On Sunday morning I received a very interesting Email from someone with the Steinreich Communications Group, Inc., which you can read below.
I was curious why a PR firm would contact me without any solicitation, especially since they were “offering” to provide analysis of who would be the next likely Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.
Immediately, I wanted to check out the Steinreich Communications Group, Inc., which I discovered has the largest number of Israeli and Jewish clients of any agency in the US. I also discovered that in December of 2020, the Steinreich Communications Group, Inc., had hired Joshua Lavine, a former Israeli mission to UN Speechwriter & American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) professional. Lavine then left Steinreich Communications Group, Inc., and now serves as advisor to Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan. Lavine’s role is to Advise Ambassador Gilad Erdan on foreign policy and international media strategy.
When South Africa brought charges against Israel at the ICJ in January, here is what Joshua Lavine advised the Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, had to say, according to the Associated Press:
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the case a “new moral low” and said that by taking it on, “the U.N. and its institutions have become weapons in service of terrorist organizations.”
It is very instructive that such a high powered PR Firm as the Steinreich Communications Group, Inc., with long standing ties to the Israeli government and AIPAC, would contact GRIID out of the blue. Are they really that threatened by such a small, Grand Rapids-based blog, that they would waste their time trying to put me in touch with a former Israeli Intelligence Official? I don’t know if this is a mild attempt to co-opt or threaten GRIID, but it certainly demonstrates that they are deeply concerned about the growing public opposition in the US to the Biden Administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.
Editor’s note: I did write then back and said, “Hi Josh, just curious, why have you reached out to me specifically, as I am but a lowly blogger in Grand Rapids, Michigan?”
I’m still waiting for a response.
Hi Jeff,
According to Former Israeli Intelligence Official and regional analyst Avi Melamed (bio below), Abbas’s choice of Dr. Mohammad Mustafa to serve as the next prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was an expected choice, meant to illustrate progress yet failing to show meaningful pragmatic progress towards the “reformed Palestinian Authority” that world leaders have called for, and the “Palestinian street” needs.
Melamed shared:
“Abbas’s choice of Dr. Mohammad Mustafa to serve as the next prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was an expected choice as Mustafa, an Abbas-loyalist was previously appointed by the aging Palestinian President to oversee the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF) and its $1,000,000,000 portfolio.
While Abbas seeks for this change to placate those calling for a technocratic, reformed PA, the reality is that Hamas’s actions have proven the ability that those independent of the Palestinian Authority have to dictate radical agendas, and the PA will not be seen as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in Gaza until it can represent the vast majority of them, to control the post-war strip, and to police radical actors.
Ultimately while the ongoing reforms in the Palestinian Authority are meant to illustrate progress, they fail to show meaningful change including open elections, a succession plan for Abbas, and reforms to bridge the gap between the Palestinian street and those sitting in palaces in Ramallah.”
I’d welcome the opportunity to connect you with Avi to learn more about his analysis on the war.
Let me know when works best for you.
Best,
Josh
Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of March 17
It has become clear that the Israeli government will continue their assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, has escalated, 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
A New Surge of Settler Outposts is Terrorizing Palestinians Off Their Land
Biden’s regime change agenda prolongs Gaza genocide
DHS USING HAMAS TO EXPAND ITS REACH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
Israel killed Israelis, confirms new 7 October documentary
The Genocide in Gaza Is Filling Our Beautiful Month of Ramadan With Dread
Here’s Every U.S. Factory Making Bombs For Israel
Analysis & History
ISRAEL’S USE OF MASS STARVATION AS A WEAPON OF WAR
NYT’s Morning Newsletter Blames Everyone but Israel for Israeli Crimes
Local Events and Actions
Tell the City to pass a Move the Money resolution – Tuesday, March 19 from 6 – 9pm. Join us for a vigil to honor the children of Gaza and call on the Grand Rapids City Commission to follow in the footsteps of the City of Hamtramck which passed a “Move The Money” resolution that urges Congress and Biden to divest from war and fund our communities instead. Email the City Commission here: https://bit.ly/MoveTheMoneyGR
On Wednesday, March 13th, the US House overwhelmingly voted for H.R.7521, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Every member of the House from Michigan voted in favor of the bill, except for Rep. Tlaib. Rep. Hillary Scholten, who represents the 3rd Congressional District, which includes Grand Rapids, said the following on her Facebook page:
“I just voted YES on the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Misinformation abounds, but let’s be clear— this is NOT a ban on TikTok. It’s a necessary step to keep Americans’ data out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party & protect our kids from foreign influence. TikTok can still continue in the United States…but not under the control of a foreign adversary.”
Interestingly enough, the far right think tank, the Heritage Foundation, shares the same sentiment as Rep. Scholten. They said in an article from last year:
“U.S. policymakers have a duty to safeguard America’s social fabric and protect young citizens from the whims of a hostile, foreign nation.”
Ok, so let’s be real. Virtually all social media is an invasion of privacy. Every time I search for a produce online, my Facebook feed then has numerous ads for that specific product and/or other brands. It is called Data Mining, and corporations have been doing it for decades. So why target TikTok? And why doesn’t the US Congress apply the same approach to Facebook? Facebook engages in data mining and they have a history of sharing information with the US government.
The reason seems to be that while US government can get Facebook to turn over data on the public, the Chinese government cannot be trusted. US is good and benign, the Chinese government is bad and evil.
Several national groups have come out against this legislation. The ACLU recently posted the following statement:
“We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.”
The ACLU has repeatedly explained that banning TikTok would have profound implications for our constitutional right to free speech and free expression because millions of Americans rely on the app every day for information, communication, advocacy, and entertainment. And the courts have agreed. In November 2023, a federal district court in Montana ruled that the state’s attempted ban would violate Montanans’ free speech rights and blocked it from going into effect.
Like Montana’s blocked TikTok ban, this legislation would forbid app stores and internet service providers from offering TikTok so long as the company remains under foreign ownership. The proposed legislation would also let the President block other foreign-owned apps that they deem a national security threat.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also taken a strong stance against this legislation. On Tuesday, they posted a statement, which partly says:
“Make no mistake—though this law starts with TikTok specifically, it could have an impact elsewhere. Tencent’s WeChat app is one of the world’s largest standalone messenger platforms, with over a billion users, and is a key vehicle for the Chinese diaspora generally. It would likely also be a target.
The bill’s sponsors have argued that the amount of private data available to and collected by the companies behind these applications — and in theory, shared with a foreign government — makes them a national security threat. But like the RESTRICT Act, this bill won’t stop this data sharing, and will instead reduce our rights online. User data will still be collected by numerous platforms—possibly even TikTok after a forced sale—and it will still be sold to data brokers who can then sell it elsewhere, just as they do now.”
MLive reported that the bill will now head to the US Senate, but that President Biden has already stated that he will sign the bill into law. Unfortunately, the MLive piece did not explore the intent of the legislation nor the larger political and social implications.
A good example of a critical perspective on the House passed legislation to censor TikTok, would be an interview done recently by Democracy Now! with Ramesh Srinivasan, professor of information studies at UCLA. Here is an excerpt from that interview:
“It’s disenfranchising to many young people in the United States. It is alienating to them. And it is singling out TikTok and China without any evidence whatsoever that they are engaging in any nefarious or spying activity or are any more extreme in their algorithms and their ways in which they polarize American users than any of the Big Tech companies, you know, which we’ve discussed before. So, it’s absurd and it’s theatrical for people like Mark Zuckerberg, etc., to be paraded in front of Congress multiple times, and even publicly shamed, while the actual legislation that takes roots is one that singles out TikTok, primarily because it’s a Chinese company, and possibly because it’s so prominent amongst Americans and young people in general in this country.”
In Rep. Hillary Scholten’s most recent weekly newsletter, the Congresswoman states:
As many of you know, I took a trip down to the southern border recently to see the situation on the ground. We have a crisis at the border – it’s a humanitarian crisis, an economic crisis, and a national security crisis, and it demands immediate, bipartisan action. I sat down with WZZM 13 to talk about what I learned and how I’m working toward bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform.
The WZZM 13 story that Scholten refers to can be found here, a story that I want to look at.
Early on in the channel 13 story the reporter states, “Under the Biden administration, expulsions and apprehensions of non-citizens have spiked amid a rise in illegal border crossings.”
This acknowledgement by the reporter is true, as many commentators are noted. In an article by Tina Vasquez, it states:
Biden is currently considering an executive action that would prevent migrants who enter the U.S. outside of ports of entry from claiming asylum, a devastating blow to longstanding legal procedures that require migrants to be on U.S. soil to request protections. The order is a key part of a failed bipartisan bill Biden championed that would have implemented Trump-era immigration policies and granted the president the unilateral power to shut down the Southern border.
That Democrats signed off on the bill signals they have taken a hard-right turn on immigration during an election year. The party’s wanton disregard for asylum law will almost certainly lead to further human rights violations against migrants, who are already brutalized all across the detention system where the number of people detained has nearly tripled since Biden took office in January 2021.
This analysis shows that the reality of the Biden Administration’s US immigration policy is that it has changed much since the Trump years. Even Rep. Scolten acknowledges that the current US immigration policy is flawed. She said, “The system that we have is not set up to meet just the insurmountable demands that are being presented every single day at our southern border,” she continued. “It is truly a national security, emergency humanitarian crisis and an economic disaster.”
Rep. Scholten then goes on to say:
“[Part of the solution] is addressing the root causes of migration that are happening in these sending countries,” Scholten said. “Right now, insurmountable numbers coming from Venezuela, as well as still out of the Northern Triangle in Central America – we have to be working with those countries, as well as our neighbor to the south, Mexico, to deal with the flow of these individuals.”
I agreement with Rep. Scholten that part of the root causes are people from various Latin American countries, but she does really address why they are fleeing. I would argue, that people from Mexico and Central American countries in particular, are fleeing primarily because of the political, economic and social conditions in those countries that the US has imposed on those countries for decades, such as direct US military interventions, the funding and training of militaries from many Latin American countries, adopting disastrous trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA, the US support for corrupt Latin American governments, along with the role that Climate Change plays in displacing people, which is well documented in Todd Miller’s excellent book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration and Homeland Security.
Rep. Scholten also talked about having bipartisan support for the Dignity Act, specifically with Rep; Salas from Florida. However, the Dignity Act is not Comprehensive Immigration Reform, nor does it address more structural elements of root causes of immigration that we have already addressed. If Rep. Scholten wants to be serious about address the immigration & border crisis, then she needs to acknowledge the harm that the Biden Administration has done and their rightward shift on immigration policy.
For additional resources on US Immigration Policy and US Immigration History:
GRIID Popular Education Class on History of US Immigration Policy
In this edition of West Michigan Far Right Watch I want to take a look at three recent examples of far right ideology in Grand Rapids. The first is an Acton Institute podcast, where three Acton staff members disparage Aaron Bushnell for his decision to self-immolate as a protest against US complicity in the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.
In the second example I will discuss the West Michigan CEO Council’s endorsement of welcoming immigrant business savvy as long as it fits within the current NeoLiberal Capitalist framework. Lastly, I will discuss a recent interview that Doug DeVos did on his show Believe!, where he talks with former Grand Rapids Public School Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal.
Acton Institute and character assassination of Aaron Bushnell
In the March 4th podcast of Acton Unwind, three Acton Institute staff spend about 28 minutes spouting all sorts of non-sense about Aaron Bushnell. In the narrative about the March 4 show they write, “This week, Eric, Anthony, and Dylan discuss the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell and the ethics of using his suicide to advance the Palestinian cause.” Throughout the 28 minutes all three Acton staff refer to Bushnell as unstable, that taking his own life was a waste, and that they felt sorry for him for feeling complicit in the Israeli genocide. To be clear, the Acton staff disagreed with Bushnell’s analysis of what Israel is doing in Gaza, plus they kept wanting to frame his act of self-immolation as something that wasn’t Christ-like. The audacity of these 3 privileged men talking about Aaron Bushnell in such a disrespectful and demeaning way is hard to listen to, but here is the link. As an alternative and independent understanding from some people who knew Aaron, go to this link.
Immigrant Inclusion and the West Michigan CEO Council
There is an interesting post from February 27th on the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce site entitled, West Michigan CEO Council Explores Immigrant Inclusion with Global Detroit and Local Industry Leaders.
The post makes some interesting comments, such as: “By incorporating immigrants and their diverse talents into our community and economic development strategies, we ignite growth, revitalize communities, and ensure sustained prosperity throughout Michigan,” remarked Jones. The article also mentions this, “Michigan’s nearly 34,000 international students are an incredible talent pool.”
This assessment of immigrants was shared in September of last year after the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce came out with a report on the economic impact of immigrants, which GRIID reported on. While the GR Chamber of Commerce and the other West Michigan Business leaders talk a good game about US immigration policy, the need to fill the talent pool gap, and how much immigrants benefit the economy, what they really mean is that they are the ones who primarily benefit from immigrant labor in the current neoliberal capitalist economy. Just ask yourself if the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce values migrant workers so much as to make sure they are guaranteed a living wage?
The GRPS Superintendent that was mentored by Betsy DeVos
In the final piece of far right thinking, I want to look at the Doug DeVos podcast, where former Grand Rapids Public School Superintendent, Teresa Weatherall Neal, was DeVos’ guest.
Neal talks about her history in the GRPS and how she made it a point to promote School Choice, despite being the Superintendent of the GRPS. None of this should be surprising to those who follow GRIID, since Teresa Weatherall Neal went to Washington, DC for the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.
In the GRIID article on Neal going to DC, we also document how Neal adopted many of the DeVos family priorities for education, which was charter schools, privatization of education and allowing religion to be inserted more aggressively in the Grand Rapids Public School system.
At one point in the interview, Neal was talking about getting additional funding for the Grand Rapids Public Schools, specifically through the Student Advancement Foundation, an entity that is really driven by the DeVos family and other members of the Grand Rapids Power Structure. Neal confirmed this when she said to Doug DeVos, “We came through you guys, the Student Advancement Foundation.”
In the later part of the interview DeVos and Neal talk about her leadership, which she bragged about, with little or no humility. At one point Neal said, “no one loves the children in Grand Rapids more than I do.”
Lastly, Teresa Weatherall Neal briefly talks about her work now with the group Thrive & Prosper, which has no information on it other than sending a message to the group. I submitted a message, so I will be curious to see if I get anything back.
Meijer family wealth increases by $1.5 Billion, putting their combined wealth at $16.5 Billion
In January of 2023, GRIID made a post about how the Meijer brothers – Hank, Doug and Mark, had split their family wealth into 3 separate accounts.
I noted that previously, Hank and Doug Meijer were always listed as having their wealth combined, such as in 2020, where their combined wealth was $10.2 Billion at the beginning of the pandemic. Eighteen months later, the combined wealth of Mark and Doug DeVos was $16.9 Billion, which means that during the first 18 months of the pandemic, their wealth had increased by $6.7 Billion. This is an astounding increase, considering that so many people could not work, while others had contracted the COVID virus and many had died.
In 2023, I also noted that the Meijer brothers had added another brother (Mike Meijer) and another account, where they each listed that they had $5 Billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires listing.
A little over one year later, and each of the Meijer brothers are now worth $5.5 Billion, for a combined total of $16.5 Billion. However, at the same time, the Meijer brothers used to be in the top 250 billionaire list on Forbes, but this year they are listed at as 541, 542 and 543rd on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires site.
To put the Meijer family wealth into perspective, the Grand Rapids City Budget is $643 Million. The Meijer family wealth increased by $1.5 Billion over the past year, which is nearly equivalent to 3 years of the Grand Rapids City budget.
Some other ways that the $1.5 Billion that the Meijer brother made over the past 12 months could be used to benefit the most vulnerable residents of Grand Rapids could be:
- For $1.5 Billion you could build 6000 homes that cost $250,000 each.
- For $1.5 Billion would provide 12 months of rent – at $1500 per month – for 83,333 people.
- For $1.5 Billion you could pay people at wage of $25 an hour for 40 hours a week, which would be $56,000 a year. The $1.5 Billion would cover the wages of 26,785 people for a year at $25 an hour. $25 an hour is what the Low Income Housing Coalition has stated that this is what people need to earn in order to afford the average rental costs for Grand Rapids.
These 3 points about what $1.5 Billion could do to transform people’s lives is astounding and it says something not only about the wealth gap that exists in the US and in Grand Rapids, but it also provides an opportunity for all of us to think deeper about the banality of wealth, especially when it benefits so few. Lastly, it is worth noting that if the $1.5 Billion of the Meijer family wealth were to be redistributed to the community, that would still leave them with $15 Billion. Somehow, I think they could manage.
Ever since the Hamas attack on October 7th and the ongoing and vicious Israeli retaliation, activists have been exposing US weapons manufacturers and then resisting their role in manufacturing military equipment and weapons being used in Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.
GRIID has posted several articles about the Israeli company Plasan North America, which has a manufacturing facility in Walker. In late December I posted a pieced based on information from an American Friends Service Committee report, which documents how many US-based military contractors have been providing weapons and military vehicles for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Now, we have another resource that has been tracking US military contractors that are making weapons military equipment specifically for Israel, military equipment that is being used currently in Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.
In a recent post on Truthout, we learned that there is a new activists map, a map which shows the location of military contractors across the US, even in Michigan. If you click on the map, you can see that the activist created map shows two locations of military contractors that are making weapons and military equipment for the Israeli Defense Forces. One factory is located in Novi, Michigan, while the other facility in near the Gerald R. Ford Airport, on Patterson Ave.
According to the map’s information:
GE Aviation Systems, a Boeing subcontractor is a part of a $927,492,124 contract to provide KC-46A Pegasus aircraft for the state of Israel and its military. The contract was announced on August 31, 2022 and the work associated with this contract is estimated to be completed by December 2026.
So, the GE Aviations Systems, located at 3290 Patterson Ave SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49512, has a current contract to manufacture KC-46A Pegasus aircraft for the Israeli military. The information from the activist map also includes two additional links. In the first link, it states in part: “The Boeing Co., Defense, Space & Security, Seattle, Washington, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $927,492,124 undefinitized contract action for four KC-46A aircraft for Israel. This contract is also issued for the non-recurring engineering design and test for the Remote Vision System 2.0 and the Air Refueling Operator Station 2.0 mission equipment and installation, pre-delivery integrated logistics support, and technical publications. Work will be performed in Seattle, Washington, and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2026.”
The second link confirms the contract, but it primarily data-driven, with no narrative about the contract. However, I did find an additional bit of information about the KC-46A Pegasus, which states, “the KC-46A is delivering fuel, data, and multi-mission capability around the globe. It’s been proven in combat and provides millions of pounds of fuel each month to U.S. and allied receivers.”
The bottom line is that there is yet another military contractor in the Grand Rapids area that is assisting in the manufacturing of the KC-46A Pegasus planes, which provides in air refueling for Israeli military planes that have been carpet bombing Gaza since early October of 2023. And while the contract at the GE Aviations Systems plant on Patterson Ave. is for weapons, but it is for military equipment that is being used to support the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign be wage in Gaza at this very moment.
Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of March 10
It has become clear that the Israeli government will continue their assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, has escalated, 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
Demeaning airdrops over Gaza are humanitarian aid theater
Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza
DESPERATE TO ESCAPE GAZA CARNAGE, PALESTINIANS ARE FORCED TO PAY EXORBITANT FEES TO ENTER EGYPT
LEAKED U.S. CABLE: ISRAELI INVASION OF RAFAH WOULD HAVE “CATASTROPHIC HUMANITARIAN CONSEQUENCES”
History will record that Israel committed a holocaust
WOLF BLITZER CUT HIS TEETH DOING JOURNALISM FOR AIPAC-LINKED PROPAGANDA OUTLETS
Analysis & History
‘Israeli Violence Is Legitimized and Palestinian Counter-Violence Is Delegitimized’
A New Surge of Settler Outposts is Terrorizing Palestinians Off Their Land
How The ‘Fight Against Antisemitism’ Became A Shield For Israel’s Genocide
Local Events and Actions
For upcoming events/action also check the FB page for Palestine Solidarity Grand Rapids. https://www.facebook.com/PalestineSolidarityGR
Graphic used in this post is from https://visualizingpalestine.org/#visuals
The weather has been all over the map for some time now, but particularly this winter – if you can call it that – in West Michigan. 2023 was the warmest year in recorded history, as was the most recent months of December, January and February.
Over the past few weeks we have had some temperatures in the 70’s, and while having sunshine and warm in the later months of winter and often welcomed, we can no longer deny that the human manufactured Climate Crisis is the culprit. Of course it would be easy to blame the climate deniers – GOP politicians, think tanks, and far right pundits, but we are facing a Climate Crisis because the political and economic systems are both failing us miserably. Here are a few examples of the lack of Climate Justice within the Biden Administration:
- As the Center for Biological Diversity noted in January, the Biden Administration is on pace to approve more oil and gas drilling permits than what former President Donald Trump did in the previous 4 years.
- The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) provides some of the best critiques of the COP28 conference that took place last year. The IEN writes, “The outcomes of the UNFCCC 28th Conference of Parties has left Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities across the world sitting in disappointment as world leaders put forward watered-down climate commitments and text that continue to compromise our future.”
- The Biden Administration approved the largest US military budget in history at $886 Billion, with over an additional $100 Billion in military aid to Ukraine, Israel and for so-called Border Security. US military spending and climate change are well documented in a recent report entitled, Climate Collateral: How military spending accelerates climate breakdown, published by the Transnational Institute.
- The Biden Administration has decided that invest billions into electric vehicles instead of a robust mass transit system in the US. Such a decision does not provide a long term solution and only perpetuates extractivist practices of removing precious metals from other countries to power electric vehicles.
Then there is the role of the commercial news media, which is also complicit in not making Climate Change a front and center issue. For example, WZZM 13 ran a story a few days ago talking about Michigan businesses can apply for federal relief funding because on the warmer winter weather, specifically businesses that rely on tourism. While the channel 13 story talks about the warmer winter weather, nowhere in the story are the words Climate Change mentioned.
A second example of local news coverage about the warmer winter was from MLive on March 5th, with the headline, We had a 2-week winter in Grand Rapids, Muskegon, West Michigan. The MLive article had some very nice graphics showing how few days of winter temperatures we actually had over the past several months, but refused to bring up the issue of Climate Change and the causes of such a warm winter.
Liberals and Democrats love to mock climate deniers, but many of these same people continue to vote for and defend politicians that ultimately do nothing to stop the planet from warming or burning. What we need is a Climate Justice movement that is also an anti-war movement and an anti-Capitalist movement that understand the systemic root causes of the current climate crisis.
Lastly, it is important that we come to terms with the fact that the Climate Crisis impacts BIPOC at a higher level that white/Europeans. However, one of the most important players in the Climate Justice movement are Indigenous people.
Throughout the history of the struggle for Indigenous Sovereignty, right relationship to the land (rather than property) and its people has been central. Multiple direct actions and campaigns led by Indigenous people to fight pipelines from Standing Rock to Line 5 have been effective in reducing the impact of climate change. According to a report put out by the Indigenous Environmental Network in 2021, Indigenous-led resistance campaigns against pipelines in the US and Canada have reduced greenhouse gas pollution by at least 25% annually since these campaigns began. We need to learn from and follow the examples of concrete ways to reduce Climate Change, especially if we care about leaving behind a planet for future generations.
It is quite understandable that the immediate work we can do in Grand Rapids is to demand a permanent ceasefire in the Israeli assault on Palestine, plus a push to end US military aid to Israel.
However, we should not and cannot be content with making those two outcomes the end goal. In 2005, the Palestinians began their Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, as a means of ending Israeli Apartheid and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
For the entire month of March, the international BDS campaign has designated this month as Israeli Apartheid Week. Yes, I know it’s a month, but they historically have organized doing education and actions for one week to draw attention to Israeli Apartheid. Considering that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since early October, which it the largest amount of Palestinians that Israel has killed in such a short period of time, they BDS campaign expanded Israeli Apartheid week to a month. They also recognize that the level of international solidarity has been incredible. Here is part of what the BDS campaign wrote for Israeli Apartheid Week:
While Palestinians remain steadfast in the face of this genocide and persist with our liberation struggle, we take hope and strength from global solidarity expressed in mass demonstrations from Jakarta to Washington, Cape Town to London, and Rabat to Baghdad; trade union actions to stop arms shipments to Israel in Belgium, Italy, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere; hundreds of creative civil disobedience actions (sit-ins, peaceful occupations, walk-outs, strikes, etc.) worldwide; fast-growing grassroots BDS campaigns and calls for military embargo; strong declarations of solidarity by racial, Indigenous, climate, gender and social justice movements; high-profile statements by prominent artists, writers, academics, international experts in genocide, as well as by progressive Jewish groups, human rights and civil rights organizations; and a million local, grassroots solidarity actions and creative initiatives worldwide.
Now, the BDS campaign consists of three areas that we can all take part in – the Academic Boycott, the Cultural Boycott and the Economic Boycott and Divestment. Divestment is a tactic that Calvin University faculty and staff are using, which we wrote about earlier this week.
The BDS campaign also focuses on targeted boycotts instead of un-targeted. Un-targeted boycotts are usually longer list of companies to boycott, as opposed to choosing few targets that can often have a larger impact. The targets that the BDS campaign has focused on are companies like Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard (HP), Chevron, RE/MAX, ect. In the graphic above you can see some of the targeted boycott campaigns, some of which are for institutions to divest from. If you are part of a faith community, a university, a corporation or even a labor union, you could chose to divest from companies that are profiting off of the Israeli occupation and Israeli Apartheid. However, there are other boycotts, such as consumer boycotts or pressure targets that people can organize campaigns against directly, both by not purchasing products, but also by doing larger public awareness campaigns or direct actions against companies complicit in the Israeli occupation and Israeli genocide.
The possibilities are endless and the BDS campaign website has an amazing amount of resources;
- An Intro into BDS.
- Israel’s new far-right government – an analysis.
- Israeli Settler Colonialism and Apartheid
- Regular posts and updates about success stories.
- Creating Apartheid Free Zones
- The importance of a Military Embargo.
It is imperative that we support the BDS campaign because it is a Palestinian movement, but also because this work addresses the long term and root causes of Israel’s occupation and Apartheid system of government. STOP GENOCIDE, DISMANTLE APARTHEID!
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 