For anyone who spends time with working class people you know that there are countless people who are struggling to get by.
Despite the claims made by economists and Democratic Party apologists, a huge sector of the population is struggling with housing costs, food costs, gas costs, utility costs and many other basic necessities.
The cost of living continues to rise, yet most people’s annual income or their wages has not risen at all or not nearly close enough to the cost of living. There are lots of people with more than one job and there are also lots of people that I know who have a side hustle, primary because the wages they make are not enough to cover the weekly or monthly expenses.
What is instructive is that fact that in the midst of the 2024 election cycle, wages, income and poverty are not significant talking points. Sure, there are candidates and politicians who will talk about the middle class or equity, but they do not talk about economic justice, the wealth gap or the fact that the wealth of the billionaire class continues to grow at astronomical rates. According to a March 2024 report from inequality.org, “the country now has 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of $5.529 trillion, an 87.6 percent increase of $2.58 trillion, according to Institute for Policy Studies calculations of Forbes Real Time Billionaire Data.”
A popular meme right now on social media has been to remind people of the fact that the fight for a $15 an hour wage has been around so long that such a wage would be grossly inadequate for people to survive. Many people are saying that the new minimum wage should be $25 an hour and that a Living Wage should be at least $35 an hour.
Data on Poverty
According to a recent study done by Wallet Hub, where they looked at which states are seeing high levels of distress around income, Michigan is #1 in states with the highest percentage of a states population in financial distress.
On Sunday, MLive posted an article entitled, 41% of Michigan households live paycheck to paycheck. You can see the breakdown by town on an interactive map in the article.. The source that MLive is citing is a recent ALICE report. ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.
The MLive article provides a searchable map, so that anyone can look to see what percentage of people are economically struggling across the state. I looked at the data for Grand Rapids, shown above on the right. As the MLive headline said, 41% of Michigan households live paycheck to paycheck, but that number goes up to 47% for Grand Rapids households. This means that nearly half of the households in Grand Rapids are living paycheck to paycheck! You wouldn’t know this, since the local news doesn’t really talk about it much, nor do the politicians, hell even faith leaders to make economic justice a priority when they preach.
Now, for anyone who reads the GRIID blog, you know that Grand Rapids has lots of major development projects that, especially in the downtown area, where hundreds of millions of public taxpayer money is being used to fund projects that will primarily benefit the already disgustingly rich people who have been proposing these projects. And yet, there is no organized movement of people making demands that public money should be prioritized around meeting the needs of thousands of households in this city.
One last piece of data that should piss everyone off, is based on a recent article on TruthOut, with a headline that reads, 27 States Let Utilities Shut Off Electricity for Nonpayment During Heat Waves.
The TruthOut article cites data from Utility Disconnections, which tracks where utilities are being shut off throughout the year, regardless of how hot or how cold it is. According to Utilities Disconnections, between January 2018 and December 2023, Michigan had the highest number of utility shutoffs in the country – 320,706.
What can we do?
There are no easy answer or quick fixes. One thing for sure is that whatever we do has to be a collective response. As an abolitionist, I am committed to not only dismantling the economic system of Capitalism, I want to practice collective liberation and cooperation. One way to think about this is from an excellent article by Stephen Dacy, Environmentalism as if Winning Mattered: A Self-Organization Strategy. Darcy suggests we need a two-pronged strategy of Resistance and Transition. Darcy argues that while we resist oppressive structures and systems, we need to simultaneously work to create autonomous systems and practices that reflect the kind of world we want to live in.
However, in the mean time, here are a few things that we can do collectively to promote and practice economic justice and foster cooperative practices that can lead to collective liberation.
- Most of us have jobs and are not bosses, therefore you can be organizing for workplace democracy and fight for better wages and benefits. You can join a union or you can start an independent one, like an autonomous IWW chapter.
- Create worker-run cooperatives, where bosses are not needed and where those who do the work decide how funds are spent and how they are shared between those involved. See the book, For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America.
- Create or join a community garden. Growing food collectively will not only help us not rely as much on agribusiness and fake foods, but it helps to foster solid relationships and practice skill building. The same could be said for food cooperative, housing cooperative, childcare cooperatives, etc. For a great model, look at the example of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, where those who have been displaced and dispossessed, occupied land that was appropriated by the rich. The MST then creates their own autonomous communities. It is the largest organized social movement in the world.
- Make demands at the local, state and federal level to prioritize budgets – which are exclusively made up of the tax we collectively pay – that larger portions of public money be spent on uplifting people, creating more equity and moving away from funding things like policing, the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, etc. If government systems to not respond to our demands, then we can collectively engage in tax resistance. As Secretary of State George Shultz once said, “people can march all they want, as long as they pay their taxes.”
- Practice Mutual Aid. One of the fundamental principles of Mutual Aid is the idea that “we take care of each other.” Mutual Aid can be in the form of money, food, transportation, housing, caring for children, pretty much anything we can do that demonstrates ways of taking care of each other. I would highly encourage what Dean Spade has written on the topic of Mutual Aid.
- Engage in collective boycotts and economic sabotage. Systems of power and oppression rely on us to spend money on things that cause oppression. If we engage in collective boycotts and economic sabotage, we can wound the system of Capitalism, Militarism and White Supremacy, especially in our own communities.
- Practice skill sharing. We all know things, knowledge or skills that we can share. The more we share those skills, the more than we don’t have to collectively relying on someone else doing something for us. Again, skill sharing is most effective when we practice it collectively.
These are just some of the more important tactics and strategies we can implement and practice if we are going to create another kind of world to live in. None of it will be easy, much of it will mean that we need to take risks, but then again if we look at significant shifts in history, especially the kind where collective liberation was at the center, taking risks has always been necessary.
Deconstructing Memes: What we need to learn from history books about Nazi Germany and US complicity
In today’s Deconstructing Memes, I want to take a look at a meme that oversimplifies history, creates a false equivalency, and fails to account for a more complete analysis of the rise of Nazism and what it has to do with US politics.
The meme, shown here, reads:
I suggest that everyone pick up a History Book or two and read about what took place in Germany in the Early 1930’s. Especially those of you who think a dictator isn’t such a bad idea.
It’s too bad that the meme’s creator doesn’t list or suggest some good history books on what was happening in Germany during the early 1930s, but that is probably because they don’t really want people to read about this history or at least a more robust and comprehensive aspect of this history.
The rise of Nazism and their leader Adolf Hitler, is more complex than what the meme suggests. Germany came out of WWI defeated and their economy was hurting, particularly for working class people. Germany, like the rest of the world, was deeply impacted by the Great Depression.
During economic hardships, political leadership will often direct working class people’s attention away from economic policy by laying the blame at the feet of other poor and working class people. Some of the targets are usually lobbed at immigrants and racial minorities.
In James Whitman’s book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, he says that a great deal of the policies that the Nazi Party adopted that not only vilified Jewish people, but also demonized Roma, the queer community, immigrants and non-Aryan people, were based in large part on what they learned from policies in the US. Whitman states:
The 1920 Party Program called for sharp limits on citizenship, which was to be restricted to persons of “German blood,” along with a scheme of disabilities for resident foreigners, who were to be threatened with expulsion.
When the US adopted the the Naturalization Act of 1790, it opened naturalization to “any alien, being a free white person.” The Nazi Party learned from this as well as US immigration laws that were adopted in 1921 (Emergency Quota Act – which limited the amount of immigrants into the US) and 1924 (The Immigration Act of 1924), which prevented immigration from Asia and put limitations on immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. The Nazi Party were paying attention to both of those US immigration policies and and wove them into their own citizenship law that emerged in 1935.
Getting back to Germany’s post WWI economy, it should be pointed out that the primary investors in Germany after the 1929 depression were firms based in the US. In Christopher Simpson’s monumental book, The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, he documents how Allen and John Foster Dulles, who were working for the corporate law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, collaborated with German banks and other financial institutions to help create the economic conditions that led to the Nazi Holocaust.
US investment in Nazi Germany was not just limited to the the 1930s, but continued right through the end of 1945. In Edwin Black’s book, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust, the author presents detailed information on corporations like IBM, along with the famous US Capitalists Carnegie and Rockefeller who embrace eugenics research to justify White Supremacy.
Another important history book is entitled, Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot, by Charles Higham, who documents how Standard Oil Chase Bank, ITT and the Ford Motor Company were collaborating with the Nazi Party throughout most of WWII. In fact, the Ford Motor Company was manufacturing military vehicles in Detroit for Nazi Germany at least until 1944.
On the matter of racial laws that the Nazi’s adopted, which led to the Holocaust, the Nazi Party learned a great deal from US anti-miscegenation laws, according to Hitler’s American Model. The Nazi’s were obsessed with not wanting Aryans to inter-marry with anyone else, thus keeping the bloodline “pure.” On this matter, the Nazi Party once again adopted US anti-miscegenation laws, particularly around white and African American citizens, particularly during the Jim Crow era. In his book, Hitler’s American Model, Whitman not only talks about what the Nazi’s learned from Jim Crow segregation policies, but that some of the Nazi lawyers and jurists felt that in some policies the “Americans were too extreme.” Whitman is not the only historian who provides this insight. In Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she writes:
While the Nazis praised the American commitment to legislating racial purity, they could not abide the unforgiving hardness under which an American man or woman who has even a drop of Negro blood in their veins’ counted as blacks. The one-drop rule was too harsh. For the Nazis.
Again, I agree with the general sentiment of the meme cited above, which suggests that we read history books. I have two more books to suggest as well. First, there is David Wyman’s important book, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941 – 1945. Wyman provides a detailed account of how the US Government would not allow European Jews that had fled Europe during the Nazi era, to migrate to the US. Lastly, in the book, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America, we learn from Annie Jacobsen that the US methodically recruited Nazi scientists and former Nazi military personnel to come to the US to assist them during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
Therefore, the meme mentioned above is not only simplistic, but fails to address the fact the Nazi Germany had learned a great deal from the US regarding racial laws and immigration policy. In addition, the history books I am citing demonstrate that one contributing factor to the rise of Nazism from the 1930s through the end of WWII, was in part due to the collaboration between the US financial sector with Nazi Germany and numerous major US corporations that were profiting off of Germany war of expansion in Europe, along with profiting from the sale of technology that was used (IBM punchcard system) that was instrumental in the Nazi Concentration camps.
I agree, we all need to learn from history. However, instead of making over simplifications about the possible re-election of Donald Trump, maybe we need to learn about how not to collaborate with dictators, something the US has been doing for a long time.
Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of July 21st
It has been more than 9 months since the Israeli government began their most recent assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The retaliation for the October 7 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
Landmark ICJ ruling says world must act to end Israel’s illegal occupation
Israel Has “Flattened” UNRWA HQ in Gaza in “Blatant” War Crime, Agency Says
Resisting Israeli Scholasticide and Academic Apartheid
81 Killed in 24 Hours as Israel Continues Targeting UN School Shelters in Gaza
US “charity” aids armed Israeli settlers
Report: US Allows Tax Incentives for Donations to Israeli Groups Blocking Aid
On the Murder of Children and the Return of Genocide to Banality
Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza Show the Real Danger of AI
Analysis & History
Phyllis Bennis on Israel’s War on Palestinians
Havat Oppenheimer: settlers use outpost to take over Deir Istiya land with military backing
Local Events and Actions
Sign this Action Alert demanding that the City of Grand Rapids Divest from companies profiting from the Israeli Occupation, Israeli Apartheid and the Israeli genocide.
Power to Palestine: Weekly Rally in Grand Rapids
Wednesday, July 24th, 6pm – 7pm, Monument Park
Graphic used in this post is from https://www.shutitdown4palestine.org/
WZZM 13 does a major disservice to TV viewers in Kent County with an awful story that does nothing more than provide a platform for the group that is pushing voters to approve the August 6th ballot initiative that would increase the hotel & motel tax by 3% to fund the Amphitheater, Soccer Stadium and Aquarium projects.
The story, which aired on Tuesday, states that there is a new billboard up that is “misinformation” regarding the Hotel Tax Ballot Initiative. The billboard was paid for using money from the TGIF Victory Fund PAC, which funds a variety of conservative political candidates in West Michigan, based on data from the site Transparency USA. You can see if the data that some of their money has gone to Outfront Media, the billboard company that has the Vote No on the August 6th hotel tax message.
Unfortunately, channel 13 did bother to contact anyone from the TGIF Victory Fund PAC to get their take on the August 6th hotel tax. What WZZM 13 did was contact the people who are part of the pro-Hotel Tax crowd, specifically the Destination Kent Committee, thus providing them with an opportunity to say that the billboard is misinformation.
Only Andy Johnson, who works for the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, was afforded the opportunity to speak on this matter. The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce is one of the main groups behind the Amphitheater, Soccer Stadium and Aquarium projects that will be funded by the increased hotel tax if more people vote yes on August 6th.
In addition, WZZM 13 engaged in some of their own misinformation when the reporter says that “those behind the proposal want to remind people that this is all visitor funded.” This is simply not true. Roughly 10% of those who stay in hotels and motels are Kent County residents, which include a number of people who are housing insecure and often will stay in motels for weeks at a time as opposed to going to a shelter.
WZZM 13 not only parrots misleading information, they also fail to practice the principle of giving both sides of these kinds of issues an opportunity to speak and present their position. Channel 13 miserably failed the public in this instance, which is not surprising, since they have primarily been doing promotional stories for the Amphitheater, the Soccer Stadium and the Aquarium.
Lastly, it is worth pointing out that none of the four daily news sources in Grand Rapids – MLive, WOODTV8, WZZM 13 and WXMI 17 – has done one single story that provides a critique of the August 6th Hotel Tax Ballot Initiative, a critique like the one that GRIID has been providing.
We really need to pay more attention to what the local, state and federal governments give priority too when it comes to budgeting issues.
According to the National Priorities Project, the US spends more on militarism than the next 9 countries with the largest military budgets combined. In 2020, the combined amount of money spent by Presidential candidates in the US was $3,977,400,000.00, according to OpenSecrets. (most of that money is spent on those shitty political ads)
We should always remember, it is not a question of having enough money, rather it is a question of priorities.
The City of Grand Rapids is now planning on borrowing up to $30.5 million to build a multistory parking deck on site at 201 Market Ave. SE near US-131. The city commission approved a resolution Tuesday afternoon, signaling its intent to go forward with the proposal, according to a WOODTV8 story.
The channel 8 story also said, “the parking deck will only have 340 parking spots, mainly aimed at making the amphitheater accessible for all. The goal is to draw most people to and from downtown.” Just 340 parking spots for a 12,000 seat Amphitheater. This is an absurdly low amount of parking, which has been a concern and a concrete issue for many people during this whole process.
The Deputy City Manager Kate Berens explains the low number of parking space by saying, “We also want to maintain that idea of, ‘You’re coming downtown, you’re staying a little bit longer. We’d like to capture you in our downtown and ensure you visit some of our other opportunities as well. That’s why you don’t see 12,000 parking spots right there at that facility. We want to rely on everything that’s downtown and invite users in and make it a gracious place to walk to on a nice summer night.” This will not really address the parking issue, on top of the fact that the City just increased parking rates and they are extending the time til 7pm for parking meters. It’s as if they want to cater to a certain class of people.
There are two other interesting points made in the WOODTV8 story. First, that the Amphitheater will owned, operated and maintained by the Grand Rapids Kent County Arena Authority, which is exclusively represented by the Grand Rapids Power Structure. Second, the Deputy City Manager says the Amphitheater and the Soccer Stadium will, “support the local economy.” This is not only a claim that is unsubstantiated, the money (meaning profits) that will be spent downtown, whether its Hotels, parking, restaurants and bars will disproportionately go to the owners of this city and not the people who wait on tables, those who clean the hotel rooms or the parking attendants. When people say these things support the local economy, they mean it will further enrich the Capitalist Class that runs this damn city.
Getting back to priorities. Ask yourself, if the City of Grand Rapids is willing to borrow $30.5 million for a parking garage, why don’t they borrow that same amount to address the housing crisis? I crunched the numbers and found that 1,694 renters who pay an average of $1500 a month for rent, could be subsidized for 1 whole year, which is the equivalent to the $30.5 million that the City of Grand Rapids is borrowing for a parking garage that will be for the Amphitheater attendees. Again, it is never about not having enough money, rather it is a matter of priorities.
The GRPD and the Kent County Sheriff’s Department will be spending a great deal of time and taxpayer money to protect the neo-fascist, White Supremacist Donald Trump this Saturday.
While the GRPD and the Kent County Sheriff’s Department are protecting Trump, they have a long history of suppressing social movement activists for demanding accountability and justice for numerous issues in recent years.
This same type of repressive and threatening posture from the GRPD was directed at Movimiento Cosecha GR and allies in the immigration justice movement even before the COVID pandemic began, specifically in 2019, when the GRPD threatened to arrest people on May Day of 2019 if they marched in the streets. To be clear, Movimiento Cosecha GR had marched in the streets on May Day in 2017 and 2018, but the GRPD decided they would no longer tolerate disruption of traffic and commerce. Cosecha and their allies obtained FOIA documents that verified that the GRPD was prepared to use force against people marching in the streets. Here is the Dispersal Announcement the GRPD made:
I am (Rank and Name) of the Grand Rapids Police Department. I am now issuing a Public Safety Order to disperse and I command all those assembled at (specific location) to immediately disperse, which means leave the area. If you do not do so, you may be arrested (cite ordinance or law) or be subject to other police action. Other police action could include the use of Chemical Agents or less-lethal munitions, which may inflict significant pain or result in serious injury. If you remain in the area just described, regardless of your purpose, you will be in violation of city and/or state law. The following routes of dispersal are available: (provide escape route details). You have (provide a reasonable amount of time) minutes to disperse.
The targeting of primarily BIPOC organizers and activists began with actions organized by Defund the GRPD and Justice for Black Lives in the fall of 2020 and throughout 2021. The City of Grand Rapids then hired Eric Winstrom to be the acting Chief of Police for Grand Rapids. Winstrom came from Chicago, a city which has a long and brutal history of repression by the police. (See the book, Chicago’s Reckoning: Racism, Politics, and the Deep History of Policing in an American City.)
Shortly after Winstrom began his tenure as the head of the GRPD, a cop murdered Patrick Lyoya on April 4th of 2022. The very next day, Chief Winstrom, along with other City leaders, held a Press Conference. What was instructive about that Press Conference is how polished Winstrom was as a PR man.
Two months after Patrick Lyoya was murdered, there was another “officer involved shooting, so Chief Winstrom once again held a Press Conference where he started to use the phrase, “the Ferguson Effect.” Winstrom was using that term to make the claim that whenever there is an “officer involved shooting,” that crime usually goes up, especially crime in the Black community. Of course, Winstrom offered to verification of this claim because when people in positions of power make such claims they must be true, according to the dominant narrative used by the commercial news media.
The phrase “Ferguson Effect”, was coined by Heather MacDonald, which Chief Wonstrom named during the Press Conference. What Winstrom didn’t mention is the fact that Heather MacDonald is a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute. The use of the phrase, the “Ferguson Effect” was looked at in an article by the media watchdog group, Fairness in Accuracy & Reporting in June of 2015. The article states:
The point of the “Ferguson effect,” though, is not to be accurate. It is instead to distract us from the growing evidence about the magnitude and extent of police use of lethal violence in the United States—as powerfully documented just this week by the Guardian and the Washington Post—and to besmirch the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
It’s a strategy that Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater inaugurated in his campaign in 1964, almost single-handedly turning crime into a political weapon against the civil rights movement.
This is exactly what Chief Winstrom was doing, which the local media seemed to be eating up. WOODTV8 repeated the Ferguson Effect claim in their coverage on Friday.
Since last year, the GRPD is targeting more dissident groups and calling un-permitted marches illegal. When the Comrades Collective joined Palestine Solidarity Grand Rapids for a march that began at MLK Park, then went to Rep. Scholten’s home, the GRPD showed up in big numbers and arrested the safety car driver. Safety cars have been used in recent years during marches as a means of protecting those marching from motorists that want to ram into people who are in the streets, just like what happened in Charlottesville in 2017.
The same thing happened during the march for Patrick Lyoya, which took places 2 days after the second anniversary of his murder on April 6th. The GRPD arrested the safety car person and then impounded their car.
However, a few weeks after that happened, two BIPOC activists then received calls from the GRPD to turn themselves in, since one was being charged with a misdemeanor and the other a misdemeanor and a felony.
In May, during a protest organized by Palestine Solidarity Grand Rapids, the GRPD once again showed up and arrested 4 people, specifically those that were acting as crowd safety. Here is what the GRCC students newspaper reported:
After protesters marched around the downtown area and disrupted traffic, around 35 Grand Rapids police trailed behind the group stating that they could be subjects of arrest if they didn’t comply with the law. Protestors moved over to the sidewalk while going down Monroe Avenue but marched down the middle of Monroe Center Street.
After Protesters made it back to Monument Park on the corner of Fulton Street and Division Avenue, Police detained four individuals after they were blocking roads according to GRPD Police Chief Eric Winstrom.
“This group has had probably 20 marches since Oct. 6 when Israel was invaded by a group of terrorists,” said Winstrom when referencing when the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas killed around 1,200 Israeli citizens on Oct. 7. “They (protesters) have not had a permit at any point in time. They continually block streets, creating traffic hazards for individuals. We have been extremely tolerant in accommodating them in their activities, even though they have been illegal…”
It is instructive to note that Winstrom clearly has a Zionist view of what happened in early October, failing miserably to understand the historical context of the actions of Hamas. Winstrom’s lack of clarity on US foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine aside, what is most important is what he said that is in bold in the previous paragraph. What is at issue here is that Winstrom will not tolerate people engaging in un-permitted marches, especially if those marches are disruptive in nature.
In Kristian Williams’ book, Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, (a book which discusses the history use of counterinsurgency by police departments – something they learned from the US Military), the author states that one of the primary tactics of counterinsurgency is to engage in “preserving order” and “social management.”
Alex Vitale, in his book, The End of Policing, confirm’s this function of social control, when he writes:
The reality is that the police exist primarily as a system for managing and even producing inequality by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and nonwhite people: those on the losing end of economic and political arrangements.
We should all expect the repression of social movements and organized dissent to increase in Grand Rapids. We need to expect the worst and plan accordingly when we engage in public acts of disruption. Disruption is a long-held tactic of social movements. Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement used disruption, which he wrote about:
“We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice,” Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in the spring of 1964, refusing calls from moderate Black and White leaders to condemn a planned highway “stall-in” to highlight systemic racism in New York City. “I hear a lot of talk these days about our direct action talk alienating former friends,” he added. “I would rather feel they are bringing to the surface latent prejudices that are already there. If our direct action programs alienate our friends … they never were really our friends.”
It would be understandable, in light of the increased GRPD repression, for people to pull back on direct action. However, we also know that if we are committed to systemic change and collective liberation, we cannot afford to lessen our resistance. We do need to take care of each other and protect those that are the primary targets of this repression, but we must not diminish our resistance, no matter the cost.
I’ll just end with this observation from Kristian Williams’ book, Gang Politics: Revolution, Repression, and Crime, he writes:
“The challenge for liberatory movements, then, is not merely to launch an insurgency capable of overturning the existing power structure but to create new ways of relating, of organizing, of exercising and sharing power, that do not themselves reproduce the logic of a protection racket, like the police.”
In Part I of this series I began an updated version of a Grand Rapids Power Analysis, which lays out the ground work for what the Grand Rapids Power Structure looks like and what it means for this community.
When I use the phrase, the Grand Rapids Power Structure and who has power, it is important to note that I mean power over. A local power analysis is designed to investigate who has power over – who oppresses, exploits and engages in policy that benefits them to the exclusion of everyone else – the majority of people living in Grand Rapids.
In Part II of this series on the Grand Rapids Power Structure, I looked at the DeVos family, which I argue is the most powerful family in this city, in terms of economics, politics, social and cultural dynamics.
In Part III of this series I looked at some of the other families and individuals that also wield tremendous power in this city, economically, politically and socially. In today’s post I will focus on the private sector organizations that also have tremendous power and influence on daily life in Grand Rapids.
In Part III, I used a graphic showing how the Grand Rapids Power structure people are connected to private sector organizations, what I named as Interlocking Systems of Power. Many of the groups that were included in the graphic I used in Part III, are the groups that wield tremendous power and influence on daily life in Grand Rapids.
The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce
The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce likes to present themselves as promoting economic policies that benefit everyone in this city. The Chamber uses this claim in their promotional material, but they consistently act in such a way that results in the majority of Grand Rapidians to experience economic hardship.
As GRIID has documented over the years the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce they have opposed any substantial increase to the minimum wage in Michigan, they opposed organized labor and worker efforts to democratize the work place. In addition, the GR Chamber doesn’t shy away from supporting projects that are or will be owned by the private sector, yet they lobby for public dollars to make these projects happen.
Since I wrote the 2018 Grand Rapids Power Structure analysis, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce has continued to promote economic projects that rely heavily on public funding, but will be owned and controlled by private sector entities, such as the outdoor Amphitheater, the Soccer Stadium and the yet to be formalized Aquarium. The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce also created the group Housing Next, which takes a market-based approach to the current housing crisis.
The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce also uses their Political Action Committee, known as Friends of West Michigan Business, to channel thousands of dollars to candidates run for Grand Rapids City positions, Kent County positions and those running for the State Legislature. Here are some examples from 2022 and so far in 2024.
Lastly, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce pushed for the City of Grand Rapids to adopt ordinances that would criminalize the unhoused, which they proposed in 2022, and were later adopted by the City in 2023.
The West Michigan Policy Forum
The West Michigan Policy Forum was actually a creation of the GR Chamber of Commerce back in 2008, with the intention of creating an organization that would influence state policy in ways that would primarily benefit the Capitalist Class in the Grand Rapids area.
In recent years GRIID has documented how the West Michigan Policy Forum has supported policies which hurt working class families, such as:
Opposing any regulation of rental property units in Michigan
Oppose Stay at Home orders during the Covid pandemic, putting public health at risk.
Ongoing efforts to undermine public education in Michigan
Opposing paid family and medical leave
In addition, the West Michigan Policy Forum holds major policy conferences every two years. GRIID used to cover those conferences, but in recent years they would not allow GRIID to attend as media, especially since we have been critical of their role in state policy since 2008. They have told me repeatedly that I can attend if I pay the registration fee, which is cost prohibitive for working class people like myself.
Grand Action 2.0
Grand Action 2.0 was formed in the mid-1990s as a way for the Grand Rapids Power Structure to get the public to pay for projects that would expand their wealth. The first such project was the promotion of the Van Andel Arena.
Since then Grand Action 2.0 has promoted the Downtown Market, the creation of the convention center, and more recently the Amphitheater, the Soccer Stadium and the Aquarium. Dick DeVos has always been the primary chairperson of Grand Action 2.0, which makes tremendous sense, considering how many downtown GR hotels they own and other places of business that benefits from people coming downtown to events or tourists visiting GR. Grand Action 2.0 was also instrumental in getting the City of Grand Rapids to approve $318 million subsidy for the expensive apartment buildings that will be erected next to the Amphitheater and the Soccer Stadium.
In 2021, I wrote an article that asked the question, How is it that we allow groups like Grand Action 2.0 to get away with the shit they do? What I was attempting to do is to point out how groups like Grand Action 2.0 manipulate the system for their own benefit, while too many of us either buy into what they are selling or are oblivious to what they are up to, especially when it comes to how they use public money for private interests.
The Right Place Inc.
The function of the Right Place Inc. is to recruit businesses to West Michigan, businesses that will then lobby to get tax breaks for moving here and making profits.
There are some recent examples of The Right Place Inc working to bring companies to the Grand Rapids area, such as 1) their attempt to bring Amazon to the area, which included massive public subsidies , and 2) The Right Place Inc’s role in attracting Israeli military companies to the area, using taxpayer subsidies. On top of that, The Right Place Inc is also a member of the Michigan/Israeli Business Bridge, an entity which develops and encourages trade and business interaction between Michigan-based companies and Israeli companies.
The Board of Directors at the Right Place Inc. is also a who’s who of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, both tier 1 and tier 2. Not surprising, many of these people signed on the letter that supported the GR Chamber of Commerce proposed ordinance that would criminalize the unhoused, a list you can read here.
There are some additional private sector organizations that play a significant role around economic, political, social and cultural dynamics in Grand Rapids, but on a slightly lesser degree than the four groups named above. These group include:
Downtown Grand Rapids Inc., which essentially manages downtown GR and is zealously in support of increasing tourism, which is why they also endorsed the city ordinances that criminalized the unhoused.
The Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority, which operates many of the entertainment venues in downtown GR and has mostly business people on its Board of Directors that are either part of or connected to the GR Power Structure.
The Econ Club of Grand Rapids, which is primarily an organization that provides opportunities for the local power structure to meet and discuss ways to carve up more of the city for themselves and host speakers that affirm their goals to expand wealth and maintain power in Grand Rapids.
The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which hosts events and influences public policy through discourse, speakers and conferences. Of all these groups they have less of a direct impact on Grand Rapids, but they shouldn’t be ignored since they have national and international connections that make them very dangerous for BIPOC and working class communities. GRIID has written extensively about them for more than 2 decades.
In Part V, I will write about the Grand Rapids City Government and the role they play in working with the private sector members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure.
Yesterday, MLive posted a story with the following headline, Catholic counselors sue over Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy.
The article states that the Catholic counselors have hired Becket Law (formerly known as Becket Fund for Religious Liberty), which claims, “the law banning conversion therapy – a widely discredited practice of trying to change an LGBTQ person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – violates a right to free speech and free exercise of religion.”
According to Mlive, Becket Law is based in DC is dedicated to “defending the freedom of religion.” The only other information that MLive provides readers on Becket Law is the following:
Becket has successfully argued several religious liberty cases before the U.S. Supreme Court including one over Philadelphia refusing a contract because Catholic Social Services rejected same-sex couples as foster parents. The group also won a case over Hobby Lobby not offering its employees birth control.
Most of the rest of the MLive article focuses on the background of the State of Michigan’s ban on conversation therapy, which happened in 2023.
So what didn’t the MLive article tell us about Becket Law?
- Becket Law has ties to the far right groups known as the State Policy Network.
- Roger Severino, who was chief operations officer and legal counsel for Becket, was appointed by Donald Trump to head the department’s Office of Civil Rights in 2018.
- Becket Law has ties to the Koch Family Foundation.
- Becket Law defends families against school system that providing reading material or curriculum that informs about LGBTQ issues and particularly anything that promotes being trans.
- Becket Law defends Jewish students at the university level because they claim that the Pro-Palestine movement on US campuses is antisemitic.
- Becket Law fights cases where groups are seeking to remove certain statues or memorials that center war. Becket Law believes that many of these memorials are also religious in nature.
- The Southern Poverty Law Center says – “Though it was originally nonpartisan and took on a variety of “religious liberty” cases, under the current leadership of President William Mumma it has become more conservative and is seen as the intellectual leader of right-wing religious liberty campaigns. In 2012, it won the landmark Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. EEOC, a ruling that allows religious organizations to hire and fire clergy without regard to employment discrimination law.”
- Becket Law also works with Catholic and other Right to Life groups defending their religious grounds to NOT support abortion or any kind of reproductive freedom.
I found out all of this information about Becket Law within one hour, but apparently the journalist with MLive didn’t think it was necessary to provide more background of the group that is trying to undermine Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy.
Sources used:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Becket
https://www.splcenter.org/20160211/religious-liberty-and-anti-lgbt-right#becket-fund
MLive coverage of the Grand Rapids 3rd Ward Candidates gives the public vague answers to vague questions
Last week, I posted a critique of the MLive coverage for the Grand Rapids City Commission 1st Ward candidates, and today I will do the same regarding the six 3rd Ward Candidates.
The MLive story on the six 3rd Ward candidates follows the same format, a brief introduction of each of the candidates and then responses to the same 4 questions that was asked of the 1st Ward candidates. Those four questions are:
- What in your experience makes you the most qualified candidate for this position?
- What are your goals should you be elected and how will you work to accomplish them with currently limited resources?
- What are the most important challenges facing our community, and how do you propose to address them?
- What will you do to support a vibrant economy in our community?
As I stated previously, these are not compelling questions, nor do they address some of the most pressing issues in the city and specifically in the 3rd Ward. According to the MLive article, one of the six candidates, Al Willis, did not respond to the candidate questionnaire.
In the post I did about the 1st Ward Candidates I wrote an overview of responses bases on each of the question asked. Today I want to focus on the responses from each candidate in the order they are listed in the MLive article.
Joyce Priscilla Gipson – Regarding what goals she has, Gipson wants to end Proposal 3, since she is against abortion, plus she has questions about making the “new stadium or aquarium” priorities, when children’s lives are “in the balance.” Regarding the challenges facing the Grand Rapids community, Gipson said that she would monitor sex education and then give those students that meet the requirements should each get $2000. First, Gipson doesn’t seem to be aware that as a City Commissioner they have little say in state policy (Proposal 3) or GRPS policy (sex education). Gipson offers no concrete solutions on how to address pressing issues facing Grand Rapids and doesn’t even respond to the question about the economy.
Bing Goei – He says he wants to reduce poverty, but offers no concrete solutions on how to do that. Goei acknowledges a disinvestment in the 3rd Ward, but also doesn’t offer what real investment would look like, except to say he would prioritize “strengthening and growing the existing small businesses economy in the Third Ward and the City by prioritizing Black Owned and Hispanic Owned businesses” How exactly will that reduce poverty in the 3rd Ward. Prioritizing Black and Latino/a business might benefit the families of those businesses, but it would unlikely benefit others unless those businesses plan on paying a living wage with good benefits. On the most important challenges the city faces Goei thinks the city should “retain diverse, International talent.” On building a vibrant economy, and Goei suggests supporting small businesses.
Reggie Howard – He wants to keep widows in their homes, get services to Veterans, go gun storage, help people become home owners and help people open more businesses. Howard says all of this without any concrete plans. Regarding most pressing issues in the city, he says gun control and building trust between Commissioners, the GRPD and the community. Again, no concrete solutions. On the matter of a vibrant economy Howard does say people should be paid “good wages”, but wages are only good if they meet the needs of those earning the wages.
Marshall Kilgore – This candidate says they are a human rights advocate and that he wants inclusive policies for the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. This sounds like a positive things, but there are no concrete solutions offer that would benefit BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. In response to the questions about goals Kilgore says increase the 3rd Ward Equity Fund, support solar initiatives and make affordable housing a priority. However, Kilgore offers little in concrete solutions and only talks about getting state and federal funds for housing. Responding to challenges faced in the 3rd Ward, Kilgore simply restates the need for expanded investment and more affordable housing options. On the matter of creating a vibrant economy Kilgore again talks about investment and fair wages, both of which come with no actual numbers. Why is it that candidates can’t say a living wage or wages no lower than $25 an hour?
John Krajewski – This candidates wants more commercial districts and more staffing for the GRFD and the GRPD. If MLive wanted to do journalism instead of simply providing candidates with an open forum to say whatever they want without their comments being questioned, then MLive would have told readers that Krajewski wants to add more cops because he received $12,500 from the Grand Rapids Police Officer’s Association PAC in campaign contributions. Regarding the biggest challenges facing the city, Krajewski says housing, with no solutions, then talks more on policing and building community trust. On the matter of creating a vibrant economy Krajewski says more safety for businesses to thrive in and more business districts. Again, no real solutions are offered and he says nothing about working class people or poverty in the 3rd Ward.
The Grand Rapids 3rd Ward is already the most policed area in the city. The 3rd Ward has the highest percentage of African Americans living in that ward, which also translates into the fact that there are more Black people in the Kent County jail than any other group of people, because the GRPD targets the Black community. None of the 3rd War candidates really talk about racism, specifically structural racism. If MLive would chose to ask more probing questions and follow up questions to the candidate responses, the public would be better served regarding where the candidates stand on critical issues. Instead, the public is left with vague questions and relatively vague answers from the candidates. Commentators often wonder why there is low voter turnout or the lack of enthusiasm for candidates, but rarely do they talk about the low quality of candidates themselves.
Do politicians really believe that violence has no place in America: A short history of violence in so-called America
After Saturday’s shooting during a Trump rally, numerous politicians responded by saying that violence was unacceptable.
When President Biden heard about the shooting, he said, “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer responded to the news of the shooting by saying, “There is no place for political violence in this country, period.”
My initial reaction to these comments from Biden and Whitmer is simply that what they are saying is bullshit! I say this for two reasons. First, Biden and Whitmer, along with lots of white liberals were hoping that Trump would have been killed, they just don’t want to admit that they feel this way. Believe me, I understand that sentiment. I was thinking that before I even sat down to write this piece I was reflecting on the plot to assassinate German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, a plot that included the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I would encourage people to watch the Martin Doblmeier 2003 produced documentary, Bonhoeffer.
Second, the notion that there is no place for violence in America is to ignore the very core of what this country was founded on and what it continues to practice……..violence. Now, it is not a question of whether or not Whitmer or Biden are unaware of the history of violence in the US, it is more about the fact that they can’t acknowledge this historical fact or even admit it. For most politicians it would be political suicide. However, imagine for a second if there were political leaders who would say things like, the US was founded on structural violence, both with the genocide of Native Nations and the enslavement of Africans. Of course that will not happen, since both Republicans and Democrats don’t want to admit that the US was founded on genocide, the theft of Indigenous land and the enslavement of people from Africa.
Genocide and slavery were the two foundational aspects of the founding of the US, but they are not the only forms of violence that are at the core of US history. What follows is an overview of the systemic or structural violence that is woven into the very fabric of this country, along with sources to support these claims.
- Genocide of Native Nations – see An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
- Chattel Slavery – see The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E Baptist.
- Only white men who owned land could vote for nearly the first 75 years of this country – see Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions, by Jerry Fresia.
- The racist, xenophobic, white nationalist history of US immigration policy – see American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants, by Robert Bartholomew & Anja Reumschussel and The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin.
- The violent history of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their communities and placing them into so-called boarding schools – see Kill the Indian, Save the Man, by Ward Churchill.
- The history of US wars, whether they have been for the expansion of what is now the 50 states to the countless wars and other forms of imperialism around the globe – see Stephen Kinzer’s book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, William Blum’s book, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, and the excellent online source from Zoltan Grossman FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO YEMEN
- The violent history of US worker suppression by the Capitalist Class – one great example is found in David Correia’s book, Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police, plus the 10 volumes of the History of the Labor Movement in the United States, by Philip Foner.
- The violent history of patriarchy and misogyny in the US – see Phyllis Chesler’s book, Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness.
- The suppression of political dissent in the US – see Jules Boykoff’s book, Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States.
- See the three volume history of the US by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vittoria, Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny
- Mass Incarceration in the US – see Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and Naomi Murakawa’s book, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.
- The US Drug War – see Clarence Lusane’s book, Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs, plus the global side of the US drug war, which is documented well in Alfred McCoy’s book, The Politics of Heroin: CiA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
- Police murder of civilians in the US – see the online source https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
- The long history of violence against nature and eco-systems in the US, the climate crisis and environmental racism.
- We also need to add all of the systemic violence perpetrated against people with disabilities, queer & the LGBTQ community, all BIPOC people, class violence against working class people, immigrants and religious people who are not Christians.
This is just a short list of the violence that has been part of the US since it was founded and is woven into every aspect of society. To the degree that we have any civil liberties, civil rights or human rights, has been because regular, everyday people organized, fought, resisted and often died to win any sense of justice. The US political system never gave us anything, it was never a gift. So for President Biden to say there is no place for violence in America is to deny the very history of this country, especially the history of systems of political and economic power & oppression.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 