That Plan to Close Half of Detroit's Schools? It's Really Happening
by Liz Dwyer
Good
Eminem's acclaimed Super Bowl advertisement for Chrysler told the world that despite what you've heard, Detroit is making a comeback. Tell that to the city's children, because the State of Michigan has sounded the death knell for Detroit Public Schools. DPS's Emergency Financial Manager (EFM), Robert Bobb, has received approval for his plan to shut down half of the city's public schools over the next two years, raising remaining school class sizes to 60 students. The decision could be the tipping point that pushes Michigan into Wisconsin-style protesting.
Bobb's solution addresses a $327 million budget deficit and will reduce the current 142 schools in the district down to 72 by the 2012-13 school year. The plan will likely drive more families out of the Detroit, setting up a domino effect of even more financial problems for the schools.
Steve Conn, a 25-year-veteran teacher at Detroit's Cass Technical High School, is heavily involved in plans to march through the state capital, Lansing, today at noon with teachers, parents, students, and other public education allies. The planned protest targets education budget cuts, the school closings, and a bill that will expand the number of EFM positions in the state.
If the bill passes, it "will allow the state to appoint an EFM over any school district, city or town that is in a financial deficit," says Conn. EFM's have the power to fire entire school boards, change pay and benefits and eliminate union contracts, all without any public debate. When financial times are tough, as they are now in many low-income communities, EFM's can decide to sell off or close libraries, schools and other public buildings, and they're only answerable to the governor. Conn says such a system position "replaces democracy with tyranny."
To Read the Rest of the Report
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sunday, December 05, 2010
David Solnit: Eleven Years After WTO -- The Impact of Uprisings
Eleven Years After WTO: The Impact of Uprisings
by David Solnit
Truth-Out
Eleven years ago yesterday, on November 30, 1999, a public uprising shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) and occupied downtown Seattle.
That same week in 1999, three thousand miles away in Immokalee, Florida, farm workers carried out a five-day general strike against abusive growers paying starvation wages. Two weeks ago, on November 16, 2010, those same growers - the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange representing 90 percent of the industry - publicly agreed to every one of the farm workers "Fair Food" demands.
Now seems like an important time to remind ourselves that when we organize, have some strategy and rebel we can build power and win change. The Seattle uprising was just a warm-up for what is needed and to come as we face the crisis of wars, corporate capitalism and climate. We continue to win victories and build movements; from recent, historic farm worker victory in Florida, to the successful US Social Forum in Detroit in the spring to the climate justice mobilization today in Cancun, Mexico.
Seattle
On November 30, tens of thousands of people joined the nonviolent, direct-action blockade that encircled the WTO ministerial conference site, keeping the most powerful institution on earth shut down from dawn until dusk. People did not back down in the face of teargas, rubber bullets and even the National Guard being deployed.
Longshore workers shut down every West Coast port from Alaska to Los Angeles. Large numbers of Seattle taxi drivers went on strike. All week, the firefighters union refused to turn their fire hoses on people. Tens of thousands walked out of or skipped work or school. Coordinated actions took place across the planet.
Thousands continued nonviolent direct action, marches and protest throughout the week, despite a clampdown that included nearly 600 arrests, the declaration of a "state of emergency" and suspension of the basic rights of free speech and assembly in downtown Seattle. Hundreds of independent media journalists founded Indymedia and did an end run around corporate media, getting the real story out. A month later, after corporate media attempts to marginalize the uprising, a January 2000 opinion poll by Business Week found that 52 percent of Americans supported with the activists at the WTO in Seattle.
Mass action in Seattle and afterward was a convergence of movements, networks and communities taking on the system, not a single movement focused on the issue of trade. Those movements, networks and people continue in Immokalee, Detroit, Cancun and everywhere.
...
To Read the Rest of the Essay and the Reports about Immokalee, Detroit and Cancun
by David Solnit
Truth-Out
Eleven years ago yesterday, on November 30, 1999, a public uprising shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) and occupied downtown Seattle.
That same week in 1999, three thousand miles away in Immokalee, Florida, farm workers carried out a five-day general strike against abusive growers paying starvation wages. Two weeks ago, on November 16, 2010, those same growers - the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange representing 90 percent of the industry - publicly agreed to every one of the farm workers "Fair Food" demands.
Now seems like an important time to remind ourselves that when we organize, have some strategy and rebel we can build power and win change. The Seattle uprising was just a warm-up for what is needed and to come as we face the crisis of wars, corporate capitalism and climate. We continue to win victories and build movements; from recent, historic farm worker victory in Florida, to the successful US Social Forum in Detroit in the spring to the climate justice mobilization today in Cancun, Mexico.
Seattle
On November 30, tens of thousands of people joined the nonviolent, direct-action blockade that encircled the WTO ministerial conference site, keeping the most powerful institution on earth shut down from dawn until dusk. People did not back down in the face of teargas, rubber bullets and even the National Guard being deployed.
Longshore workers shut down every West Coast port from Alaska to Los Angeles. Large numbers of Seattle taxi drivers went on strike. All week, the firefighters union refused to turn their fire hoses on people. Tens of thousands walked out of or skipped work or school. Coordinated actions took place across the planet.
Thousands continued nonviolent direct action, marches and protest throughout the week, despite a clampdown that included nearly 600 arrests, the declaration of a "state of emergency" and suspension of the basic rights of free speech and assembly in downtown Seattle. Hundreds of independent media journalists founded Indymedia and did an end run around corporate media, getting the real story out. A month later, after corporate media attempts to marginalize the uprising, a January 2000 opinion poll by Business Week found that 52 percent of Americans supported with the activists at the WTO in Seattle.
Mass action in Seattle and afterward was a convergence of movements, networks and communities taking on the system, not a single movement focused on the issue of trade. Those movements, networks and people continue in Immokalee, Detroit, Cancun and everywhere.
...
To Read the Rest of the Essay and the Reports about Immokalee, Detroit and Cancun
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Allison Kilkenny: Detroit and Missouri -- a tale of two police raids
Detroit and Missouri: a tale of two police raids
by Allison Kilkenny
True/Slant
Aiyana Jones is the 7-year-old girl who was recently killed during a raid on her home. Allegedly, the police launched a flashbang grenade through the window of the apartment where Jones was sleeping, and the device set Jones on fire. Her grandmother, quite understandably, got into an altercation with the armed men who stormed into their home, and during the struggle, the police claim an officer’s gun discharged accidentally, killing Jones.
This official narrative is being disputed by the family’s attorney, who claims video footage shows the police fired into the home at least once after lobbing the grenade through a window – before grandma and the officer ever had their interaction.
This terrible tragedy follows an incident that received considerably more (especially on-line) media attention — a Missouri SWAT raid.
First, a disclaimer: I don’t write this as a way to cast blame. After all, I covered the Missouri incident extensively. The Missouri raid is something that should attract a significant amount of media coverage. And there are several important differences between the story that might explain why one incident went viral, while the other remains in danger of being buried by the Next Big Thing to come along.
Unlike Detroit, the Missouri raid was videotaped, forever capturing the terrible drama of the event, while Jones’s last, awful moments will only be memorialized in the testimony of cops and her family. Additionally, the Missouri raid demonstrated the overzealous, destructive police response to the unwinnable War on Drugs, which 40 years after its implementation, has cost over $1 trillion, failed to meet any of its goals, while “drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.” Most Americans believe the War on Drugs is failing, so video proof of the militaristic behavior of the police during drug raids reinforces widely held, negative views about drug criminalization. Simply: people like to watch what they already know.
The Detroit raid is much more complex, and reveals a more sinister reality. A little poor, black girl dying during a police raid in Detroit is considered as a somewhat normal event in America. It’s terrible, yes. It’s something that makes Americans tisk and shake their heads over, but many view Detroit as a kind of third world country in which terrible things happen. The ghetto is a poor, dilapidated place under constant siege by the police so as to keep the undesirables in order.
To reject the idea that the ghetto should be a bad place entails rethinking much larger American issues: race, class, poverty, wealth disparity, social hierarchy, the two-tier justice system. It’s much easier to accept that bad things happen in the ghetto and move on.
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Allison Kilkenny
True/Slant
Aiyana Jones is the 7-year-old girl who was recently killed during a raid on her home. Allegedly, the police launched a flashbang grenade through the window of the apartment where Jones was sleeping, and the device set Jones on fire. Her grandmother, quite understandably, got into an altercation with the armed men who stormed into their home, and during the struggle, the police claim an officer’s gun discharged accidentally, killing Jones.
This official narrative is being disputed by the family’s attorney, who claims video footage shows the police fired into the home at least once after lobbing the grenade through a window – before grandma and the officer ever had their interaction.
This terrible tragedy follows an incident that received considerably more (especially on-line) media attention — a Missouri SWAT raid.
First, a disclaimer: I don’t write this as a way to cast blame. After all, I covered the Missouri incident extensively. The Missouri raid is something that should attract a significant amount of media coverage. And there are several important differences between the story that might explain why one incident went viral, while the other remains in danger of being buried by the Next Big Thing to come along.
Unlike Detroit, the Missouri raid was videotaped, forever capturing the terrible drama of the event, while Jones’s last, awful moments will only be memorialized in the testimony of cops and her family. Additionally, the Missouri raid demonstrated the overzealous, destructive police response to the unwinnable War on Drugs, which 40 years after its implementation, has cost over $1 trillion, failed to meet any of its goals, while “drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.” Most Americans believe the War on Drugs is failing, so video proof of the militaristic behavior of the police during drug raids reinforces widely held, negative views about drug criminalization. Simply: people like to watch what they already know.
The Detroit raid is much more complex, and reveals a more sinister reality. A little poor, black girl dying during a police raid in Detroit is considered as a somewhat normal event in America. It’s terrible, yes. It’s something that makes Americans tisk and shake their heads over, but many view Detroit as a kind of third world country in which terrible things happen. The ghetto is a poor, dilapidated place under constant siege by the police so as to keep the undesirables in order.
To reject the idea that the ghetto should be a bad place entails rethinking much larger American issues: race, class, poverty, wealth disparity, social hierarchy, the two-tier justice system. It’s much easier to accept that bad things happen in the ghetto and move on.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Monday, February 08, 2010
On the Media: Ruin Porn; Time in Detroit
On the Media
Ruin Porn
Are photojournalists obsessed with "ruin porn"? Reporter Thomas Morton recently visited Detroit, where photographers have been flocking to take pictures of the city's decrepit factories and abandoned buildings. But Morton says these photos, which he calls ruin porn, paint a misleading picture of the city.
To Listen to the Episode
Time in Detroit
Time Magazine and other outlets, including CNN Money, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, have launched Assignment Detroit. They've purchased a house where reporters will live for a year as they cover the city. Steven Gray, the writer behind The Detroit Blog and journalist and Detroit native Dan Okrent describe the project and how it will document the struggles of this once great American city.
To Listen to the Media
Ruin Porn
Are photojournalists obsessed with "ruin porn"? Reporter Thomas Morton recently visited Detroit, where photographers have been flocking to take pictures of the city's decrepit factories and abandoned buildings. But Morton says these photos, which he calls ruin porn, paint a misleading picture of the city.
To Listen to the Episode
Time in Detroit
Time Magazine and other outlets, including CNN Money, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, have launched Assignment Detroit. They've purchased a house where reporters will live for a year as they cover the city. Steven Gray, the writer behind The Detroit Blog and journalist and Detroit native Dan Okrent describe the project and how it will document the struggles of this once great American city.
To Listen to the Media
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