Welcome to the very first newsletter from the Grand Rapids, MI chapter of Black Lives Matter!
“#BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans, and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.” - (via blacklivesmatter.com) Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors & Opal Tometi created #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 and they are a powerful example of
black leadership. Their leadership has led to the development of 23 national BLM chapters and 2 international chapters. Black Lives Matter: Grand Rapids (BLM GR) Co-founders Anita Moore and Briana Ureña-Ravelo like many others were introduced to #blacklivesmatter via social media. The two took action upon recognizing that the same anti-Black racism that exists in Sanford Florida, where Trayvon Martin was extrajudicially murdered, and Ferguson Missouri, where Michael Brown experienced the same, also exists in Grand Rapids MI. Affirming the Black Lives Matter founder’s declaration of the need for a movement that is inclusive of all Blacks, these women sought to create a chapter in Grand Rapids that also honored the lives of “queer, trans, disabled, undocumented, folks with criminal records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.” In October 2014, after the non-arrest of, who was later identified as, officer Darren Wilson in the murder of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown, Moore &
Ureña-Ravelo held a silent vigil at Cherry Street Park. The vigil drew people of all ages, races, gender identities, sexual orientations, socio economic status to assert that Black Lives matter. After connecting with national co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, Moore and UreñaRavelo officially created the Grand Rapids chapter. The day after the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson was announced, Black Lives Matter: Grand Rapids (BLM GR) held a major anti-police brutality rally in solidarity with Ferguson protesters. Nearly 400 people showed up as an act of resistance to state violence. The rally created a stir in the city drawing the attention of the mayor and other elected officials. BLM GR then launched a series of meetings and trainings less than a mile away from City Hall in the Heartside neighborhood where the voices of city’s homeless community could be heard. People seeking housing, freedom from state surveillance, protection from police harassment and brutality joined Black Lives Matter to share their concerns. BLM GR held several listening sessions and engaged antipolice brutality demonstrations. Local media sources including the nightly news, SEE TV Society, and Michigan Public Radio have followed the movement reporting
meeting and event dates. As state violence against Blacks in America continued to make national news headlines and social media highlighted the police terror, BLM GR sprawled into a local movement drawing students from surrounding colleges, long time organizers and activists, and first time movement builders. BLM GR is currently working to hear the voice of the Black community using canvassing teams and social media as avenues. News of BLM GR is being spread through the chapter’s writing team, FaceBook page, and emailing list. BLM GR has several partnerships and supporters including Justice for Ayotzinapa GR, Ebony Road Players, Our Kitchen Table, and Fountain St. Church. The work has not been without conflict as groups from the larger community have attempted to coopt the name, discouraged participation, and criticized the group’s tactics. Collaborations have ended as partners failed to uphold the group’s mission to bring humanity to all Blacks. In spite of it all, BLM GR is moving forward to honor the mission and vision of the founders and to work for racial justice in Grand Rapids, MI and beyond.
-Chaka Holley
Local Spotlight:
Dorothy Sewe is a Kenyan refugee who has been living in Grand Rapids for 13 years with her 8 children and husband. She joined BLM GR last year looking to find support and community around the imprisonment of her 17 year old son, David. Sewe has a long history of activist work here in Grand Rapids, but none of her impressive experiences could prepare her for the fight for her son’s life. David is currently facing charges that could put him in prison for up to 30 years. Since coming to the US, Sewe has dedicated herself to helping refugees. She knew how hard her first year in the US
was, and has supported many new refugee families in Grand Rapids with their English; gave them rides; and many other things. Eventually this led her to being a volunteer driver for the American Red Cross. Sewe continued to train and volunteer through the Red Cross for many years and even became an instructor in International Humanitarian Law through one of their programs. A few years later she was accepted to Grand Valley State University to study International Relations in the hopes of building a career as a refugee advocate. While finishing her bachelor’s degree, she studied abroad in Switzerland at the School of
International Training in the UN Headquarters in Geneva. There she took classes in international studies, community organizing, and social justice. Recently, after finishing her bachelors at GVSU, Sewe finished her master’s degree in Sustainable Development at the School of International Training in Vermont. Sewe’s son, David, has been trapped in the “school to prison pipeline”* since he was 11 y/o. For a number of years, she has been fighting relentlessly to keep her son on track to graduate and out of the hands of the state. Now, he is 17 and is being held at the adult detention center in Kent County while awaiting trial in April for home invasion. He has faced a number of challenges since being charged such as court documents mislabeling David as Libyan when he is Kenyan, threatened with immigration hold despite the fact that he is a US citizen, and police brutality. BLM GR is now working with a local filmmaker to create a documentary about David and the school to prison pipeline in Grand Rapids. Before joining with BLM GR, Dorothy had felt lost and alone in her journey to protect her son. Being able to tell her story has given hope to both her and David.
If you are interested in helping Dorothy and/or assisting with the documentary, please contact us at blmgrandrapids@ gmail.com. *ACLU definition of the “School to Prison Pipeline” ––The “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. -Anita Moore
Feliz cumplea単os mami! From Anita
Suggested Resources:
Local History: There seems to be this illusion that policy brutality and overt racism don’t exist here, how could they? We are in the Midwest which has some kind of odd norm where we have been socialized against public confrontation and overt rudeness. Smile and wave. The Midwest is nice right? Michigan is nice right? Grand Rapids is nice? Yet somehow we still see young people of color being beaten by the police that are supposed to protect them (Willy Winters in 2005, Darrius Joseph in 2004). Yet somehow we’re still using “growth” and “expansion” as a justification for gentrification and segregation. This is because before we were taught niceness, to avoid public confrontation or to be “respectful”, we were taught racism. Racism is an underlying theme in the history of Grand Rapids. In his book, A City Within a City: The Black Freedom struggle in Grand Rapids, MI, Todd Robinson explains how managerial racism, practiced by those in the political class in Grand Rapids like Frank McKay and George Welsh as well as the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, was used to refuse access to job skills to Black people as well as excluding them from the political and economic decision making in the city. The development of Downtown was facilitated by the efforts of the business community which injected millions of dollars into expanding infrastructure and office space in the downtown area at the ex-
pense of many neighborhoods that were historically homes to people of color. This expansion and development was happening from the 1920’s through the 1940’s, almost 100 years ago, and seems eerily similar to some of the “development projects” happening in the city today (ahem Eastown). To think that Grand Rapids is somehow some post-racial safe haven because there haven’t been any high profile murders of youth by the police or because confederate flags are few and far between or because we’ve been taught that yelling at someone over a parking space is not an acceptable way of responding in public is more than misleading. Today people, primarily lowincome people of color are being pushed out of their homes, their neighborhoods, and communities in our city in the name of development, growth and expansion. For nearly 100 years people of color in Grand Rapids have been continually pushed out of their spaces in order to make way for big business and enterprise. Racism grows, morphs, changes, and the racial contract continually re-writes and re-signs itself. These moments of struggle that we find ourselves in today do not stand alone, racism did not “come back”, it’s always been here and there is an importance in locating these events in a more comprehensive historical narrative.
-Shannon Fryover
A City Within a City by Todd E. Robinson A case study of the civil rights era as it happened in smaller cities, focusing specifically on the struggles involving school integration and bureaucratic reforms in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The efforts to dismantle structures of racial inequality had a very different flavour in smaller northern cities than they did in other parts of the north, and Robinson’s book should add a new dimension to our understanding of how the civil rights movement operated in a part of the country that has only recently become an object of focus among historians.
Suggested Read from Jessica Liddell -Youth Services Librarian at GRPL • a small Transcendent elite with such enormous wealth, power, and influence that even white folks have to genuflect; • and two newly Emergent groups—individuals of mixed-race heritage and communities of recent black immigrants— that make us wonder what “black” is even supposed to mean.
The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a “Black America” with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book, Disintegration, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson argues that over decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered. Instead of one black America, now there are four: • a Mainstream middle-class majority with a full ownership stake in American society; • a large, Abandoned minority with less hope of escaping poverty and dysfunction than at any time since Reconstruction’s crushing end;
Robinson shows that the four black Americas are increasingly distinct, separated by demography, geography, and psychology. They have different profiles, different mindsets, different hopes, fears, and dreams. What’s more, these groups have become so distinct that they view each other with mistrust and apprehension. And yet all are reluctant to acknowledge division. Disintegration offers a new paradigm for understanding race in America, with implications both hopeful and dispiriting. It shines necessary light on debates about affirmative action, racial identity, and the ultimate question of whether the black community will endure.
-(from Goodreads.com)
On Bodycams: The use of state legitimacy in a social contract among state and individual may only be effective in instances of moral obligation. This moral obligation to succumb to legitimacy is derived from the ideation that those “working within the system” have absolute power to influence public policy. In other words, only those who have power to influence state decisions are morally bound to the concept of state legitimacy – that is, state acceptance of something seen as morally acceptable and legally bound, including the ability to claim human lives. This is problematic for populations within the democracy who do not have a voice or representation of voicing concerns and thus creates unjust and imbalanced public policy based on the majority. Today we bear witness to an extension of the use of legitimacy to claim black lives, but within a different context. Instead of justified lynching, murders, rape, and torture of black folks at the hands of simple commoners, we have focused the power of legitimacy within a single social institution of government - law enforcement. In the case of Michael Brown, issues surrounding police accountability and transparency spurred a wide variety of proposed regulations to help address and remedy the issue of dominant culture inspired state legitimacy. The most prominent of those proposed solutions that I will discuss is the issuance and use of police body cameras which come packaged with several advantages and disadvantages.
The most obvious of which is increased transparency and accountability of police officers in the field. If recent cases of state-backed black murder have taught us anything, it is that witness accounts by members of the black community have little, if any weight or credibility. Visual evidence and recordings should remedy this, shouldn’t it? But what about in the case of Eric Garner? Where there was documented visual evidence of a police officer breaking the law and murdering a black man and the officer walked free. The issue is that we should not be taking such a superficial approach to staunching these injustices. We are busily being distracted by fear and the search of immediate remedies that we fail to take a critical approach. Policy change is futile for the black community, what we need is to challenge the fundamental core essence of oppression and its applications in societal institutions. While body cams will definitely serve as a platform for judgment and help address some of these issues, it is most definitely not a definitive solution. It is for this reason that I do not disapprove of the police body cams, rather I caution our faith in such a superficial temporary aid.
-Paris Lara
Job Posting:
Community Engagement Specialist The Rapidian A service of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center Posted 2/25/2015
Community Media Center seeks a creative, energetic and welcoming person to manage and grow community involvement with web-based, citizen reporter driven, hyperlocal news site, The Rapidian. Position is responsible for strategy and activities to: ¥ Cultivate and encourage new citizen reporters and other volunteers ¥ Connect audiences with The Rapidian via social media, events and other promotional activities ¥ Manage and expand services to reporters, including trainings, tools, and mentorship programming ¥ Assist managing editor with reporter/volunteer relations, material development and special coverage strategies ¥ Supervise and direct work of interns and volunteers The ideal candidate will have: ¥ Strong passion for building community ¥ Drive to increase Rapidian readership and involvement, through creative problem solving and new strategies ¥ Engaging personality and experience working with volunteers ¥ Creative problem solving skills and organizational strength ¥ Demonstrated experience with project management ¥ Strong social media knowledge and demonstrated experience ¥ Ability to meet deadlines and work effectively with minimal supervision ¥ Strong writing and speaking skills (journalism/writing background a plus) ¥ Excellent references Details: 3/4 FTE (30 hours per week) Position to begin ASAP $11 hr. starting pay, plus vacation/sick time. Some evening/weekend hours. Send letter of interest, resume and two writing samples to holly@grcmc.org Applications accepted through March 13, 2015.
The BLM GR Writing Team is: Anita Moore Drew Damron Elena Gormley
Chaka Holley Paris Lara Shannon Fryover CeNique Yeldell
Please send any and all questions to blmgrandrapids@gmail.com We would love to include your writings, drawings, poetry, photos, and other creations in our next newsletter! If you would like to get involved and/or submit material for the next issue please email blmgrwriting@gmail.com
From the Cherry Street Park Vigil on October 22, 2014