Black Lives Matter

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Brothers in basketball from the city to the country

Basketball may be the common bond between high school hoops teams from Louisville, Kentucky, and Glen Lake in Northern Michigan, but the opportunity for a meaningful racial and cultural exchange is what inspired two close friends to launch the trip. Michael McDonald and Bryan O’Neill joined a group of basketball coaches last year called Kentucky Coaches Advancing Racial Equity (KCARE), which seeks to improve race relations in Louisville and break down stereotypes and racial equity barriers. One of their calls to action was the killing of Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman, by white police officers in Louisville on March 13, 2020—just as the nation was shutting down to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Uniting for racial equity, before and after the election

You’ve seen the full-page advertisements this fall in local newspapers including the Glen Arbor Sun and the Leelanau Enterprise (the County’s weekly paper of record)—advertisements declaring: “it’s time to deal with our racism problem”; quoting County Commissioners whose diversions complicated the body’s effort to pass an anti-racism resolution; explaining that the “Black Lives Matter” movement doesn’t mean “Only Black Lives Matter”, and quoting the late Congressman and Civil Rights icon John Lewis.

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From Republican to hippie: my evolution, a party’s evolution

I was raised in Shelby by Republicans. In the 1960s my father, Robert R. Wheeler, was the Republican chairman of Michigan’s Ninth Congressional District, stretching from Grand Haven to Traverse City up the shore of Lake Michigan. Republican activism ran in the family: my grandfather Neil Wheeler had been elected state representative in Lansing for one term (two years) in the 1930s.

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Slow down, stop racism, fight for equity

“We have a geographic implicit bias right here in our county, where the highway was built upon a village,” said Melissa Petoskey on Aug. 19 as cars zoomed by on M-22, seemingly unaware that they were driving through a tribal reservation between Suttons Bay and Northport. Petoskey is the human relations executive for the Grand Traverse Band. “There’s no reduction in speed limit here. We’re the only village in Leelanau County without a reduction in speed.

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Racist road commissioner resigns. What’s next?

In the wake of former Leelanau County Road Commissioner Tom Eckerle’s public racist tirade, and subsequent resignation, activists are pondering whether to launch a movement to change the name of Eckerle Road, a small stretch of road just south of Suttons Bay, and coincidentally where the Leelanau County Road Commission sits. Here’s what it would take to change the road name.

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Latina Like Me: Voices from people of color in Leelanau County

Bea Cruz may be the ideal bilingual outreach liaison to our Spanish-speaking migrant population, a job she holds for Suttons Bay Public Schools, both in and outside of the classroom. Cruz’s family were migrant farmworkers, themselves, and she learned to grow up embracing two cultures while interpreting for her Mexican immigrant parents. A graduate of Leland High School, Cruz is the mother of three sons between ages 8 and 17. As an ambassador to the Latino community, she understands what it’s like to grow up a person of color in Leelanau County.

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Black Like Me: Growing up a person of color in Leelanau County

Northport native and Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District educator Marshall Collins, Jr., has a unique story to tell as an African-American in Leelanau County. Collins was the only black member of his graduating class in 1995, and despite struggling with being one of very few people of color, he returned to the County after college to be near his family and out of love for this region. Following the gruesome murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day, Collins helped organize recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Traverse City, including an upbeat and peaceful rally at the Open Space on June 6 that drew a diverse crowd of approximately 2,000 mask-wearing and social distancing activists and allies.

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