Detroit

Flint & Detroit: The Failures Of Privatization And Non-Democracy

March 16, 2016 David Bacon, www.davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com Educate! Detroit, Flint, Privatization, Water

By David Bacon for The Reality Check - In spite of the growing sense of disbelief and horror surrounding the lead contamination of drinking water in the Michigan city of Flint, at least one thing is clear: that the catastrophic levels of pollution and destruction are a direct result of the extreme policies pursued by the Michigan's right-wing leadership. A very conservative group has controlled Michigan since the election of Governor Rick Snyder and a Republican majority in its legislature in 2011.

Teachers Who Staged ‘Sick-Outs’ Declare Victory

March 3, 2016 Mario Vasquez, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Detroit, Education, Protests

By Mario Vasquez for In These Times - Education activists cheered today as Darnell Earley officially stepped down from his position as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools (DPS). His departure came after thousands of teachers staged rolling “sick-outs” to protest his role as the unelected head of the school system. Strikes by teachers and other municipal employees are illegal under Michigan law, but more than a dozen times this winter, groups of teachers called in sick to protest frozen wages, ballooning class sizes, decaying buildings and other conditions they say are the result of state-imposed austerity.

How Detroit Is Working to Change Food Desert Rep

January 28, 2016 Sherrell Dorsey, www.nextcity.org Create! Detroit, Food Access, Food Security

By Sherrell Dorsey for Next City - Mike Feinman owns and operates E&L Supermercado in Southwest Detroit. The grocery store has been in his family for three generations, and has supplied the surrounding community with a variety of Hispanic food offerings and farmers-market-fresh produce since the 1940s. Despite a much-debated reputation for food deserts (some point to not a lack of stores, but rather a lack of transportation available to help people access existing stores), Detroit has several indie grocers like E&L that have spent several decades feeding residents.

Detroit Schools In Session After Teacher Sick-Out Shutdown

January 22, 2016 Staff, www.AP.org Resist! Detroit, Education, Protests

By Staff of The Associated Press - DETROIT (AP) — Detroit Public Schools says all schools are in session a day after a massive sick-out by teachers kept tens of thousands of students at home. District spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski gave the update about Thursday's classes. Disgruntled Detroit educators have stepped up efforts to protest Gov. Rick Snyder's plans for the district, its ramshackle finances, dilapidated buildings, overcrowded classrooms and their low pay.

Detroit Teachers Shut Down 3 Schools In ‘Sick-Out’ Protest

December 8, 2015 Khalil AlHajal, www.mlive.com Resist! Detroit, Education, Protests

By Khalil AlHajal for Michigan Live - DETROIT, MI -- A group of teachers stayed home from work Tuesday in protest of longstanding state control over Detroit Public Schools, forcing the closure of three schools with their "sick-out" action. The teachers said they stayed home due to "Snyder flu," gathering with students for a brief demonstration against ongoing emergency management outside the Detroit School of Arts on Tuesday afternoon. State-appointed emergency managers have run the district since 2009, leaving the elected school board with little power, particularly after the passage of laws strengthening Michigan's financial emergency law in 2011 and 2012.

Former Detroit Officer Found Guilty In Videotaped Beating Of Black Man

November 24, 2015 Staff, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Detroit, police brutality

By Staff of The Huffington Post - DETROIT (AP) -- A white, former Detroit-area police officer was found guilty Thursday of assault and misconduct in the bloody beating of a black driver during a traffic stop that was captured on video. Wayne County jurors handed down the verdict in the case against William Melendez, who was charged in the January beating of Floyd Dent. Police stopped Dent, 58, in the Detroit suburb of Inkster for disregarding a stop sign, and dashcam video from a police vehicle shows Melendez punching him 16 times in the head. It wasn't until after WDIV-TV aired the footage in March that Melendez was fired.

Water Resistance Trial Underway In Detroit

November 19, 2015 Bill Quigley, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Detroit, Detroit water, Detroit water shut off, Human Rights

By Bill Quigley for Popular Resistance. A jury trial is underway in Detroit for human rights activists arrested for blocking trucks which were going to cutoff water to low-income families. On July 18, 2014, dozens of people successfully blocked the trucks of the Homrich Inc., a private wrecking company that the City of Detroit contracts with to carry out water shutoffs. The trucks were leaving to cutoff water for Detroiters who were more than $150 past due on payments. After an eight hour blockade nine people were arrested. Those on trial said civil disobedience was their only option to address the grave public health crisis of mass water shutoffs, since the City of Detroit was under emergency management, which effectively strips all elected officials of decision-making power. One of the people on trial is Bill Wylie-Kellermann, pastor of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit. He told The Detroit News “It was, at the time, the last vestige of democracy in the city.” Defendant Marian Kramer of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and Highland Park Human Right Coalition highlighted what she sees as the irony of the City criminally charging and prosecuting defendants for nonviolent defense of Detroiters’ right to water.

Why A Not So Public Home Auction Could Devastate Detroit

October 7, 2015 Michele Oberholtzer, www.occupy.com Educate! Detroit, Foreclosure

By Michele Oberholtzer for Occupy - It’s Ebay on a city scale this fall in Detroit, with 25,000 properties up for sale starting Tuesday, Oct. 5 in the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction. The largest known municipal foreclosure sale to date, the Detroit home sell-off could be a modern take on Manifest Destiny – luring would-be frontiersmen and speculators from across the world to try their hand at “buying Detroit.” But the fantasy of blank-slate real-estate is no truer now than it was in the days of forging West, because nearly a third of the properties being sold are occupied homes. Native Detroiters have little more to do with this auction than Native Americans had in the sanctioned theft of their land. Often, in fact, residents here are not even aware of the fact that their home is for sale.

Protesters Tap Water Supply At Detroit Mayor’s Mansion

August 6, 2015 Gus Burns, www.mlive.com Resist! Detroit, Tar Sands, Water

By Gus Burns in M Live - A group of more than a dozen activists wanted to make point about water access Monday. Wearing ventilation masks and carrying signs that read, "Thousands of kids w/o water" and "Water is life," they walked up the circle drive to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's' home, the Manoogian Mansion, hooked hoses to the tap and filled up water jugs. Daymon Hartley, who photographed the protest for the People's Tribune, said the activists spent about 10 minutes filling jugs and took group photographs on the front lawn of the 4,000-square-foot riverfront home without being approached by Duggan's security detail or Detroit police; although Hartley said he saw an unoccupied, unmarked police car in the driveway. The Detroit Coalition Against Tar Sands, who are environmental protection advocates, helped organize the protest in response to the growing number of Detroit and other area residents who are forced to live without water because of shutoffs.

In Detroit, Safety Is A Privilege Enjoyed By The White & Wealthy

July 5, 2015 Patrick Sheehan, www.alternet.org Educate! Crime, Detroit, Police, Public safety

By Patrick Sheehan for Alternet. Detroit's public electric company, DTE Energy, that the local government was forced to decommission all streetlights on its residential streets. Not only did DTE cut the power to street lights in Highland Park, it sent out workers to physically dig up and remove nearly 1,000 light-poles from the neighborhood. Highland Parkers now live in permanent, debt-induced darkness. Six miles away, in Detroit’s rapidly gentrifying downtown area, DTE Energy runs a very different public policy. The same company that repossessed 1,000 streetlights from Highland Park, condemning its residents to permanent darkness, has recently launched a pro-bono security program in the increasingly white area. Safety is a privilege in Detroit. Like all privileges, it gravitates toward the white and wealthy. Decades of budget cuts to public safety services alongside concentrated investment downtown has created two Detroits: downtown, white and professional, bathed in state-of-the-art private security; and the “neighborhoods,” poor and black, where public safety has become a do-it-yourself endeavor.

People Power Defends Detroit Homeowners

June 7, 2015 Patrick Sheehan, www.occupy.com Resist! Detroit, Evictions, Foreclosures, Housing

By Patrick Sheehan for Occupy.com. Antoinette Talley stands on a makeshift podium in the common area of a gray stone church on Detroit’s east side. As she addresses the audience, Talley is flanked by several of her neighbors, each of them recent homeowners in the new Gratiot-McDougall housing development just a few blocks north of the church. She and her neighbors have been fighting a dubious eviction notice from the project’s developer for months now. Today they are guests of honor at a fundraiser held on their behalf by the activist organization Detroit Eviction Defense. “Those houses are a part of us,” Talley tells the supporters, “That’s our family. And it would destroy me to have to leave my family behind and go somewhere else. You have all warmed our hearts, so thank God for fighting with us day in and day out.”

Detroit Is Starting To Shut Off People’s Water Again

May 31, 2015 Rob Wile, www.fusion.net Educate! Detroit, Detroit water, human, Water

By Rob Wile at Fusion. The City of Detroit began shutting off water access to residents behind on payments Tuesday, with thousands at risk of losing access. According to the Detroit Free Press, 64,769 delinquent residential customers owe the city’s water department a combined $48.9 million. The city started sending out shut-off warnings May 11. According to theFree Press, Mayor Mike Duggan is proceeding with the shutoff orders over the wishes of city council members, who voted on May 12 to freeze the shutoff until an assistance plan to help affected residents was enacted. Last year, the United Nations warned the city that the shutoffs were violations of residents’ human rights, and called on the city to stop them and reconnect their houses. “None of those things happened,” Kauchek said. Detroit residents are not the only ones facing water shut-offs: In March, Baltimore residents began receiving turn-off notices; according to theBaltimore Sun, 25,000 water customers are delinquent.

43% Of Detroit Homes Could Lose Water Service

May 12, 2015 Curt Guyette, www.aclumich.org Educate! Detroit, Housing, Water

Last August, after Detroit's mass water shutoffs had attracted international condemnation, Mayor Mike Duggan implemented a 10-point plan he said would provide significant help. "It's taken a lot of effort to get to this point, but I truly think we're in a situation now where if you want to pay your bill we've made it easier, and if you're truly in need we're going to get you to the right place," Duggan said at the time. "I think for the great majority of people in this town the whole process will get a lot better.” More than nine months later, here’s what “a lot better” looks like: Of the city’s 170,493 residential customers, 73,457 were at least 60 days past due as of the end of February.

The Truth About The Detroit Water Shutoffs

April 20, 2015 Matthew Kovac, www.occupy.com Educate! Detroit, Human Rights, Law, Water

Ever since the City of Detroit started shutting off water to low-income residents last summer in what United Nations investigators denounced as a human rights violation, city officials have maintained that they are simply responding to Detroiters’ failure to pay their bills. Now it’s looking like that’s not the case. The independent investigative outlet Motor City Muckraker recently revealed that the city had shut off water to residents with up-to-date bills, including a Detroit Free Press editor. When called on it, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) told Muckraker that a clerical error resulted in 11 such shutoffs.

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