Update: Defending Justice For Black Lives, Resisting Repression by Grand Rapids Police
In the months since the last update shared here in August 2021, activists with Justice For Black Lives (JFBL) have continued marching, protesting, and demanding change and accountability from the City of Grand Rapids in the face of ongoing harassment and escalation from the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD).
Two core members of JFBL still face charges originating from March 8, 2021, when the GRPD used the pretext of a noise ordinance to attack their Justice for George Floyd March downtown. (It was the first of many times that Danny Santiago, Vice President of Justice for Black Lives, has been arrested over alleged noise violations that the City seems to pursue mainly when Black activists condemn local racism.)
While the NLG-coordinated team of volunteer attorneys continues to assist with these cases, the number of people facing charges (along with the need for lawyers) has grown, as police persist in targeting and abusing Black organizers and those who join them in solidarity.
On the morning of September 3, 2021, the GRPD profiled and violently arrested a young Black man, Isaiah, in the parking lot of the McDonald’s where he worked. In a display of aggression that made the national news, officers, claiming that Isaiah “fit a description” from a nearby robbery, forced him to the ground and held him at gunpoint even as his coworkers insisted he’d been waiting for hours at the restaurant to pick up his check. Isaiah was bailed out the next day by the Michigan Solidarity Bail Fund and received support from JFBL, who organized a march on September 26, 2021 to demand that his charges be dropped. The GRPD responded by assaulting Isaiah’s supporters in the middle of downtown Grand Rapids, sending multiple people to the hospital and charging two activists with felonies. Two days later, JFBL President Aly Bates was arrested after leaving a meeting of the Grand Rapids City Commission where she had given a statement criticizing the GRPD’s unchecked violence.
Isaiah’s spurious charges were dropped on November 3, 2021, but the struggle against police repression continues. JFBL regularly marches to City Commission meetings, with support from NLG Legal Observers and the Michigan Solidarity Bail Fund, to demand that all remaining charges against protesters be dropped. On November 20, 2021, in the aftermath of a march reacting to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, the GRPD brutalized activists yet again, detaining several people of color at gunpoint and arresting two. As part of this wave of repression, GRPD officers held two young trans people at gunpoint on Transgender Day of Remembrance.
With the number of people facing charges rising, JFBL organizers held a press conference on November 22, 2021, noting the irony of the city’s recent official recognition of racism as a public health crisis. “For the City of Grand Rapids to declare racism a public health crisis,” JFBL wrote in a followup statement, “while neglecting to address the racism from the Grand Rapids Police Department, is hypocritical and displays a lack of leadership.”
Justice For Black Lives will be keeping up the pressure and the fight for racial justice in West Michigan! They are currently organizing court support for Aly Bates’s next hearing on December 2, 2021, and circulating their call for the City to #DropTheCharges in the form of an online petition, an email zap, and a call-in campaign. Their next march to the City Commission is scheduled for 6pm on Tuesday, December 7, 2021.