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Recent Posts
- Some examples of the conditions for blacks in Grand Rapids and what types of discrimination blacks faced on a daily basis in the early part of the 20th Century
- “Maybe America has forgotten how smoke smells”: The state of Black Grand Rapids from the perspective of Paul I Phillips in the mid-1970s
- African Americans from Grand Rapids who were part of the US Civil War
- 1970 document sheds light on the housing crisis in Grand Rapids and the lack of political will to solve it
- Days of Our Lies: Public Access TV show provided independent news and news analysis in Grand Rapids from 1992 – 1998
Author Archives: Jeff Smith (GRIID)
Newly archived Labor Press available at the Grand Rapids Public Library
Thanks to longtime local labor historian Michael Johnston, the Grand Rapids Public Library now has both hard copy and digital archives of several different labor press sources from 1955 to the present. The archived labor press sources are the Grand … Continue reading
How the press reported on an 1891 Labor Strike in Grand Rapids
I was recently reading Sidney Harring’s, Policing A Class Society: The Experience of American Cities 1865 – 1915, and came across a brief description of a labor strike in Grand Rapids in May of 1891. I decided to look up … Continue reading
New Prints celebrate the Animal Rights/Animal Liberation Movement in Grand Rapids
As we have noted in previous posts, there has been an organized effort fight on behalf of animals in West Michigan since the 1980s. One of the first groups that came together was West Michigan For Animals. This group was … Continue reading
New Print Celebrates the Central American Sanctuary Movement in Grand Rapids during the 1980s
A new print from GVSU student Michaela West celebrates the fact that Grand Rapids had a formal sanctuary for Central Americans who were fleeing US-backed death squad violence in the 1980s. The Grand Rapids People’s History Project has several postings … Continue reading
Anti-Iraq War Organizing in Grand Rapids 2002 – 2008: Part X – resistance lost out to electoral politics
In our tenth and final post covering the anti-Iraq war organizing in Grand Rapids, we look at the final year of resistance in 2008. The group ACTIVATE organized an End the Occupation demonstration on the fifth anniversary of the beginning … Continue reading
Anti-Iraq War Organizing in Grand Rapids 2002 – 2008: Part IX – Counter-military Recruitment
In Part VIII of this series, we looked at all of the organizing efforts to confront Congressman Vern Ehlers, who supported the war in Iraq and voted every year to finance the US occupation of Iraq. In today’s post, we … Continue reading
New Print focuses on the Immigrant Justice Movement in Grand Rapids
GVSU student Bailey Becksvoort has created a wonderful print that reflects the power of the immigrant justice movement in Grand Rapids. The print, depicts immigrants with signs in Spanish that say, Families Deserve to be United! The text that accompanies … Continue reading
