “Can the intensity of this year’s tornadoes be blamed on climate change?” and answered “Probably not. Over all, the number of violent tornadoes has been declining in the United States, even as temperatures have increased.”
Indeed, while the number of reported tornadoes has steadily risen in recent years, prior to this year the number of strong tornadoes (category F4 or F5) had not, leading most scientists to conclude that the rising totals for weak storms are merely a result of more thorough reporting, thanks to sprawling development in tornado-prone regions that has put more people within sighting distance. And because the mechanics of tornado generation are poorly understood—and they depend on vertical temperature differential, so a warming lower atmosphere would predict more tornadoes, but a warming upper atmosphere would tend to reduce them—most scientists say that stronger and more frequent tornadoes can’t be definitively linked to climate.
Still, Trenberth told the blog Think Progress (4/29/11) that it’s “irresponsible” not to mention climate change in tornado coverage. “The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft,” he told the site. “With global warming, the low-level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms.”
Most reporters, though, chose to stick to the narrower question of whether these particular tornadoes were caused by climate change—which, given all the factors involved to create any particular storm, is impossible to answer, except in the sense in which all weather today is the product of a warmed climate.
“Contributing to the thrashing were the La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the increase of moisture in the atmosphere caused by the warming climate,” wrote the Washington Post (6/15/11) on the spring’s tornadoes, fires and floods. The piece cited National Oceanographic and Atmo-spheric Administration climate director Thomas Karl as “caution[ing] against focusing on any single cause for the unusual chain of events,” quoting him as saying that “clearly these things interconnect.”
Karl also featured prominently in an article by the New York Times’ John Broder (6/15/11) that reported, “Government scientists said Wednesday that the frequency of extreme weather has increased over the past two decades, in part as a result of global warming,” but quickly added that scientists “were careful not to blame humans for this year’s rash of deadly events.” Broder’s only evidence: Karl’s statement that “since 1980, indeed, extreme climatological and meteorological events have increased. But in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades.”
The story’s headline: “Scientists See More Deadly Weather, but Dispute the Cause.” (Broder later apologized to Romm—Climate Progress, 6/18/11—for what he called a “crappy headline.”)
In fact, though, Karl had previously made clear that climate change would result in more extreme weather. “How climate change will be felt by you and impact your neighbors is probably going to be through extreme weather and climate events,” he told EarthSky (3/15/10). “We may be fine for many years, and all of a sudden, one particular season, one particular year, the extremes are far worse than we’ve ever seen before.”
In many ways, articles like Broder’s parallel the decades-long public debate over carcinogens: It’s just as difficult to say whether any one person’s cancer was caused by pollutants as whether one weather event was caused by climate change. And in both cases, statistical studies have a literally fatal drawback: By the time you’ve gathered enough data, it’s too late to prevent the consequences.
Scientists, then, may conclude that it’s “too soon to tell” exactly how climate change affects tornadoes and other severe weather, but that’s not the same as saying it has no effect. As Trenberth tells Extra! of the spring’s string of catastrophes: “Much of what goes on is natural variability and weather. But there is a component from human influences through global warming. While it may be modest, it is real and significant.”
As noted, the role of climate change in the spring’s severe weather wasn’t entirely ignored. The Christian Science Monitor (6/9/11), in its report on Arizona wildfires that had “blackened an area half the size of Rhode Island,” called them “the latest poster child for what some scientists see as a long-term trend toward larger, longer-lived wildfires in the American West,” noting that “climate change appears to be an important contributor.”
Urgency was left to op-ed pages: Climate activist Bill McKibben wrote a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post (5/23/11) that sarcastically suggested: “It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies.” Environmental writer Chip Ward wrote an opinion piece on CBS News.com (6/16/11): “Global warming, global weirding, climate change—whatever you prefer to call it—is not just happening in some distant, melting Arctic land out of a storybook. It is not just burning up far-away Russia. It’s here now.” (CBS News’ television programs, meanwhile, never once mentioned climate change in their coverage of the spring’s wildfires.)
One example of how to cover the story differently came from the Edmonton Journal (5/17/11), where columnist Graham Thomson wrote:
No scientist can guarantee that any of these events are caused by human-induced climate change. Climate change is all about trends.
However, the trends are consistent: The atmosphere is warming, the climate is changing and we are largely responsible through our burning of fossil fuels.
What scientists can tell us is that as the climate warms we’ll experience more extreme weather events leading to floods, droughts, forest fires and crop failures. In other words, it’s what we’re seeing now.
Even Thomson, though, didn’t try to suggest that we change our behavior to prevent extreme weather from becoming te norm.
Similarly, when the New York Times editorial page weighed in on what can be done about climate change (6/1/11), it was to praise the city of Chicago for building more rooftop gardens and adding air conditioning to classrooms as part of “long-term preparations for a warmer, stormier climate.” Never mind that the electricity needed to power air conditioners is a major contributor of carbon emissions, or that air conditioning in schools is unlikely to do much to stem the additional 166 to 2,217 annual deaths that researchers Roger Peng and Francesca Domenici estimate Chicago will suffer by the end of the century as the result of climate change (Environmental Health Perspectives, 5/11).
And then there was the counsel given by Nightline anchor Bill Weir (4/26/11), who bent over backwards to avoid definitive conclusions on the causes of the deadly weather:
After months of epic droughts and floods, blizzards and heat waves, some are seeing proof of warnings past, while others refuse to believe that man could ever wreck God’s planet. But neither side can deny that we are having one hellacious spring.
He informed viewers that a NASA scientist says blaming individual weather events on climate change is “a leap too far,” then signed off with this advice: “In the near term, the best you can do is get a weather radio and try to stay dry.”
The Drug War as the New Jim Crow
(This article/video by Laura Flanders is re-posted from GRITtv.) The NAACP has just passed a historic resolution demanding an end to the War on Drugs. The resolution comes as young Black male unemployment hovers near 50 percent and the wealth gap’s become a veritable gulf. 
So why is the forty-year-old “War on Drugs” public enemy number one for the nation’s oldest civil rights organization? Well here’s why: it’s not extraneous – it’s central: the war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination – an engine that has brought Jim Crow into the age of Barack Obama. Author Michelle Alexander lays out the statistics — and the stories — of 21st Century Jim Crow in her ought-to-blow-your-socks off book: “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness.” I had a chance to sit down with Alexander earlier this summer. We’ll be posting the full interview in two parts.
“We have managed decades after the civil rights movement to create something like a caste system in the United States,” says Alexander in part one here “In major urban areas, the majority of African American men are either behind bars, under correctional control or saddled with criminal record and once branded as criminal or a felon, they’re trapped for life in 2nd class status.” It’s not just about people having a hard time getting ahead and climbing the ladder of success. It’s about a rigged system. Sound familiar? Like the Pew Research Center report on household wealth and the Great Recession — the NAACP resolution story was a one-day news-blip – despite the fact that it pierces the by-your-bootstraps myth that is at the heart of – you pick it – the deficit, the stimulus, the tax code – every contemporary US economic debate.
White America just maybe ought to pay attention. With more and more Americans falling out of jobs and into debt, criminal records are a whole lot easier to come by than life-sustaining employment. Contrary to the conventional media version, the “Drug War” story is not a people with problems story – it’s a policing and power story that reminds us that racism’s not a figment — and it just might contain a hint or two, too, about what a high-unemployment America could come to look like — for all of us.
Rally for Marital Justice all week in Grand Rapids
The struggle for LGBTQ justice has been taking place in Grand Rapids for decades and one of the most visible allies of the LGBTQ community over the years has been the group Concerned Clergy.
Concerned Clergy was involved in the early days of LGBTQ organizing in Grand Rapids and has provided not on spiritual support for the LGBTQ community, they have actively been engaged in local campaigns. Concerned Clergy was involved in the effort to get an anti-discrimination ordinance passed in Grand Rapids and has organized numerous forums on the faith & justice implications of support equality and dignity for all.
Today in Grand Rapids, several members of Fountain Street Church continue that tradition by holding a monthly vigil in support of Marriage Equality. Starting on Valentine’s Day nearly three years ago Rev. Fred Wooden and Rev. Matthew Cockrum began inviting members of their congregation and the general community to join them in these vigils to make this issue public and to say that Marriage Equality is not just an issue for the LGBTQ community, but one that the straight community should also fight for.
These vigils are the first Wednesday of every month, beginning at noon near the entrance to Rosa Parks Circle. This week, however, they are hosting a vigil Monday through Friday to try to make this issue more visible to the Grand Rapids community.
GRIID had a chance to interview Fred Wooden about the history of this effort, what it means for West Michigan and his thoughts on the recent vote to have Marriage Equality in New York.
March in Holland on Wednesday for LGBTQ Rights
This Wednesday, August 3rd people are invited to Holland to participate in a march that will end up at City Hall to get the Council to reconsider their non-vote on an anti-discrimination ordinance voted on in June.
GRIID writer Joshua Sadowski wrote a story about the 5 – 4 no vote in June and we plan on being at the march this week to report on both the marchers and the reaction at City Hall.
People are invited to come to Smallenburg Park on Fairbanks Avenue in Holland at 5pm and share some food before marching to City Hall. The facebook page announcement states that people are encouraged “to speak up against the unfair discrimination of LBGT members in Holland. We will be asking that the Council reconsider their NO vote on adding sexual orientation and gender identity language into our anti-discrimination ordinance.”
Marching to City Hall as The Voice of Holland’s Future
Wednesday, August 3
5:00 PM
Smallenburg Park on Fairbanks Avenue
Holland, MI
According to a new report from the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, the top 150 PACs in Michigan have raised $8,587,412 since January 2011.
This amount is actually a bit down since last year at this time, but last year was also a gubernatorial election year. The report cites the following as the top PAC fundraisers for the first half of 2011:
“The Republican legislative caucuses’ PACs are the top fundraisers so far this cycle. The House Republican Campaign Committee has raised $758,385 to top the list, and it has a cash balance of $511,267. The Senate Republican Campaign Committee is second with $599,050 raised, but it has only $63,784 on hand after repaying debts from last election cycle. The SRCC still owes $325,000.
The House Democratic Fund has had the third biggest take so far this cycle at $501,547. It has a balance of $235,824. The Senate Democratic Fund has raised $202,276, good for seventh place on the list, and its balance is $124,163.
The rest of the top ten PACs includes Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan PAC, $309,342; Michigan Health and Hospital Association’s Health PAC, $298,638; the Michigan Education Association PAC, $294,612; Business Leaders for Michigan PAC II, a corporate PAC, which can make independent expenditures but not contributions to candidates, $200,500; Michigan Association for Justice PAC, $195,417; and the Michigan Association of Realtors PAC, $190,532.
Business Leaders for Michigan also operates a PAC, which does not use corporate funds that can make direct contributions to candidates. That PAC raised $100,500. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, likewise, has a corporate PAC, which raised $60,000, and a ‘hard money’ PAC that raised $122,148.”
The Press Release for this new report ends with this comment from MCFN executive director Rich Robinson, “Michigan’s economic recovery may be sputtering, but the money that lubricates Michigan politics never dries up.”
Reporting on anti-gay violence
Yesterday, MLive posted a story about a gay man who was assaulted on Wednesday night after leaving an event at the Bistro Bella Vita in downtown Grand Rapids.
The article states that Dave Battjes, a member of the West Michigan Pride, was physically assaulted by “2 men in their 20’s” who called Battjes a “faggot” and told him he didn’t deserve to live.
The article then refers to the assault as “alleged” until police are able to interview the victim. The Press reporter goes on to quote Battjes and then refers to a statement from the GR Community Foundation President, which condemns the violent assault.
The comments section of the MLive article is filled with lots of anti-gay comments and victim blaming, which is what we have come to expect from those who regularly spew hate. However, what is equally objectionable is the weak article from GR Press reporter John Tunison.
Like much of crime reporting, the article has little contextual information that would assist readers in understanding that while this assault was a specific incident it is also part of a larger societal problem. For instance, a National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs report from 2010 stated that anti-LGBTQ violence increased by 13% from 2009 to 2010, with 2,503 reported incidents of violence.
The same report also states that the majority of the perpetrators of such hate crimes are White men between the ages of 19 and 39. The Press article says that the victim estimated the perpetrators as in their 20’s, but it doesn’t identify their race and there is no discussion about what motivates young men like those who assaulted Wednesday’s victim. In other words, like news stories on rape, we are left with only a focus on the victim and not the perpetrators.
In Michigan the numbers on anti-gay violence aren’t much better. According to Equality Michigan (cited in the same report mentioned above), the number of reported anti-LGBTQ hate crimes reported in Michigan in both 2009 ad 2010 were both around 200.
One of the services that Equality Michigan provides is to assistance to victims of hate crimes. Michigan Equality’s Department of Victim Services (DVS) “is a social change and social service program that works to address and end violence in the lives of LGBT and HIV-affected people. Violence is any act or situation where a person or group harms others, denies them the right to be who they are, or hurts their quality of life. Violence can be direct, such as assault, or it can be indirect, such as being fired because you are gay. Both can be devastating to an individual and to a community.”
In fact, at the Equality Michigan event that was held on Wednesday night in downtown Grand Rapids just prior to the assault, the new Executive Director spoke about this service that the statewide organization provides. The focus on these kinds of services might have been more apparent to the GR Press has they bothered to send a reporter to that event, which was historic in that the new Executive Director for Equality Michigan is the first trans person to lead an statewide equality organization. The sad fact that no commercial news media attended the event and the only report we are aware of is what GRIID posted yesterday.
It is certainly important that the GR Press reported on the anti-gay assault, but we need to demand better coverage of this kind of violence in order to have a greater collective understanding of what drives this kind of violence and how we can all respond to it.
New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these items are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable – This book not only sheds new light on the person of Malcolm X, it raises numerous questions about the Nation of Islam, the FBI, CIA and NYC cops and their role in the assassination of one of the most important Black activists of the 20th century. There is a great deal of new information on Malcolm’s life that the author was able to track down over a 10 year research period, which includes new documents, taped lectures and interviews with those who knew Malcolm. Equally important is the new details on the drastic changes that Malcolm X was making months before his assassination in terms of his evolving views about the plight of Black America, religion, politics and organizing. Highly recommended as an informative and inspiring look at the person that James Baldwin referred to as “the gentlest person I ever met.”
BP: The Unfinished Crimes and Plunder of Anglo-American Imperialism, by Frederic Clairmont – It has been more than a year since the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and not only has BP been able to avoid any serious backlash from their insidious greed they have been able to avoid having to deal with greater scrutiny of their entire history. This short book provides readers with a brief history of the company that has been wedded to western imperialism and British colonialism. The author provides important information that frames BP as a long-term partner in the plunder of countries like Iran, where BP played a central role in the military overthrow of the democratically elected government in 1953. This book is an important resource to help us prevent future historical amnesia when it comes to corporate crimes.
To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War, by John Gibler – The united Nations recently published a report saying that the 40 – year old international war on drugs has been a complete failure. This new book by John Gibler confirms this fact in terms of how the war on drugs is playing out in Mexico. Gibler provides an investigative reporter account of the human cost of the war on drugs and takes you to the scene of the crimes where innocent people are being gunned down over profits. To Die in Mexico follows in the great tradition of writers such as John Reed and John Ross, making Mexican life and politics come alive in print. This book not only should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand the human cost of the war on drugs, it should be read by Americans who will come to realize through Gibler’s book that the US government is deeply complicit in the gruesome deaths that occur daily throughout Mexico because of drug trafficking.
Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (DVD) – This documentary not only demonstrates that Stonewall was not the first radical action by the LGBTQ community it sheds like on the fact that the main force behind this uprising in San Francisco were trans people. The film is packed with first person accounts of what happened in before and after the 1966 riot where police attacked members of the LGBTQ community and people fought back. Screaming Queens is an important contribution to our understanding of the struggle for liberation within the LGBTQ community and a powerful example of the need to continue to present a grassroots perspective on history that mostly ignores the views of the most vulnerable.
Last night about 50 people gathered in Grand Rapids to meet the new Executive Director of the statewide organization Equality Michigan.
Earlier this week Equality Michigan announced that Denise Brogan-Kator was named the new Executive Director and she and other staff have been visiting communities across the state to let them know the of organization’s future plans and find out what communities need to fight for greater equality for the LGBTQ rights.
In a media release from Equality Michigan, Brogan-Kator states:
“I am excited about the opportunity to move equality forward with our talented team, and humbled by the support I’ve received. My focus is to end legal workplace and housing discrimination in Michigan by bringing our antiquated state nondiscrimination law in line with those states, which understand that equality for all is central to being competitive. I know what it is like to lose a job after you’ve performed well; I know what it is like to hear homophobic and transphobic slurs; I know what it’s like to nearly lose my children in the legal system; I know what it’s like to feel unsafe walking with my partner – all for no reason other than who I am.”
After making a few comments to the audience we had a chance to speak with Denise on camera about the work of Equality Michigan, her assessment of where West Michigan is on LGBTQ issues, the Holland vote and the significance of her new appointment as a trans woman.
