A No Struggle, No Development Production! By Kenny Snodgrass, Activist, Photographer, Videographer, Author of :
1} From Victimization To Empowerment… www.trafford.com/07-0913 eBook available at www.ebookstore.sony.com
2} The World As I’ve Seen It! My Greatest Experience! {Photo Book}
3) YouTube: I have over 405 Video’s, over 148,000 hits averaging 5,000 a month on my YouTube channel @ www.YouTube.com/KennySnod
Unless otherwise indicated, photos below are by Kenneth Snodgrass.
- Rank and file Detroiters help lead off march.
Signs seen at front of march demanding that Detroit stop service on its debt to the banks, from the Moratorium NOW! Coalition. Winning this demand will take a truly mass uprising of people across the U.S. to save Detroit.
Organizers of march included (l to r) UAW Pres. Bob King, Rev. Wendell Anthony, Martin Luther King III, Rev. Al Sharpton. Mayor Dave Bing is seen at right talking to the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow:PUSH.
Detroit community activist Valerie Burris said on Facebook: “It would be wonderful if we could gain our freedom just by going for a walk. Sorry guys,that is not how it works. Power concedes nothing without a demand. Strolling down Woodward on a Saturday afternoon is not a demand. It did however make many forget for a moment that they are slaves, until the straw bosses Bing and swindle Wendell spoke.”
The future of the youth of Detroit is at stake. Photo: Kenneth Snodgrass
Bing, who teamed up with Ric-tator Snyder and the Sell-Out Six on the City Council, in the current Emergency Manager demolition of Detroit, was loudly booed by city workers and others, who began leaving Hart Plaza as he spoke. UAW President Bob King could call on his membership here in Michigan and across the U.S. to conduct a general strike with other unions to stop not only the Big Three’s attacks on the workers and Right to Work, but also the takeover of the UAW’s birthplace, Detroit. He has not done so. In the true revolutionary spirit of the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Revs. Anthony, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can call for a national boycott of Michigan businesses to protest the takeover of the largest majority-Black city in the U.S. They have REFUSED to do so.
Seniors and disabled attended the march. Their living conditions are at stake, Photo: Kenneth Snodgrass
As Valerie Burris referenced, Frederick Douglass said on Aug. 4, 1857, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.”
DR. Martin Luther King, Jr High School marching band. The future not only of Detroit’s youth, but of their schools, is at stake.
The nation’s public school system was founded largely through the efforts of Africans in the South after they won freedom from slavery in 1865. During slavery, of course, Africans were not allowed to learn to read or educate themselves. Those days are returning. Over half of the Detroit Public School system is shut down. There is no such thing as a “neighborhood school” anymore. Many of the city’s pastors and other erstwhile leaders have collaborated in the corporate-sponsored destruction of DPS by establishing charter schools, which steal funds from the public schools to be administered with little oversight.
Dr. King depicted at march.
The state has established a separate agency under arch-racist Gov. Rick Snyder called the Educational Achievement Authority, or “Educational Apartheid Authority” as Detroit School Board member Elena Herrada calls it. Dr. King organized against such apartheid in the South, including its “separate but equal” system of segregated schools. The state of Michigan’s per pupil funding of its public school districts is allotted according to a formula based on property taxes, meaning Detroit and other impoverished districts get perhaps three-fifths of the funding that suburban districts, in keeping with the formula which counted Africans during slavery as THREE-FIFTHS OF A PERSON.
Marian Kramer (center), leader of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. Photo by Kenneth Snodgrass
Tens of thousands of people, most of them women and children, have been slashed from Michigan’s public assistance rolls through the efforts not only of Gov. Rick Snyder, but also former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who signed the legislation leading to the cut-offs before her second term began. The legislation was based on former Pres. Bill Clinton’s “Welfare Reform” efforts, which abolished 60 years of progress in that area. Former Michigan Gov. John Engler headed Clinton’s welfare reform task force.
It was during the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization’s protest against these genocidal cutbacks at Cadillac Place that VOD asked Rev. Jesse Jackson, as well as U.S. Congressman John Conyers, whether they would support a boycott of Michigan businesses to turn the situation around. Both refused to do so. The following week, Jackson met with automotive execs from across the globe at Rainbow: PUSH’s global economic summit held at the MGM Grand Casino.
- National Action Network’s contingent in march. Photo by Kenneth Snodgrass.
Rev. Charles Williams II of the Michigan Chapter of the National Action Network has led many progressive protests against the takeover of Detroit, including one in Cleveland, Ohio at the Jones Day law firm’s headquarters, which targeted the banks and other clients of Jones Day as the real culprits in Detroit’s economic decay. He evidently objected to corporate sponsorship of the march. Original posters showed GM as a sponsor. Below is Mike Illitch’s contribution to the march.
Billionaire Mike Illitch celebrates Freedom Walk.
The irony of this photo almost goes beyond words. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream also included the end of poverty, and decent housing for all. Mike Illitch and his competitor Dan Gilbert are buying up property downtown at a breakneck pace, taking advantage of the EM takeover of Detroit. In the process, they are ousting hundreds of poor Detroiters living in senior and disabled apartment buildings along Washington Blvd. as well as poor people living in low-rent apartments in the Cass Corridor. Mike Illitch’s Red Wings owe the city at least $70 million in fees that have not been paid. Illitch could bail out Detroit with one swoop of his pen, signing a check to show his appreciation for the $40 million in Detroit taxes that he got to build the Tigers’ Comerica Park and the numerous tax abatements he and other corporate moguls have received on their businesses in the city.
March on June 29, 2010 to protest the police murder of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7. Jewel Allison and her daughter Honesti, of New York City, were among the organizers. Photo by Herb Boyd.
There was also a “Justice for Aiyana Jones” contingent on the Freedom Walk. VOD is still waiting for photos from this contingent and will publish them when received. Meanwhile, look next for VOD’s story on the mistrial declared in the case of Aiyana’s killer Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley, and the continued persecution of her father Charles Jones and other members of the family by the police and prosecutor’s office.
FREE DETROIT! Photo by Kenneth Snodgrass.
