Detroit

The Truth About The Detroit Water Shutoffs

April 10, 2015 Matthew Kovac, www.progressmichigan.org Educate! Detroit, Human Rights, Politics, 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 Presseditor. When called on it, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) toldMuckraker that a clerical error resulted in 11 such shutoffs. But that story didn’t hold up, either.

This City Could Become The Next Detroit

April 6, 2015 Carl Gibson, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Baltimore, Bankruptcy, Detroit, Water

Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings. Rita, a renter in Southeast Baltimore who asked to remain anonymous for this story in order to protect her two children from being taken away, told ThinkProgress she was served with a shutoff notice last week. Maryland law states that a child that is “neglected” may be taken out of his or her home and put into foster care. One characteristic of “neglect” as defined by the Maryland Department of Human Resources is a child with “consistently poor hygiene” that is “un-bathed, [having] unwashed or matted hair, noticeable body odor.”

This Year Let’s Not Let Detroit Shut Off The Water

April 2, 2015 Justin Wedes, www.justinwedes.com Resist! Detroit, Human Rights, Water

This year, let’s not let them just concede minor points. We have the opportunity to fundamentally restructure the way water is distributed and governed in metro Detroit, and we need to seize it. It is time to seriously consider both income-based rate structures and a meaningful debt amnesty program for long-delinquent accounts. Treating water as a commodity or luxury item that must be paid for or it will be withdrawn leads to the illogical conclusion that those who can’t find work can’t have water. If the city can’t guarantee a job to all of us who want to work, how can it demand a water bill? The only possible answer is: it can’t, and we won’t let it. Solving Detroit’s water affordability crisis isn’t just about more financial assistance, it’s about job creation. Detroit is in desperate need of fixing, but can’t seem to come up with the funds to fix itself.

Regime Change In Detroit

March 27, 2015 Thrasher, www.planeideas.blogspot.com Educate! Democracy, Detroit, Globalization

There were no loud explosions nor chaos in the streets,troops did not flood the avenues and enclaves of the city. A manifesto was not distributed by air drop nor was there a state of martial law issued. A coup took place in Motown a ' regime change' in the post industrial rust belt has been installed. In the post industrial era of America political, cultural, and economic realities are unlike anything our country has experienced. The very fabric of life in this era is altered by the forces of technology and the global marketplace. Traditional platforms of interaction with elected officials has been fundamentally altered. The State has now replaced the local elected legislatures ( city councils) and the core of power.

Detroit Resistance To Neo-Liberal Assault

March 24, 2015 Margaret Flowers, www.clearingthefogradio.org Educate! Detroit, Education, Neo-Liberalism, Resistance, Water

In March, 2013, Detroit was placed under the control of an appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, despite protests from local residents. Facing a severe financial crisis, the city later filed Chapter 9 Bankruptcy. Several years prior to the emergency manager for the city, the Governor replaced the school board with an appointed manager, Robert Bob, who made cuts to the budget and closed schools. The Detroit public school board members continue to meet ‘in exile’ and protest these school cuts. We’ll speak with Lamar Lemmons, a past president and current member of the school board in exile. We’ll also speak with Miss Beulah Walker, an amazing volunteer who works with the Detroit Water Brigade bringing water to those who have had their water turned off and helping to pay their bills. Miss Beulah also volunteers helping homeless people in Detroit.

Detroit Stops Residential Water Cut-Offs

March 18, 2015 Christine Ferretti, www.detroitnews.com Resist! Detroit, Human Rights, Water

The city’s water department this week plans to step up enforcement of overdue business accounts to collect tens of millions in lost revenue, but it won’t shut off residential water until a proven safety net is in place. Although there are 26,000 residential accounts with outstanding balances, officials said they will target commercial accounts first. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is seeking compliance from 2,044 delinquent commercial accounts to avoid shut-offs. Those customers owe DWSD about $20 million, said Bill Nowling, spokesman for a new regional water authority set to go into effect in July. The department will also go after some 8,355 accounts that have been deemed illegal hookups — in which the water has been shut off at a meter but is still showing water usage. The water thefts account for about $13.6 million owed to DWSD, he said.

Detroit Water Brigade Part Of Larger Struggle

February 9, 2015 Demeeko Williams, www.detroitnews.com Resist! Detroit, Human Rights, Public Health, Water

The largest nurses union in the country declared Detroit in a “public health emergency,” with an infant mortality rate higher than Mexico. The Irish Parliament brought us to Dublin to testify. Even The Hulk himself, actor Mark Ruffalo, came to Detroit to turn the water back on. Occupy Wall Street stands behind the people of Detroit because Wall Street bondholders stand behind the water shutoff program. In reality, we’ve been on the front lines of this real crisis, bringing emergency relief to thousands of Detroiters pushed to the brink by utility cutoffs, foreclosure, crumbling public services and mass joblessness.

Photo Essay: Detroit Violates Human Rights To Residents

January 19, 2015 Balazs Gardi, www.azdarya.com Educate! Detroit, Human Rights, Water

Although Detroit sits next to one-fifth of the world’s freshwater supply, earlier this year the city decided to cut the water off from its residents who cannot not afford to pay for it. I have travelled to almost all continents in the past decade photographing stories of conflict over water and I have witnessed vicious violence between people struggling for survival. Yet the unnecessary violation of the human right to water in the world’s most powerful country shocks me the most. “Rather than forcefully displacing people in these outer areas we have convenient policies and systems in place that are doing it anyway.” says Michele Oberholtzer, a writer, engineer and environmentalist and founder of the Tricycle Collective.

Beating Back Austerity: Lessons From Fighting Irish

December 18, 2014 Justin Weeds, www.detroitwaterbrigade.org Resist! Austerity, Detroit, Human Rights, Water

The Detroit Water Brigade was honored to join the Irish Right2Water Campaign for International Human Rights Day in Dublin on December 10th. We traveled across the country to meet communities actively resisting the Irish government’s plan to privatize and commodify Ireland’s public water supply – a plan that would drive the country into even more bond-financed debt in order to enrich bankers and their European Union technocrat lapdogs. The anti-water charges campaign, however, is winning. Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s ruling Fine Gael party has watched its ratings sink to an 11-year low, and the minor concessions offered by the government to the overwhelmingly-popular campaign have only galvanized more people to take to the streets and awakened a once-apathetic and dormant populace.

Two Detroits, Separate And Unequal

November 18, 2014 Laura Gottesdiener, www.tomdispatch.com Educate! Detroit, Water, wealth inequality

And now, after seven decades of these slow-moving storms, including acts that are almost impossible to see as anything but retribution against the city’s predominantly African American population, Detroit is often viewed from afar as a cautionary tale, a post-industrial dystopia of vacant buildings and dormant factories. The truth, however, is more complicated. On the brink of a new, post-bankruptcy beginning, Detroit is really two cities. One is comprised of wealthy enclaves like Palmer Woods linked to a compact, rapidly redeveloping downtown. The other is made up of the rest of the 139-square-mile urban expanse, populated by longtime residents who have fought for decades to survive in an environment that has become increasingly uninhabitable. In the first Detroit, private security is common and the living is relatively safe. In the second, running water has systematically been cut off from at least 27,000 households this year alone.

Detroit Activists Resist Bankruptcy Plan

November 12, 2014 Detroit Resisting Emergency Management, www.d-rem.org Organize! Detroit, Finance and the Economy, History, Law

Federal Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes’ approval of the Plan of Adjustment is not in the best interests of Detroiters. The plan, submitted by emergency manager Kevyn Orr, supported by Mayor Duggan and Gov. Snyder, protects banks, gives away public resources, and has no method to revitalize the city. We object! “We don’t live in a bankrupt city; we live in a city being attacked by bankrupt officials,” said Rev. Ed Rowe of Central United Methodist Church. From the very beginning this process has been a sham. The city was not bankrupt. Independent analysts demonstrated that the city suffered from a cash flow problem, caused by the cessation of promised state revenue sharing. The systematic withdrawal of state support, cutbacks to public services and schools, and massive layoffs in the public sector, combined with policies encouraging industry to move elsewhere, have created enormous pain for the people of Detroit.

Pay Rent Or Drink Water: Detroit Crisis Escalates

November 5, 2014 Ben Ptashnik, www.truth-out.org Educate! Detroit, Human Rights, United Nations, Water

Despite mass protests, the emergency management water shutoffs in Detroit have resumed, even as UN experts publish a press release calling the water disconnects "contrary to human rights" and activists decry them as "genocide." The corporate-led humanitarian crisis in Detroit is escalating, forcing local activists to appeal for international intervention. "The indignity suffered by people whose water was disconnected is unacceptable" according to Ms. Catarina de Albuquerque, the special United Nations rapporteur on human right to water and sanitation, in a press release October 20. The "unprecedented scale" of water shutoffs is targeting the "most vulnerable and poorest" of the city's population, including tens of thousands of African Americans, said Leilani Farha, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

UN Says Water Is A Human Right In Detroit

October 25, 2014 Emily Badger, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Detroit, Human Rights, Water

Representatives from the United Nations spent a few days in Detroit earlier this week looking into the spate of utility shutoffs that left thousands of poor households in the city this year without water to bathe and cook by. The two special rapporteurs — one on "the human right to water and sanitation," the other on "adequate housing" — were invited to town not by the city, but by community groups that have been advocating for the poor. And their conclusion reinforces what concerned on-lookers have been saying since this summer: "When people are genuinely unable to pay the bill," the U.N. says, the state is obligated to step up with financial assistance and subsidies. "Not doing so amounts to a human rights violation."

Detroit Canary In The Coalmine When It Comes To Water Rights

October 22, 2014 Maude Barlow, www.rabble.ca Educate! Detroit, Human Rights, Inequality, Water

Today, October 20, two UN experts, Catarina de Albuquerque, the special rapporteur on the human right to drinking water and sanitation and Leilani Farha, the special rapporteur on housing, will visit Detroit Michigan to assess the charges that water cut-offs violate the human right to water and sanitation. This is a very important development in the ongoing struggle for water justice in Detroit and the experts will be welcomed by the civil society movements there. While water cut-offs for non-payment of water bills are nothing new in Detroit, the practice took a serious turn for the worse last March when the emergency manager, appointed to administer the newly “bankrupt” city, announced he would commence with an aggressive plan to cut water services to 3,000 residences a week throughout the summer.

How Public Art Builds Safer, Stronger Neighborhoods

October 20, 2014 Anna Clark, www.freshwatercleveland.com Create! Art, Detroit, Housing

Art that merges with the landscape brings human presence, safety, and physical activity into the city’s spaces. This kind of art triggers more than one sense: it is something you move in, touch, and, in some cases, even eat. In Detroit, a spread-out city of single-family homes that is difficult to traverse and pockmarked by vacancy, these artistic interventions are an uncommonly powerful nexus of community life. They create welcoming traffic, as well as opportunities for neighbors to interact and work together. And rather than being a temporary show, in the style of a traveling exhibition or ephemeral installation, this is art for the long-term. It is for a city with a future.

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