There's a real progressive in the MI gov's race

Chuy Garcia and Abdul El-Sayed

Democrats in Michigan have a chance to back a genuine progressive over a couple of corporate dems in the upcoming governor's race. But the official state party officials are holding back support because they say, he's too young, too brown and too Muslim.

I got to meet Dr. Abdul El-Sayed at an event in Chicago this morning where he was introduced with lavish praise by soon-to-be Congressman Chuy Garcia. And quite frankly, cynical me was blown away by his eloquence, his qualifications and his history of progressivism. This in a state that is currently under all-out assault by the worse dregs of Trumpian Republicanism who are committed to nothing less than the total privatization of everything public, including schools, healthcare and public decision-making.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

Republicans won the state in 2016 even though Barack Obama won MI twice and Bernie Sanders won the primary in 2016. Part of the reason, says El-Sayed, is because "people of color stayed home", uninspired by traditional Democratic candidates.

According to El-Sayed, there are currently four Michigan cities that rank in the top 20 in national poverty stats: Flint is #1. Detroit is #4. Kalamazoo is #18 and Dearborn is #20.

El-Sayed, the former Detroit Health Department director, has a Medicare-for-all plan. He also wants to abolish ICE. He's also taken a strong stand against school privatization, expressed a strong distaste for Ed. Sec. Betsy DeVos (Michigan's own) and wants to reverse the current governor's takeover of dozens of local municipal governments.

His opponents in the Aug. 7 primary are two corporate-types, one of them a Republican, running as a Democrat, the other running with lots of PAC money from the giant health care corporations.

Dr. El-Sayed will campaign later this month with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who he connects with in terms of generation and political outlook.

If you're interested to working for his election, doing some campaign work in Michigan or contributing some dough, you can do it here. 

What I’m running for:

🏥 #MedicareforAll
💰 Paying people a living wage.
📚 A good education for all.
🏡 Affordable housing.
🚰 Clean water.
🌎 Taking care of our planet.
✊🏽 People over profits.

These are not political issues. They’re moral ones.

— Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) July 20, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rahm's council rubber-stamp, Ald. Will Burns bails out. Takes job with AirBnB.

CTU Vice-Pres. Jesse Sharkey 

“The Big Bargaining Team will tell us if there’s a [tentative agreement].” -- Sun-Times

Freep Editor Stephen Henderson on Flint

This is about cities themselves, and how Michigan’s system of governance permits and even incentivizes the creation of poor, isolated urban centers that don’t have enough population or resources to deliver services. This is about race and class, and the historic emphasis of suburban development on moving away from black and poor communities, stripping them of the tax base and other resources they need to survive. -- Detroit Free Press

Rahm Emanuel on $1.3B O'hare expansion

"We went after this like a heat-seeking missile." -- Crain's

Brother Fred on Iowa Caucus

If Trump gets 25% that's 30,000 people. That wouldn't be a sell-out crowd at Wrigley. -- Iowa Caucus Project

Donald Trump on his donations to the Clinton Foundation

 “Again, I was a businessman, and it was my obligation to get along with everybody, including the Clintons, including Democrats and liberals and Republicans and conservatives. As a businessman, I had an obligation to do that.” -- The Hill

Flint water disaster was preceded by takeover of schools and local govt's

In Michigan, the idea of a government of, by, and for the people did not apply to poor black cities, and when residents were robbed of the ability to govern themselves, they suffered. In Flint, it meant they got poisoned. -- Bill Moyers

The current disaster in Flint has its roots in Gov. Snyder's racist, anti-democratic coup d'etat in which power was usurped from local elected officials in financially distressed municipalities across Michigan. Snyder replaced them with his own appointed political cronies and corporate managers.

Flint isn’t the only city in Michigan deeply affected by the coup. In fact, Flint was one of six cities — most of which were poor and had a majority black population — to be placed under emergency management by Snyder since 2011.

Bill Moyers, who grew up in Flint, writes:

The emergency manager law gave unchecked power to the governor in the name of helping these communities emerge from financial distress. But in reality, it unleashed a series of devastating austerity and privatization measures adopted in the name of progress, and took away democratic rights from poor communities of color.

The financial distress came, not as a result of mismanagement or corruption -- although there was plenty of that right in Snyder's office as well as in the legislature -- but from the state's massive de-industrialization and collapse of the state's auto industry which began in the '70s. But Snyder, a right-wing ideologue, who believes that autocratic rule should trump democratic decision making, didn't want to let a good crisis go to waste.

His next target was the state's local school districts where he seized control of their budgets. In Detroit, the district was put under the rule of an emergency manager, Robert Bobb by Snyder's predecessor, Jennifer Granholm. Bobb then contracted with Barbara Byrd-Bennett to run the schools. It was there that BBB and her partner in crime, Gary Solomon, embarked on a trail of corruption that would run through Chicago and end finally in conviction and a possible 7 year prison sentence.

Snyder replaced the elected city governments in Muskegon Heights. and Highland Park with hand-picked business czars. In Muskegon Heights, an emergency manager dissolved the public school system and turned it over to a for-profit charter school, only to have the company bail on the contract because, as the emergency manager put it, “the profit just simply wasn’t there.”  The districts were left in a state of chaos rather than academic improvement.

In Pontiac, emergency managers privatized or sold nearly all public services, outsourcing the city’s wastewater treatment to United Water months after the company was indicted on 26 counts of violating the Clean Water Act, including tampering with E. coli monitoring methods to cut corners on costs.

In Flint, says, Moyers, "children were poisoned to save money."

The poisoning of the children and families of Flint was part and parcel of the poisoning of democracy in the state of Michigan. Now IL Gov. Rauner is proposing the same measures for Chicago and its school district. If you want to see where that leads, look no further than Flint.

Rauner makes his move to take over Chicago and CPS

If you want to see what it looks like when a right-wing governor pulls a coup d'etat and appoints corporate managers to supplant elected local officials, take a look at Flint, MI.

Yesterday, we heard the news that Gov. Bruce Rauner and top Republican leaders are planning to introduce legislation aimed at an emergency financial takeover of the city of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools. Their rationale is the $500 million shortfall within the Chicago Public Schools system which they themselves -- with help from sellout Democrats -- created.

We are told that the legislation would also allow for CPS and the city of Chicago to declare bankruptcy – something by law both cannot currently do. To sweeten the pot, Rauner threw in the promise of a elected CPS school board, but only "once the financial situation is remediated". 

Given the history of corruption, racism, and incompetence behind Rahm Emanuel's own autocratic rule over the schools, the promise of an elected board may sound attractive, given the widespread support shown for an end to mayoral control by Chicago voters. But it's merely a ploy.

The move is also Rauner's way of heading off a budget compromise and a contract agreement between CPS and the CTU and cutting the heart out of collective bargaining rights for teachers public employee unions, statewide. It's their alternative to raising taxes on their wealthy and corporate patrons to pay for the operation of a predominantly black and Latino school district.

It's the "Katrina model" which Paul Vallas used to bust the teachers union and privatize the entire New Orleans school system, getting Arne Duncan's stamp of approval in the process. Gov. Snyder used it in Michigan to destroy democracy, including elected city government and the school system in Detroit. Snyder poisoned the people in Flint as a cost-cutting measure, along with way.

It's all based on Rahm's dictum, "never let a serious crisis go to waste."

The move brings to mind the Tribune editorial board's call back in May, for a "Mussolini-type" dictatorship over CPS followed by the Trib's Kristen McQueary praying for a Katrina-like storm to hit Chicago.

Can Rauner pull it off? Can he do what Snyder's done in Michigan? Not without complete and total acquiescence from Madigan, Cullerton and state Democrats who still hold a veto-proof majority in the legislature. Rahm claims he is "100% against the plan". But we don't know what kind of deal he's cut with his pal the governor, behind closed doors, to save his own ass.

In other words, yes he can. 

Rahm's hidden corruption tax

As Rahm Emanuel is about to hit city residents with the biggest property tax increase in history, there's another hidden tax we already pay. It's one Rahm never mentioned in recent budget hearings. I  call it the corruption tax, and it's a big one. 

According to a recent study, everyone in this state pays an annual corruption tax of $1.308 and Chicago remains the "corruption capital" of the U.S. with 1,642 public corruption convictions from 1976 through 2013. That total has obviously risen in the past two years.

The latest installment of the tax will go to pay the lawyers defending the CPS Gang of 4, charged or implicated in the SUPES scandal. That's Barbara Byrd-Bennett and her three aides (who've also been named as perps in Detroit's Houghton Mifflin Harcourt corruption scandal) Sherry Ulery, Rosemary Herpel and Tracy Martin. While CPS isn't currently on the hook for Byrd-Bennett's criminal defense lawyers, they (we) are still paying a hefty sum for her salary, benefits and golden parachute contributions.

According to the Sun-Times, Chicago Public Schools’ lawyers’ bills for the corruption case that took down BBB have already topped $280,000. And things are just getting started.

The Gang of Four

Then there's the millions in lost services from SUPES and possibly other contracts steered by BBB, like the one to Global Workplace Solutions. They won the $30.9 million bid to help Rahm close 50 schools. A portion of the business was subcontracted to a company called The Robert Bobb Group, a company run by Robert Bobb, the former Emergency Financial Manager for Detroit Public Schools. Bobb hired Byrd-Bennett in Detroit in 2009 as Chief Academic Auditor and paid her a salary of $18,000 per month.

Of course, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $100 million the city has already spent on on settlements and legal fees in the case of of CPD torturer Jon Burge and his crew. But it still could add up to millions more by the time the trials and investigations are over.

CPS spokesperson, Emily Bittner says that the board, "covers legal fees for employees within the scope of their duties.” The implication here is that the Gang's SUPES dealings with Gary Solomon and Tom Varanas were "within the scope of their duties" and defined by the board and the Mayor. In that sense, I have to agree.

Who still thinks that making CPS a wing of Chicago City Hall, under the autocratic rule of the mayor, is a good idea?

Rahm's 'fear Detroit' campaign worked. But then there's this...

Remember Rahm Emanuel's fear campaign, the one that -- along with $20 million -- helped get him re-elected?

John Kass ridiculed it in the Tribune:

...what if Chuy wins?How long will it take Chicago to become Detroit, as threatened by the Rahmulans? Not the real Detroit, but more like a cinematic post-apocalyptic Detroit. Just imagine Chicagoans dressed as the extras from "The Book of Eli," in a parched wasteland Chicago of the future as promised by the Rahmulan politicos should Rahm not win.

FOX News was all too happy to pick on on David Axelrod's fear campaign associating Chuy with Destroit. Here's John Stossel on March 23rd:

Emanuel’s opponent in the run-off, Garcia, vocally supports the unions and joins them in opposing both pension reform and competition from charter schools at all costs. Garcia also wants a "moratorium on charter schools." But charters are a rare bright spot in the failing city. Chicago is the next Detroit.

Well, they all can relax now. Rahm won the election. There's no Latino mayor sitting on the 5th floor ready to blow up LaSalle St. And the plan to transform Chicago into the Silicon Valley of the Midwest, rather than Motown, is in full swing. You know about Silicon Valley right? Privatization Mecca with white-only gated communities and where even millionaires don't feel rich.

But then, yesterday there's this...Moody's drops Chicago's credit rating to 'junk' (Reuters)

Moody's Investors Service on Tuesday pushed Chicago's credit rating into the "junk" category, potentially triggering $2.2 billion in accelerated debt payment and increasing the fiscal challenges facing the nation's third-largest city...The only big U.S. city with a lower Moody's rating is Detroit, which exited bankruptcy in December.

I guess the city's creditors aren't buying the Rahm as great white hope scenario, especially after the Supreme Court ruled that pension theft was unconstitutional -- something anyone with half a brain knew they would.

Chuy's plan to reform the tax structure, to make it more progressive rather than balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and retired public workers, looks pretty damn good right now. A lot better than Gov. Rauner's plan to drive the city into bankruptcy, a la Detroit.

So Rahm's fear campaign worked -- for the time being. But really, what did he win? The feds are in town inching closer to City Hall. His schools chief has gone underground. He's facing another possible teachers strike after offering CTU members a 7% pay cut. He's going to have to raise property taxes. His pension-theft plan has been ruled unconstitutional. And his brilliant plan to finance his operations with red-light tickets and gambling casinos is blowing up in his face. VICTORY!

DR. KING WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Still whistling Dixie in AR

Dr. Martin Luther King

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. -- The Purpose Of Education

Andrew Wilkes on "Pentecostal piety"

 The civil rights movement saw black folks (and non-black folks) consecrate the American dream by way of the prophetic Baptist theology of Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, yes. But it also involved the anointed agnosticism of Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s founding executive director and the generative force of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating committee, Ella Baker. The radical Quaker vision of a Bayard Rustin next to the ethical humanism of an Asa Phillip Randolph were also blended in. And also in the mix was the subtle, yet significant tradition of faith-filled lay activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Marian Wright Edelman. -- The Guardian

Detroit hip-hop artist Mic Write

What does it mean for our community for there to be this vacant space where there used to be a life? Where have those people gone? What is left for them?" -- Mother Jones

Morris Dees, Founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

We've seen the results: voter suppression, corporate hegemony in Washington, a shrinking social safety net, and mass incarceration. Our schools are increasingly segregated, and the headlines this past week tell us that the majority of our public school students now live in poverty. -- Huff Post

Prof. Charles Payne, author of "I've Got The Light of Freedom"

The movement managed to ameliorate the most blatant features of white supremacy; it didn’t end it. Given that the net wealth of white households is 13 times that of black ones, given that too many black children are coming to maturity in life-limiting ghettos — and the notion that the black ghetto and the ethnic ghettos of the past can be equated is simply a lie — given unprecedented levels of incarceration, given that James Baldwin’s comment about the police in black neighborhoods being regarded as an occupying army still has too much truth, given that blacks and other non-whites are treated superficially in the curricula of most schools, if they are present at all, the last thing we need is a new movement. We need to finish the old one. 
The struggle continues. -- New York Times

The politics of water and schooling in Detroit

A SMALL VICTORY -- Ongoing protests against Detroit's massive water shut-off to the city's poorest have forced a restructuring in the city's already bankrupt government. The so-called Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr has handed over control of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to elected mayor, Mike Duggan.

Jason Stanley writes in yesterday's New York Times:

Orr’s actions are a result of sustained and heroic activism by Detroit citizens, and a concomitant international outcry. Still, any victory they may be tempted to claim remains tenuous. Clause 6 of the order reads, “The EM may modify, amend, rescind, replace, supplement, or otherwise revise this Order at any time.” ("Detroit's Drought of Democracy")

And the reshuffling begs the question -- why is it that thousands of city residents can't afford drinking water?

Detroit photo-op for Duncan and T-Party pal Synder.

The state takeover, led by Tea Party Gov. Rick Snyder has been a disaster for the state's poor and low-income workers.  Snyder had disbanded local elected governments and school boards, placing them in the hands of corporate managers.

Detroiters haven't been the only targets of water shut-offs. Across the state Hamtramck, Warren, Pontiac, Eastpointe, Romulus and other cities have shut off delinquent customers.

Writing for The Guardian, Martin Lukacs argues that Orr’s focus on privatizing the water utility, “a prized resource worth billions,” turns the shut-offs into “a way to make the balance-sheet more attractive in the lead up to its privatization.” 

FOREIGN AID...W. Virginia environmental activists expressed solidarity in the form of more than 1,000 gallons of bottled water trucked into Detroit where more than 15,000 of the city’s poorest people have already had their water shut off — for being unable to pay their bill.

W.V. recently suffered its own water woes, with 300,000 people in its capital, Charleston, and surrounding areas told not to drink their water for several days after a January coal processing chemical spill.

As for the schools, Detroit's black community has also become the laboratory for class-size experiments like this one where 100 kindergartners are taught in one class. I suppose the aim is to prove Arne Duncan's thesis that class size doesn't matter. 

Water

In response to the unraveling situation in Detroit, the United Nations issued a statement out of Geneva last month that said, “Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights.”

Warring factions in Ukraine are using basic necessities of life, such as water, as weapons against the civilian population. Horrible! A clear violation of basic human rights. The U.N. reports that half of Gaza population, "without water supply". Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon also expressed concern over reports that water supplies in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo were deliberately cut off by armed groups for eight days, depriving at least 2.5 million people of access to safe water for drinking and sanitation.

It raises the question, how can anyone stoop so low as to deny people, including small children, the aged and infirm, access to water? Unthinkable here in the U.S. Right?

The average monthly water bill for a family of four in Detroit is nearly double the national average. Chris Hayes reported on MSNBC that, though the E.P.A. recommends that families spend no more than 2.5 percent of their pretax income on water and sewage, some residents of Detroit pay 20 percent of their pretax income for these services. Those who can’t pay face a shutoff—and a stigmatizing blue slash of paint in front of their houses, signifying that they are, in fact, waterless. -- The Nation

Congressman John Conyers says that the causes of this crisis include the economic problems with the country, deindustrialization, higher unemployment rates, population decline, and the number of families who cannot afford water.

At the Netroots Nation conference in Detroit this week, N. Carolina civil rights leader, Rev. Wm. Barber called for a lifting of the water blockade affecting hundreds of thousands of the city's poor and unemployed.

Retweeted by The Nation's John Nichols:

Rev. Barber @Netroots_Nation: "It is extreme and it is immoral to cut off water for poor people in Detroit." pic.twitter.com/ZJIAwk1Pry

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) July 18, 2014

ABC News7 reports that poor and unemployed residents can receive assistance from the city if they can prove to a Water Dept. bureaucrat that they are truly deserving of aid. Even this offer of assistance came only after the city's bankruptcy judge, Steven Rhodes, ordered Deputy Director Darryl Latimer to  "do something."

According to Latimer:

"When you're getting to the range of 40-50% of your customers in delinquent status, that becomes alarming so you have to react to that." 

But The Atlantic reports:

Residents targeted by the shut-off campaign have been reluctant to speak up. Some have stayed quiet because they’ve resorted to illegally hiring plumbers, and others—who are without water and relying on neighbors and friends for drinking water and showers—are afraid child-protective services may intervene, as a lack of running water is grounds for social services to immediately take children out of parents’ care.

Even those without children remain reticent. Some feel tarred by a general notion of shame and culpability for not being able to meet such a bare necessity as water. Last week, a headline in one of the local newspapers, The Detroit News, described delinquent customers as “water scofflaws.” 

Rev. Charles E. Williams II, in an interview on MSNBC's All in With Chris Hayes says:

 We celebrate this year, 50 years since the signing of a Civil Rights bill that gave Blacks access to public accommodations that were segregated by race. Now, 50 years later we are marching to maintain public services that are human rights, but being segregated by class. Detroit's water crisis should remind us that this is class warfare, that's waged on those who are at the bottom. In Detroit we will march and we will fight not just for those who are losing water daily, but for those who are being shut out and driven into poverty across the nation.

Rev. Williams II and National Action Network Michigan will lead a National demonstration today to call for a moratorium on water shut offs in Detroit. National Nurses United, which claims that the shut-offs will trigger a large-scale public health disaster, is calling on people to turn out for today's march.

You can join the movement by going to www.therevcw.com or http://detroitwaterbrigade.org/

More polls now indicate Rahm can be had

Emanuel's weakness has been known for months—he lost the left ages ago, and has lost Chicagoans more generally over basic competence issues. In the Sun-Times, his response to the poll is an anonymous insult, "laughable." But this same pollster nailed the 2011 race, which Emanuel entered late and won. -- Politico

h/t Brother Fred

There should be no question now that even with his bloated war chest and friends in high low places, Mayor 1% is beatable in his run for re-election. Wednesday's Early & Often poll conducted by We Ask America, shows Karen Lewis and Toni Preckwinkle either leading Rahm head-to-head, or if several candidates run, at least forcing the mayor into a run-off where he would be vulnerable no matter who finishes second on the initial ballot.

  If the mayoral election were held today, the lightning rod union leader who was the architect behind a 2012 teachers’ strike would beat Emanuel by 9 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, the survey found. Lewis was leading Emanuel 45 percent to 36 percent with 18 percent of the likely voters undecided.

And Emanuel could face an even steeper hill if he faces Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, long considered his most formidable challenger. A head-to-head contest found Preckwinkle in a romp vs. Emanuel by a stunning 24 points.

And Ald. Bob Fioretti looks formidable as well at this early stage, in sight of Rahm, with a 30% poll rating.

David Weigel at Politico writes:

When a politico's first on-the-record response to a poll number is "wow," you know it's good for them. "Wow" is what Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, told the Chicago Sun-Times after being informed that she would easily lead Rahm Emanuel in a mayoral election. In an automated poll of more than 1,000 voters, Lewis led Emanuel by a 45–36 margin, cutting into every group that backed him four years ago. She trailed by only 3 points with white voters, led by 4 points with Hispanics, and led by 18 points with black voters—a margin that might increase if Lewis ran and black voters discovered that she, too, was black. And Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle (a black woman, like Lewis) led Emanuel by 24 points.

I would keep this early poll in perspective. It's only a "snapshot in time," as E&O is quick to point out. But it is an indicator that even before any viable opposition candidate has announced or spent even one penny on the campaign, Rahm is in trouble. And despite his staffer's "entirely laughable" comment, he knows it. If he's truly laughing at the results, Rahm's in even more trouble than I thought.

Again, Politico:

Here's the twist, which doubles as the reason we know Emanuel's camp believes the polling. At the end of June, Emanuel supporters launched a super PAC (yes, super PACs for mayoral races) to vacuum up hedge fund money. It worked, and in 10 days Chicago Forward announced $1 million in funds—from just eight people. Hedge funder Ken Griffin, who had just given $2.5 million to a PAC for the (independently wealthy) GOP gubernatorial candidate, gave $150,000 to Emanuel.

Washington Post analyst Philip Bump, sounding a little pollyanna, tries to minimize the poll results:

The Democratic primary takes place in February 2015, during the winter, when the level of violence in the city will almost certainly have receded. 

First, Mr. Bump, there is no Democratic primary any more in Chicago. The machine got rid of that two decades ago after Harold Washington won it twice to become the city's first black mayor. Where have you been? Secondly, even an expected drop in the violence numbers (does anybody believe them any more?) won't likely make people forget what's happened here this summer. Not to mention the school-closing debacle which has devastated so much of the city's black community.

The poll offers at least Lewis and Fioretti (and less likely, in my opinion, Preckwinkle) an open invitation to enter the fray. So far, only Lewis has publicly announced her intent. But the interesting thing is that, in an election of this type, even two or three strong anti-Rahm candidates won't hurt each other as much as they'll hurt Rahm, because of the wider range of voters they can turn out, leading to a likely run-off when two enter and one leaves the ring.

Another interesting survey, conducted by MoveOn.Org, of its 75,000 left/liberal Chicago members, finds that 85% of them want to see a progressive challenger to Rahm Emanuel. If that number somehow translates into actual voters and a core group of campaign workers, it could be another real incentive to Lewis, Fioretti or Preckwinkle to announce.

Sen. Kirk has outdone himself

Our "moderate" Republican Senator Mark Kirk, who has called for the mass incarceration of 18,000 young black men as a crime-fighting strategy, has outdone himself this time. Kirk, who has to legitimize himself with his anti-immigrant base, is now demanding criminal background checks on all unaccompanied children that have crossed the U.S. border with Mexico looking for sanctuary.

FREE WRITE...I thoroughly enjoyed last night's gallery exhibition, at Chicago Art Department in Pilsen, "The Artists Will Not Be Present", which featured creative writing, visual art, music, spoken word poetry, and performances by Chicago's incarcerated and court-involved youth. Special thanks to Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy Program director Ryan Keesling and his crew for all the hard work that went into to creating the exhibit.

SPINNING...While the mayor and his police supt. continue to spin the gun violence stats, we're already off to another bloody weekend in Chicago. This morning's Trib reports at least 2 dead, 16 wounded just since last evening.

DETROIT WATER BRIGADE...If, like me, you're looking for ways to support the activists who are protesting the shut-off of water to tens of thousands Detroit citizens who can't afford to pay their utility bills, check out the website of the Detroit Water Brigade.

I'm not surprised to find Rock guitarist Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) on the front lines in Detroit. Morello, tweeted this week details about the July 18th nurses-sponsored march organized by Netroots Nation. 

Detroit: Turn on the Water. Tax Wall Street. Join the nurses-sponsored march, Netroots Nation, July 18, 12:30 pm, Cobo Convention, Detroit
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) July 8, 2014

On the Wolverine

Heading for Detroit on the Wolverine for the NDSG meeting. I love trains. A ticket to Motown -- $28 each way. Plus I got free upgrade from previous trips. I can't drive it for that and the travel time is about the same. Wish we had high-speed rail with a Chicago hub. I'd hardly ever fly.

Detroit power outage. A metaphor?

Power Struggle… Detroit schools continue to be a disinvestment basket case, even more so since the state takeover. The latest news is about school power outages which shut down 30 schools in the city Tuesday. Before Tuesday, schools had missed 130 days collectively through the end of January because of power outages. Now that number has climbed to 160.

While in Detroit, I'm hoping to see the Grace Lee Boggs and Jimmy Boggs school, a small school named after two of the heroes of the city's freedom movement. In a good piece in Huffington, Laura De Palma described the beloved community being created at the school, largely based on Dr. King's legacy.

She writes:

Many Detroiters have been resisting the city's emergency manager laws and the downtown corporate takeover and fighting to reinvent the city in a way that is just, transformative and paradigm-shifting. Activists in Detroit have been asking, "What kind of revitalizing does Detroit need at this point in history?" Gentrification and social entrepreneurship that ignores history and context and does not address the root causes of the economic disinvestment in the city of Detroit is not the kind of change we need.

Front Page...Check out the front page of today's Defender. It's Prof. Timuel Black still looking great at 95.

Go Portland...It looks like it's on in Portland. PPS leaders say they will try and scab out the strike. "We expect our regular PPS substitutes to work during a strike and plan to hire replacement teachers on a temporary basis while you are on strike," the document reads. "Staffing will be deployed where it is needed most." 

The Whitenizing of Detroit

I'm heading to Detroit next week for the annual meeting of the North Dakota Study Group. I used to attend every year for at least part of the meeting. But since it was moved from near Chicago to Motown, I haven't been able to make the trip. But withdrawal has been tough. I miss hanging out with some of the best progressive educators and public intellectuals in the country who are doing some of the best democratic education and social-justice work -- people like 98-year old movement hero, Grace Lee Boggs, who will once again welcome NDSG to Detroit. So it's back on the road. Hope to see some of you there.

******

As everyone knows, Detroit has become the poster child for post-industrial urban devastation, corporate dis-investment (forced bankruptcy) and white abandonment. In Detroit and other hard-hit cities in Michigan, voters no longer have the power to elect their own local government and school systems have been privatized and handed over to corporate operators. I can still remember the chilling headline in the Detroit Free Press a couple of years back, which asked: "Is Detroit Public Schools worth saving?"

Detroit’s population loss may even leave Michigan without a black representative in Congress for the first time since 1955, a shift that would punctuate the erosion of African-American power in a region.

Michigan's Tea Part Gov. Rick Snyder

Now Michigan's Tea Party Gov. Rick Snyder is putting the finishing touches on his plan to whitenize (ethnic cleanse?) Motown by the further push-out of thousands of African-Americans and their systematic replacement, through a special visa program, with 50,000 white and Asian imported immigrants.

A New York Times editorial criticizes the localness of Snyder's plan but is generally okay with it. In one chilling scenario, the Times editors write:

One way to avoid the unwieldiness of a one-city visa program is to go big. Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer who grew up in Detroit, has suggested doing for immigrants what the “Race to the Top” competition has done for schools.

Race To The Top indeed. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Xian Barrett protests Chicago school closings. He was one of 2,100 teachers and staff fired Friday. CPS called his mother to tell her, son has been fired from his job.  

Fired Chicago teacher Xian Barrett

“The fact that there’s a script and it has in it, 'Thank you for the service to the kids’ but no details — the fact that it’s always done this impersonally. It’s not just about firing. It’s how CPS treats their students. They’re interchangeable, and the relationships in their lives are interchangeable.” -- Sun-Times

UIC Prof, Dick Simpson

“Many people know one of the fired school employees. They were fired — not because they weren’t doing their jobs, but because of how school finances were handled... Rahm Emanuel is losing the African-American vote. And independent voters are gonna be swayed by school closings and bond ratings.” -- Sun-Times 

Princeton Prof, Douglas Massey

"Unlike cities such as Chicago or Philadelphia, where segregation produced disinvestment in certain neighborhoods, the nature of segregation in Detroit meant that the entire city suffered disinvestment." -- Auto troubles, race at root of Detroit collapse 

New York teacher, Katie Lapham

The new Common Core state tests have left me despairing of the future of public education in both NYC and throughout the country.  -- WaPo, Teacher: Why the last school year was ‘crushing’

Retired Detroit worker, Vera Proctor

“Where’s the nearest street corner where I can sell bottles of water? That’s what it’s going to come down to. We’re not going to have anything.” -- NYT, Cries of Betrayal as Detroit Plans to Cut Pensions

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Roberts was told to "blow up" and "dismantle" Detroit schools

Roy Roberts, Emergency Manager of Detroit Public Schools 

According to a Detroit Free Press article, he also revealed that when he first entered his job in 2011, he was told to "blow up the district and dismantle it."  -- Huffpost Detroit

Dana Goldstein

 If smaller, themed schools are better for kids -- and there is significant evidence they are -- the question then becomes, how can districts transition to such a system without leaving behind those students who most need help? Crenshaw was already pursuing a themed school-within-a-school reform plan, and it is discouraging, I think, that the Social Justice and Law Academy, whose work was politically and intellectually challenging, will be discontinued, with its leaders dispersed. -- An Activist Teacher, a Struggling School, and the School Closure Movement: A Story from L.A.

Diane Ravitch

Bill Gates is wrong. American education is not “broken.” Federal education policy is broken. -- NPE,  "Zombie Federal Policies"

Rahm Emanuel

"Does anyone have any questions for my answers?" -- Chicago Tribune

Beatrice Dbimimi, Lincoln Park H.S. senior. 

"We're not just a bunch of stoners who wanted to walk out of school. We actually care." -- Huffington

Valerie Strauss

He is blind and he can’t talk, nor can he understand basic information, but, yes, Michael had to “take” the test. -- Washington Post

Ravitch, no Gates, at this year's AFT Convention

Bill Gates addressed the 2010 Convention

I don't expect anything too new or exciting coming out of AFT Convention, just starting in Detroit. The meeting is pretty well scripted and delegates, representing the union's 1.5 million members, are nearly all aligned with the Unity/Progressive Caucus and the current leadership is not up for re-election. But given the intensity of the attacks on public education, teachers, and all  public sector workers and their unions, this year's convention does take on special significance.

There are several important things are worth noting as the meeting gets underway. First is the setting in the Motor City which has become disaster capitalism's new great laboratory for corporate-style reform and union busting. Michigan's Tea-Party governor is putting entire cities under corporate control, disbanding elected local governments and turning entire school districts over the private management companies.

Detroit has become New Orleans without the storm and there's the growing possibility of a teachers strike now that Emergency Manager Roy Roberts announced he was imposing a contract to replace a deal that expired on June 30, using powers afforded his office through state law, Public Act 4. Following her speech to the convention, AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten plans to lead a march of the 3,000 delegates over to Roberts' office, demanding an opening up of negotiations.

Then there is the anticipation of Diane Ravitch's keynote speech. Remember, two years ago the keynote was delivered by Bill Gates who left through the back door after his speech to avoid any confrontations with protesting teacher activists. Expect Ravitch to set a completely different tone of resistance which hopefully will be carried back to AFT locals.

Third is the presence of the Chicago delegation, led by CTU President Karen Lewis. The CTU has now become a reluctant but powerful symbol of fight-back unionism at a time when national leaders are counseling conciliation and going along with many corporate reform plans in order to get along. Cleveland and New Haven are among the latest examples where AFT leaders are accepting teacher evaluation and pay, based on student test scores while producing little in return for teachers.

Another indication of the changing mood within the union has been its promotion of the national resolution on high-stakes testing, which puts the union on record as favoring a stronger stance against "the growing fixation on high-stakes testing."   

The 'civil rights issue of our generation' -- Taking those words seriously

Jitu Brown of Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (back, left) and Helen Moore, Co-Chair of Keep the Vote/ No Takeover Coalition of Detroit demanded a meeting within two weeks with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan. They are filing USDOE civil rights complaints alleging that African American students are unfairly and disproportionately impacted by school closings, turnarounds and phaseouts. | Rich Hein~Sun-Times

Every opportunist politician from Mitt Romney to Arne Duncan has lately been calling ed reform, "the civil rights issue of our generation" turning the words civil rights into an empty, meaningless cliche. But now it looks like students, and school activists are taking the words seriously.

Yesterday, parents and students from seven cities joined those in Chicago in filing civil rights complaints against school closings, phase-outs and other “rampantly horrible” corporate-style school reforms, they contend have disproportionately victimized minority communities.

(From left) ShaQ Carbon, 18, Tone Elliott, 18, and Tre Murphy, 16, were part of a group demanding a meeting within two weeks with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The group is calling  for a “national moratorium’’ on the kind of school reform shakeups that they say began in Chicago under former Schools CEO Paul Vallas; ramped up under his successor, Arne Duncan, and have spread nationwide during Duncan’s tenure as U.S. Education Secretary. 

The Sun-Times' Ros Rossi reports: 

Among those gathered outside the U.S. Department of Ed’s Chicago office Thursday was Helen Moore, a Detroit school activist for 45 years.

Ten years ago, Moore said, the Detroit school system had 300 schools; now it has 86. The system has been shattered into a crazy quilt of neighborhood schools, charter schools, “site-based” schools overseen by a selected school board and schools run by an outside agency. An “emergency manager” runs the place like a “dictator,” she said.

Maddow's follow-up on the killing of Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit

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We almost lost Detroit in '66

But now we're losing Motown's public education system

Gil Scott Heron died Friday. I've been listening to his music and poetry all week and still have the words to his anti-nuke anthem, We almost lost Detroit, spinning around my brain. Gil's song was based on a book by the same title, written two years earlier by John Fuller about the partial meltdown in Michigan of Fermi 1, America's first breeder reactor, in 1966.

Yesterday I read this headline in the Detroit Free Press --IS DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS WORTH SAVING?

The Detroit Public Schools, as we know it, could disappear in a few years. A DPS action plan would charter up to 45 schools, close 20 and leave about 70 that include the best-performing schools, some newly constructed and a handful of special-education schools that are expensive to run... With such a concerted effort to shrink DPS, local leaders, educators, politicians and taxpayers are debating a question: Is DPS worth saving?

Neither Fuller nor Heron could have predicted that the death of this great American city and its school system would come, not from a nuclear meltdown, but rather from an economic meltdown and meltdown of civil society caused in large part by the greed and rapaciousness of Wall Street and Motown's own disaster capitalists.

Detroit has become New Orleans without Katrina.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Students occupy Detroit school for pregnant girls

“I was scared at first but I’m not anymore,” Catherine Becker, senior at CFA, said while her child Da-Mire Simmons slept on the desk before her. “We’re staying here, and I’m staying.” -- The South End

Tiffany Baldwin

"Police came and they're like, 'You've got to go. You've got to go,' said Tiffany Baldwin. "We just stood there and they just arrested us one by one." -- FOX News

Nicole Conaway 

“We’ve done petitioning, we’ve done letter writing. This is the sit-in portion.” -- Metro Times Blog

Rahm says no to collective bargaining

“We’re not going to negotiate or discuss whether children get more instruction." --SunTimes

Where NCLB reformers went to school

"No longer did a person with a clipboard have to spend days observing a school to determine whether it was any good. Because of the law, it is now possible for an assistant secretary of education to be sitting in his Washington office and, by simply studying a spreadsheet for a few minutes, know exactly how a school in Juneau is performing."  -- Michael Winerip, NYT