Regardless of what you might hear, it hasn’t just been bonuses an pay raises since the GOP tax plan passed

By Mark | January 25, 2018

While I fought against the Republican tax plan, I’m not personally against the idea of cutting taxes. I think, in certain instances, cutting taxes can make sense, especially in tough economic times, when those cuts are being directed at non-wealthy Americans, who are more likely to put the money they receive back into circulation, creating jobs, and boosting the overall economy. What I objected to about this most recent Republican tax plan was that a) it wasn’t necessary, given that the fact the economy was already growing, and b) the money could have been used better elsewhere, like assisting in our transition away from fossil fuels. [note: Global climate change is real.] And, of course, I objected to the fact that most of the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts would be directed toward America’s super-wealthy, at the expense of America’s non-wealthy, who would see programs that they depend upon cut as the government contracted to offset the loss in federal revenue. The Republicans, of course, argued that, ultimately, the non-wealthy would benefit as well, as the rich would take this new-found wealth, re-invest in their businesses, start paying better wages, and create new jobs, but, having lived through the lie of trickle down economics one time, I knew that was bullshit. The truth, as the economists told us going into this, was that the money being handed back to the rich would not, on the whole, be used to make the lives of non-wealthy Americans better, and that the money being given back to corporations would more likely be spent buying back corporate stock, to drive up share prices, than handing out pay raises to loyal employees. And, in the wake of the Republican tax bill passing, that’s pretty much what we’ve seen.

Yes, some corporations, at the urging of Republicans in Congress, are announcing employee bonuses. Generally speaking, however, it’s playing out exactly like some of us had feared. Sure, companies like War-Mart announced “$1,000 Bonuses” and minimum wage bumps, but, on the very same day, they also announced 7,500 layoffs and 63 store closings. And, just a day later, the company announced the firing of 3,500 co-managers and plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs at their Arkansas headquarters. Oh, and those $1,000 bonuses weren’t for everyone. They were just for people who had been with the company 20 or more years.

As some of you will no doubt argue, $1,000 bonuses can make a huge difference in the life of an hourly worker. And you’re absolutely right. Which is why I believe that the entire tax plan should have been directed at this segment of our population, and not at the wealthy, in hopes that they might do the right thing, and allow some of their new-found fortune to trickle down upon those beneath them. So, yes, it’s good that Wal-Mart is doing this, but, to be honest, it’s a drop in the bucket when you consider that the Republican tax deal, which dropped the corporate tax rate to 21%, is expected to save the retailer between $1 billion and $2 billion each and every year.

And Wal-Mart, by the way, isn’t alone in announcing significant layoffs. Since the Republican tax giveaway to the rich was signed into law, we’ve seen several companies announce layoffs. Macy’s announced the closure of 68 stores, and the termination of 10,000 jobs. [Yesterday, Macy’s raised their projection, adding 5,000 moe job cuts, and 7 new store closures.] And Toys R Us is closing 182 stores. And JCPenny announced it would be closing 138 stores. And it’s not just retailers that are laying people off in response to increased competition from online retailers like Amazon. AT&T announced plans to cut 80,000 more job. And Disney announced plans to layoff 5,000-10,000. And, just yesterday, Kimberly-Clarke announced that they’d be firing 5,500, and shuttering 10 manufacturing plants, in spite of having $3.3 billion in operating profit. Oh, and remember that Carrier plant in Indianapolis, where Trump went during the campaign and told the employees that he’d stop their jobs from being sent to Mexico? Well, he lied. The company just announced that another wave of jobs – this time 215 – would be moving across the southern border.

Oh, and here’s the sweetest part. The Republican tax bill, according to economists, is actually incentivizing American companies to move jobs outside our country’s border… American First, indeed… And, get this, Kimberly-Clark execs say they’ll be paying for their restructuring, which will cost 5,500 people their jobs, using the money they’ll receive from the Republican corporate tax cut.

So, yes, what Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are saying about a few companies giving 2018 bonuses as a result of the Republican tax bill may well be true. I would argue, however, it doesn’t change the larger narrative, which is one of wealth increasingly concentrating in the hands of the super-rich. And, here, with more on that, is an excerpt from USA Today.

A new billionaire is created every other day. The three richest Americans have the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the U.S. population. And 82% of the global wealth generated last year went to just 1% of the world’s population.

These are among the findings of a study released Sunday by Oxfam, a British campaigning group, as political and business leaders, including President Trump, prepared to gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Income inequality will be a major topic at the conference, which runs from Tuesday through Friday.

“There’s a billionaire boom,” said Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s vice president for policy and campaigns. “A perfect storm is driving up the bargaining power of those at the top while driving down the bargaining power of those at the bottom. If such inequality remains unaddressed, it will trap people in poverty and further fracture our society.”…

So it was against this backdrop that our elected Republicans chose to hand $1.5 trillion over to the rich, instead of investing it in the American people. They could have passed laws that incentivized corporations to keep their jobs in the United States. They chose not to. Knowing that they retail sector was imploding, they could have invested these funds in green energy job training programs. Instead they handed it over to the super-wealthy. And, as a result, the division between rich and poor is once again becoming untenable, with the middle class, and the security it provided, once again fading away.

Again, I don’t have a problem with the Republican taking to social media to crow about these one-time bonuses being doled out by bug business. I just think, if they want to talk credit for that, they should also take credit for the other things that have happened since they passed their tax bill. They should also send tweets out, alerting people to the fact that, for instance, after receiving their $5 billion tax cut, Pfizer announced that they’d be firing 300 scientists, shutting down their Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research programs, and using their money instead to buy back their corporate stock. It’s only fair.

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A Michigan man, following Trump’s lead, calls CNN to say, “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down.”

By Mark | January 23, 2018

This past July, in a post about our President’s war on the free and independent press, I shared the following quote from CNN contributor, and lifelong Republican, Ana Navarro, who had, at that point in time, just been a guest on ABC’s This Week, discussing Donald Trump’s heightened rhetoric against the press. “It is an incitement to violence,” she said. “He is going to get somebody killed in the media.”

Thankfully, to my knowledge, no journalists have yet been killed by Trump supporters, but I fear it’s just a matter of time, with our President sharing violent anti-press memes, the head of the NRA listing “media elites” as being among our “greatest domestic threats,” and members of the White House press corps like April Ryan reporting an ever-growing number of death threats. I mean, we’re living in an age where Republican members of Congress are physically assaulting reporters without political consequence, and Trump supporters are wearing t-shirts emblazoned with phrases like, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” And, all the while, our President, who, during the campaign, seemed to imply that he was fine with Putin’s murder of journalists, continues to feed the anti-free-press fire here at home, handing out “fake news” awards, and referring to the news entities that his political party doesn’t own as the “lying press.” (In German, the word is “Lügenpresse,” and Hitler was quite fond of it.)

And, today, thanks to documents just made public by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, we got a little glimpse as to where all of this is leading… Following are excerpts from the United States v. Brandon Griesemer, the latter being a 19 year old, part-time grocery store employee in Novi, who, between January 9 and January 10 of this year, is thought to have made approximately 22 calls to CNN, threatening to kill members of their staff.


Did you get all that? A Michigan man, believed to be Brandon Griesemer, reportedly called a CNN operator to say, “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down.” He then went on, over the course of approximately 20 more calls, to say things like, “I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.”

Griesemer, you’ll be interested to know, is also accused of having called the Islamic Center in Ann Arbor in September of last year, and making racist comments.

I don’t feel like visiting any far right sites right now, but I’m sure, if I did, I’d find some celebrating this young man’s moxie, some saying that he’s just a mentally ill kid, and still others suggesting that it was nothing more than a harmless little prank that us ‘snowflakes’ on the left are blowing all out of proportion. I think, however, that it points to a bigger problem in our society. And, with that, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s speech from last week about the very real damage Donald Trump is doing to the fabric of our democratic society when he attacks America’s free and independent press.

…It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.

2017 was a year which saw the truth – objective, empirical, evidence-based truth — more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. “The enemy of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.

This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward – despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him “fake news,” it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.

I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of “fake news” are dubious, at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of U.S. based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to their commitment and their sacrifice.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, 80 journalists were killed in 2017, and a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists documents that the number of journalists imprisoned around the world has reached 262, which is a new record. This total includes 21 reporters who are being held on “false news” charges.

Mr. President, so powerful is the presidency that the damage done by the sustained attack on the truth will not be confined to the president’s time in office. Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful – in fact, we question the powerful most ardently – to do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship — and so, we know well that no matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality…

No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions. And Mr. President, an American president who cannot take criticism – who must constantly deflect and distort and distract – who must find someone else to blame — is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president adds to the danger…

Flake, of course, has not taken the next step and called for the President to leave office. But at least he’s beginning to articulate the threat posed by Donald Trump, and I suppose that’s a good thing… One wonders what it will take at this point for anyone on the right to take that next step, though, and call for Trump to leave office. It didn’t happen when Trump, defending the Nazis marching in Charlottesville, noted that some of them were “fine” people. And it didn’t happen when he called predominantly black nations “shitholes.” What makes us think anything will be different the first time a reporter is shot down by someone yelling “fake news”? Seriously, would a mass shooting at CNN headquarters even make a difference at this point? Sadly, I’m thinking that it wouldn’t. And that terrifies me.

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I’m tempted to say that the Democrats caved, but I’m withholding judgement.

By Mark | January 22, 2018

Remember, yesterday, when I said that I hoped the sight of millions of women marching across the United States put a little steel in the backbones of Congressional Democrats? Well, it seems not to have worked. This afternoon, the government shutdown ended, as a number of Democrats voted with Republicans to pass a temporary, three-week spending bill. I can see the logic in it, as the deal not only got the government up and running again, but secured a six-year extension for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides health care for 9 million kids growing up in poverty, while, at the same time, giving us another crack at DACA in three weeks. Personally, though, I would have preferred to see the Democrats hold out longer, in hopes of forcing a vote on DACA right now, as I think we owe it to those 800,00 young American immigrants facing deportation to fight for their rights and remain faithful to the promise that was made to them. While it’s true that there’s nothing precluding us from having that showdown on February 8, when, once again, we’ll find ourselves needing to negotiate a long-term funding package, I just feel like we should have pushed harder now. While the plight of the Dreamers may be a bit abstract to some of us, the truth is that deportations could begin as early as March 5, and every minute counts. People’s lives are literally hanging in the balance, and, in my opinion, it’s not only a fight that we should be having, but it’s a fight that we should be able to win, seeing as how a large majority of Americans believe there should be a path toward citizenship for these young adults who were brought to the United States as children.

It’s difficult for me to imagine that we’ll have any more leverage in three weeks that we had right now, but apparently some seem to think that, when February 8 comes, if Congress still hasn’t addressed DACA, it’ll be more obvious as to who’s at fault, as we now have a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that we’ll have a real up-down vote on the matter between now and then. Of course, he promised his fellow Republicans, Susan Collins and Jeff Flake, that they’d get a DACA vote in return for their votes on the recent tax bill, and, as we know, he never kept his word to them.

I guess we won’t know whether or not the Democrats played this correctly until we see how it all washes out. I just hate being in a position where the fate of 800,000 young people depends on Mitch McConnell to keep his word. And I can’t help but think that Democrats chose to accept the agreement more out of fear than out of concern for these young American immigrants. Yes, I know that it can’t be easy standing up to the onslaught of attacks from the far right, blaming you for stopping death benefits for the families of American vets, or suggesting, as the following ad from the Trump camp did yesterday, that you’d be “complicit” if an immigrant were to commit murder on U.S. soil. But I can’t help but think that we should have at least waited until we knew what the American people were thinking, and had a better sense as to how strong our hand was. [As I understand it, Democrats didn’t see any polling data before deciding to accept the terms of the agreement.]

And it’s not just that I feel like we turned our backs, at least for the moment, on the Dreamers. There’s also the matter of the 2018 elections, and the fact that we need bright, motivated and energetic people who are excited about contributing their time to the cause. And I just don’t see how backing down from fights like this helps in that regard. I suspect that most people on the left want a party that stands up and fights, even when the going gets tough. But maybe that fight will still happen, and maybe it’ll be an easier fight to have, knowing that we’ve already secured funding for the health care of those 9 million kids in poverty. I just want to know, at some point, that my party is going to articulate what it believes in with conviction, and make it clear that there are some things worth a fight.

I could go on, but, really, you’d probably be better served just listening to tonight’s episode of Pod Save America.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Military pawns, racist scum, and living in a nation where no-one’s at the helm… Welcome to the #TrumpShutdown

By Mark | January 21, 2018

As we discussed last week, in hopes of avoiding a government shutdown, a bipartisan group of Senators led by Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin went to the White House with a plan that, as they relayed to the President, would pass through both houses of Congress. This compromise legislation, they explained to Donald Trump and his advisors, would, among other things, both increase funding for border security and protect the approximately 800,000 immigrants who came here as children and have been protected under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) since the Obama administration. Donald Trump, however, likely with input from immigration hardliners in his administration, like Stephen Miller, rejected this compromise package, calling it “big step backwards.”

Based on what we’ve heard from Graham and Durbin, it would appear as though the aforementioned immigration hardliners within the administration had two major issues with the compromise legislation. First, they wanted for it to include funding for the impractical and ridiculous southern border wall that Trump had promised his racist followers during the campaign, which it didn’t. And, second, they wanted for it to strip immigrants, like those from “shithole” nations like Haiti, of their temporary protected status, which the compromise package also did not do.

So, just to recap… Donald Trump was given a funding package that would have passed both houses of Congress, protected the 800,000 young immigrants covered under DACA, which is widely popular across both red and blue America, and increased funding for border security. Instead, he chose to push back, demanding a less fact-based, and more racist approach to immigration. And, when he didn’t get it, he forced the government into shutdown.

So, now, with Republicans refusing to bring the so-called Gang of Six compromise bill to the floor of either the House or the Senate, as they’ve been told that, even if it passes, Trump won’t sign it, the blame game has begun in earnest, with both sides claiming that the government shut down because of the other. [As of right now, #TrumpShutdown is the number one trending tag on Twitter. #SchumerShutdown is another five spots down on the list.]

The Republicans, never ones to have qualms about playing dirty, have started to suggest not only that the Democrats are to blame for the shutdown, but that they are playing a dangerous game with the lives of our men and women in uniform… Here’s a photo of Vice President Mike Pence today in Jordan, using American troops “as props for a partisan political message.” [That quote comes from conservative columnist Bill Kristol‏.]

According to the Washington Post, the Vice President told the service men and women surrounding him that “they deserve better,” adding “a minority in the Senate has decided to play politics with military pay.”

What Pence neglected to mention was that, during previous shutdowns, Democrats and Republicans alike have come together to pass bipartisan legislation to ensure that our men and women in uniform continue to be paid. Furthermore, he didn’t tell them that Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill had just introduced such a plan on the floor of the U.S. Senate, only to have it blocked by Republican Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell… Here, if you don’t believe it, is the video proof.

So, for the better part of a year, the Republicans have been delaying action on DACA and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers approximately 9 million kids in poverty, knowing that they could be used as bargaining chips in these budget negotiations. And, now, they have the audacity to turn around and say that it’s the Democrats who are playing games with people’s lives. It’s absolutely sickening… Again, just to reiterate, Trump had a deal on his desk that would have funded the military, protected our young immigrants, and reauthorized CHIP, but he turned it down for the ridiculous wall that he had sworn to us during the campaign wouldn’t cost the American people a dime.

As for why Trump did this, it would seem that immigration hardliners within the administration, like Stephen Miller, have his ear. Here, if you have any doubt, is a little tidbit I just picked up from Lindsey Graham on The Daily Beast.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) targeted White House policy advisor Stephen Miller as an unproductive force in the immigration fight that has been at the center of the government shutdown debate. “As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we are going nowhere,” Graham said to reporters. Graham noted that President Trump’s “heart is right on this issue,” but said that Miller’s restrictive immigration views have “never been in the mainstream in the Senate” and has made him “an outlier for years.”

Here, for those of you who can’t read, is the video.

Trump’s idea for a southern border wall, for those of you who haven’t been following along, was always stupid. And everyone who knows anything about either immigration or border security has known this since day one. Even the conservative CATO Institute called his plan “impractical, expensive, and ineffective.” But it motivated the Trump base, so he kept it up. The imagery of this imposing wall resonated with the isolationist, “America First”-chanting folks who attended his rallies and bought his MAGA merch. Not only did they apparently think this wall would somehow magically get them better jobs, and stop the surge of crime and drugs, but they honestly believed Trump when he said it wouldn’t cost us a penny. [“Mexico will pay for the wall!,” the conman-turned-reality-television-star said repeatedly to great applause.] Most of us, of course, knew it was bullshit, but middle America ate it up, and, in the end, it drove enough people to the polls to put him in the White House. And now, apparently, Trump feels as though he has to deliver something to his willfully ignorant base, regardless of the fact that almost everyone says it would be ineffective. And it just keeps getting more ridiculous and surreal by the day… When border officers said, not too long ago, that Trump’s wall would make it more difficult for them to do their jobs, as their view of the border would be obstructed, Trump had a solution. “(We’ll make it so that you can) see through it,” he said… His own Chief of Staff, John Kelly, has since said that Trump’s understanding of such things during the campaign was “uninformed,” and yet this charade continues, thanks to people like Miller telling Trump that he has to make good on this promise.

And make no mistake… this shutdown is over the President’s transparent wall. It’s not about CHIP, or DACA, which people on both sides of the aisle pretty much agree on. White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as much as confirmed it when he said that we’re going through this now because, during negotiations, Schumer didn’t offer enough to pay for the wall.

But, to hear Trump and his supporters tell it, the shutdown is because Democrats don’t support the military, and want open borders, allowing “illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked.” Here’s just one of Trump’s several tweets about it from this morning.

Of course, none of this is true. The compromise budget package, as I noted above, includes increases for border security. And if there’s a single Democrat serving in Congress who believes we should have an “open border” with Mexico, I’m not aware of them. No one that I know of wants an open border. That doesn’t mean, however, that they want to throw away billions of dollars on an impractical and ineffective wall that people can tunnel under and launch drugs over. As for Trump’s attempt to paint the Democrats as being against our men and women in uniform, I’ll let Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving in Iraq, respond.

[Duckworth: “ I will not be lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferment draft dodger.“]

I could say more, but I think you get the point. For all their marketing efforts on social media, this is not a #SchumerShutdown. This is a #TrumpShutdown. And the Republican leadership doesn’t give a fuck about either sick kids in poverty or members of the United States military. Thankfully, however, it seems as though more Republicans in Congress are beginning to step up and state the obvious. Even Rand Paul said today that the compromise bill should be brought to a vote.

So, wherever you live, look up the phone numbers of your elected representatives, and give them a call. If they’re Republicans, demand that they bring the compromise bill to the floor for a vote. And, if they’re Democrats, encourage them to stand strong for the 800,000 Dreamers and the 9 million families that depend on CHIP. This fight might get ugly, but the truth is on our side, and we shouldn’t cave in to the pressure of the far right and their adolescent wet dream of an enormous, glittering wall that will magically keep out everyone who isn’t white.

Oh… It’s also worth noting that this weekend, as the Republican party allowed our federal government to collapse rather than stand up to the racists in the Trump administration, millions of American women and their supporters took to the streets to celebrate the first anniversary of the Women’s March on Washington, and make it be known that there will be hell to pay at the ballot box come this November. Hopefully their presence helps put a little steel in the backbones of Congressional Democrats, who are now being subjected to all kinds of attacks from the far right.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 245 Comments

Everything you need to know about tomorrow’s “March for Love, Resilience, and Action” in Ypsilanti

By Mark | January 19, 2018

A year ago this weekend, as several hundred thousand women marched on our nation’s capitol, well over 1,000 people took to the streets of Ypsilanti in solidarity. And, tomorrow, many of us will be returning to those same streets, not only to march again, but to discuss how we might better work together to address the challenges that we’re facing as a community. Following is my conversation with Desirae Simmons, one of the folks organizing the Ypsi March for Love, Resilience, and Action, which is set to begin tomorrow at 12:30 PM, in front of the downtown Ypsi library.

MARK: I just watched footage of last year’s march taken by Donald Harrison, and I was surprised to see how happy everyone seemed to be…

DESIRAE: I need to see this video! We can do a viewing party.

MARK: Donald just finished editing it yesterday. Here’s a link. I’ll also embed it at the end of this post… Like I was saying, I was kind of shocked, which I watched it, to see how happy everyone was. It’s almost like, even though Trump had just been elected, there was a sense of optimism and hope, like we were all coming together in solidarity to fight back against the forces that put Trump in power. Now, a year later… and maybe it’s just because I’m sick with bronchitis… I just feel so tired. I’m curious to know what you think the mood surrounding this year’s march will be. Will there still be optimism, or has that been beaten out of us?

DESIRAE: I do think that people may be a little tired- but only because they have either been out doing the work, or because they feel beaten down by the onslaught of pure insanity coming out of the White House and beyond. To those folks I say: dust off those work boots because we have some ass to kick! There have been some great things happening here in Ypsi- and I hope that comes through at the march. And, that in sharing space with one another we can be motivated to share in the responsibility to really effect change- locally, county-wide, across the state, and at the national level.

MARK: Am I remembering correctly that you and Mariah organized that first march because you were both pretty far along in your pregnancies at the time, and didn’t feel as though you could head to DC for the Women’s March?

DESIRAE: Yes, that was part of it. We also felt tied to the idea that in order to make changes on the federal level we needed to focus on the people power here in Ypsi.

MARK: What did you learn from that first march, and what have you been doing over this past year?

DESIRAE: I learned that Ypsi has a lot of pride and heart. People are not afraid to show up. Over the past year I have become very active. Becoming a mother has radicalized me in a way; I feel ambitious for the first time. I have always wanted to make an impact in my community but I now feel the pressure to make big moves and I refuse to settle for not-good-enough. I have been reflecting on what kind of community I want to live in- what kind of community I want Indigo to be able to own as her hometown. So, I’ve been trying to be a part of the change- cliche or not. I have been involved in Defend Affordable Ypsi’s efforts to stop International Village and to hold this town accountable to what we say we want- the ability that anyone, no matter income, race, or ability status should be able to be able to live here. I have listened to and offered to support efforts by families of We Love Ypsi Schools to stop the takeover of WIMA by WEOC. I have been a part of a growing citizen coalition called Rising for Economic Democracy in Ypsi (REDY) to demand a participatory process to be central to the Community Benefits Ordinance that City Council will be considering.

MARK: And you decided to organize this year’s march around the theme of gentrification. Why?

DESIRAE: Well, this year’s march is organized around gentrification, feminist spaces, and voter mobilization. We wanted to focus on areas we feel passionate about and also that we could make an impact on here in Ypsi. Gentrification is something that could impact the very face of Ypsilanti. Last year we focused on the history of resilience and action here. This year we want to ensure that we continue that proud history (and recognize that it wasn’t all good). When looking at some of the main causes of gentrification you can see that there is a clear tie to federal policies impacting the way that cities govern themselves. The idea of “growing the tax base” is founded on the lack of funding from the federal and state governments. Maybe we should demand our money back.

MARK: I believe, when we discussed the march a little while ago, you mentioned that there would be an event afterward, at the Riverside Arts Center. What have you got planned?

DESIRAE: We want to offer a space for community dialogue and sharing. Last year, we held an event the day before the march but needed to simplify. The majority of the group really long for true feminist spaces in Ypsilanti. We want to allow time for people to share what it is they need and to create a vision for what they want to see. We will also be registering people to vote. I am very interested in increasing voter turnout and citizen turnout. There will be a lot on the ballot in August and November and the majority of the people should be making the decisions. We are too small a community to be satisfied with 11-20% turnout. And, as citizens we can be more involved too. Not everyone will be able to do everything, but I want everyone to be able to do something. Ypsilanti Gathering Space is an example of this and there will be an opportunity for people to see the space and to sign-up to volunteer. And, DAY will be launching their new zine “Perspectives on International Village.”

MARK: Is there anything else you’d like for people to know before coming out on Saturday?

DESIRAE: We just have some amazing people involved in this effort. Matt Siegfried, Karlie Ebersole, Bryan Foley, Amy Shrodes, Yodit Mesfin Johnson, Mary Larkin plus the wonderful volunteers from LRAY and Women March On- Washtenaw and the staff or RAC- I am just so grateful for all of the support and energy that these folks bring. There is a lot to be hopeful about. And it starts with each of us.

The March for Love, Resilience and Action Ypsilanti 2017 from 7 Cylinders Studio on Vimeo.

Posted in Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

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