01/04/2026
“On January 3, 2023, six brave new county commissioners closed the Marxist DEI Department in Ottawa County, the first local government body to do so in America. It’s easy to be brave when you are not first. It’s not so easy when you are.
But evil triumphs when good men—and women—do nothing.”
When times were simpler, and our world more naive, the roots of Marxism were quietly slipped into Ottawa County from an organization far away at UC Berkeley on California’s west coast— the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE). Before GARE partnered with the Biden Whitehouse, or slipped its influence through Governor Whitmer into Michigan’s powerful bureaucratic entities, the Trojan horse of DEI was intentionally placed in the pivotal county of a pivotal swing state in Ottawa County, MI.
In early 2019, the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners created a new DEI Department to inject a DEI lens into hiring, policies, and training, and solicit GARE membership with nearby cities and townships. Introducing leftist ideologies, the new department kicked off its yearly countywide training with a transgender keynote speaker, platforming the transgender movement in our communities as sexuality exposure intensified in our schools.
The county was primarily led at the time by a group of older men, who naively fell for the lies that white, cisgender, heterosexual, conservative, Christian males were the nation’s greatest oppressors, and it was on the county to educate the rest of us about it. They failed to see the dangers of labeling America’s young people as oppressors who harm or victims without agency. Years later, we see that our young men bore the greatest harms from the lack of discernment and cowardice of their older counterparts in positions of power who platformed the DEI movement across America.
Despite repeated efforts to educate the county on the errors of forcing DEI on our people, our county leaders—early to the movement—instead injected GARE’s DEI across the state through having Ottawa County's DEI Department present at the Michigan Association of Counties (MAC), of which Commissioner Phil Kuyers was President, and be involved with the National Association of Counties (NACo), where Kuyers served on the board.
As we watched GARE’s influence grow in Ottawa County and nationwide in those early years, I was in communication with Christopher Rufo, who was studying the roll out and harms of DEI in our nation’s schools and corporations. Rufo began writing extensively to explain the movement and give Americans the ability to understand the implications of this Marxist teaching.
After COVID-19 hit our nation, I met Joe Moss and we founded Ottawa Impact. I am forever grateful to Joe for his willingness to dig into this issue and supercharge the ability of parents to educate our larger community on this and other critical issues. When our local leaders ignored parents, parents ran for office.
On January 3, 2023, six brave new county commissioners closed the Marxist DEI Department in Ottawa County, the first local government body to do so in America. It’s easy to be brave when you are not first. It’s not so easy when you are.
But evil triumphs when good men—and women—do nothing.
By 2023, doing nothing was the norm.
For the crime of speaking truth and protecting our young people, Democrat activists, local and national press, and Michigan RINO electeds and power players descended to destroy the new majority of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners.
I’m forever grateful for the six commissioners who courageously stood in the fire for truth and our nation—and so thankful for Christopher Rufo, Charlie Kirk, Robby Starbuck, President Donald J. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and others who articulated so well the harms of DEI, and finally put the movement on the run.
When President Trump took office in January of 2025, he, too, immediately abolished DEI. Doing nothing is no longer the norm. 🇺🇸
For more information on DEI in Ottawa County, see links in comments.
Allison Miedema for Ottawa County Commissioner
