Click on http://www.facebook.com/VoteVIPslate/events#!/VoteVIPslate and http://votevipslate.blogspot.com/ for contact and other information on the Vote VIP Slate.
- In this Aug. 4, 2009 file photo, Detroit Chief of Police Warren Evans, right, and team stop a vehicle in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
VOD Editorial: Although the VIP slate says to vote “NO” on individual Detroit proposals other than the Charter requirement issue, VOD endorses Proposal M, which would essentially de-criminalize the personal use of marijuana in Detroit on a limited basis. It would put a partial stop to the ongoing mass incarceration of Detroiters and others who are targeted by police in illegal stops and searches, many of them involving possession of marijuana. See commentary by Glenn Morgan, Jr. at http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/10/14/native-sons-on-lockdown-a-message-to-the-black-community-in-the-d/
For more information on Proposal M, go to
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/19413283/2012/08/29/detroit-voters-to-decide-on-marijuana-proposal-come-november?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=7669266 and http://norml.org/news/2012/02/16/detroit-court-of-appeals-rules-that-2010-legalization-initiative-should-have-gone-before-voters
VOD also endorses the proposal for Wayne County Community College’s operating millage, as well as Wayne County proposals directed at limiting the powers of the Chief Executive, currently Robert Ficano. Click on Wayne-County-and-Detroit-proposals for a full listing posted by the Service Employees International Union. Unfortunately, neither the city or county clerks have posted the listing on their websites.
TV ADS NEEDED TO TELL VOTERS: NO ON PROP 1, REPEAL PA 4
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic march for civil rights in Detroit, 1963. Then UAW President Walter Reuther is at left. Photo: WSU Reuther Library
VOD endorses the grass roots actions of the hard-working VIP slate, but VOD has not yet seen any television commercials at all to tell folks to vote NO on proposal 1 to eliminate Public Act 4, the Emergency Manager Act which has decimated Detroit and in particular other majority-Black cities in the state.
The daily media is campaigning vigorously to keep PA 4 and has published questionable polls claiming that the VOTE NO ON 1 vote is diminishing.
The major unions appear to be focusing on Proposal 2, the Collective Bargaining Amendment, which VOD supports. However, despite what officials like Bob King, President of the UAW International, have allegedly said, Proposal 2 will NOT take care of issues regarding voting rights.
- UAW President Walter Reuther embraces Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the podium before Dr. King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech to the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington.
It is a betrayal of the UAW’s founding mission not to fund the campaign against PA 4. UAW President Walter Reuther and other union officials from the Teamsters and the rest of the AFL-CIO marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement. Dr. King was assassinated directly after marching with Memphis sanitation workers represented by AFSCME who were on strike.
Detroit’s own Viola Liuzzo, who was married to a Teamsters local official, was murdered by KKK members, with the FBI riding along, during the campaign for voter rights in the South. So was Leroy Moton, the 19-year-old Black youth riding with her. Dr. King, Reuther, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, and many other union officials attended her funeral at IHM Parish in Detroit.
- Anthony and Viola Liuzzo. Anthony Liuzzo was a Teamsters business agent who supported his wife when she joined the voter rights campaign in the South, before she and Leroy Moton were murdered by the KKK in collusion with the FBI.
VOD is SHOCKED that whoever is putting money into the Prop 2 ads is not contributing some of that money to ads against Proposal 1. This is a betrayal of the 51 percent of Michigan’s African-American voters who are impacted by PA 4, and also white voters who have not yet faced the PA4 sledge hammer. Until now, the state government has focused on majority-Black cities as a way of dividing the electorate.
But if PA4 is not defeated, the state government will go on a rampage taking over other cities.
See video from Michigan Forward below and go to their website at http://michiganforward.org/ for further information on Proposal 1–VOTE NO TO REPEAL PA 4!
The whole nonsense of “a-disaster-will-happen-if-we-end-prohibition” sentiment sums up the delusional Chicken-L-little stance of those who foolishly insist on continuing down this horrendous blind alley. As if a disaster isn’t already happening? As if prohibition has ever worked? Literally not one prohibitionist argument survives scrutiny. Not a single one!
Under our present regime, these certain plants/concoctions/drugs are sold only by criminals and terrorists; the huge black-market profits are used to bribe and threaten law enforcement officials; the availability and usage rates tend to go up, not down; the prisons have become filled to capacity with easily replaced vendors or smugglers. This list is endless!
Law enforcement and rehabilitation are mutually exclusive. Would alcoholics seek help for their illness if doing so were tantamount to confessing to criminal activity? Likewise, would putting every incorrigible alcoholic behind bars and saddling them with criminal records prove cost-effective?
Prohibition is the most destructive, dysfunctional, dishonest and racist social policy in America since Slavery. Prohibition is a holocaust in slow motion. We MUST end it NOW!