WMPRSA Communicator of the Year Jamiel Robinson uses his voice to advocate for expanded economic opportunities for Black communities
Jamiel Robinson co-founded the Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses, which works to foster an economy that creates prosperity and supports the revitalization of predominantly Black neighborhoods.
By Shandra Martinez, WMPRSA
Nearly a decade ago, Jamiel Robinson co-founded Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses (GRABB), an economic development social enterprise. GRABB works to foster an economy that creates prosperity and supports the revitalization of predominantly Black neighborhoods.
Under Robinson’s leadership, GRABB has expanded opportunities for Black businesses and entrepreneurs by helping them acquire human, social, intellectual, and financial capital and creating awareness for Black businesses.
Jamiel was named WMPRSA 2021 Communicator of the Year for his work raising awareness about the systemic racism faced by Black business owners and promoting economic equity. Jamiel was a recent guest of WMPRSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to help us better understand the role communication plays in his advocacy role.
How did you become an advocate/voice for West Michigan's African American community?
Growing up here in Grand Rapids, I saw the predominantly Black business district of Wealthy Street and Cherry Street begin to change, but African American businesses and people were not part of the prosperity. I started GRABB as a way in which we can drive resources, awareness and capital to Black-owned businesses in Grand Rapids' predominantly Black neighborhoods. GRABB officially launched in 2013, and in 2015 Forbes came out with an article stating that Grand Rapids was the second-worst place economically for black people. They used self-employment, homeownership rates and median income as the data points. It opened a lot of eyes of institutional leaders who hadn't acknowledged that institutional racism prevents African Americans from realizing their full potential. We now work with hundreds of businesses every year to provide services and information and have a directory on our website. We also do ecosystem work. I serve on the steering committee for small businesses through the state's Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity office. We are looking at how to utilize the once-in-generation funding through the American Rescue Plan as a catalyst to leverage the maximum amount of economic impact, especially in communities that have always been marginally invested in.
What is the Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses and why did you start it?
When we started GRABB, the initial focus was just awareness building. We started off with a directory because the first issue was visibility. How can we help people become patrons of these businesses? We started initiatives to get people through the door like our 30 days $30 campaign, where we say, for this month, shift $30 of your spending to black-owned businesses. We called this the Black Business Challenge, and we had some large institutions early on adopt this. We have expanded to host workshops, events and consultancies to support Black-owned businesses throughout Grand Rapids and statewide. We work with more than 200 Black-owned businesses and have a directory of them on our website. We're not a Chamber-esque organization that is membership-driven. We do more broader ecosystem-level assistance and advocacy for businesses as a whole. We've been focusing more on the soil and not the individual crops. We need to improve the conditions of the soil instead of blaming the crop for not growing. To do that, we have to look at the environmental issues that prevent equal access.
What are the goals of GRABB in the area of communication and what’s the message the organization is trying to get out?
We're in the process of building out our headquarters, which is the Entrepreneurship Innovation Hub on Grand Rapids’ Southeast Side. It's near the corner of Eastern and Burton in the former Fifth Third Bank location. Rehab work will start in March 2022, with plans to be open sometime July or August 2022. We built a lot of awareness, and we're really looking to deepen our communication about economic access. In 2015, we helped the Grand Rapids Community Foundation change its purchasing policy to include more diverse vendors. We worked with a few different institutions and entities across the city to look at their spending (with BIPOC-owned businesses). We have to make sure these practices take place, and so we've done some consulting with entities to open up economic opportunities.
What are some of the challenges GRABB and its members encounter in trying to get their message out?
The challenge is that we live in a society where communication is spread in 140 characters, and if it didn't happen in the last five minutes, we’ve already moved on to a new story. But people in neighborhoods and our communities hold on to information a lot longer than just the news cycle. So even as the news moves on to the next story, communities are living this day-to-day, and this information stays with them. There's growing awareness outside, but we also must ensure that what we are communicating is acted upon. With GRABB, we aren't just here for communication; we're also here for action. With a lot of entities, their rhetoric is always ahead of their actions. We're just ensuring that what was stated, whether it's by a public official or public employee, the work required is actually getting done. The city of Grand Rapids just adopted racism as a public health crisis. So what are some of the policy changes that are going to occur? It's great that the city voted to declare racism a public health crisis, but now what policies are being put in place?
How can WMPRSA, made up of communications professionals across West Michigan, support GRABB in its efforts to support and grow Black businesses?
We need support telling the stories about what is happening. One example is that CARES Act dollars were supposed to be utilized in areas that suffered the most under COVID. In Grand Rapids, those were areas in the ZIP codes 49503 and 49507, the main ZIP codes where people of color live. When you look at how CARES funding was allocated, the majority of resources weren't being put in neighborhoods in those ZIP codes. More than 40% of African American businesses had to close their doors because of COVID. The vast majority of African American businesses are sole proprietors or single-member LLCs, and generally with less than $90,000 in annual revenue. Early on, the Paycheck Protection Program rules prevented those businesses from even acquiring the funds. Locally, the vast majority of African American and Latinx-owned businesses were initially excluded from more than 90% of relief funding. That's why we raised our own $100,000 fund to support African American businesses. Our message was that our community still hadn’t received relief while the rest of the country was talking recovery.
The DE&I Committee at the West Michigan Public Relations Society will continue to offer thought-provoking discussions with leaders from our community who are making a difference in diversity, equity, and inclusion into the coming year, and we are working to open these discussions to a broader audience.
To learn more about Jamiel Robinson’s work at GRABB, visit grabblocal.com