Above photo: Katie McTiernan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.
BLM leaders in Grand Rapids, Michigan are dealing with a new round of repression by the Grand Rapids Police Department.
This is an attack on their struggle to get justice for Patrick Lyoya, a young Congolese refugee killed by the police two years ago.
In April 2022, Patrick Lyoya was murdered by police officer Christopher Schurr. His murder garnered national attention — his funeral was attended by Al Sharpton, and Lyoya’s family was represented by Ben Crump. The movement in Grand Rapids mobilized, and held a 1,000 person demonstration demanding Schurr be fired and prosecuted. In response to the movement, Christopher Schurr was fired from the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) and charged with second-degree murder. However, two years have passed, and Schurr has still not gone to trial. Yet, in those two years several BLM activists have faced trumped up charges, including felony assault of a police officer. Two activists had to serve jail time.
Several activists are now facing charges for organizing and taking part in a protest held last month on the two-year anniversary of Patrick Lyoya’s death. While some of the organizers were ticketed and arrested at the march, others were not charged until days after. One of the activists who received their charges later, Ky, is facing a felony for supposedly injuring an officer’s eardrum with a bullhorn, and a misdemeanor for disturbing the peace.
Another activist, Aly Bates, is being accused by GRPD of violating her probation, all because she was doing media coverage of the rally for her blog. She said that she was “live-streaming and taking pictures from a safe distance” and “wasn’t even there the whole time.” If she is found guilty of violating her probation, Bates faces a felony and possible jail time. Aly’s original charges stem from her participation in a protest of the Grand Rapids City Commissioners’ meeting, where activists confronted city commissioners to demand justice for Patrick Lyoya. Aly was pregnant when she was arrested at this event last year and said that she “was repeatedly assaulted by GRPD and was even knocked on the ground. An officer actually tried to kick me in my stomach after I fell and yelled that I was pregnant.”
These activists understand that they are being targeted by the state in an effort to disrupt the movement and keep it from sustaining itself and growing. Ky pointed out that “the cops silence the loudest voices,” and that “they’ll do anything to keep us quiet.” The attack on leaders has had a chilling effect on the movement, too. Targeting leaders slowed down organizing in Grand Rapids, especially since some of those leaders were forbidden to be in contact with each other as part of their plea agreement. It also discourages others from participating, who fear having to deal with serious charges by the police or being physically harmed by them.
Dealing with legal cases can be expensive, exhausting, and take up a huge amount of a person’s time. Ky mentioned how they “went to court five times in the past month. They are pulling every string they can to make sure I don’t have any time. I have a wife and kids. I only have so much energy.”
This is what makes confronting repression so important. Not only does it provide us with a way of defending the movement when it is under attack, but it is a way of continuing the movement and challenging the state’s attempt to divide the radical sector from the broader masses. By creating strong campaigns against repression, the movement can help create a public backlash against the police for brutalizing activists. If the state and the police have to pay a political price for repressing the movement, this makes it harder for them to simply rely on physical repression as a way to deter us.
Strong campaigns against repression also help challenge the narrative of the police, who seek to use charges against activists as a way to discredit the movement and call into question its motives. They also help expose the true nature of the police and the courts; far from delivering justice or protecting victims, these are institutions that seek to maintain the power of the status quo.
We have seen different campaigns against repression that have succeeded in backing the police off, and either forcing them to drop charges or reducing charges against protesters and leaders. These experiences range from historical — like the campaigns to free Angela Davis or Huey P. Newton — to more recent experiences of BLM, like the organizing done in Shelby Township, MI that forced the prosecutor to back away from charging activists with felony charges.
For a place like Grand Rapids, which is the home of the Devos family (think Betsy Devos and her husband, who owns Amway) and located in a part of Michigan that is dominated by conservative politics, it is especially important that the broader movement show Grand Rapids activists support by exposing what is happening and expressing active solidarity. Activists are asking that people donate to a GoFundMe fund, and provide court support by attending the legal hearings of activists. Specifically, Aly Bates has an upcoming hearing that people who can should mobilize for this Wednesday, May 29th, at 9:30am in the 17th Circuit Courthouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
State repression is not a problem restricted to the BLM movement or Grand Rapids, as can be seen with the repression of student encampments for Palestine across the country. That’s why we need a regular practice of building broad campaigns and struggles against repression. We need to be responsive to repression against all movements — from Palestine to Black Lives Matter to workers on strike. The apparatus that is throwing charges at these activists to slow them down is the same one that is raiding student encampments protesting genocide. We must unite with the working class, using our labor power to fight the repression against BLM activists and against student protestors. Unifying our struggles is how we will keep movements afloat.