YOUR ELi: Independence

Happy Independence Day from your ELi! Before ELi goes on summer break for the week (except for a reader survey and Council coverage, as explained below), I want to share with you a fundraising update and also reflect a little bit on ELi’s place in American history—because Independence Day is my favorite holiday, and ELi is my favorite local service organization.

First off, a big “thank you!” to all of the people who stepped up to donate to ELi in the last week. You’ve made a big difference! This week brought in 13 donations via Paypal totaling $1,035 and two donations via check totaling $1,050, bringing our June fundraising to a total of $5,185. Not the $8,000 we were aiming for, but enough to keep us going for several more months!

I am especially excited to see more and more donor names I don’t know, because this—along with our ever-increasing electronic reader stats—tells me we are fulfilling our mission of reaching the people of East Lansing with news of the people, by the people, and for the people.

So where does ELi fit in the place of American history? Flash back to high school social studies and you’ll realize that the Founding Fathers made space for ELi in the first amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Take a look at that amendment, and you’ll see something interesting: freedom of the press is linked to the right to peaceably assemble and petition the Government. The Founders understood the importance of a free press to a well-functioning democracy. Without a press to tell you what’s really going on in your government, without the right to protest and petition the government, you can’t get your government to function as it should.

I was raised by a woman who escaped Poland just as Soviet rule began. As a result, I grew up being constantly reminded of how remarkable the freedoms of America are. It is no exaggeration to say my parents used every one of the rights given to them in the First Amendment, and my mother in particular argued fiercely with anyone who thought any of those rights should be limited.

I remember when 9/11 happened, and calls went up for limits on our freedoms in the name of “national security.” Even though my parents lived not far from Manhattan, even though the cemetery next door ended up with an entire section dedicated to rescue workers killed in the towers, my mother kept explaining to her friends why we couldn’t let the government use fear of terrorist attacks to shut down our rights.

We face nothing so dramatic or terrifying in East Lansing today. But this week has reminded me of how we struggle here with transparency—how we need the free press that is ELi to know what’s going on in our government.

As I reported in Council Capsule this week, East Lansing’s City Council is using “work sessions”—not broadcast, not video archived—to review and approve matters of millions of dollars, essentially out of the view of the public (were it not for ELi). Additionally, as I also reported this week, Council members are not disclosing in real-time when they are making decisions that could financially benefit the businesses of people who donated to their campaigns.

Meanwhile, our public school district seems to be aware that they are sometimes violating the Open Meetings Act. This week my son got the results of his first Freedom of Information Act request; he (through me) requested copies of internal communications regarding sex ed following my visit to his class, and what he found was the sex ed advisory committee conducting itself in a way that seems to run counter not only to the Michigan sex ed law, but also to the Open Meetings Act.

This isn’t a matter of good and evil, like 9/11 was. This is a matter of mostly nice people functioning as humans will—using paths of least resistance, unconsciously acting in their own interests, and sometimes just accidentlly screwing up. I believe the Founders didn’t set up the federal government as they did because they were worried about evil; they set up the system of checks-and-balances because they understood people will be human.

ELi, your truly independent (and non-commercial) news source, is a critical part of the checks and balances system of our local democracy. When I think about ELi failing—which it could only ever do for lack of what amounts to a relatively small amount of money—I think about what would result: less transparency, less ability of the people to know how to use their rights to speak, to assemble, to petition. We have to continue, even though the work can be hard, exhausting, and sometimes make us personally unpopular as messengers of depressing news.

This week ELi will be on summer break so our Managing Editor, Ann Nichols, who works 7-days-a-week for ELi can get a little respite, and so I can work on ELi’s tax returns. Our first fiscal year just ended, and so it is time for us to do the full accounting. I am looking forward to bringing you full information about our year's expenses and income, after the accountants check it, in the interest of complete transparency.

Meanwhile, this week I’ll also be doing some cleaning up of our website (contact us if you have thoughts on that), preparing and sending out a reader survey asking you what you want us to investigate in the coming months, and covering what should be a pretty intense City Council meeting on Tuesday. A special “work session” is scheduled for Tuesday from 6-7 pm, off camera, to talk about the future of the Bailey Community Center and a “pre-development agreement with DTN” about the Park District. The “regular session” that starts at 7 pm also has lots of important issues on the agenda. This is not something from which our reporting can take a break, so I’ll be at those meetings and will bring you reports mid-week. Our calendar will also keep humming, so be sure to check that out this week.

For now, I’m breathing a little easier with $5,000 more in the bank than at the start of June, so thank you again to the neighbors who care enough to keep ELi running as a free-to-all, non-profit, non-commercial, non-partisan news source dedicated to the people of East Lansing.

And remember: it’s not too late to join me in donating to ELi. The more you do, the less time we have to spend asking for money when we could be reporting in ways that enable your rights and hopefully improve your local quality of life.