Media Alert – Say No to the Comcast – FCC Merger
(This Media Alert is re-posted from Free Press.)
FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast – just four months after she voted to approve the Comcast-NBC merger.1
This is just the latest – but perhaps most blatant — example of so-called “public servants” cashing in on companies they are supposed to be regulating. But Baker’s jump to Comcast is particularly egregious. As recently as March, the commissioner was giving speeches complaining that the Comcast-NBC deal “took too long.”
And you wonder why the American people are disgusted with Washington.
Stop the Revolving Door: Demand Congress Investigate Baker’s Conflict of Interest
Congress is already concerned about how the FCC conducts itself. Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been making a lot of noise recently about alleged ethical violations at the agency. By signing this letter to Congressman Issa, you’re urging him to launch an investigation of Commissioner Baker’s seemingly blatant conflict of interest.
Outside of Washington, people of every political stripe have expressed near unanimous contempt for a system of government that favors powerful corporations at the expense of the many. Sadly, the complete capture of government by industry barely raises an eyebrow inside the Beltway anymore. That’s why Congress needs to hear from you.
Urge Congress to Investigate this Conflict of Interest at the FCC
The revolving door at the FCC erodes any prospect for common-sense public policy — such as strong Net Neutrality rules or a rigorous review of mega-deals like AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile.
A new campaign by Brave New Films/Cuentame is now operating with the intent of providing updated information on both anti-immigration policies around the country and to expose the corporations profiting from immigrant detention.
The campaign states, “Immigrants are for sale in this country. Sold to private prison corporations who are locking them up for obscene profits!
Here are the top 3 things YOU need to know about the Private Prison money scheme:
- The victims: Private prisons don’t care about who they lock up. At a rate of $200 per immigrant a night at their prisons, this is a money making scheme that destroys families and lives.
- The players: CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), The Geo Group and Management and Training corporations—combined these private prisons currently profit more than $5 billion a year.
- The money: These private prisons have spent over $20 million lobbying state legislators to make sure they get state anti-immigrant laws approved and ensure access to more immigrant inmates.
The campaign is also enlisting people across the country who will be part of the nationwide network of Prison Watchers that will follow and expose the players, the money and the victims in this corrupt money making racket. You can sign up to be part of this campaign.
Here is the video they created that is part of the campaign.
Heartwell says No to Privatizing GR’s Water for Now
Yesterday, it was announced by Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell that privatizing the water services was no longer on the table. The Mayor made this announcement on the blog of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council (WMEAC).
Hear is what Heartwell had to say about how he came to the decision to take privatizing the water off the table.
“After Commissioners individually considered this idea they concluded that it is not an option they wish to pursue. And so, rather than bringing the idea to the community for consideration, I have withdrawn it. There is much work remaining for us to do in our journey toward sustainability; none of us can afford to take precious time and energy exploring an option that has little chance of succeeding. There are many other opportunities for transforming local government and we will vigorously pursue those that have the greatest possibility of success.”
What is missing from the Mayor’s comments is the fact that there has been numerous efforts to stop the privatizing of the City’s water system. A Facebook page was created several months ago in opposition to the possibility of water privatization in Grand Rapids, GRIID has been posting numerous articles on the matter and last month the Bloom Collective hosted a forum on the issue. Out of that forum people crafted a letter and got people to sign on demanding that Heartwell take a public stance on this issue. The letter read as follows:
It was brought to our attention that you have recently engaged in communication with the companies Veolia and Suez regarding the potential privatization of Grand Rapids’ water services. We find such communication to be deeply alarming.
In communities where water privatization has occurred, water quality has gone down, water bills have gone up, and control over our most precious natural resource has been removed from the hands of the people to the hands of corporations. This distribution of power places top priority in profit rather than the health and happiness of the people and the environment. This is not something we want for our city and our water. While we understand the gravity of the current economic situation, tampering with the condition and control of our water is absolutely not a solution, and will simply not be tolerated by the people of Grand Rapids.
In our attempts to contact your office and city council members, it has been communicated to us that water privatization is no longer being considered in our city. While we find this moderately relieving, we are requesting an official public statement from you specifically so that we can rest assured that you are committed to keeping water services in the public hands. Pledge yourself and our city to accessible clean water for everyone.
We await your prompt and positive response. In the meantime, we will continue to educate ourselves and our neighbors, and maintain open and probing dialogue regarding the privatization of our water supply. We are prepared to take further action if it is not made explicitly clear by you that Grand Rapids will no longer be considering this option and that negotiation of such has been permanently removed from the table.
It seems that the public opposition has worked and that for now water privatization in Grand Rapids is off the table.
The Economics Club of Grand Rapids is hosting a luncheon on Monday, May 16 and has invited Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to speak to its members. No details of the luncheon talk are posted on the Econ Club’s website, but one would have to assume that Snyder will talk about his policies and proposals that have been met with a tremendous amount of dissent.
In response to Snyder’s noon visit at the Amway Grand Hotel there will be a protest beginning at 11:30am and continuing until 2:00pm outside the Econ Club event. At least three groups are involved in putting together the protest – We Are the People, Michigan Citizens United and We Are One. Michigan Citizens United is behind the Recall Snyder campaign.
The Press Release for the protest stated that groups “will be showing up to protest against many of the proposals that have come out of the Legislature since the beginning of the year.” The accompanying flyer says that people should bring “appropriate” signs.
As he walked a parade route in Benton Harbor on Saturday, May 7, Governor Rick Snyder was greeted with loud booing, chants of “Recall Rick!” and angry cries of “Fascist!” “Get him out of here!” and “You’re an asshole, Rick!”
It was not business as usual at Benton Harbor’s Blossomtime celebration.
This year, an emergency financial manager, appointed by Snyder under HB 4214, the newly expanded EFM law, had just gagged the entire city council. He also suspended all elected boards in the city government. EFM Joseph Harris also fired Planning Commission members and the Brownfield Development Commission, replacing them with hand-picked choices from the governor’s office.
At risk: Our democratic process. And to illustrate that fact, citizens of the city fear specifically that Jean Klock Park, a significant piece of public lakefront property with a beach, is about to be seized. A $500 million development of summer homes with a private golf course is being planned—right on the Jean Klock Park property.
The largest investor in this new elite development is Whirlpool. The company completed its phasing-out of all manufacturing plants in Benton Habor this year. Now it has sets sights on a new cash cow, the luxury vacation development. And the city employees who would have been the most likely to block a public facility from being turned into a multi-millionaires’ enclave are, of course, the Planning Commission and the Brownfield Development Commission members…now staffed by Snyder appointees.
Under HB 4214, Snyder’s greatly expanded EFM law, emergency financial manager Joseph Harris has the right to sell the beachfront park to private investors, just as he has the right to seize any city asset—without citizen input.
Interestingly, Harris was recommended as an appointee by legislator Al Pscholka, the same state representative that sponsored HB 4214.
Asked about the development plan, Pscholka said, “Capital flows to places that are stable. I think we can all agree on that.” Perhaps Pscholka learned that philosophy in his last private-sector job: as the vice president of the development company working on the “Harbor Shores” golf-course-luxury-home plan for Jean Klock Park.
Pscholka was going to be a featured participant in the Blossomtime Parade, but announced on May 6 that he would not be involved in the event after he learned about the potential number of protesters.
Perhaps he made a wise decision. Outraged citizens of Benton Harbor were joined by other Michigan residents. They lined the parade route and barraged Snyder, the Grand Marshal of the event, with unrelenting shouts of protest. At first, Snyder marched while staring straight ahead, but later he attempted smiling and waving, which led to some bizarre film footage (see below).
Some of the attending protesters were organized by Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Its founder, Reverend Jesse Jackson, met with Michigan’s assistant attorney general about the Benton Harbor situation. Later, Rev. Jackson announced that the Coalition is setting up a headquarters in Benton Harbor and intends to launch a lawsuit against the governor and the State of Michigan concerning HB 4214’s unconstitutionality.
The opening salvo of the lawsuit was issued via a petition to the governor on May 3. Benton Harbor’s mayor and City Commission stated that HB4214 violates the Michigan Constitution. It suspends the right of citizens to petition the government for redress of grievances. It takes away the right of Benton Harbor citizens to frame, adopt, and amend their city charter. It violates citizens’ rights to taxation with representation. The petition demands the removal of Joseph Harris on these grounds.
Earlier this year, when HB 4214 went into effect, analysts worried that minority areas and school systems would be specifically targeted by the law. Benton Harbor seems to be a case in point: it is 85 percent Black, and the average income—now that major employer Whirlpool has moved its factories out of the area—has fallen below $9,000 a year. Not only are these citizens vulnerable to power grabs, they tend not to vote for conservatives. Driving them from the state, intimidating them or silencing them through the EFM law allows this financial class warfare to be conducted without obstruction.
Plus, seizing city assets and transforming them into private profit centers benefit those who paid to put Snyder and his team into power in Lansing.
But judging from the reaction of the crowds last Saturday, Michigan citizens are currently refusing to stand silent while their rights are stripped from them. As one protester said, “… unless we the people start getting engaged and make our voices heard, we’re going to lose what we thought we had.”
Here’s a look at the parade and protest:
(This article by Paul Street is re-posted by ZNet.)
I was never quite as excited as some of my fellow leftists seemed to be about the antiwar movement that developed in response to George W. Bush’s planned and then implemented occupation of Iraq. True, the anti-invasion turnouts in Europe and the United States were remarkable even before the actual fact of the “war.” On February 17, 2003, more than a month before “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (quickly changed to “Operation Iraqi Freedom” [O.I.F] because the original brand name’s acronym [“O.I.L.”] was too suggestive of the invasion’s petro-imperial ambitions) was formally launched, the New York Times was so impressed by the global antiwar outpourings that it said the following: “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” Times analyst Patrick Tyler referred with respect to Bush’s “tenacious new adversary: millions of people who flooded the streets of New York and dozens of other world cities to say they are against war based on the evidence at hand.” 1
The people were out in mass opposition before the war actually commenced. This was a notable difference with the popular campaign that helped end the Vietnam War. The Vietnam-era peace demonstrations started out tiny. It took the 1960s peace movement years of hard and dedicated organizing to become a genuinely mass movement and a force to be reckoned with in the corridors of power. It did not develop the capacity to put substantial numbers in the streets until long after the Washington had (under the John F. Kennedy administration in fact [2]) launched its attack on Vietnam.
Don’t get me wrong. I was one of Tyler’s millions on the eve of O.I.F, pinching myself in downtown Chicago on Lake Shore Drive (LSD) on March 19, 2003 as I took in the endless sea of humanity (quite ethno-racially and otherwise demographically diverse on the first night) chanting and marching against Bush’s criminal war. It brought tears to my eyes. There was another huge march the following night, after Bush unleashed his sickening campaign of “Shock and Awe” on Baghdad. It was a heady experience of popular, democratic activity in George W. Bush’s post-9/11 United States. I still remember the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) buses marooned on LSD by the flood of peace marchers on the 19th. The black female bus drivers smiled and made the peace sign with both hands out of their windows. It almost brought tears to my eyes. Still, it all seemed too good to be true.
It was, in a sense. With all due respect for the dedicated work of many left activists across the country, the early pre- and anti-Iraq War marches of March 2003 were a largely spontaneous outpouring of middle class Democrats who sincerely wanted to prevent a Republican president’s stupid and criminal war from happening in the first place but who had little interest in fighting a difficult, long-term battle against that war and the broader culture and system of militarism once the invasion took place. I’ll never forget the comment of one nice, teary-eyed 50-something lady in the elevator of my mother’s downtown Chicago condominium complex after the second straight night of anti-war marching in the city: “Oh well, we tried. We lost.” It was back to real life for this peace marcher, who harbored the fantastic belief that demonstrating against Bush’s war might have prevented it.
The marches of March 2003 were organized as much by the televised images of the boorish Bush and his loathsome, transparently arch-authoritarian Vice President (Darth Cheney) and Defense Secretary (Donald Rumsfeld)as by any sophisticated, impressive, in-place, and battle-steeled peace movement. And, as I worried at the beginning, it was all too partisan and Democratic, insufficiently able and/or willing to grasp the imperial and militaristic nature of the Democratic Party in connection with the Iraq War and more broadly. It was opposed not so much to criminal militarism as such as to the clumsy and boorish, and translucently blatant cowboy imperialism of a Texas Republican president, leaving one to suspect that many of its members would be far less likely to be hitting the streets if the wars they claimed to oppose were being conducted by supposedly kinder and gentler imperialists like Al Gore or John F “Reporting for Duty” Kerry.
This dark suspicion was born out by the retreat of the contemporary “antiwar movement” after the election of the militantly imperialist Democratic president Barack Obama. As Cindy Sheehan noted in 2009, thinking of all the liberals she could no longer interest in opposing Washington’s imperial policies, “Wars that were wrong under Bush become acceptable under Obama.” Alexander Cockburn chimed with the observation that numerous supposedly left and liberal Americans who opposed criminal wiretappings, immoral and illegal wars, plutocratic bankers’ bailouts and other vile policies when they were implemented in the name of a white Republican moron from West Texas but who became all too strangely silent when those same policies were enacted under the portrait of an eloquent black Democrat from Chicago. Democrats can be very dangerous.
There is some new evidence on just how bad this problem was and remains. Consistent with Sheehan and Cockburn’s complaint and my own voluminous warnings on what Tariq Ali calls “the Obama syndrome,” a recent major study by University of Michigan political scientist Michael Heany and his colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University finds that the antiwar movement in the United States “demobilized” as Democrats withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then with the presidency in 2008. Democrats had been sparked to participate in antiwar activities when the war (the invasion and occupation of Iraq) they purported to oppose was being conducted by a Republican president. “As president,” Heany notes, “Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war inAfghanistan…The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama’s ‘betrayal’ and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.” 3
Looking at Heany and Rojas’ study the other day, I was reminded of my futile counsel to the local campus antiwar activists with the University of Iowa Antiwar Committee (UIAC) in Iowa City in the summer of 2008: “protest at the [Obama-nominating] Democratic national convention in Denver, Colorado, not the [McCain-nominating] Republican national convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Obama,” I told disbelieving students, is “the next president, the empire’s next and new clothes. He is very militaristic and imperial, as you would know if you studied his speeches and writings for the power elite. He will continue the war on Iraq and expand the one in Afghanistan.” The students were convinced that Obama could not win because of his skin color and what they thought was his “antiwar” position. We know what happened on that score.
There is no longer an antiwar group of any relevance in Iowa City. The UIAC is dead, thanks to the departure of the best activists, the nefarious activities of an FBI informant, internal squabbles over personalities and Israel, and – last but not least – the significant demobilizing impact of a Democratic president who deceptively ran as an antiwar candidate. The kids in UIAC loved Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States but did not seem to grasp the radical historians’ counsel that “The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties.” 4
The anti-Vietnam War movement may have started out small and weak but it built and expanded hard-earned capacity and legitimacy over time. And the popular struggle againstWashington’s Indochina wars did not discriminate between the two imperial parties, the Republicans and Democrats. The biggest mobilizations followed the Republican war monger Richard Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in the spring of 1970, but the movement reached critical mass and emerged as a truly mass phenomenon in opposition to a Democratic presidential war monger named Lyndon Baines Johnson, the most socially liberal U.S. president in American history. Had the Democratic war hawk Hubert Humphrey defeated Nixon in the 1968 presidential election, the movement would have continued to expand through the end of the decade and beyond.
But, of course, the 1960s and early 1970s antiwar movement was the creation and creature of a different war and time. Negative comparison between contemporary peace movement failures and antiwar triumphs in the 1960s and 1970s can be significantly unfair. The earlier antiwar organizers both fed into and fed off broader and related currents of social protest and organization around race, poverty, sexuality, culture and the role of the modern university in American life. They drew heavily on the fact that the Vietnam era-military drafted middle and even some upper class teenagers and young men into its ugly campaigns abroad. While the primary victims by far were Indochinese, the Vietnam War much more lethal for U.S. citizens than O.I.F, killing more than 58,000 Americans.
The U.S. imperial establishment learned from Vietnam to never again fight bloody colonial wars with a citizens’ army that includes the children of privileged classes. It now kills official enemies in more technology-/capital-intensive ways and fills its mercenary (both uniformed and private-corporate) ranks with specialized, multi-tour gendarmes who are recruited mainly from the working class and who constitute something of a separate element – people who kill, torture, and maim to earn a living – within American society. To make matters worse for would-be antiwar organizers, the mass corporate war and entertainment media today is more consolidated and more adept at deleting, misrepresenting, mocking, and otherwise marginalizing those who dare to raise their voices in opposition to the U.S. imperial project [5]. And American “higher education” is now even more captive to the corporate and military establishment than it was in the 1960s. Last but not least, Americans have much less free time and are more deeply in debt than they were in the 1960s – two related facts that work against mass participation in protest movements of any kind.
On a positive note, I wanted Obama to win the presidential election in 2008 for what might seem to some as a strange reason. I thought there was radical potential in U.S.voters and citizens, especially younger ones, experiencing life under a Democratic administration. I wanted Americans to come into more direct and visible contact with the bipartisan nature of the American imperial and business system and to confront the gap between their rising and ridden expectations and the harsh reality of persistent top-down corporate, financial and military rules with supposedly antiwar (in-fact highly militaristic) Democrats at the nominal helm of the ship of state. I wanted them to be subjected in a very dramatic war to the cold reality that (in Marxist writer Doug Henwood’s words) “everything still pretty much sucks” [6] when Democrats hold the top political offices – that the basic institutional reality stays the same. As the antiwar activist, author, and essayist Stan Goff put it on Facebook last year: “I’m glad Obama was elected. Otherwise, people would blame the war on McCain and the Republicans and continue with the delusion that elections can be our salvation. The modern nation-state was created by war, of war, and for war. That is its only real purpose, and all others are subordinate to it. You can change the executive director but he/she is still the commander in chief. That’s the job description.”
Call me crazy, but I’m still clinging to this ironic version of Obamanistic hope. We’ve yet to see much of what I (along with Henwood and Goff) dialectically dreamed of yet, but two years and four months is not a long period of time on the historical scale and my hope springs eternal in a time when surprises (e.g. the Republic Door and Window workplace occupation of December 2008 and the Arab democracy uprising of 2011) still take place and revolutions must occur if humanity is going to survive in a desirable form. In Madison, Wisconsin, we did briefly get to see a significant number of workers and citizens seem to momentarily grasp the wisdom of Zinn’s counsel in 2009 that the really critical thing isn’t “who’s sitting in the White House” but rather “who is sitting in—in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating—those are the things that determine what happens. It is becoming clearer and clearer to many, after the first year of Obama’s presidency,” Zinn added, “that it is going to require independent action from below to achieve real change.”[7] Dialectics aside, that is an existential fact that needs to be acted upon on a significantly expanded scale in the world’s only superpower if humanity is going to enjoy a desirable future.
Selected Notes
1. Patrick Tyler, Patrick E. Tyler, “Threats and Responses, News Analysis; A New Power in the Streets,” New York Times, February 17, 2003 at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/world/threats-and-responses-news-analysis-a-new-power-in-the-streets.html
2. Noam Chomsky. Rethinking Camelot: JFK, Vietnam , and U.S. Political Culture (Boston: South End Press, 1999).
3. Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas, “The Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, 2007-2009,” Mobilization: An International Journal, 2011, 16 (1): 45-64, read at www-personal.umich.edu/~mheaney/Partisan_Dynamics_of_Contention.pdf. As the University of Michigan press release explains: “Heaney and Rojas analyzed the demobilization of the antiwar movement by using surveys of 5,400 demonstrators at 27 protests mostly in Washington , D.C. , New York , Chicago and San Francisco from January 2007 to December 2009. The surveys asked questions on basic demographics, partisan affiliations, organizational affiliations, reasons for attending the events, histories of political participation, and attitudes toward the movement, war and the political system…In addition, the researchers observed smaller, more informal events at which antiwar activists gathered, including Capitol Hill lobby days, candlelight vigils, fundraisers, small protests, planning meetings, training sessions, parties, the National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice and the U.S. Social Forum. They also interviewed 40 antiwar leaders about their personal backgrounds, the inner workings of the antiwar movement, political leaders and the Democratic Party…Their study found that the withdrawal of Democratic activists changed the character of the antiwar movement by undermining broad coalitions in the movement and encouraging the formation of smaller, more radical coalitions…After Obama’s election as president, Democratic participation in antiwar activities plunged, falling from 37 percent in January 2009 to a low of 19 percent in November 2009, Heaney and Rojas say. In contrast, members of third parties became proportionately more prevalent in the movement, rising from 16 percent in January 2009 to a high of 34 percent in November 2009….’Since Democrats are more numerous in the population at large than are members of third parties, the withdrawal of Democrats from the movement in 2009 appears to be a significant explanation for the falling size of antiwar protests,’ Heaney said. ‘Thus, we have identified the kernel of the linkage between Democratic partisanship and the demobilization of the antiwar movement.’…Using statistical analysis, the researchers found that holding anti-Republican attitudes had a significant, positive effect on the likelihood that Democrats attended antiwar rallies. The results also show that Democrats increasingly abandoned the movement over time, perhaps to channel their activism into other causes such as health care reform or simply to decrease their overall level of political involvement. ‘Overall, our results convincingly demonstrate a strong relationship between partisanship and the dynamics of the antiwar movement. While Obama’s election was heralded as a victory for the antiwar movement, Obama’s election, in fact, thwarted the ability of the movement to achieve critical mass.’”
4. Howard Zinn, “Election Madness,” The Progressive (March 2008)
5. On the U.S. mass media’s terrible treatment of U.S. antiwar protest in the first decade of the 21st century, see Anthony DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion and the Limits of Dissent (New York: Monthly Review, 2010); Anthony DiMaggio, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Understanding the News in the War on Terror (Lexington, 2009); Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
6. Doug Henwood, “Would You like Change With That?” Left Business Observer, No. 117 (March 2008).
7. Quoted in “The Legacy of Howard Zinn,” SocialistWorker.org (November 2, 2010) at http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2010/11/02/legacy-howard-zinn.
The Bloom Collective will be hosting a screening of the recently released documentary GasHole.
“GAS HOLE is an eye-opening documentary about the history of oil prices and sheds light on a secret that the big oil companies don’t want you to know – that there are viable and affordable alternatives to petroleum fuel! It also provides a detailed examination of our continued dependence on foreign oil and examines various potential solutions — starting with claims of buried technology that dramatically improves gas mileage, to navigating bureaucratic governmental roadblocks, to evaluating different alternative fuels that are technologically available now, to questioning the American Consumers’ reluctance to embrace alternatives.
Narrated by Peter Gallagher, hear from a wide range of opinions from representatives of the US Department of Energy Representatives, Congressional leaders both Democrat and Republican, Alternative Fuel Producers, Alternative Fuel Consumers (including actor Joshua Jackson), Professors of Economics and Psychology and more. Anyone who buys gas should see this film!”
Following the film there will be a discussion. Light refreshments will also be available. The Bloom Collective is asking for a suggested donation of $3 – 5.
GasHole
Saturday, May 14
3:00 PM
Bloom Collective
671 Davis NW, Grand Rapids
(The following information is based on a Media Release sent out this morning.)
Bartertown Diner and Roc’s Cakes a raw, vegan/vegetarian restaurant opening in a couple weeks in downtown Grand Rapids has decided to go “wobbly.” The seven-member team which constitutes the worker-run establishment have all decided to join the old and storied Industrial Workers of the World labor union.
“It just seemed like the perfect fit for us. After meeting with members of the IWW it was clear that we all want the same things and being that we really don’t want to be just another restaurant it seemed logical,” said Ryan Cappelletti cook at the new Diner.
Bartertown Diner and Roc’s Cakes, which will be located at 6 Jefferson St., joins a growing list of worker-owned IWW shops. The Red and Black Cafe in Portland, Oregon and Just Coffee in Madison, Wisconsin are the two other IWW worker-owned shops in the US.
“We are very happy that Bartertown and Roc’s Cakes has decided to go IWW and believe it can only help in our larger campaign to raise the standard of living and benefits for all food and beverage workers in Grand Rapids,” said Shannon Williams, Treasurer of the local IWW branch.
The Grand Rapids Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World has been involved in food service organizing for many years. The local IWW has been involved in campaigns with the Starbucks Workers Union and the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union.
The Industrial Workers of the World is a rank-and-file labor union open to all workers.
Bike Summit 2011 – What Are We Planning for?
On Friday, the Greater Grand Rapids Bicycle Coalition held its second Bike Summit in the Eberhard Center of the downtown GVSU campus. The one-day conference brought together bicycle enthusiasts, city planners, bike commuters and business owners to discuss the future of bike transportation in Grand Rapids.
This writer was only able to stay for the morning keynote speaker and the two breakout sessions, so these observations are limited in scope.
The morning kepnote speaker was Darwin Hindman, the former Mayor of Colombia, Missouri. Hindman began by saying he is impressed with Grand Rapids and mentions the Chamber of Commerce award for most Green Mid-sized city, how Grand Rapids has great philanthropists and Art Prize, all indications of sustainability for the former Mayor.
He says that a sustainable city will happen with a knowledge-based economy, with “engineers, scientists and poets.” Hindman said the sustainability of Grand Rapids will be with “smart people, people who are drawn to the arts.” In fact, most of his opening remarks seemed to be targeted at young professionals who might want to raise a family here.
Eventually Hindman stated that bicycling is also important for the future of any city since health care costs are a big part of the economic cost for any community. In addition, “more bicycling promotes more ecological sustainability, shorter trips, less pollution, less fossil fuel dependency.” Hindman also noted that it is just cheaper to bike. People will save money and more money will stay in the local community.
The former Mayor then shifted his presentation to talk specifically about what has happened in Colombia, Missouri. Hindman said they took advantage of rails to trails in the 1980s that resulted in the MKT Trail project. The MKT Trail project even led to an increase in bicycle commuting. Hindman said this was important since about 1/3 of most car trips are 1 mile or less. In fact, the former Mayor made the claim that cities have designed physical activity out of the lives of people.
Hindman went on to say the MKT trail gave people a reason to change these attitudes, which eventually led to the City’s creation of a walk-able city manual. The PedNet Coalition was created to look at the interconnectedness of all forms of non-motorized transportation, which Hindman stressed was essential for long-term benefit.
Policy was key to making this all happen, whether it was sidewalk policy, working with school routes and all new construction. The next component was a complete streets program, which is designed to stop the bleeding – meaning as new infrastructure is completed it will include sidewalks, bike paths and landscaping to connect to the rest of the city.
Another aspect of the larger plan is to have neighborhood parks for every half-mile of the city, with no parking to encourage people to walk or bike to these parks. The parks also include a bike trail system as another way to connect the city.
Colombia, Missouri also received a $25 million federal grant to build this system to be able to demonstrate a shift in people’s behavior from car use to walking and biking. Part of the money was used to rebuild intersections, created bicycle/walking underpasses and a broad interconnecting of these systems in the city. All new businesses are required to put in bike racks and the city will provide economic incentives.
They also have put in sharos, which is a bike image and sends the message to the car drivers that they need to share the road with those on bikes. These are areas where there is not enough width to have bike lanes. Some of the intersections have included artwork as part of the re-design and as a way of sending the message to the community about changing habits.
Another project was to create a walking bus plan. A walking bus plan is getting adults to walk part of a route to school and meet kids along the way, so that kids are accompanied by adults on the whole way to school. This seems like a really creative project that has great community building potential and sends the message that all residents can take some responsibility for the safety and well being of children.
The former Mayor of Colombia ended his remarks by pointing out that promoting more non-motorized transportation was good for economic development. Hindman said that Real Estate companies have been including biking and bike paths as part of their sales pitch to selling homes in Colombia and IBM even recently open a facility in Colombia because of the City’s shift in developing more non-motorized transportation systems.
Planning for Bicycle Facilities – Breakout Session
Suzanne Schultz with the Planning Department of the City of Gran Rapids was the first presenter for this session. She presented a list of questions that they have been hearing from people and then responds to each question.
The first question is what has the city done since the last summit? Many people think nothing, but Suzanne says that the Green Grand Rapids plan has been completed, the city has been working with the bike coalition, a Complete Streets Solution is being developed and a Complete Streets Policy.
Question #2 addresses why the only bike lane in the City is on Lake Dr. Shultz argued that they are trying to get everybody involved with City Planning on the same page in order to make bike lanes happen. Once everyone is on board she thinks more bike lanes will happen, but no timeframe was provided on when new bike lanes would happen.
The next question dealt with road diets. Schultz said there have been about 13 miles of road diets, where there are one less car lane and now there are spaces for bikes to ride, such as E. Fulton St. They have plans to do the same for Division beginning in June.
Schultz also said the City is developing more sharos and are looking at what can happen since you need at least 5 feet on the outer part of a street for bike lanes to be added. The City has done traffic calming projects, some under/overpasses redesign, as well as adding new requirements for any new construction.
One obstacle to implement more bike lanes and other bike friendly projects is the lack of funds. Schultz admitted that finding money to pay for creation, operation and maintenance of bike facilities is a major challenge.
The second presenter in this breakout session was a representative with the Grand Valley Metro Council. They are trying to identify non-motorized transportation needs, identify gaps in existing facilities and develop prioritizing criteria. They are trying to help facilitate regional planning. There is a also non-motorized Committee, which is working on developing long range transportation plans for the region.
The Metro Council gets funding on an annual basis, about $1.3 million per year and nearly half of that is for non-motorized transportation. This money is used for sidewalks, bike racks and safety issues. There is also some State money through Fund Act 51, which is divided between MDOT, County road commissions and cities. She said there is a total need of $77.9 – 95 million for the next 25 years, but there is only $36 million identified so far.
The session ended with two representatives from the Downtown Development Authority (DDA). Both talked about the current economic conditions and the work they did to get public input. Based on the public input people said they want more retail downtown and the activation the river, particularly riverfront trails. They have divided the work into three areas – economic development, the environment and the cultural experience for people when downtown.
Some of the doable or “low hanging fruit” possibilities were then identified for the downtown area. The DDA spokesperson said there are currently 350 downtown bike parking spaces, some within the parking ramps and others along major roads downtown. They are looking at best practices from around the country, which may include bike storage shelters and other designs that would meet the needs of people.
Economic Development – Breakout Session
This breakout session involved 5 men all emphasizing the economic possibilities around bicycle use, but within a very narrow framework. All five of the presenters in this breakout session were businessmen who either sold bikes, sold bicycle gear or promoted bicycle events as a means of tourism.
Several of these speakers said that they specifically target a younger audience, what they referred to as Millennials, which they meant were young urban professionals who are less interested in owning cars and are part of the “knowledge economy.”
Two guys from Bike Friendly GR were part of this presentation. They both own a bike lifestyle company that is making t-shirts and looking to make other products that promote “Bike fashion.” The spokespersons from Bike Friendly GR acknowledged that it costs on average about $12,000 to won a car, but if more people could ride bike lots of money would be saved. They stated that if people only rode bike 31 days a year there could be a savings of over a million dollars in Grand Rapids. However, they both stressed that this money could just be spent on something else as opposed to people being able to live a more downwardly mobil and simple lifestyle.
The main presenter in this breakout session was Scott Chapin, with RJF Agencies in Minneapolis. Chapin talked about attracting tourists, both seasonal and permanent. He also said that bicycling attracts commerce and enhances communities, even though he gave no concrete examples.
Chapin said there is different types of economic impact such as direct initial purchase of bikes and bike gear, cross industry investment and induced investment, which is where people will go to bars, cafes and restaurants after biking on bike events. He talked about bike trips and the expenditures, which is where the “real money is.” In Wisconsin there is more of an economic impact from biking than hunting, according to Chapin. People are driving to Wisconsin for bike riding. He even said that Towns are competing for bike races, because they know there are significant economic benefits. Charity rides also bring in lots of money, according to Chapin.
Chapin also claims that land values increase because of bike infrastructure. He thinks that if communities made these kinds of investments they could also get grants to continue the process. Chapin concluded with pushing silent sports and bike races, which will not only have a big investment for the race, but people coming to train for the race thus spending more money in your community.
Much of this emphasis on economic development seemed problematic. Why so much emphasis on attracting tourists and starting companies to promote bike fashion? I understand that people are looking to develop new businesses, but there was so little information or discussion about making bicycle transportation a justice issue.
Bicycling has significant justice implications. Biking can improve your health and cut down tremendously on health care costs. It reduces carbon emissions, which also reduces the risk of respiratory problems such as asthma.
Bicycling has tremendous implications for environmental protection. It lessens the need for fossil fuels, especially when there is a comprehensive bike-commuting infrastructure. High numbers of bike users means less traffic congestion, less land use by roads and parking lots, just to name a few.
While there were certainly some positive aspects to the Bike Summit, it raised many questions about the long-term goals of such efforts and who are the real beneficiaries of such planning. In looking at some of the sponsors of the event the emphasis on economic development seems clearer, with companies like Meijer, Atomic Object, Priority Health and the law firm of Varnum.
However, the largest sponsor was the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation. This raises even bigger questions about why they would fund such an effort and how it fits into branding their image as philanthropists, especially while they fund campaigns to privatize government, social services and education, fund anti-gay campaigns and other religious rights efforts. These are important questions for the organizers of the Bike Summit and anyone who wants to promote greater transparency and shed light on the ultimate goals of such efforts.
The local group Healing Children of Conflict (HCC) will be hosting the 4th film in it’s spring series this Tuesday at Calvin College.
Little Town of Bethlehem “follows the story of three men of three different faiths and their lives in Israel and Palestine. The story explores each man’s choice of nonviolent action amidst a culture of overwhelming violence.
The film examines the struggle to promote equality through nonviolent engagement in the midst of incredible violence that has dehumanized all sides. Sami’s story begins as a young boy living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; Yonatan’s starts on an Israeli military base; and Ahmad’s begins in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Their three stories are interwoven through the major events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting with the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics and following through the first Intifada, suicide bombings in Israel, the Oslo Accords, the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, and the second Intifada. Sami, Yonatan, and Ahmad each describe the events from their unique perspective, interjecting personal reflections and explaining how these events led them to become involved in the nonviolence movement.”
Following the film there will be a discussion with members of HCC.
Little Town of Bethlehem
Tuesday, May 10
7:00 PM
Calvin College
Bytwerk Theater, DeVos Center
