The Black community is not monolithic, its members hold a wide range of political views, yet the Governor’s 15 appointees do not reflect this diversity. Instead, when looking into the backgrounds, I found that nearly every single member is a vocal partisan Democrat with strong ties to leftist organizations and a history of donating almost exclusively to Democrats. If the council’s purpose is to represent the full spectrum of the Black community, why not include other voices as well? Rather than being a nonpartisan body capable of finding real solutions, this council has become yet another liberal institution funded by Michigan taxpayers. I urge a “no” vote.
Senator Geiss asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Geiss’ statement is as follows:
I would hope that our colleague from the 23rd Senate District would be more consistent into whether he likes diversity or does not like diversity. Yesterday was a whole different story when we had the resolution on promoting and accepting DEI. The Black Leadership Advisory Council is indeed diverse. It’s not meant to be political. It is meant to be about the broad diaspora of the Black community writ large in the state of Michigan.
I was actually one of the people who, in its initial creation, was one of the folks who was a part of the multi-generational, multi-diasporic group that created the language that eventually became the executive order. We’ve been working on this since 2015. The various parts of the Black Leadership Advisory Council are the African diaspora committee, the arts and cultural communications committee, the business leaders committee, the community safety committee, the educational committee, and the health committee, because these were the areas that were determined to be significantly relevant in terms of reducing disparities for members of the Black community, whether they are African American, ADOS, consider themselves just Black, or members of the Caribbean community, or are international members of the community who are from the continent of Africa.
This is one of the cultural commissions in the state of Michigan that is not statutory, and it needs to be. I urge a “yes” vote.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 82, entitled
A bill to protect the safety of judges and certain other individuals; to protect certain information of judges and certain other individuals from disclosure; to provide for the powers and duties of certain state and local governmental officers and certain other people and entities; and to provide remedies.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: