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Recent Posts
- During the Depression, the Grand Rapids City Government provided direct relief and created a public works project for those unemployed
- 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
Category Archives: Central American Solidarity Movement
Anti-Contra Aid action from 1986 in Grand Rapids
As we have mentioned in numerous postings before, there was an active Central American Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, resisting the US wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and the US funding of the Contra War in Nicaragua. US aid to … Continue reading
“We learned solidarity from those who thanked us for staying in the country when other North Americans had left”: An Interview with Bill Van Lopik on doing Solidarity work in El Salvador in the 1980s and 90s
This interview is with Bill Van Lopik, who, along with his wife, spent years doing justice work in El Salvador while calling Grand Rapids home. Bill is one of the hundreds of people from Grand Rapids who were part of … Continue reading
1990 Flyer makes the link between US militarism and Housing Justice in the US
Over the past week we have posted some archival flyers that were used by Central American Solidarity activists in Grand Rapids, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. One flyer dealt with the connection between the Columbia legacy and the … Continue reading
1989 Flyer on the US Invasion of Panama that was distributed in Grand Rapids
Last week we posted a flyer that was created by the Latin America Working group at the Institute for Global Education on the Guatemalan Genocide and the Columbian Legacy. We discovered another flyer that was developed in response to the … Continue reading
GR Central American Solidarity flyer connects Guatemalan Genocide to Columbus Legacy
We came across a flyer the other day that was produced in 1990 by the Latin American Working Group from the Institute for Global Education. The flyer talks about the Columbian legacy and the genocidal policies in Guatemala during the … Continue reading
Reversing the Missionary Position: Documentary recounts the experience of GR activist involved in the Central American Solidarity Movement
(Disclosure: This documentary is based upon a book written by the same person who hosts the Grand Rapids People’s History Project, Jeff Smith) In 2003, I wrote a book about my experiences doing Central American Solidarity work, Sembramos, Comemos, Sembramos: … Continue reading
Campaign to Boycott Salvadoran Coffee was part of the Grand Rapids Central American Solidarity Movement in the early 1990s
The US backed counterinsurgency war in El Salvador saw one of its darkest days in November of 1989, when Salvadoran soldiers (many of them trained at the US Army School of the Americas) murdered six catholic priests, their cook and her … Continue reading
Archival photo from Central America Solidarity Protest in the early 1980s Grand Rapids
(Thanks to Barb Lester for sharing this photo.) As we have written in the past, there was a lively Central American Solidarity movement in Grand Rapids in the 1980s that lasted well into the 1990s. Those who organized in the … Continue reading
Twenty Five Years Ago Grand Rapids Responded to the Murder of Priests in El Salvador
Twenty Five years ago, on November 16, 1989, Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., Ignacio Martín-Baró, S.J., Segundo Montes, S.J., Juan Ramón Moreno, S.J., Joaquín López y López, S.J., Amando López, S.J. and their housekeeper Elba Ramos, and her 15 year-old daughter Celina … Continue reading
