Gretchen Whitmer Archives - Public Seminar

Corporations

Election Day 2022: Good (and Some Bad) News for State Corporate Power Politics

Big tech antagonists did well, but so did megadeal boosters

November 14, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Big Tech antagonists won big in attorneys general races. So did all of the governors who have been promoting major corporate subsidy deals in recent months won their reelection races, lending more evidence to the already existing heap of it that massive corporate handouts can be potent political tools....

Election Day 2022: Good (and Some Bad) News for State Corporate Power Politics

North America

After Trump

Towards democracy and social justice

October 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

That, of course, is the problem. And the problem is grave. In 2016, we were worried about what Trump’s victory might mean. Now we know that things have become much worse than most of us ever imagined, and not only for us in the United States. Trump has been a revolutionary—he ...

Democracy

Did the Militia Group that Planned to Kidnap the Michigan Governor Commit Treason?

They stand accused of hoping to trigger “a civil war leading to societal collapse”

October 14, 2020 • by Carlton F.W. Larson

On Wednesday, October 7, the Michigan Attorney General filed 19 state felony charges against seven men who are accused of being members, or associates of, an anti-government militia group calling itself the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen (Wolverines is also the name of the University of Michigan football team). The alleged militia members ...

Did the Militia Group that Planned to Kidnap the Michigan Governor Commit Treason?

Activism

How Do You Protest in a Pandemic?

The challenges of creating a social movement while social distancing

May 12, 2020 • by Jane Desmond

On Thursday, April 15, the traditional day for paying federal taxes, several thousand cars rolled to a stop on the streets in Lansing, Michigan. They surrounded the State Capitol, commencing “Operation Gridlock” to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s extension of the state’s “stay-at-home” order. Blaring horns, waving flags, and sprouting signs ...

North America

“There Go the People….”

By endorsing protesters who demand that states reopen, Donald Trump reveals himself as a leader of a movement, not a party or a nation

April 21, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. No one could be further from Donald Trump in either ideology or personal biography than Ledru-Rollin, who was the grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, a well-known quack doctor under the Old Regime. But the celebrated quote attributed to the radical French ...

Activism

Don’t Give Paranoids Too Much Credit

Some minds can’t trust anything or anyone not on their side

April 17, 2020 • by John Stoehr

The evidence? Here’s the Washington Post, explaining the Michigan rules. “Confused shoppers found they could buy liquor and lottery tickets … but couldn’t visit the vegetable seed aisle … The order required large stores to shut down plant nurseries and rope off sections where carpet, flooring, and paint were sold, provisions ...