Interview with Brett Colley on his letter to those protesting the Pétalos De Cambio mural at GVSU
I sat down with Brett Colley, a professor at GVSU in the Department of Visual & Media Arts, after he wrote a letter to people who were protesting a mural that was on display at the GVSU campus.
Before reading the interview with Brett, I encourage you all to read his letter, which you can find at this link.
GRIID – Can you first share when people began objecting to the mural entitled Pétalos De Cambio at GVSU and why they were opposed to it?
Brett – “Pétalos De Cambio” was installed in the Kirkhof Center in the Summer of 2024, and I believe GV officials received concerns about its imagery as soon as September. My understanding is that there were at least two meetings during the Fall semester between Catholic students demanding Grand Valley remove the work from its collection, and university officials. I wasn’t part of those meetings so I can only glean the students’ motives from their statements to various news outlets and the information shared out by GV representatives.
In the press, students claim the mural is offensive to them due to the fact that in one of three panels a modified depiction of Our Lady of Guadalupe (a Catholic icon originating from Mexico) has an X drawn over its head and a gun floating near its feet. They insist this is an act of violence against Mary, asserting to the Detroit Free Press, “There’s no other interpretation of an X through a person’s face and a gun pointed at them than the total death, destruction and annihilation of that person” – a statement that, as an artist, I find patently absurd. The mural also includes text, such as “homophobia is lethal”, and “my son is homosexual – I am proud of him”. While not mentioned by GV students in any news article I could find, these phrases were described in a petition supporting their protest as “blasphemous” and “offensive to God”.
In other news coverage the protestors – again, mostly GV students – argue that Grand Valley’s purchase and display of “PDC” is a sign that they’re disrespected and unwelcome on campus.
It is definitely worth noting that the artist provided an eloquent, thoughtful statement about the work which makes its intentions quite clear:
“The murals are aimed at addressing societal challenges without undermining the core tenants of the Catholic Faith. These murals seek to confront gender-based violence, homophobia, and mental health disorders advocating for a nuanced reevaluation of certain aspects of Catholic teachings to foster a more inclusive and compassionate culture. The intent is not to criticize, but to encourage thoughtful reflection on interpretations that may inadvertently contribute to societal issues.”
This is art from a student who identifies as Catholic themself, with familial connection to Mexico. Motivated by their own religious convictions and deep compassion they created a work intended to raise awareness about systemic violence (femicide) and the oppression of queer folks in that part of the world – the sort of socially-engaged scholarship we purport to celebrate at GVSU. Its installation in the Kirkhof Center near the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center and Office of Multicultural Affairs owes to its thematic relationship with the work of those offices. All of this seems to have been lost (on both protestors and GV leaders who removed the work) in a cacophony of self-righteous voices.
With the involvement of conservative state lawmakers (Luke Meerman, Jamie Thompson) and a far-right national organization (TFP Student Action) this ongoing drama has evolved from a misunderstanding of specific symbolism in “PDC” into a battle from the larger culture war, as those who feel their long-held conservative dominance undermined by social progress in a more tolerant direction. Here’s an instructive quote from Meerman: “We want healthy debate to go on, but I think the real point of what we who call ourselves Christians continue to feel is, that we’re continuing to be ostracized and pushed out of the university realm and this is one more example of, ‘You’re not welcome here. You’re hateful people.’”
GRIID – How did GVSU respond to the demands to remove and destroy the mural?
Brett – As I mentioned earlier, GV officials met with offended students on least two occasions. It is my understanding that these meetings included the Vice President of Academic Affairs, the Dean of Student Affairs, the director of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute, the director of the GV Art Museum, and a representative from our Title IX office. In short, their concerns were met with great seriousness and respect.
In response to those discussions, measures were taken to provide greater context for “PDC”. GV curators added label copy to its display, expanding upon the artist’s own statement with more background regarding the mural’s imagery, and its social significance.
Several news outlets have reported that GV officials also informed the students “PDC” would not be removed, in keeping with the university’s commitment to the First Amendment. Then, shockingly, the work was removed in the early hours of February 5th, before the Kirkhof Center had even opened to students for the day.
One of my principal frustrations since this occurred is that there’s been no widely shared explanation for the abrupt change of course. University leadership has been woefully silent in the press on the subject of “PDC”s removal, though the protest has been covered several times since.
The radio silence implies that GV leaders feel they made a mistake (in collecting and/or displaying “PDC”), or that the artist did something wrong, or that we are simply not deserving of an explanation. Additionally, the lack of information makes seeing a clear way forward very challenging. When you don’t know exactly why a decision was made, how can you address it?
What has been shared in small meetings and my individual communications with GV leaders is that several of them were receiving hate mail and threats, and that there were threats to the mural, as well. Evidently there have been offers to purchase the work for the express purpose of destroying it. I’m inclined to believe there were also threats made by conservative donors to withdraw funding.
I wish that GV leadership would simply disclose what the actual pressures were, so that we as a culture could have that learning moment, an opportunity to reflect openly on the greater meaning of this. I think that level of transparency would also be a constructive step toward healing.
GRIID – You wrote a letter to Grand Valley leadership before you wrote a letter to those protesting the mural. What were you hoping the letter to GV leadership would accomplish? And have you received a response from the Catholic group that was protesting?
Brett – My first written reaction to this issue was a message to state rep’ Jamie Thompson, addressing a melodramatic Facebook post she made on January 26, amplifying one GV student’s lamentation that the mural was “stomping on their religion” and condemning the school for displaying it. There were actually dozens of others who, like me, commented on that post immediately to correct misinterpretations, share the artist’s own words, and call Thompson out for exploiting the situation to stir up support with conservative constituents.
Naively, I mistook that single post’s comment section as an indication of where the protest stood in the greater social consciousness, but it was only a few days later (Feb. 7) that my colleagues and I from the Visual & Media Arts received official word of the mural’s removal. With that news I volunteered to compose a letter to GV leadership (on behalf of over 20 colleagues who co-signed) expressing our concerns about the dangerous precedent this move has set. I can share some of that language here:
“We are deeply troubled over the chilling effect the decision to remove “Pétalos De Cambio” will have on the expressive works of both present and future students, staff, and faculty, as well as the message it may send to Latinx students at GVSU who see this work as representative of their experience and concerns. Moreover, we believe that in removing this artwork GVSU signals that it will bow to societal pressures despite freedoms guaranteed in the constitution, and that the institution has somehow made an error in moral judgment by procuring/displaying the piece at all, and that by extension the artist – our student exemplar – has also committed an offense.”
This letter prompted a meeting between concerned VMA faculty, the director of the GV Museum, and GV leaders where we learned there is intention to reinstall the mural, but no designated site or clear timeline. Following that meeting I had more personal exchanges with leadership, wishing to emphasize that – while their email inboxes have likely quieted a bit with “PDC”’s removal – many on campus feel betrayed and demoralized, and the work of VMA faculty, staff, and students has been made more challenging as a consequence.
The most recent letter I wrote and published to social media is directed at the students/protestors themselves, and is my good faith effort to elucidate the unique language of visual art and the power of varied interpretations, while also calling out what I perceive as the actual agenda and extraordinary audacity of folks with immense privilege declaring their persecution at the expense of the artist – a Catholic peer – and the marginalized communities reflected in the mural’s content.
I shared the letter directly with LakerCatholic (student organization), as well at the pastor and campus minister at St. Luke University Parish. I haven’t heard anything in response.
GRIID – You mentioned that the Catholic group at GVSU received support from TFP Student Action. Judging from its website, it is clearly a far-right organization. Can you say anything more about them and the petition they circulated? https://tfpstudentaction.org/
Brett – I’d not been aware of TFP Student Action prior to this protest. It’s the worrisome organization of some ugly, homophobic, misogynist values. In addition to common Catholic positions like being opposed to abortion rights, they are aggressively anti-queer. There is a “victories” page on TFP’s website that lists instances across the country where they targeted schools for organizing Pride celebrations, for listing Planned Parenthood as a potential employer, for displaying other so-called “blasphemous” artworks, etc.
It has been my assumption that the social media firestorm fueled by Luke Meerman and Jamie Thompson attracted the attention of TFP, but it’s possible there is some other affiliation with GV protestors. It is not clear to me how much their own values align with TFP, but regardless they came together for a rally on GV’s campus on February 8, and TFP created and continues to circulate an online petition, which is aimed at GV President Mantella. After being apprised that “PDC” is an attack on the Mother of God, petition signers are also encouraged to call other listed GV leaders and demand with “polite firmness” that it be removed from the collection. Recently I attended a luncheon where President Mantella disclosed that she’d been threatened with bodily harm over this issue. How very polite!
The overall rhetoric of TFP, and of the petition specifically, is alarming to say the least. They describe even the concept of being “trans” or “homosexual” as an insult to the Mother of God. I wasn’t seeing or hearing that sort of extreme language on GV’s campus until the Feb. 8 rally. This rhetoric and behavior is so divisive and wildly off target, not at all in keeping with the stated values of the university, and tragically ironic given that the sustained complaint from these Christian students is that they don’t feel respected or welcome. It seems like a pretty misguided way to earn respect, make friends, or build alliances.
GRIID – With the rightward shift of politics, even before the 2024 Election, it seems as though groups like those protesting the mural have even more space in the cultural and political landscape to impose their far-right views. What do you say to that?
Brett – That’s my perception, as well, and I don’t even think there’s a reasonable argument to the contrary. I mean, the advent of social media platforms like X, Truth Social, and Meta all but assure that – unless we’re very deliberate about countering it – each of us is continually occupying an echo chamber, with slightly distorted versions of our existing beliefs bouncing back at us from all directions. These environments – populated by increasingly isolated people and largely anonymous – are the ideal breeding ground for extreme political species.
I’m thinking again of (state rep) Meerman’s quote from above, about Christians being “ostracized and pushed out of the university realm”. In addition to being so instructive about the protest’s agenda, it’s an unsubstantiated, statistically preposterous claim when two-thirds of U.S. identifies as Christian, and an example of the sort of Orwellian argument we’ve been hearing over the past 10+ years in national politics: the majority claims minority status. It’s laughable, but through social media (like Facebook, where I first saw Jamie Thompson sharing a similar sentiment) one has the instrument to amplify such an assertion. I think it’s more accurate to say that what’s being challenged at some universities – through the introduction of diverse voices and perspectives – is regressive dogma that impedes the ability of many people to flourish.
I’m also thinking about something that happened in 2020 under the proverbial radar, as we were (rightfully) preoccupied with the early pandemic. That year Trump signed an executive order mandating that all future federal buildings conform to Neoclassical architectural styles, and another commissioning a sculpture garden of traditional statues to honor patriots of his choosing (figures like Barry Goldwater and Douglas MacArthur). In other words, he turned his authoritarian attention to arts and culture.
And now this protest against “PDC” is happening against a national backdrop where we find Trump usurping directorship of the Kennedy Center and ordering changes to the language of NEA grant applications that cut off support to any DEI-inflected proposals, overtly fascist efforts to control culture at the level of the arts and humanities. I’m definitely not the first to acknowledge the parallels between what is happening there and Hitler’s campaign against “degenerate art”, a violent determination of what was made, exhibited, and supported in 1930s Germany.
GRIID – Would you say that what happened at GVSU is part of the growing assault on Higher Education in the US?
Brett – I certainly see it as more than a coincidence. No doubt conservative voices across the country feel emboldened by the far-right policies being pushed at our national level.
I fully appreciate that for most people reading this there are greater concerns facing higher ed, including suspension or cuts to federal funding for critical studies and experiments, the targeting of DEI programs and institutions that have enacted them, the gutting of our Department of Education, which threatens financial aid, violent suppression of pro-Palestinian campus protests and First Amendment rights.
And even these issues are overshadowed by a host of other crises like the imminent threat of deportation facing undocumented students and their families, the precarious status of non-citizen staff/faculty, the open assault on queer and trans folks, a long list of horrible things.
This one act of censorship at Grand Valley may seem insignificant in comparison, and an odd thing to direct such emotional energy toward, but to me it’s a micro sample of a macro concern – the slide toward a less informed, less tolerant, less democratic, less free society.
If you want to undermine democracy, if you want to smooth the path to authoritarian rule, start with education, start with the arts – spaces where people are actively curious and afforded diverse experiences and perspectives, growing socially conscious, critically engaged, and creative about solving problems.
GRIID – How has this whole process impacted your students and how has it impacted you?
Brett – Honestly, I feel disrespected as a scholar and as an artist. At the same time “Petalos De Cambio” was being removed from Kirkhof, the GVSU library was showcasing historically banned books about two hundred yards away. In other words, not only standing behind but celebrating controversial, creative works. Why is that? Why are university’s values being applied so differently from one discipline to the other?
The students I work with have learned and shared back to me the following lessons:
- A dominant group can cry persecution and get what it wants
- Conservative values over-ride their own
- Bullying is an effective tactic
- Donors have the real power
- Their opinions/desires don’t matter
- GVSU does not support freedom of speech
- GVSU is not a safe space for them
As painful as that list is to share, it’s truly not hard to understand why those are the thoughts/feelings of art students who use their visual language to express complex and sometimes controversial ideas, who are discovering their individual identities through these media, and who’ve now seen one of their own censured due to conservative blowback.
An art student produced scholarship that so exemplifies the university values – critical engagement, global curiosity, commitment to making the world a better place – we purchased it. A second student found it offensive. That student chose to reject any explanation or interpretation beyond their own, shared their animus with state lawmakers, and from there social media converted it into an ill-informed chorus of censors. Now a smart, significant artwork is in storage. Conservative Christians, not artists, are acting as curators of our culture. It’s an indignity we won’t soon forget.
It is my charge to encourage and support students in their creative research, and this experience has made that work more difficult. How do I counter the lessons they’ve learned? I find myself in the complex position of being both a mentor and a representative of the institution many students now view as unsupportive, at best (and oppressive, at worst).
I’m simultaneously fired up and fatigued. I have been expending a lot of time and energy toward understanding and addressing this protest and GV’s decisions. The fact that an excellent student has been so negatively impacted by both the protestors and the admin decision (double injury) is depressing and infuriating and distracts me from other work I have to do. At the same time, it feels important to challenge what’s happening on all fronts and redeem this shitty situation somehow, so I haven’t given up yet.
For week #6 in our collective investigation into the Prison Industrial Complex in Kent County, we read two essays that I selected based on the discussion we had during week #5.
I did share an extra resource, which is a toolkit that focuses on community care around mental health.
The first essay we discussed was a chapter from the book, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, beginning on page 44, by Dylan Rodriguez. Rodriguez talks about carceral violence, using the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign against radical groups in the 1960s and 70s. The essay then talks about what lessons the state learned during those decades and how they began to develop relationships with those in the non-profit sector and how the non-profit industrial complex came to play a larger (less violent) role in diminishing the impact or even the possibilities that people might take more radical actions to challenge systems of power and oppression.
Next, we discussed what environmental strategist Stephen D’Arcy lays out for us in his essay, Environmentalism as if Winning Mattered: A Self-Organization Strategy.
D’Arcy suggests a two-pronged strategic approach, the Resistance Phase and a Transition Phase. Keep in mind that D’Arcy is focusing on environmental outcomes, but he also makes clear that his approach is fundamentally an anti-capitalist strategy.
The Resistance Phase would include some of the following strategic objectives:
- To construct an anti-corporate alliance of Indigenous communities, workers’ organizations, and environmental protest groups, based on a serious, sustained commitment to practical solidarity at the grassroots level.
- To build cost-raising protest movements, directed against all forms of environmental destruction, framing these struggles whenever possible as struggles for environmental justice, including Indigenous self-determination, economic justice and public welfare.
- To promote prefigurative community-based alternatives to capitalist production that model sustainability, solidarity, popular autonomy, and environmental justice.
- To re-establish vital currents of ecologically oriented anti-capitalist radicalism, for instance, eco-socialism, anarcho-Indigenism; social ecology; left eco-feminism; and so on.
The Transition phase would also have four strategic objectives:
- To organize anti-capitalist environmentalists into a common front of radical community organizations (SMOs, CCOs, PAOs), capable of tactical concentration for united action;
- To establish the hegemony of the anti-capitalist common front within the mass environmental movement, so that it exercises a consensual, acknowledged leadership role in pointing the way forward for large sections of the broader movement;
- To gain for the common front and its allies a degree of community-based “social” power, resting on the capacity to deploy general strikes, mass protest, and mass civil disobedience campaigns, on such a scale that the community-based opposition constitutes a community-based counter-power that can effectively challenge the economic power of corporations and the coercive power of the state;
- To secure the transfer of ever more extensive governance functions to community-based self-organization (SMOs, CCOs, PAOs), so that “social” sector institutions ultimately displace — rapidly whenever possible, gradually whenever necessary — both “private” and “state” sector institutions from their role in running the economy, the healthcare and education systems, providing social services, etc.
Darcy emphasizes that we not only need to resist the harm that governments or the economic systems are causing, but to create a counter-power infrastructure that makes us less dependent on existing political structures, structures which primarily benefit those in the Capitalist Class.
GR Chamber of Commerce Policy Conference benefits the business class, regular people are on their own
I used to be be able to attend these conferences, but the GR Chamber of Commerce and the West MI Policy Forum gatherings are off limits to media that are critical of the Capitalist Class. I would have been able to attend, but only if I paid the $250 registration fee for a morning only policy conference.
Last week, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce held their annual policy conference, with the usual suspects in business, along with politicians that they have bought. What follows is the line up of people who presented:
- Hannah Naltner, Senior Vice President of Organizational Strategy and General Counsel, RDV Corp. (DeVos-owned)
- Joshua Lunger, Vice President of Government Affairs, Grand Rapids Chamber
- David LaGrand, Mayor, City of Grand Rapids
- Mark Washington, City Manager, City of Grand Rapids
- Ben Greene, Chair of Board of Commissioners, Kent County
- Speaker Matt Hall, Michigan House of Representatives
- Brooke Oosterman, Executive Director, Housing Next
- Sam Cummings, Managing Partner, CWD
- Marc Eichenbaum, Former Special Advisor to the Mayor of Houston, Texas
- Rick Baker, President & CEO, Grand Rapids Chamber
All three politicians that spoke, Mayor LaGrand, County Commissioner Greene and State Representative Hall, have all been funded by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce. In the 2024 election cycle, LaGrand received $2000 from the GR Chamber, along with plenty of money from other GR Chamber members. Kent County Commissioner Ben Greene received $3500 from the GR Chamber, along with hefty amounts from members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure. State Rep. Matt Hall hasn’t received as much from the GR Chamber of Commerce, but he has received $43,550 from the MI Chamber of Commerce during his career as State Representative.
Since I was unable to attend the policy conference, I am relying on what other news reported and from what the GR Chamber of Commerce posted on their social media.
As was listed above, Grand Rapids Power Structure member Sam Cummings spoke during the Policy Conference, primarily to promote his conversion of the Fifth Third Bank building from office space to apartments. The building conversion that Cummings talked about was due to a state law change in 2023 amending the Brownfield Redevelopment Financing Act. Housing development activities are now eligible activities for brownfield capture, like the 111 Lyons building that is owned by Cummings. Essentially this means that there will public subsidies available to people like Cummings, who has a long history of benefiting from public funding, as GRIID has noted in a previous posting.
The conversion of the Fifth Third Bank building will result in 140 apartments, according to Cummings. Former Mayor Rosalynn Bliss praised this conversion and current Mayor David LaGrand said it would help make the downtown a “real, living neighborhood.” However, no where in the coverage of this building conversion did it talk about what the 140 apartments would cost. Considering where the building is and the fact that Cummings, Wierda and DeVos (CWD) owns the building, the cost will be affordable only to members of the professional and Capitalist classes.
State Rep. Matt Hall also spoke at the Chamber’s Policy Conference, but he was not cited in any of the local news stories. Rep. Hall, you might recall, recently pushed a resolution that would threaten to block funding from the state if communities adopted Sanctuary policies in opposition to the Trump Administration’s threat of mass deportation. Too bad we don’t know for certain where the GR Chamber of Commerce stands on this matter, unlike their previous push to criminalize the unhoused in downtown Grand Rapids.
In the end, despite the claims from the GR Chamber of Commerce that they want to build a “thriving, prosperous West Michigan for all,” they continue to only represent the class they are part of, the Capitalist Class.
Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of March 16th
It has been more than 17 months since the Israeli government began their most recent assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel, has escalated to what the international community has called genocide, therefore, GRIID will be providing weekly links to information and analysis that we think can better inform us of what is happening, along with the role that the US government is playing. We will also provide information on local events and actions that people can get involved in. All of this information is to provide people with the capacity of what Noam Chomsky refers to as, intellectual self-defense.
Information
Death sentence for health sector as Israel closes Gaza crossings
As Israel Pulls Plug on Gaza, Smotrich Says Trump’s Ethnic Cleansing Plan ‘Taking Shape’
From Gaza to Syria: The Unyielding Reality of Israeli Settler Colonialism
Israeli Cabinet Minister: ‘Only Solution for the Gaza Strip Is to Empty It of Gazans’
Israeli soldiers vandalize and desecrate West Bank homes
EXCLUSIVE: Banned Yale Scholar Speaks Out After AI-Generated Accusations of Terror Ties
Analysis & History
The Gaza Ceasefire Stalemate and the Case of Mahmoud Khalil: A discussion with Sami Al-Arian
Gaza Doctrine: The West Bank is under fire
Image used in this post is from https://www.btselem.org/
Lessons on the history of US Immigration Policy #6: White Supremacy has always driven US Immigration Policy
So far in this series on lessons on the history of US Immigration Policy, I have looked at the question – Is the US a Nation of Immigrants in Part I; how anti-immigration policies in the US are bipartisan in Part II; the dominant narrative around how we talk about immigrants in Part III; and an investigation into the root causes of people migrating to the US, especially those coming from Latin America, in Part IV. In Part V, I looked at false narratives about immigrants and the importance of creating counter-narrative.
In today’s post, I want to talk about how US immigration policy has historically been grounded in a white supremacy framework. Since the first immigration policies were adopted at the end of the 1700s, like the Naturalization Act of 1795. The Naturalization Law of 1802 repealed and replaced the Naturalization Act of 1798, but kept the “free white person” requirement remained.
However, we first began to see the over racist nature of US Immigration policy in the later part of the 19th Century, with the passage of the Page Act in 1875. The Federal Government argument is that they didn’t want Chinese women to become prostitutes. Real reason is that they barred Chinese women so that male Chinese workers who came to work on the railroad, didn’t start families in the US.
The US government continued the anti-Chinese policy with the notorious Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, barring Chinese laborers for 10 years and establishing grounds for deportation of any Chinese person found unlawfully in the US. Anti-Chinese immigration laws created a political climate that normalized vicious anti-Chinese sentiment. According to the book, The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants, between 1885 and 1886, at least 168 communities carried out Chinese expulsion and self-deportation campaigns. These campaigns resulted in the destruction of Chinese businesses, homes and several massacres.
White labor groups were even involved in the anti-Chinese campaigns, particularly on the west coast. In fact, according to an article from the Grand Rapids Evening Leader, dated December 24, 1885, a labor group was asking people to come to California to help “round up” Chinese people, which you can see in this post in that Grand Rapids newspaper in 1885.
During the Great Depression, millions of Mexican living in the US were forced to leave because of the growing anti-Mexican sentiment, coupled with the economic hardship. This is what some historians refer to as “coerced repatriation.”
During WWII, there were thousands of Japanese Americans put into internment camps, even though many white communities were discriminating against the for years prior to the war. In fact, the US would not allow thousands of Jewish people who were fleeing Nazi Germany to come to the US, something that David Wyman documents well in his book, The Abandonment of the Jews.
In the post-Cold War era, the xenophobic nature of US immigration policy has disproportionately been reflected in the treatment of Mexican, Haitian and Central America immigrants.
I would recommend for people wanting to explore the racialized nature of US Immigration policy to read America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, by Erika Lee and American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants, by Robert Bartholomew & Anja Reumschussel.
One of the 10 principles of journalism is that it must serve as an independent monitor of power.
Now, I don’t claim to be a journalist, more of a media watchdog, but I do engage in movement media. Movement media is reporting and documenting what social movements are doing, which is what I have been trying to do with GRIID since 2009.
However, since I have been monitoring what I call the Grand Rapids Power Structure for nearly two decades, I thought I would start a new segment – Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids.
The Monitoring the Rich and Powerful in Grand Rapids segments will offer brief commentary on those who have power over others in this community. These segments will not replace my regular reporting on the Grand Rapids Power Structure, since those stories will offer more in depth writing.
As we navigate a second Trump Administration with the likes of Elon Musk, it seems like a perfect opportunity to shed some light on rich and powerful of Grand Rapids, or to frame it the way that radical media from the 60s and 70s would do regarding the Capitalist Class, using the phrase, “up against the wall motherfucker!”
- Grand Valley State University President Philomena Mantella was appointed to the board of directors for the Detroit branch of the Federal Reserve Bank Chicago. Mantella can add this appointment to her list of other roles that demonstrates that she is more interested in being connected to centers of power than promoting critical thinking and academic freedom. Mantella is also part of the Right Place Inc., the Econ Club of Grand Rapids, and Grand Action 2.0. In 2023, the President of GVSU decided to partner with local companies to promote a talent pipeline for local business, when she stated: “We are addressing labor-shortage concerns and creating a positive impact on the business community. This program will highlight Grand Valley students’ human-centered skills and deep knowledge of their disciplines, and the companies will benefit from well-prepared employees.”
- On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids City Commission voted to authorize $128 million in capital improvement bonds that will go toward constructing the Acrisure Amphitheater and Amway Stadium, as reported in Crain’s Business. This money will eventually come out of the Hotel Tax, which was increased last year through an August ballot initiative. However, the City’s willingness to approve the $128 million bond for entertainment facilities is reflective of their priorities, since Grand Rapids City Commissioners have never agreed to take out a similar amount for affordable housing or any other social benefit for the residents of Grand Rapids. Imagine if Grand Rapids took out a bond of $128 million for housing? Imagine if people could get $50,000 towards a downpayment for a modest $250,000 home. $128 million could provide 2560 families with a downpayment. For tenants who are paying $2000 a month for rent, which is $24,000 a year, then $128 million could cover the cost of rent for 5333 families for an entire year. Now, that would be housing justice!
- The Acton Institute is a notorious think tank that calls Grand Rapids home. GRIID has been writing about the Acton Institute for decades. However, we also are always looking at who sits on their board of directors. For instance, J.C. Huizenga, the CEO of National Heritage Academies (NHA), is an Acton Institute board member. NHA is a charter school entity that has a long history of undermining public education. JC Huizenga also sits on the Grand Rapids Promise board. At one of their board meetings in someone entions BIPOC students and Huizenga responds, “what does BIPOC stand for?” Former GRPS Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal responds, “It’s just another name for non-sense, JC.” JC Huizenga then asks, “I’m wondering, does this discriminate against Asian people, Jews who aren’t wealthy or Syrian Refugees?” All the while Weatherall Neal is shaking her head in affirmation of Huizenga’s comment. Weatherall Neal talks about how she had to deal with the term BIPOC while she was GRPS Superintendent. “Black signifies all people from Africa. So everyone is lumped together.” You could not make this stuff up.
Last week marked the 60th anniversary of what is often referred to as Bloody Sunday, where police beat Civil Rights activists during a march through Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) has been engaged in a 2-year voting rights campaign in Selma, so SNCC leader John Lewis, along with Hosea Williams (SCLC) led the march. A blockade of state troopers and local cops told those marching to disperse, to which they refused.The police gave orders to attack those marching, beating them with clubs in a cloud of tear gas, while mounted police ran down marchers and continued to club them as they fled.
The march was organized not only because of the fight for Voting Rights, but to honor the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson, who was murdered by the police on February 18th, 1965. On March 3rd, Dr. King delivered the eulogy for Jackson, which included the following words:
Jimmy Lee Jackson was murdered by every white minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of his stain-glassed windows. He was murdered by the irresponsibility of every politician…..who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. He was murdered by the timidity of a federal government that is willing to spend millions of dollars a day to defend freedom in Vietnam but cannot protect the rights of its citizens at home. He was murdered by every sheriff who practices lawlessness in the name of law. He was murdered by the cowardice of every Negro who passively accepts the evils of segregation and stands on the sidelines in the struggle for justice.
Interestingly enough, Rep. Hillary Scholten posted numerous photos of her family who went to Alabama for this historic 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Here is a picture of Scholten’s family on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Black activists were brutalized by cops. No one should be fooled by the photo ops from Rep. Scholten, especially in light of the comments that Dr. King made in 1965 at the funeral of Jimmy Lee Jackson.
Putting sentiment aside, let’s look at the voting record of Rep. Scholten since she was first elected as the 3rd Congressional Representative for Michigan in 2022, and juxtapose her voting record with Dr. King’s words cited above.
During Police Week in 2024, Rep. Scholten made the following statement:
“Every single day, law enforcement officers put their lives on the line to protect their communities. I’ve had the honor of meeting hundreds of these heroes during my time in Congress, and I am in awe of their willingness to put others above self in a time when serving one’s community is all the more challenging. As we work to make policing stronger and safer for all in West Michigan, it’s so important to recognize our safety heroes who do this work every single day. This week, the House came together in a bipartisan way to advance several pieces of legislation that will improve the lives of officers around the country, and I was proud to be a part of this much-needed effort.”
These words from Rep. Scholten were matched by her votes in 2024, which are listed below, with some commentary from GRIID.
- H.R. 3325 – The Recruit and Retain Act to authorize law enforcement agencies to use Community Oriented Policing grants for recruitment activities, in an effort to address an unprecedented crisis in hiring and retaining qualified personnel. GRIID – she voted for more public money to be used to recruit more cops, which are state violence workers.
- H.R. 7581 – The Improving Law Enforcement Officer Safety and Wellness Through Data Act to require the U.S. Attorney General–within 270 days of enactment–to submit reports that detail acts of violence against law enforcement officers and the efficacy of programs intended to provide law enforcement with wellness resources. GRIID – Let’s find more money and created programs to assist cops with wellness, but not for the families of the 426 people that the cops have killed so far in 2024, according to https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/.
- H.R. 7343 – TheDetain and Deport Illegal Aliens Who Assault Cops Act to require that non-U.S. nationals who assault law enforcement officers must be arrested, detained, and removed from the U.S. GRIID – really, this shit. Does Rep. Scholten want us believe that there is an epidemic of undocumented immigrants assaulting cops? PLEASE!
- H.Res. 1213 – A resolution regarding violence against law enforcement officers. GRIID – This resolution begins by stating, “Whereas, beginning in 2020, and in conjunction with the “defund the police” movement, respect for the rule of law and law enforcement officials diminished;” This is very telling, since it equates the Black-led Defund the Police Movement with the lack of respect for the rule of law. How can any reasonable person respect cops who brutalize Black people, or in the case of Patrick Lyoya, shot them in the back of the head while sitting on top of them?
In addition to supporting the police and voting for more public money for cops, Rep. Scholten has voted for the massive US military budgets over the past two years, which Dr. King also condemned since it took money away from meeting the needs of every day Americans.
A third way that Rep. Scholten betrays the memory of Bloody Sunday, is by voting to suppress the pro-Palestine campus movement, which Dr. King would certainly have endorsed. I wrote about this just yesterday, but will include part of what I wrote regarding Rep. Scholten’s position on the pro-Palestine campus movement.
Rep. Scholten, the so-called liberal, once again is demonstrating her allegiance to US Imperialism, to Zionism and her commitment to the repression of free speech. Notice that the Congresswoman provides no evidence of antisemitism. You just have to invoke it to make it a fact, just like Zionists preach. On top of the unsubstantiated claim of antisemitism, Rep. Scholten takes it one step further by partnering with a Republican from Indiana to introduce legislation that in reality is meant to further silence critics of Israel and US policies that support Israel. However, this might be a good time to point out why Rep. Hillary Scholten is on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of justice.
- US students and faculty are organizing to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and against the US-funded Israeli genocide that has already killed 35,000 Palestinians.
- Many of the campus protests against the Israeli genocide are being led by Jewish students and faculty.
- US students who are organizing encampments across the country are following in the same tradition as previous movements like the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam and anti-Iraq War Movements, the Climate Justice Movement, and the South African anti-Apartheid Movement, just to name a few.
- US students and faculty are exposing the political and economic commitment that Higher Education has to conformity, especially when it comes to US foreign policy and Israel.
- US students and faculty are also exposing how the police state functions in the US, especially when university trustees and university donors are pressuring campuses to actively suppress this movement.
In the end, Rep. Hillary Scholten can not hide behind the 60th anniversary commemoration of what happened on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Rep. Scholten is in no way furthering the cause of justice for Black people, for immigrants, but she is proudly voting for increased funding for the cops and for the US military. How dare she cheapen the memory of the Black Freedom Struggle, of the SNCC organizers and the murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson.
Photo credit goes to Spider Martin – 1965.
Fox News asked Betsy DeVos what she would do if she was Secretary of Education in the 2nd Trump Administration
A month ago, Betsy DeVos was interviewed by Fox News, where she was asked about being the Secretary of Education in the second Trump Administration, along with what she thinks the Trump Administration should focus on regarding education policy.
Of course, Betsy DeVos was passed over, with Trump nominating Linda McMahon as the new Secretary of Education. However, this didn’t stop DeVos from speaking her mind about what the 2nd Trump Administration should do regarding the Department of Education.
Here are some highlights from what Betsy DeVos had to say:
- She hopes that Trump will complete the education agenda from the first term.
- DeVos believes that the Department of Education has been a completer failure, since its founding in 1979.
- DeVos said that one trillion has been spent on the Department of Education, with zero or near zero benefits.
- DeVos said, we are not talking about defunding or eliminating the budget, but having the money be more effectively spent – block granting back to the state and directly to families who need it the most.
- In response to “critics” of school choice programs, Betsy DeVos said that those are opposed to school choice have been around for a long time, but the achievement levels have increased with school choice programs.
- DeVos also claims that teachers will benefit under the Trump Administration’s education priorities.
- DeVos claims that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) reform will be beneficial to students, since it will move “professionals” into administering student loans, which means privatizing federal loans, which DeVos believes would mean more accountability.
- DeVos would also love to see the Education Freedom Policy implemented.
So far the Trump Administration has signed two Executive Orders related to the Department of Education and education policy – Keeping Education Accessible and Ending Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools, and Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.
GRIID methodically monitored the 4 years that Betsy DeVos spent in the Trump Administration, wiring about what the billionaire was doing and what her agenda was as the Secretary of Education. I put those articles under the section – Betsy DeVos Watch.
GRIID made it very clear in 2016, when Donald Trump asked Betsy DeVos to be his Education Secretary, that she has always been an enemy of public education. Betsy DeVos led a school voucher campaign in Michigan, a campaign that was defeated in 2000. Betsy didn’t let that stop her efforts to undermine public education, because the very next year she created the Great Lakes Education Project.
Betsy DeVos has always seen education as a talent pipeline for the business community, but more importantly, she has been promoting a NeoLiberal Education model for more than 3 decades.
During an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) summit, DeVos used standard content from the Neo-Liberal playbook, arguing states rights, choice, the market-place of ideas and even attempting to use language such as, “We the People.” One aspect of the Neo-Liberal playbook is to convince people that whatever policy the right wants to promote is all about freedom and liberty. In addition, one other major theme is to attack the federal government. This message has been central to every administration since Ronald Reagan, even though the Neo-Liberal agenda is not always against the Federal Government. For instance, entities like ALEC or the State Policy Network a deeply in favor of government intervention and policy when it comes to the annual US military budget, tax policies that benefit the wealthy and massive subsidies for corporations. Thus, the Neo-Liberal Agenda is quite selective in their notion of choice and freedom, especially when it comes to policies that benefit the Capitalist Class.
This is why Betsy DeVos promoted what she called Education Freedom Scholarships. According to DeVos, “The policy will make a historic investment in America’s students, injecting up to $5 billion yearly into locally controlled scholarship programs that empower students to choose the learning environment and style that best meets their unique needs.” These programs allow people and corporations to donate to a designated scholarship granting organization (SGO) and be reimbursed in the form of a tax credit. With the DeVos plan, states would designate the eligible SGOs, but the federal government would fund the tax credit reimbursement, up to $5 billion total.
Betsy DeVos has been directly involved in getting these tax credit scholarship programs in the states in the graphic above, through a network of organizations that mirror groups in Michigan like the Great Lakes Education Project and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Across the country, the State Policy Network, which brings together groups that primarily push for policy changes at the state level.
The claim made by the former Secretary of Education that School Choice is better and that achievement levels have increased is in sharp contrast to the data and analysis of a 2019 report entitled, Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter School Programs Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste. There has been over $1 billion in federal funding for Charter Schools that either never opened or have since closed. The report’s Executive Summary states:
It is impossible to document total waste for the entire 25 year program because the Department never required the states to report the names of funded schools until 2006. However, we have now documented $502,468,123 (28 percent of the total database amount) that was awarded to schools from grants that were active between SY 2006-07 and SY 2013-14 that never opened or that have closed. Applying that percentage to the total expenditures ($4.1 billion) of the CSP programs designed to create new schools, approximately $1.17 billion in federal funding has likely been spent on charters that either never opened, or that opened and have since shut down.
Facts and data don’t matter to people like Betsy DeVos, not when their deep commitment to Capitalism and their ideological belief in God drives them.
When Betsy DeVos gave a speech at the far right school Hillsdale College, DeVos was more candid than usual, since she was speaker to those with the same ideological commitments. In part of her speech, DeVos didn’t mince words about what she really thinks of the American public that doesn’t embrace God and County, when she said:
So, the unholy mob thinks our economies need redistributing. It thinks our Constitution needs rewriting. It thinks our families need restructuring. One prominent group was explicit about its desire to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”
That’s taken right from the old Marxist playbook. It admits the goal is to “[do] away with private property and [educate] children on a communal basis, and in this way [remove] the two bases of traditional marriage.”
While I miss the opportunity to critique Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, whatever the Trump Administration plans to do with the Department of Education and the Education budget will lean heavily on the network of charter schools and private schools across the US, along with think tanks, associations and organizations that are a part of the State Policy Network, all of which Betsy DeVos and her family have had a hand in crafting and funding. The battle for public education will be waged at the local and state level, regardless of whether or not the Department of Education will be dismantled under Donald Trump.
The Biden Administration paved the way for Trump’s policy of punishing Pro-Palestine campus organizers
In the past few days we learned that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents entered a student residential building at Columbia University in uptown New York and detained Mahmoud Khalil, one of the lead negotiators on behalf of pro-Palestine protesters at 2024’s Gaza solidarity encampment.
Within just a few days, over 2 million letters have been sent to the Department of Homeland Security, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to Columbia University, demanding the Immediate Release of Palestinian Student Activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention.
Just yesterday, we learned that a New York federal court judge ordered that recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil cannot be deported from the United States until a further court order.
Like several of the Trump Administration’s oppressive policies, the public and the courts have pushed back, so we’ll see what happens with Mahmoud Khalil and those who have been part of the pro-Palestine campus movement.
Of course, all of this is offensive and disgusting, since it means that free speech is no longer protected. However, if we are to honestly engage in fighting this issue, we have to come to terms with the fact that the Biden Administration paved the way for Trump’s policy of punishing Pro-Palestine campus organizers.
Do you remember President Biden’s swift and strong response when pro-Israel extremists reportedly blasted the chemical weapon “skunk spray” on students peacefully protesting at Columbia University earlier this year? Do you remember how the White House condemned the attack, demanded accountability, and called on the school to protect students from such hate?
No? You don’t remember? Of course you don’t. Because none of it happened. President Biden didn’t respond swiftly or strongly to the skunk spray attack. He didn’t respond at all.
How about President Biden’s response when a Texas man hurled racist slurs at a group of Palestinian Americans after a ceasefire protest at the University of Texas in Austin, ripped a Palestinian flagpole off their car, dragged one of them out of the backseat, and stabbed him?
The Biden administration’s silence was nothing new.
On Stanford University’s campus, a driver yelling“F—k you and your people” reportedly used his car to ram an Arab Muslim student attending a ceasefire protest, sending him to the hospital. No response from the White House.
At the University of Texas, pro-Israel extremists disrupted a Palestine Solidarity Committee meeting and hurled profanities at the attendees. No response.
In Arizona, Texas, Georgia, New York and other states, law enforcement agencies have brutalized students and even professors who attended peaceful protests against the genocide in Gaza. Again, no response.
Now contrast the White House’s lack of response to violent actions motivated by anti-Palestinian hate with the White House’s vocal response to inflammatory words that a small number of individuals have allegedly said at or near pro-ceasefire protests on college campuses.
“I condemn the antisemitic protests, that’s why I set up a program to deal with that,” the president said, broadly mischaracterizing the sit-ins led mostly by Jewish and Palestinian students.
In a statement marking Passover, Biden said, “Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses or anywhere in our country.”
Last fall, the White House rushed to falsely claim that ceasefire protesters in Philadelphia were antisemitic for demonstrating outside a kosher restaurant—the protesters actually targeted the business because it held a fundraiser benefiting the IDF.
But the White House said nothing when protesters at November’s March for Israel chanted genocidal slogans. On the contrary, a prominent Biden administration official spoke at the march, sharing the stage with notoriously anti-Muslim and antisemitic pastor John Hagee.
All of what the Biden Administration did or didn’t do, helped to pave the way for the Trump Administration to further target pro-Palestine activists. If the Biden Administration would have condemned violent actions against pro-Palestine activists or spoke up to condemn the witch hunts that Rep. Elise Stefanik from New York was engaged in by going after University Presidents and other campus leaders, it would have made it harder for the Trump Administration to do what they want to do with Pro-Palestine campus organizers.
The same could be said for the role that Rep. Hillary Scholten played in demonizing pro-Palestine campus organizer.
Last April, I wrote a piece about how Rep. Scholten responded to the pro-Palestine campus movement. Scholten wrote in her weekly newsletter:
“I’m sure many of you have seen the ongoing protests happening on college and university campuses across the country right now. The right to free speech and protest is fundamental, but far too many of these protests have crossed the line into harassment, intimidation, and discriminatory anti-semitism. Colleges and universities do not have enough clear guidance on what does and does not cross the line into antisemitism– which has put Jewish students at risk and at the same time, jeopardizes legitimate free speech. Students have the right to peacefully protest, but antisemitism is never –and never will be– tolerated.
As others rushed to the cameras, I got to work on solutions. This week, my Republican colleague and fellow midwesterner Rep. Rudy Yakym from Indiana and I championed our new bill, the PROTECT Jewish Students and Faculty Act, to require colleges and universities to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s official working definition of antisemitism in student and faculty codes of conduct as a condition of receiving Title IV federal funds for financial aid. This way, we’re protecting students and faculty and ensuring that institutions of higher education can be safe spaces of learning and free expression for all.”
Rep. Scholten, the so-called liberal, once again is demonstrating her allegiance to US Imperialism, to Zionism and her commitment to the repression of free speech. Notice that the Congresswoman provides no evidence of antisemitism. You just have to invoke it to make it a fact, just like Zionists preach. On top of the unsubstantiated claim of antisemitism, Rep. Scholten takes it one step further by partnering with a Republican from Indiana to introduce legislation that in reality is meant to further silence critics of Israel and US policies that support Israel. However, this might be a good time to point out why Rep. Hillary Scholten is on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of justice.
- US students and faculty are organizing to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and against the US-funded Israeli genocide that has already killed 35,000 Palestinians.
- Many of the campus protests against the Israeli genocide are being led by Jewish students and faculty.
- US students who are organizing encampments across the country are following in the same tradition as previous movements like the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam and anti-Iraq War Movements, the Climate Justice Movement, and the South African anti-Apartheid Movement, just to name a few.
- US students and faculty are exposing the political and economic commitment that Higher Education has to conformity, especially when it comes to US foreign policy and Israel.
- US students and faculty are also exposing how the police state functions in the US, especially when university trustees and university donors are pressuring campuses to actively suppress this movement.
Instead, what Rep. Hillary Scholten is doing is taken right from the Zionist playbook to blame the victim or anybody else, but never Israel. Scholten is one of 9 co-sponsors of H.R. 7478, which was introduced by Rep. Rudy Yakym from Indiana. Scholten is only one of two Democrats who cosponsored this shitty piece of legislation that includes the likes of Rep. Elise Stefanik from New York. Stefanik has been the person leading the charge to discredit universities who allow Palestine Solidarity actions or Middle East Studies that question Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
It’s bad enough that Rep. Scholten has consistently voted to send billions of dollars in US military aid to unconditionally support Israel and to participate in an AIPAC funded trip to Israel last year, she now wants to use a right-wing tactic to silence college students across the US for courageously denouncing genocide. Rep. Scholten’s legacy as a member of Congress will be that she defended genocide and the suppression of those who opposed genocide. This is also the legacy of the Biden Administration and it paved the way for the Trump Administration to escalate the repression against pro-Palestine campus organizers.
Viva Flaherty – Radical Socialist who documented the furniture workers strike and resisted WWI in Grand Rapids
Last week I posted a story about Voltairine De Cleyre, a feminist and anarchist writer who lived in Grand Rapids in the 1880s. Today, I want to draw attention to Viva Flaherty.
At the time of the 1911 Grand Rapids Furniture Workers Strike, Viva Flaherty was working as the office secretary at Fountain Street Church, which was a Baptist Church in the early part of the 20th Century.
Viva Flaherty documented the 1911 strike because she believed that the “people of Grand Rapids are awakened and enlightened and they can be trusted with the whole truth.” Flaherty went on to say, in her introduction to the History of the Grand Rapids Furniture Strike:
“A strike is a public matter, and if the people are to know how another is to be avoided they should know all the inside facts of this one, so that they may know whom to distrust and on whose shoulders rests blame for a nineteen weeks strike.”
Flaherty makes it clear in her version of the story that the strike was able to endure as long as it did because of the seven unions that were involved, with membership of over 4,000 workers in thirty-five shops in Grand Rapids. She also made it clear in the opening observations of her historical account that the Christian Reformed Church would not grant their members the right to be part of the union, since it was not “founded on divine right.”
On page 8 of the booklet written by Flaherty, she documents the kind of wages earned by those in the furniture industry, stating that of the eight thousand furniture workers employed in Grand Rapids, most made less than $2 a day. Flaherty also mentions that as early as 1909, after furniture workers found out that the price of what they produced had increased by 10%, they demanded that their wages increase. Some of the workers who had made such demands in 1909 were fired shortly thereafter as being agitators.
A commission was established to investigate the grievances of the workers, which included a final report. However, according to Flaherty, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners had designated the commission as, “the hired servant of that powerful union, the Furniture Manufacturers Employers’ Association.”
Such suspicions were affirmed by the furniture industry’s claims that they needed to honor any of the demands from the striking workers around wages, hours, piece work, etc. Flaherty notes that the furniture barons, “repudiated any social responsibility to regulate wages to suit the cost of living.”
On page 17, Flaherty affirms the workers admiration of Bishop Schrembs when she writes:
Such commentary not only reflects that Schrembs was practicing the social gospel, but it also reflects the sophistication of Flaherty and her keen theological observations. What a powerful indictment she makes of the church that endorsed the furniture barons, by stating that they worship the Almighty God of the Pocketbook.
Flaherty then goes on to talk more about the specifics of the strike, beginning on page 18, where she discusses the “riot” on May 15. The “riot” Flaherty was speaking of is when workers and their wives confronted strikebreakers & scabs who were brought in to continue with production after the walkout of 7,000 furniture workers.
It is worth noting here that during the confrontation against the scab workers, many of the women in the crowd, who had been hiding rocks and bricks under their dresses began to throw them at the scab workers and cops who attempted to escort them into the factories. Such disgust at the attempt to break the strike by the furniture barons is captured in the statue dedicated to the 1911 furniture workers strike. At the feet of the woman depicted in the statue, you can see rocks underneath her dress.
The City of Grand Rapids, for its part, not only called for arbitration during the strike, but adopted this resolution on July 24, 1911:
Towards the end of the booklet, Flaherty provides more forceful observations about the furniture industry and reflects a high level of class consciousness that workers had developed in the early part of the 20th century. Flaherty states:
“Capital knows that when the people realize that capital is organized in this country today for the conscious and deliberate purpose of crushing labor in its efforts to become free, the people will make common cause with labor and send the divine right of capital to join the divine right of kings. Industrial freedom is a state which the world as yet has not experienced.”
Flaherty then follows up with a clear indictment against the captains of industry, particularly the National Association of Manufacturers and the Furniture Manufacturers Employers’ Association. These entities were producing their own propaganda that blamed workers for being “class conscious” and for “stirring up trouble.”
Resisting World War I
In May of 1917, several members of the Socialist Party, two clergymen and Feminist/Labor supporter Viva Flaherty were arrested in Grand Rapids for distributing anti-conscription pamphlets near downtown Grand Rapids.
This seemingly mild act of informing people about their rights and about the imperialist nature of World War I was seen as a form of treason. There had been numerous laws passed since the beginning of the United States government, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798, which meant to silence and punish those considered to be, those “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”
The Espionage Act was passed in 1917, as a means to silence and punish those who spoke out against the US entry into World War I. However, as radical historian Howard Zinn points out, these laws were not applied equally and were meant to target dissidents during WWI, particularly radical labor organizers, socialists and anarchists. Some of those arrested for opposing the US entry into WWI were arrested and jailed, while others were arrested and deported.
The level of contempt that the US government held against radicals involved in labor organizing and anti-WWI activities eventually led to the Palmer Raids (1919-1920) as a justification for “cleansing” the US of radical leftists, socialists and anarchists.
Those arrested in May of 1917 in Grand Rapids fell under the category of dissidents and radicals. There were several who identified as Socialists and then there was Viva Flaherty. Flaherty was the only woman arrested in May of 1917, but she was possibly the most well known of the group, particularly in Grand Rapids.
Flaherty, along with those she was arrested with, were passing out anti-conscription pamphlets on Division Avenue near downtown Grand Rapids and on Bridge Street. They had 15,000 copies printed from the Furniture City Printing Company of Grand Rapids.
The International Socialist Review, published in Chicago, makes mention of the action taken by the state against Viva Flaherty and her fellow dissidents. Published in the July 17 edition of the ISR, this is what they had to say about the anti-conscription action:
Almost all active members of the Socialist Party have been arrested and indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. Principal charge is that the accused, by the circulation of literature and “thru demonstrations, mass petitions and by other means,” conspired to “prevent, hinder and delay” the execution of the conscription law. There were six counts in the indictment.
National Secretary Adolph Germer, of the Socialist Party, was also indicted by the same jury and charged with conspiracy. On learning the “news,” Comrade Germer went to Grand Rapids, submitted to arrest, plead “not guilty” and was liberated on bonds. If necessary, these cases will be carried to the highest courts.
Grand Rapids has a population around 130,000—mostly wage slaves. Scab labor runs its factories. It is a typical American Billy Sunday burg. Therefore all the fury of the pulpit and the press was directed against the socialists.
Among the indicted comrades are Ben A. Falkner, financial secretary of the Local. For years he has been employed in the city water works department. He has been fired and blacklisted by the political patriots. Comrade G. G. Fleser, corresponding secretary of the Local, who had worked eight years for the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad as a stenographer, was discharged by the patriotic rail-plutes. Viva L. Flaherty, social worker and writer; Charles G. Taylor, member of Board of Education; James W. Clement, manufacturer; Charles J. Callaghan, postal clerk (discharged); Dr. Martin E. Elzinga; G. H. Pangborn; Vernon Kilpatrick; Rev. Klaas Osterhuis, and our wellknown, active old-time Comrade, Ben Blumenberg.
The Grand Rapids Press wrote about the arrests, the selection of the jury and the trial itself. Much of the their reporting reflected a bias in favor of prosecution of those arrested for distributing anti-conscription material. There were a few interesting cartoons that ran during the trial in October of 1917, one with the note below Viva Flaherty’s image which says, “Viva Flaherty has many visitors during recess.”
Ultimately, Viva Flaherty and her co-conspirators were not found guilty for the charges brought against them from May of 1917. The trial ended on October 18, 1917, and it well documented by the National Socialist Party in the publication entitled, “Not Guilty.”
Viva Flaherty may not be well know, especially for her opposition to the US entry to WWI and the military draft, but future generations should look to her for inspiration as someone who challenged political and economic power structures in Grand Rapids. Flaherty lived to be 84, eventually dying in 1968.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 