“The exercise of arbitrary power allows the ‘Stephens’ of the Black Misleadership Class to feel more a part of the oligarchy they serve.”
“Judge Rhodes will decide whether the imposition of an unelected dictatorship in Detroit represents a ‘Constitutional crisis’ or not.”
Detroit’s Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) dictatorship runs the city the way Samuel L. Jackson’s “Stephen” character ran the white man’s plantation in Django. Without warning, and just to let the niggras know who’s boss, Chief Compliance Officer Gary Brown shut off the electricity to much of the public infrastructure in the downtown area on Friday, September 11th – of all days! – stranding numerous frightened people in elevators in 90-degree-plus heat, resulting in a least one injury. Asked why he had given no warning to the thousands affected before pulling the switch, Brown smiled like a bad cop who had just beat the hell out of a street kid (he’s a former deputy chief of police).
“We did start calling our customers prior to taking them down and asking them to turn off air conditioners, but they weren’t responding as fast as we would like them to so we had to send them a strong message by turning the power off.” Who’s The Man? Me and my boss are The Man!
Gary Brown, appointed Detroit COO by unelected EM Kevyn Orr.
Brown handles the day-to-day overseer duties for EFM Kevyn Orr, the bankruptcy lawyer whose mission is to strip Detroit of its assets and privatize its services for the benefit of Wall Street banks. The power shut-off was a voluntary initiative by Brown in response to problems with the power grid on an unseasonably warm day. Brown’s gratuitous display of disregard for the people and the public servants of the Black metropolis served two purposes: 1) It dramatized deficiencies in the city’s infrastructure at a time when a judge is deciding whether Detroit should be allowed to handle its own affairs, thus enhancing the prospects for privatization of services, and 2) the exercise of arbitrary power allows the “Stephens” of the Black Misleadership Class (he’s also a former City Council president pro-tem) to feel more a part of the oligarchy they are pleased to serve.
“The appointed Bantustan administrators behave as they do because their antics are sanctioned by White Power.”
Detroit EM Kevyn Orr, with spokesman Bill Nowling, from Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s office, at his left. Freep photo: Mandi Wright
Under the New American Apartheid, Detroit has been reduced to a South Africa-style Bantustan, administered by hired Black goons in the interests of multinational capital. Just as American slavery cannot be fully comprehended without an understanding of the roles played by the “Stephens,” so the evisceration of “home rule” in Black urban America requires the active collaboration of the Orrs and Browns. In the struggle for self-determination, they are the enemies within who eagerly throw themselves into the buffer zone between the people and their tormentors – for a fee, and the privilege of lording it over the Bantustan. (Brown resigned from his $75,000 a year City Council position to sign on as Orr’s lieutenant for $225,000 – and, of course, an inside track in the corporate looting that will accompany Detroit’s fiscal dissolution.)
Bantustans of South Africa under apartheid.
The appointed Bantustan administrators behave as they do because their antics are sanctioned by White Power – not just by the predators of Wall Street, who are keenly aware that racism allows them to use Detroit as the model for the next stage of “austerity” mega-thefts, but by white society in general. How else to explain why Boston’s “wildly popular” five-term mayor, Tom Menino, could casually declare that, if he were running Detroit, he’d “blow up the place and start all over.” You could be seized by Homeland Security for mouthing the words “blow up” in connection with any mostly white city in America, but 85 percent Black Detroit is fair game. The worst elements among the strivers of Black America know exactly how to please Bwana. (That’s also why President Obama cannot help but insult Black people, even at the March on Washington anniversary; it’s for white people’s consumption.)
Let My People Go, Please Massa
Judge Steven Rhodes with Ponzi Scheme book.
It was like a scene from a bygone world. Nearly 50 citizens lined up to appeal to Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes to safeguard their democratic and paid-for pension rights. Rhodes will decide whether the imposition of an unelected dictatorship in Detroit represents a “Constitutional crisis” that should be addressed before the process of cutting pensions and selling off assets should begin. Certainly, the cancellation of white people’s voting rights, to be followed by confiscation of their personal and collective property, would merit Constitutional scrutiny on a priority basis. But, for African Americans, it is an open question.
Detroit resident Bill Hickey objected to bankruptcy at hearing.
“This [Emergency Financial Manager] law has been applied in cities and school districts where the majority population is African American, and I find this to be racist in both its aims, and its application,” Bill Hickey, a 50-year resident of the city, told the judge. Indeed, more than half of Michigan’s Black population has been disenfranchised, a shocking state of affairs that is generally treated as a non-event – or, maybe, in the popular consciousness, it is the world as it should be.
Judge Rhodes responded sympathetically to the pleas of pensioners who feared destitution in their old age. However, people’s advocates worry that Rhodes will reason that the best way to allay pensioners’ anxieties is to forge ahead with bankruptcy – in effect, using one set of victims’ fears as an excuse to crush the rights of all Detroiters. Rhodes sees himself as a practitioner of “compassionate” bankruptcy – much like “humanitarian” military intervention.
“The cancellation of white people’s voting rights would merit Constitutional scrutiny on a priority basis.”
Malcolm X, also known as “Detroit Red”
On October 2, he’ll hold a hearing on the NAACP’s bid to proceed with its challenge to the Constitutionality of Wall Street’s rule-by-proxy through Kevyn Orr. The thrust of Rhodes’ decisions to date has been to smack down, as disruptive, any legal obstacle in the sprint to bankruptcy – full steam ahead.
Bankruptcy Judge Rhodes’ agenda has so far been in sync with bankruptcy lawyer Orr’s strategy: to keep the battle for Detroit in the realm of corporate law rather than the arena of civil, human and Constitutional rights.
Last November, a large majority of Detroiters and 53 percent of Michigan voters rejected the Emergency Manager legislation, but Republican governor Rick Snyder rammed it through the legislature, anyway. A new survey shows 75 percent of Detroit residents don’t want any cuts in public employee’s pensions, and 78 percent oppose selling any of the precious works at the Detroit Institute of Art. The people of Detroit did not choose bankruptcy – which is an option, not a mandate – and cannot legally be imposed against the city’s will unless the voters have been disenfranchised to more effectively enshrine the rule of capital.
A brother who they used to call Detroit “Red” coined a formula for this predicament: The ballot or the bullet. The applicability of his words in the current situation shows that we have regressed further than we have overcome.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
By ABDI GULED and JASON STRAZIUSO and KIMBERLY DOZIER
OCTOBER 5, 2013
This image from the FBI website shows Anas al-Libi. Gunmen in a three-car convoy seized Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Anas al-Libi, an al-Qaeda leader connected to the 1998 embassy bombings in eastern Africa and wanted by the U.S. for more than a decade outside his house Saturday in the Libyan capital, his relatives said. (AP Photo/FBI)
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — In a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia and in a raid in Libya’s capital, U.S. special forces on Saturday struck out against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, snatching a Libyan al-Qaida leader allegedly involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies 15 years ago but aborting a mission to capture a terrorist suspect linked to last month’s Nairobi shopping mall attack after a fierce firefight.
A U.S. Navy SEAL team swam ashore near a town in southern Somalia before militants of the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group al-Shabab rose for dawn prayers, U.S. and Somali officials told The Associated Press. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Qaida suspect related to the mall attack, but the operation did not get its target, one current and one former U.S. military official told AP.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the raid publicly.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman George Little confirmed that U.S. military personnel had been involved in a counterterrorism operation against a known al-Shabab terrorist in Somalia, but did not provide details.
U.S. officials said there were no U.S. casualties in either the Somali or Libyan operation.
Navy Seals encountered “heavier resistance than expected” and aborted mission.
The Somali raid was carried out by members of SEAL Team Six, the same unit that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan hideout in 2011, another senior U.S. military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly.
But this time, SEAL Team Six members encountered fiercer resistance than expected so after a 15-20 minute firefight, the unit leader decided to abort the mission and they swam away, the official said. SEAL Team Six has responsibility for counterterrorism activities in the Horn of Africa.
Delta Force team also assassinated Osama Bin Laden and dumped his body at sea.
Within hours of the Somalia attack, the U.S. Army’s Delta Force carried out a raid in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, to seize a Libyan al-Qaida leader wanted for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people, the military official said. Delta Force carries out counterterrorism operations in North Africa.
The Pentagon identified the captured al-Qaida leader as Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Anas al-Libi, who has been on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list since it was introduced shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Al-Libi “is currently lawfully detained by the U.S. military in a secure location outside of Libya,” Pentagon spokesman Little said.
Somalians downed U.S. Blackhawk helicopters during previous invasion of Libya in 1993 “Black Hawk Down” invasion. Eighteen U.S. soliders were killed, and the bodies of several were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
Saturday’s raid in Somalia occurred 20 years after the famous “Black Hawk Down” battle in Mogadishu in which a mission to capture Somali warlords in the capital went awry after militiamen shot down two U.S. helicopters. Eighteen 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in the battle, and it marked the beginning of the end of that U.S. military mission to bring stability to the Horn of Africa nation. Since then, U.S. military intervention has been limited to missile attacks and lightning operations by special forces.
A resident of Barawe — a seaside town 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Mogadishu — said by telephone that heavy gunfire woke up residents before dawn prayers.
Al Shabaab fighter attends rally in Somalia.
The U.S. forces attacked a two-story beachside house in Barawe where foreign fighters lived, battling their way inside, said an al-Shabab fighter who gave his name as Abu Mohamed and who said he had visited the scene. Al-Shabab has a formal alliance with al-Qaida, and hundreds of men from the U.S., Britain and Middle Eastern countries fight alongside Somali members of al-Shabab.
A separate U.S. official described the action in Barawe as a capture operation against a high-value target. The official said U.S. forces engaged al-Shabab militants and sought to avoid civilian casualties. The U.S. forces disengaged after inflicting some casualties on fighters, said the official, who was not authorized to speak by name and insisted on anonymity.
Map of Somalia on the African continent.
The leader of al-Shabab, Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, also known as Ahmed Godane, claimed responsibility for the attack on the upscale mall in Nairobi, Kenya, a four-day terrorist siege that began on Sept. 21 and killed at least 67 people. A Somali intelligence official said the al-Shabab leader was the target of Saturday’s raid.
An al-Shabab official, Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab, said in an audio message that the raid failed to achieve its goals.
Al-Shabab and al-Qaida have flourished in Somalia for years. Some of the plotters of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania hid out there.
Barawe has seen Navy SEALs before. In September 2009 a daylight commando raid in Barawe killed six people, including Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of the most-wanted al-Qaida operatives in the region and an alleged plotter in the 1998 embassy bombings.
The Libyan al-Qaida leader also wanted for the bombings, al-Libi, is believed to have returned to Libya during the 2011 civil war that led to the ouster and killing of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
His brother, Nabih, said al-Libi was parking outside his house early Saturday after dawn prayers when a convoy of three vehicles encircled his car. Armed gunmen smashed the car’s window and seized al-Libi’s gun before grabbing him and taking him away. The brother said al-Libi’s wife saw the kidnapping from her window and described the abductors as foreign-looking armed “commandos.”
Al-Libi, who was believed to be a computer specialist for al-Qaida, is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head. He was indicted by a federal court in the Southern District of New York, for his alleged role in the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on August 7, 1998.
Libyan officials did not return calls seeking comment on al-Libi’s abduction.
U.S. equipment left behind after aborted Somalia raid.
In Somalia, a resident of Barawe who gave his name as Mohamed Bile said militants closed down the town in the hours after the assault, and that all traffic and movements have been restricted. Militants were carrying out house-to-house searches, likely to find evidence that a spy had given intelligence to a foreign power used to launch the attack, he said.
“We woke up to find al-Shabab fighters had sealed off the area and their hospital is also inaccessible,” Bile told The Associated Press by phone. “The town is in a tense mood.”
Al-Shabab later posted pictures on the Internet of what it said was U.S. military gear left behind in the raid. Two former U.S. military officers identified the gear as the kind U.S. troops carry. Pictures showed items including bullets, an ammunition magazine, a military GPS device and a smoke and flash-bang grenade used to clear rooms. The officials could not confirm if those items had come from the raid.
Kenya’s Westgate mall.
In Kenya, military spokesman Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir on Saturday gave the names of four fighters implicated in the Westgate Mall attack as Abu Baara al-Sudani, Omar Nabhan, Khattab al-Kene and Umayr, names that were first broadcast by a local Kenyan television station.
Matt Bryden, the former head of the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, said via email that al-Kene and Umayr are known members of al-Hijra, the Kenyan arm of al-Shabab. He added that Nabhan may be a relative of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the target of the 2009 Navy SEALs raid in Barawe.
The identities of the four men from the mall attack came as a Nairobi station obtained and broadcast the closed circuit television footage from Westgate. The footage shows four attackers calmly walking through a storeroom inside the complex, holding machine guns. One of the men’s pant legs appears to be stained with blood, though he is not limping. It is unclear if the blood is his, or that of his victims’.
Government statements shortly after the four-day siege began on Sept. 21 indicated between 10 to 15 attackers were involved, but indications since then are that fewer attackers took part, though the footage may not show all of the assailants
Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and Dozier from Charlotte, North Carolina. Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Nairobi and Matthew Lee in Bali, Indonesia, also contributed to this report.
CBS/AP/ October 6, 2013, 2:03 PM
Attack on Kenya’s mall related to U.S.-backed invasion of Somalia
Sept. 23 — Billows of smoke emanated from the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on the third day of a standoff among Kenyan, Israeli and U.S. FBI forces against members of the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance movement based in Somalia, which had seized the mall. Reports indicated that at least 62 people have been killed since the incident began on Sept. 21, most of them civilian mall shoppers..
“Kenya Defense Forces” have occupied southern Somalia.
Many news sources reported that members of Al-Shabaab said their operation was in response to the ongoing occupation by approximately 2,500 Kenyan Defense Forces troops of southern Somalia.
The attack on the Westgate Mall is being portrayed by the corporate and pro-imperialist media in the U.S. and Europe as a new episode in the so-called “war on terrorism.” But there has been little news with background about the incident or of the significant role of U.S. imperialism in creating instability in the region.
U.S. Pres. Barack Obama with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki
Kenya, which shares a border with Somalia, sent its army into the troubled Horn of Africa state in October 2011 with U.S. blessing. President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, close allies of the U.S. administration, led the Kenyan government then.
KDF forces bombed the strategic port city at Kismayo in the early phase of the operation. The city was a financial base for Al-Shabaab, which controlled lucrative charcoal exports from the country.
Since the intervention of Kenya into Somalia, resistance has continued in the country’s south and has been escalating outside Kismayo, where Al-Shabaab fighters battle KDF occupation troops daily.
U.S. role in the Somalia crisis
U.S. imperialism has attempted to influence politics in Somalia for decades. In the late 1970s, the Jimmy Carter administration armed Somalian leader Mohamed Siad Barre against revolutionary Ethiopia, then in alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba.
As a result Somalia was plunged into a disastrous war with Ethiopia over the Ogaden region. Somalia’s defeat began a decade-long political crisis. By early 1991, the Barre regime had collapsed, leaving a vast security and political vacuum. U.S. troops went into Somalia in a phony “humanitarian” intervention until military casualties caused them to leave in 1994.
Mengistu Haile Mariam, President of People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987-91, driven out of power by U.S. and Somalia.
After Ethiopia’s socialist-oriented government was driven out in 1991, Washington used its new clients in that country to gain more influence in the region. The George W. Bush administration encouraged Ethiopia to invade Somalia in 2006 in order to displace the Islamic Courts Union government that had begun to consolidate its influence and stabilize the country.
With Somalia facing a grave famine, Ethiopian military forces withdrew in early 2009 and sections of the Islamic Courts were won over to a Washington-backed Transitional Federal Government. A youth wing of the Islamic Courts arose known as Al-Shabaab (Youth) and began to wage war against the TFG, demanding that all foreign forces be withdrawn from Somalia.
Beginning in 2007, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) was formed. The bulk of its forces were from the U.S.-allied Ugandan government. U.S. and British bombing operations have been carried out against alleged Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda bases in Somalia. The country is also a base of operations for U.S. drone programs, and Mogadishu is home to a major CIA field station.
AMISON forces.
The combined AMISOM forces, now consisting of some 17,500 troops, receive training and funding from Washington.
The U.S.’s Somalia operation is part and parcel of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), which was formally started in 2008 under Bush but has been strengthened and enhanced by the Obama administration.
Kenya’s intervention in southern Somalia in October 2011 had been planned for at least two years. The release of WikiLeak’s cables in 2010 documented the plans and the role of the State Department.
In addition to U.S. involvement in Somalia and Kenya, the state of Israel has close ties with the government in Nairobi.
U.S. and British warships in Gulf of Aden, 2011.
Developments in Kenya and throughout the entire region of East Africa must be viewed in the context of U.S. economic and strategic interests in partnership with its NATO allies and the state of Israel. In recent years flotillas of U.S. and European Union warships have been occupying the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia with the pretext of fighting piracy.
Both Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto are under indictment by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accused of human rights violations following elections in 2007. Not only the Kenyan government but the entire 54-member nations in the African Union have rejected the ICC, which has almost exclusively focused its charges on Africa’s leaders.
While Washington did not favor the government of President Kenyatta during the March elections, it is likely the U.S. will try to take advantage of the mall attack to increase its already strong presence in Kenya.
Former city worker Derek Grigsby and his family demand cancellation of Detroit debt to the banks. Photo: Derek Grigsby Facebook
The International Peoples Assembly against the Banks and Against Austerity will convene Saturday and Sunday, October 5 and 5, at Grand Circus Park in Detroit, at Woodward and Adams. The Assembly will convene Saturday at 11:00 am, continue to 9:00 pm, and reconvene Sunday morning.
The People’s Assembly will target the role of the major banks in creating the financial crisis in Detroit, placing 73% of Detroiters in sub-prime predatory mortgage loans that led to over 100,000 foreclosures and destroyed Detroit’s communities and tax base.
These same banks then placed the city into predatory loans, such as the interest rate swaps which have cost the city over hundreds of millions dollars already, and will net them hundreds of millions of more if Orr and Snyder have their way.
PREDATORY $1.5 BILLION PENSION OBLIGATION CERTIFICATES (POC) LOAN FROM UBS AND SIEBERT, BRANDFORD & SHANK PRESSED AT CITY COUNCIL JAN. 31, 2005 BY (l to r) DETROIT CFO SEAN WERDLOW, JOE O’KEEFE OF FITCH RATINGS, STEPHEN MURPHY OF STANDARD AND POOR’S, DEPUTY MAYOR ANTHONY ADAMS. WERDLOW GOT A TOB JOB WITH SIEBERT IN NOV. 2005 AND WAS THERE WHEN LOAN WAS RENEGOTIATED FOR 30 YRS. IN 2006. UBS AG PAID A $1.5 BILLION FINE FOR FRAUD TO USDOJ, S & P IS BEING SUED FOR $5 BILLION BY U.S.; UBS, RATINGS AGENCIES SUBJECT OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL ACTIONS ACROSS THE WORLD. Photo: DIANE BUKOWSKI
Banks like UBS and Bank of America have had their executives prosecuted and even jailed in the case of UBS for municipal bond fraud. They have been subject to countless judgments for predatory mortgage lending. They have been investigated for LIBOR manipulation and municipal bond rigging. Yet, despite being paid $62 million from Detroit taxpayer dollars, Orr, Jones Day, and the other “consultants” have refused to investigate the role of the banks in Detroit’s crisis.
Statements from France, Brazil, the Philippines Spain and many other countries, as well as speakers from across the U.S. will be introduced at the International Peoples Assembly. Their message is that Detroit is not alone. The working class across the globe, fighting similar austerity imposed by the world banks, stands in solidarity Detroit’s pensioners, workers and residents.
Detroit family enjoys summer day on Belle Isle beach.
Council Pres. Jenkins supports illegal “done deal”
Councilwoman Watson cites “rape” of city
Belle Isle costs $6 million/yr; bankruptcy consultants cost $62 million in last 7 months: Councilwoman Jones
Mich. Gov. Rick Snyder and kept man Detroit EM Kevyn Orr at press conference on bankruptcy July 19, 2013.
By Diane Bukowski
Oct. 2, 2013
DETROIT – Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his kept man,* Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, along with other state officials, signed a 60-year free deal to take over Belle Isle, the largest public island park in the U.S., owned by Detroit and its residents since 1876, on Sept. 30, 2013.
Except for a few minor changes, the lease is identical to that the state took off the table in January. The City Council failed to vote on it then due to broad public opposition citing the lack of any benefit to Detroiters, including the loss of millions in federal, state and private revenues, and resident jobs and contracts.
One interesting change: the state says it will post “No Beach Guard” signs on Belle Isle beach, per state park beach rules. Apparently they don’t care if a patron drowns.
(Link to current signed lease is below article; see box below for key points.)
“This is unfathomable; it’s as if Central Park was leased away from New York City,” said Councilwoman JoAnn Watson during the body’s regular session Oct. 1. “The City paid for Belle Isle. It is an asset of Detroit. All assets are supposed to be frozen during bankruptcy proceedings. Two federal lawsuits challenging the authority of the Emergency Manager are still pending. Over 2.3 million Michigan residents voted to repeal EM rule in Nov. 2012. Instead of the state helping us, this is a rape, a disgrace before God.”
Councilwoman JoAnn Watson at meeting Oct. 1, 2013 denounces Belle Isle takeover.
The Snyder/Orr action appears to violate Public Act 436 on its face. The law (MCL 141.1559 Sec. 9) requires the EM to submit proposed actions to the “governing body of the local government” first. It says the governing body then has 10 days to take action. If it disapproves it, it must submit a plan to to the local emergency financial assistance board to save an equivalent amount of funds, in this case six million dollars.
Councilwoman Brenda Jones came up with such a plan during the discussion Oct. 1.
“This is true disrespect for someone to come in on the pretense of saving money when they have spent $62 million on bankruptcy consultants in the last seven months,” Jones said. “It only takes the city six to seven million dollars a year to take care of Belle Isle. If this had happened in the ‘50’s or the ‘60’s the city would be shut down.”
Councilwoman Brenda Jones talks to reporters after Oct. 1 meeting.
The Public Act 4 “Consent Agreement” which the City Council approved 5-4 April 4, 2012 included a state lease of Belle Isle among other plans.
“I voted against that agreement,” Jones told reporters later. “I think the Council majority opened the door to a whole lot with it. It was supposed to stop the Emergency Manager from coming, but bingo he’s here. I have told the Emergency Manager I have a concern not only with Belle Isle, but also with the Water and Public Lighting Departments when it comes to assets being sold under the State Constitution. But the EM said he would do what he needed to do under Public Act 436. This is complete disrespect for the people of Detroit.”
A meeting focused on regionalizing the Detroit Water and Sewerage Dept. is allegedly set for Sept. 7, according to news sources.
Council Pres. Saunteel Jenkins talks to media after Oct. 1 meeting.
Most Council members said they knew nothing of the deal until late the night before, after it was already signed.
Council President Saunteel Jenkins told reporters afterwards that Watson’s remarks were “inflammatory.”
She that Orr called her personally and she emailed other members. Council members said Oct. 1 that they had no copy of the “lease,” but Jenkins’ remarks after the meeting seemed to show broad familiarity with its terms, as well as approval.
Jenkins, along with Councilman James Tate, who recently proposed setting goats and sheep loose in the city’s neighborhoods to trim the grass, and Gary Brown, now Orr’s Chief Operating Officer, voted for the Council to bring the deal to its full session at the beginning of this year.
The Council voted down an earlier lease in Sept. 2012.
Councilman James Tate at meeting Oct. 1, 2013.
Asked whether the Council should have more input and hold a public hearing on the “lease,” Jenkins said, “If this is the lease that was before the Council in January, then we have had plenty of input. . . . I certainly think Belle Isle is important enough with the citizens of Detroit to let them know [how the lease will affect them].”
Jenkins is running for re-election this September.
Councilwoman Brenda Jones makes a point as Councilmen Kenneth Cockrel, Jr. and Andre Spivey listen doubtfully.
Councilmen James Tate, Kenneth Cockrel, Jr., and Andre Spivey said they would have to see the lease before expressing their opinion. Spivey claimed Detroiters who said they would volunteer to help clean up the island during earlier discussions had not done so.
Belle Isle had a city maintenance staff including grass cutters, foresters, and building attendants prior to a series of repeated cutbacks. President Phyllis McMillon, of AFSCME Local 452, who represents city workers on Belle Isle, said at a rally in Sept. 2012, “Bing told a lie when he said we have 36 workers here. There are only four permanent workers, the rest are seasonal from April to September. The seasonals are being laid off Sept. 23, and the four permanent workers have been re-assigned even though the lease deal is not approved.”
AFSCME Local 542 Pres. Phyllis McMillon addresses rally to save Belle Isle Sept. 22, 2012.
(*Snyder is paying the costs of Orr’s residency in the Westin Book-Cadillac during his EM term.)
Click on Bellie Isle lease 9 30 13 for complete copy of Sept. 30 lease signed by Snyder, Orr, other state officials
THE ANGOLA 3: BLACK PANTHERS AND THE LAST SLAVE PLANTATION
Narrated by Mumia Abu-Jamal, this film features interviews with former Panthers, political prisoners and revolutionaries. – The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation tells the gripping story of Robert King Wilkerson, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, men who have endured solitary confinement longer then any known living prisoner in the United States.
Temporary structures are constructed around a building at Angola State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish, La., Monday, May 9, 2011. A convoy of buses and vans transferred inmates with medical problems from Angola, which is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River, while other inmates were moved to buildings on higher ground as part of an effort to prepare for possible flooding. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Politicized through contact with the Black Panther Party while inside Louisiana’s prisons, they formed one of the only prison Panther chapters in history and worked to organize other prisoners into a movement for the right to live like human beings. This feature length movie explores their extraordinary struggle for justice while incarcerated in Angola, a former slave plantation where institutionalized rape and murder made it known as one of the most brutal and racist prisons in the United States. The analysis of the Angola 3’s political work, and the criminal cases used to isolate and silence them, occurs within the context of the widespread COINTELPRO being carried out in the 1960’s and 70’s by the FBI and state law enforcement against militant voices for change. Narrated by Mumia Abu-Jamal, The Angola 3 features interviews with former Panthers, political prisoners and revolutionaries, including the Angola 3 themselves, and Bo Brown, Geronimo (ji Jaga) Pratt, Malik Rahim, Yuri Kochiyama, David Hilliard, Rod Coronado, Noelle Hanrahan, Kiilu Nyasha, Marion Brown, Luis Talamantez, Gail Shaw and many others. Portions of the proceeds go to support the Angola 3.
CURRENT STORY–Herman Wallace, dying, leaves prison after 41 years of solitary confinement
By Chevel Johnson of Associated Press
October 2, 2013
U.S. District Chief Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge overturned Herman Wallace’s 1974 murder conviction in the death of Angola guard Brent Miller.
Wallace left correctional center by ambulance Oct. 1, Tuesday to go to New Orleans hospital for treatment of advanced terminal liver cancer.
NEW ORLEANS — A 71-year-old Louisiana prisoner who spent 41 years in solitary confinement and is now dying of cancer was released late Tuesday from prison, his attorneys said.
Herman Wallace
Late Tuesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge denied the state’s motion seeking to block his earlier order overturning Herman Wallace’s 1974 murder conviction in the death of Angola prison guard Brent Miller.
Jackson had also ordered a new trial because women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted Wallace in the guard’s death. He ordered that Wallace be immediately released.
Wallace and two other inmates convicted in the 23-year-old guard’s slaying came to be known as the “Angola 3.”
Wallace, of New Orleans, was serving a 50-year armed robbery sentence when Miller was fatally stabbed in 1972. Wallace and the two others convicted in Miller’s death were moved to isolation at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. In 2009, Wallace was moved to “closed-cell restriction” at Hunt Correctional in St. Gabriel and recently was taken to the prison’s hospital unit.
Amnesty International USA last year delivered a petition to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office, containing 65,000 signatures from people around the world who called the men’s solitary confinement inhuman and degrading.
The group’s executive director, Steven W. Hawkins, welcomed the court’s ruling involving Wallace. “Tragically, this step toward justice has come as Herman is dying from cancer with only days or hours left to live,” he said in a statement. “No ruling can erase the cruel, inhuman and degrading prison conditions he endured for more than 41 years.”
Steven W. Hawkins, Exec. Director Amnesty International
Wallace’s attorneys said the freed prisoner left a correctional center in St. Gabriel by ambulance Tuesday evening and was expected to go to LSU Interim Hospital in New Orleans for treatment of advanced terminal liver cancer.
“Tonight, Herman Wallace has left the walls of Louisiana prisons and will be able to receive the medical care that his advanced liver cancer requires,” his legal team said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, Jackson overturned Wallace’s 1974 murder conviction in Miller’s death.
“The record in this case makes clear that Mr. Wallace’s grand jury was improperly chosen in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of ‘the equal protection of the laws’ … and that the Louisiana courts, when presented with the opportunity to correct this error, failed to do so,” Jackson wrote.
Black Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox with Angola prison in background.
He added, “Our Constitution requires this result even where, as here, it means overturning Mr. Wallace’s conviction nearly forty years after it was entered.”
George Kendall, one of Wallace’s attorneys, told The Associated Press in an earlier telephone interview the decision gives his client “some measure of justice after a lifetime of injustice,” but his response was tempered by the grim outlook for Wallace’s health.
“He’s pleased,” Kendall said of Wallace’s reaction after hearing of Tuesday’s ruling, “but he’s quite ill.”
Wallace, whose birthday is Oct. 13, has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. Kendall said he “ceased receiving treatment a couple of weeks ago.”
Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox in 2002–unbeaten, unbowed.
Kendall said the state had filed notice it would appeal Jackson’s ruling. A telephone message left with East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III’s office was not immediately returned. The state Department of Public Safety and Corrections referred all questions to Moore’s office.
Kendall said his client has asked that, after his demise, they continue to press the lawsuit challenging Wallace’s “unconstitutional confinement in solitary confinement for four decades.”
“It is Mr. Wallace’s hope that this litigation will help ensure that others, including his lifelong friend and fellow ‘Angola 3’ member, Albert Woodfox, do not continue to suffer such cruel and unusual confinement even after Mr. Wallace is gone,” his legal team said in a written statement.
Kendall said Woodfox won full habeas relief last year but the state has appealed that as well. The case is pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
U.S. Congressman John Conyers and Robert King, 2013.
In 2010, Woodfox was moved to the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer, where he remains in custody.
Woodfox and Wallace have continued to deny involvement in Miller’s killing and say they were targeted because they helped establish a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party at the Angola prison in 1971, set up demonstrations and organized strikes for better conditions in the prison.
The third man, Robert King, was released after 29 years in solitary confinement. King, convicted of killing a fellow inmate in 1973, was released in 2001 after his conviction was reversed and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
DETROIT — The Reverend Charles Williams acted as a kind of a facilitator today at his church here on 14th street in Detroit. He holds monthly meetings at the King Solomon Missionary Baptist church for the “National Action Network,” a kind of neighborhood clearing house for getting priority issues addressed, where the various groups show up at each others’ events when numbers are key to gaining notice.
Rev Charles Williams II at one of NAN’s 10 a.m. Saturday meetings at Historic King Solomon Baptist Church.
At last month’s meeting he said, “I feel an enormous amount of power in this room,” then indicated, “You can’t have just a little democracy,” and used the story about the walls of Jericho as an illustration of how even small numbers matter when you have a heavy- duty reputation.
This month when I got to the meeting, a minister from Jackson, Michigan was talking about how his son Joe Hines was beaten by more two dozen white police officers in Columbus, Ohio near the Ohio State University campus. Mr. Hines’ beating tapes made it to U Tube, and that prompted a guy named Jose’ to contact the Reverend Hines so the march in Columbus would be, “For Joe and Jose” because Jose’ told him that he recognized some of the same officers that beat him and knocked his teeth out in the video.
Mr. Hines said that both the young men who were beaten told him that they were sure that something good would come out of the pain and abuse that they were made to feel.
Rev. Williams said that Yvette Dukes, NAN’s attorney is going to do everything she can to help and would be looking into the matter.
Joe Hines in 2010
“We are going to light this issue up,” he said, noting that it seemed like these two young didn’t do anything but the right thing and were beaten up any way,
“Just like the state department issues travel advisories, we should issue a school advisory, they will wake up to the pocket book issue,” as a comment on how things are in and around the Ohio State campus.
“I think the suffering of the four little girls in the Baptist church in Alabama fifty years ago to the day will lend faith to our feet no matter what religion we may be and we will be going to Columbus,” he said as he made a temple bell gesture with his thumb and forefinger.
Joe Hines after beating in 2012/photo by brother James Hines
Then Rev. Williams turned his attention to the Service Employees International Union’s one day strikes of fast food restaurant employees for a decent living wage.
“This all ties in with bankruptcy,” he said. “Public bankruptcy, private bankruptcy. It’s important for us to help our young people take on responsibility. They won’t have time to get involved in all this violence. When people take their job seriously, when they have a mortgage that helps to solve the violence problem too.”
As I was getting an espresso and a danish in the church vestibule and getting ready to go, Krystal Crittendon was already addressing the assemblage on what was planned to address the suburban/ex-urban banks vis-a-vis Detroit’s pensioners and bankruptcy. (See notice at head of article.)
Davontae Sanford’s family and supporters outside appeals court after Aug. 8 hearing. His mother Taminko Sanford-Tilmon and his stepfather Jermaine Tilmon are at right.
Court panel orders testimony of hit man Vincent Smothers, who confessed
Says Smothers’ confession “wasthe most significant evidence in defendant’s actual innocence proceeding”
Blames Pros. Kym Worthy’s office for not granting Smothers immunity to testify
By Diane Bukowski
September 27, 2013
Vincent Smothers (l) confessed to killings for which Davontae Sanford (shown at 14) was convicted.
DETROIT – A Michigan appeals court ordered Sept. 26 that admitted hit man Vincent Smothers and his attorney be allowed to testify on behalf of Davontae Sanford, currently serving a sentence of 37 to 90 years for four murders on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side in 2007.
Sanford, 14 at the time, confessed to the killings during a lengthy police interrogation, without an attorney or parent present. The case has drawn international publicity.
Smothers, serving 50-100 years for 10 other drug-related killings, said in a sworn affidavit and in an AP interview last year that he and an accomplice committed the murders on Runyon, and that Sanford was not involved. He earlier confessed the killings to Detroit police, but Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy did not charge him or his accomplice, and refused to drop charges against Sanford.
Davontae’s parents Taminko Sanford-Tilmon and Jermaine Tilmon at their wedding in July.
“I’ve been crying tears of joy all day,” Sanford’s mother Taminko Sanford-Tilmon said. “I’m overwhelmed. We’ve been praying for this for so long with so many people, and God is now moving. But it’s just the beginning, because we have to go back in front of the same judge and replay it all over again.”
Sanford-Tilmon said she has not talked to her son yet, but talked to him just two days ago, after he came out of “the hole.” Sanford has experienced ongoing harassment from the guards at the Ionia Correctional Facility, his mother has said. Sanford-Tilmon has five children and just married her long-time fiancé Jermaine Tilmon in July.
Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Brian Sullivan refused to allow Sanford to withdraw his guilty plea on a claim of innocence after Smothers’ confession. The Appeals Court sent the case back to him for an evidentiary hearing, while retaining jurisdiction. The hearing ended up lasting two years. Sullivan repeatedly denied defense motions to allow Smothers or his attorneys to testify, discovery on Smothers’ other cases, and expert testimony.
Kim McGinnis, now Judge at Tribal Court in Santa Fe, N.M.
“This is a big victory for Davontae,” Sanford’s attorney Kim McGinnis, assigned by the Michigan State Appellate Defenders Office (SADO) to the case, said.
“The appeals court vacated the trial court’s decision and sent it back with pretty clear instructions on what testimony should be permitted. It remanded it so that Smothers would have the opportunity to testify, and it said a much lower standard of proof is required to approve Davontae’s request to withdraw his guilty plea than what the trial judge wanted. We can also get into Smothers’ files now on his other cases to show the clear correlations with the Runyon Street killings, and produce expert testimony on false confessions and interrogations.”
The Appeals Court, composed of Judges Mark T. Boonstra, David H. Sawyer, and Christopher M. Murray, heard oral arguments in the case Aug. 6 of this year. Judge Sawyer remarked during the hearing, “There is a chance that we have an innocent man in jail right now,” countering Judge Murray’s evident reluctance to find that Judge Sullivan had “abused his discretion.”
Gabi Silver, Smothers’ defense attorney.
The panel ruled in summary, “[W]e vacate the trial court’s order denying defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea and remand for further proceedings regarding the admissibility of Dr. Fulero’s and Ira Todd’s proposed expert testimony on false confessions and police interrogation techniques . . . and for reconsideration of defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea after affording defendant an opportunity (1) to present attorney Gabi Silver’s testimony regarding Smothers’ statements to her concerning the Runyon Street homicides . . . (2) to present expert testimony that satisfies the remaining requirements of MRE 702 . . . (3) to obtain discovery of Smothers’s other homicide case files and to present admissible evidence revealed by that discovery . . . .and (4) allow Smothers the opportunity to testify if he does not exercise his rights under the Fifth Amendment.” (Click on Davontae Sanford appeals decision 9 26 13 for full opinion.)
Pros. Kym Worthy testified at state legislature against ban on juvenile life without parole.
By press time, Prosecutor Worthy’s office had not responded to a request for a statement on whether she would now drop charges against Sanford, as she just did in a similar case, that of Raymond and Thomas Highers.
The two brothers, who are white, served 25 years in prison for murder until new witnesses came forward saying they saw a group of young Black men enter the victim’s home just before the murder, then heard a gunshot. The brothers were granted a new trial, and expressed shock and elation when Worthy dropped the charges Sept. 25.
“Just as we did 26 years ago, we firmly believe in the evidence in this case,” Worthy said in a statement on the Highers case. “We have worked diligently to bring this case to trial. With the passage of time, it is an unfortunate reality that this case cannot be put back together, and we must dismiss it. Sadly, in this case, justice was not done.”
Taminko Sanford and Mertilla Jones at rally for Aiyana and Charles Jones, and Davontae Sanford April 23, 2012.
Roberto Guzman (shown in top photo, center bottom) a paralegal who has supported the Sanford family with rallies and other actions, said, “We need to push the argument that vis a vis the Highers brothers, the evidence of Devaontae’s innocence is much more overwhelming than the evidence of the Highers’ innocence!”
Sanford has also received support from the family of Aiyana Jones, killed by Detroit police at the age of 7 in 2010. They demonstrated with the Sanford family in front of the Frank Murphy Hall in downtown Detroit earlier this year, demanding justice for Davonate, Aiyana, and her father Charles Jones, who is awaiting a murder trial based largely on statements of “jail-house snitches,” according to his attorney.
Appeals Court found WCCC Judge Brian Sullivan “abused his discretion” in Sanford case.
McGinnis, now a Judge in the Pueblo of Pojoaque Tribal Court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said she hoped that Worthy would at least allow Sanford to plead “not guilty” and go to trial without further evidentiary hearings in front of Sullivan.
“We’ll be delving into an investigation of all of Smothers’ other crimes, so it will be a little while before we get back to court,” McGinnis said. She said she still must confer with her colleagues in SADO on trial strategy.
In their ruling, the appeals court did find that Judge Sullivan abused his discretion in a number of instances, after first requiring that “the trial court shall assess the evidence of actual innocence and exercise its discretion in determining whether that evidence is sufficiently compelling that it would be an abuse of discretion to not allow defendant to withdraw his plea.”
Wayne Co. Asst. Prosecutors Robert Moran and Patrick Muscat. Moran is prosecuting both Aiyana Jones’ father Charles and her killer cop Joseph Weekley, while Muscat prosecuted Sanford during evidentiary hearing.
The Court said additionally, “We agree with defendant, however, that the trial court abused its discretion by not allowing Smothers’s counsel, Gabi Silvers, to testify regarding Smothers’s statements to her pursuant to Smothers’s waiver of the attorney-client privilege.” It said Michigan Rules of Evidence allow hearsay testimony in such circumstances.
The court also blamed the prosecution, stating, “The error in excluding Silver’s testimony was not harmless. . .The reliability of Smothers’ confession to the Runyon Street homicides was the most significant evidence in defendant’s actual innocence proceeding. The trial court was not convinced that Smothers’s statements to Williams were sufficiently clear and convincing to establish that Smothers, not defendant, was the perpetrator. But neither Williams nor any other officer thoroughly questioned Smothers about the Runyon Street homicides. There is a high likelihood that Silver’s testimony would have provided more details of Smothers’ purported involvement in the Runyon Street homicides.”
House on Runyon Street where killings occurred in 2007.
It also said the Prosecutor’s office could have offered Smothers immunity in return for his testimony, in order to allow his cross-examination.
“The prosecutor’s fairness argument is somewhat disingenuous because the prosecutor ould avoid any perceived disadvantage by petitioning for use immunity under MCL 767.6,” the court said. “ . . . .However, the prosecutor’s own unwillingness to request use immunity for Smothers’s testimony, despite the prosecution’s position that Smothers was not involved in the Runyon Street homicides, is the barrier to cross-examination of Smothers.”
During the course of the evidentiary hearing, Smothers twice invoked his Fifth Amendment rights on the advice of his attorney. But later, he agreed to testify regardless of the consequences in a sworn affidavit and an interview with AP reporter Ed White.
During that interview, Smothers said, “He’s not guilty. He didn’t do it. . . .I understand what prison life is like; it’s miserable. To be here and be innocent – I don’t know what it’s like. He’s a kid, and I hate for him to do the kind of time they’re giving him.”
According to earlier accounts, Smothers decided to voluntarily confess to 12 hit killings, most of them drug-related. He said he changed his mind about his way of life after killing Rose Cobbs, a teacher. She was the wife of a Detroit police officer who commissioned the hit outside a CVS pharmacy in Detroit while the officer was inside. The officer, who later allegedly hanged himself, was said to be having an affair with another woman.
Smothers told White in the interview, “I understand people think I’m a monster. Over the course of my young adulthood, I developed a hard heart where people didn’t matter. When you grow up in the city there’s just certain facts of life.”
The visit of Obama administration to Detroit this Friday can be an important development in restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to the City of Detroit to alleviate the financial crisis facing the city. But this will not be the case if Obama’s officials choose to meet with and listen to Governor Snyder, EM Orr, Mayor Bing and other officials who have deliberately withheld federal funds from Detroit to further their agenda of privatization, union busting and subsidies for the banks. Here is a list of concrete ways the Obama administration can funnel needed funds to Detroit by executive order.
Mich. Dept. Human Services head Maura Corrigan and Gov. Rick Snyder withheld federal funds from Detroit Human Services Dept. and forced its closure.
The Obama administration can order the release of hundreds of millions of dollars of CSBG funds to the City of Detroit, under the auspices of the City and administered by City workers. In October 2011, State DHS head Moira Corrigan illegally withheld these funds from Detroit in an effort to force the city to give up the right to administer the grants.
As a result, funds have been withheld from the neediest Detroiters for whom CSBG grants offer rental, heat, and food assistance. Bing and City Council unfortunately capitulated to Corrigan’s illegal acts. Restoring the CSBG grants to the administration of the city, by the same workers who effectively worked the program from years (perhaps minus a few rotten supervisors), would mean dozens of workers would be restored to the city’ workforce. Their wages and benefits would be paid out of the federal grant, helping to put a halt to the deliberately depleting of the pension fund by Snyder.
Services for Detroit’s children like Head Start are desperately needed.
Similarly, the Obama Administration can restore the administration of the Detroit Headstart program to the City of Detroit, which administered it for over 40 years until Mayor Bing inexplicably and illegally ceded control to a Denver based outfit with the consent of the Obama administration. Restoring the administration of the Headstart program to the City of Detroit would immediately bring $25 million in funds to the city, and employ 40 city workers. Like with CDBG, their wages and benefits would be paid out of the federal grant, helping to put a halt to the deliberately depleting of the pension fund.
Protesters from Occupy Detroit and Moratorium Now! outside Detroit home facing foreclosure.
The Obama administration could order Snyder and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) to immediately remove the impediments it has imposed on the release of the $500 million in federal Helping Hardest Hit Homeowner Funds to serve their purpose, helping homeowners remain in their homes. For example, 10,000 Detroit homeowners face losing their homes to tax foreclosures despite the availability of hundreds of millions of federal funds to pay delinquent property tax bills. Snyder’s and MSHDA’s deliberate withholding of these funds is contributing to the loss of homes, decline in neighborhoods and depletion of Detroit’s population and tax base. In addition, it is contributing to the City’s deficit as Detroit is paying $82 million in chargebacks to the County for lost value of tax foreclosed homes, which could be avoided if the Hardest Hit Homeowners Funds were released. Incredibly, in a recent deposition, Orr did not even know what chargebacks were despite their huge role in Detroit’s deficit.
The Obama administration, through the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, could order an investigation of the banks whose subprime lending practices in the city were the major factor in destroying the City’s tax base over the last decade. Similarly, the SEC and Justice Department could launch similar investigations to those carried out across the U.S. with regard to municipal bond practices of banks like Chase, UBS and Bank of America, Libor Manipulation by the banks with regard to Detroit’s bonds, and the use of the ISDA Fix by the banks to calculate termination fees on interest rate swaps. In addition the SEC and the Justice Department should investigate the role of the “ratings agencies”, Standard and Poors, Moody’s and Fitch, in encouraging sub-prime mortgage lending in Detroit, as well as “encouraging” the City to be placed in onerous interest rate swaps in 2005-2006, then lowering the City’s bond rating, placing these bond deals in default to benefit the banks who pay the agencies.
Protest against EM Kevyn Orr and Snyder in Hart Plaza July 12, 2013.
Whenever there is a State of Emergency is declared, it is the policy of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to place a 90 day moratorium on foreclosures and foreclosure-related evictions, which can be extended by executive order. Foreclosure moratoriums were put into effect after Katrina and the hurricane in New Jersey. The basis for placing an Emergency Manager and subsequent bankruptcy on Detroit was Snyder’s Declaration of a State of Financial Emergency. Based on this emergency declaration, HUD Secretary Donovan should immediately impose a moratorium on foreclosures and foreclosure-related evictions in the City of Detroit.
• In addition, because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, agencies of the federal government, along with HUD, own the vast majority of mortgage loans in Detroit, the Obama administration should stop all foreclosures and foreclosure-related evictions by these federal agencies. In addition, considering the fact that virtually all residential mortgages in Detroit are severely underwater, contributing to people just walking away from and abandoning their residences, the Obama administration should reduce the principal on all mortgage loans owned by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or backed by HUD, to the actual value of the home.
Protesters at Bank of America Aug. 19, 2013 joined retirees’ march outside bankruptcy courtroom the same day in downtown Detroit. Bank of America is a major creditor in Detroit’s bankruptcy, but protesters said it helped cause the city’s economic decline through predatory lending, fraudulent mortgages and illegal foreclosures and evictions.
By Nate Raymond
Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:45pm EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp heads to trial this week over allegations its Countrywide unit approved deficient home loans in a process called “Hustle,” defrauding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. government enterprises that underwrite mortgages.
In what would be the government’s first financial crisis case to go to trial against a major bank over defective mortgages, jury selection is set to begin in federal court in New York on Tuesday, barring a last-minute settlement.
Angelo Mozilo co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and built it into the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. Countrywide wasn’t the first to offer exotic mortgages to borrowers with a questionable ability to repay them. In its all-out embrace of such sales, however, it did legitimize the notion that practically any adult could handle a big fat mortgage. In the wake of the housing bust, which toppled Countrywide and IndyMac Bank (another company Mozilo started), the executive’s lavish pay package was criticized by many, including Congress. Mozilo left Countrywide last summer after its rescue-sale to Bank of America. A few months later, BofA said it would spend up to $8.7 billion to settle predatory lending charges against Countrywide filed by 11 state attorneys general.–Time Magazine photo and caption.
The trial is also a reminder of the billions of dollars in legal liabilities Bank of America has incurred as a result of its 2008 acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp, which became a poster child of the mortgage meltdown.
The U.S. Justice Department filed the civil lawsuit in 2012, blaming the bank for more than $1 billion in losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which bought mortgages that later defaulted. Since then, new evidence and pre-trial rulings by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff have pared the case back.
Bank of America has said the lawsuit’s claims are “simply false” and that it “can’t be expected to compensate every entity that claims losses that actually were caused by the economic downturn.”
A spokesman for the bank declined comment ahead of the trial, which is expected to last five weeks.
‘HIGH SPEED SWIM LANE’
The government lawsuit stems from a whistleblower case brought by former Countrywide Financial Corp executive Edward O’Donnell.
It centers on a program called the “High Speed Swim Lane” – also called “HSSL” or “Hustle” – that government lawyers say Countrywide initiated in 2007 as mortgage delinquency and default rates began to rise and Fannie and Freddie tightened underwriting guidelines.
Rebecca Mairone, a key figure in Countrywide’s fraudulent mortgage practices, now works for J.P. Morgan Chase.
Countrywide pushed to streamline its loan origination business through the program, eliminating loan quality checkpoints and paying employees based only on the volume of loans they produced, according to the lawsuit.
The result was “rampant instances of fraud and other serious loan defects,” including in the mortgages sold to Fannie and Freddie, despite assurances Countrywide had tightened underwriting guidelines, the Justice Department said.
The process was overseen by Rebecca Mairone, a former chief operating officer of Countrywide’ s Full Spectrum Lending Division. The Justice Department added her as a co-defendant in January.
Mairone left Bank of America in mid-2012 and is now a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Marc Mukasey, a lawyer for Mairone at Bracewell & Giuliani, said in an email it was “a shame the government is wasting time and money on a case that is utterly devoid of merit.”
Fannie and Freddie’s estimated “gross loss” on loans in the Countrywide program was $848.2 million, according to court papers. The “net loss” – the loss caused by the portion of loans the Justice Department says were materially defective – was $131.2 million.
While the jury will determine if the bank is liable, any penalty would be up to Rakoff, a judge well-known for his rulings in financial crisis cases.
March in the Detroit neighborhood of the Cullors family, which faced eviction by BOA, on Nov. 10, 2012.
In 2010, Rakoff rejected a $33 million settlement between Bank of America and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over claims it did not properly disclose employee bonuses and financial losses at Merrill Lynch, which it acquired at the end of 2008.
The bank ultimately agreed to a renewed settlement paying $150 million in an accord Rakoff “reluctantly” approved. In November 2011, he rejected a $285 million settlement between the SEC and Citigroup Inc, challenging the long-standing practice of settlements without admissions of wrongdoing.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff
In the “Hustle” case, Rakoff dismissed claims against the bank under the False Claims Act but allowed the case to instead proceed under a provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, a 1989 federal law passed after the savings-and-loan crisis.
The law, which provides a longer statute of limitations of 10 years, has become the basis of several government civil lawsuits over the financial crisis.
The case is U.S. ex rel. O’Donnell v. Bank of America Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-01422.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Eddie Evans and Grant McCool)
Retirees and residents protest at bankruptcy court hearing Aug. 19, 2013.
“Grandma, are we being made slaves again?”—Retiree’s grandson
“A small group of racist white men and the banks who have controlled Detroit for decades are to blame. Cancel the debt.” — Resident
By Diane Bukowski
September 21, 2013
DETROIT – Dozens of individual objectors to Detroit’s bankruptcy filing joined forces with the “Official Retiree Committee” during morning and afternoon hearings Sept. 19, to call for a stay on eligibility proceedings until a higher court can hear key constitutional matters, and to demand dismissal of the case.
Slavemaster Rick Snyder attacks Michigan’s majority-Black cities with EM laws.
Sheila Johnson, a city retiree with 28 years, wept during the 10 a.m. session for individual objectors. She said her husband has run a business in Detroit for the last 40 years, providing jobs for up to fifteen families.
“He gave up his future hoping that we could depend on my pension. We paid our taxes, but there is millions in taxes that should still be paid to the city. We are not bankrupt. I cannot go to sleep at night. My nine-year-old grandchild asks me, ‘Grandma, are we being made slaves again?’ I did not vote for Kevyn Orr, we do not need a dictatorship or a slavemaster. I am not a slave.”
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes said he will rule on the Retirees’ Committee motion request, argued during a 3 p.m. hearing, within the next several days.
Retirees Committee attorney Claude Montgomery of Dentons LLP.
The eligibility objections are key in the bankruptcy, attorney Jerome Goldberg told VOD, because once the judge confirms eligibility, the case largely moves from the realm of state law to federal law, which has no protection for public pensions.
EM Kevyn Orr “not the sharpest knife in the drawer”–bankruptcy objector Hassan Aleem.
During the morning session, many individual speakers demanded outright dismissal of the case, questioning the authority of the city’s unelected Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and Gov. Rick Snyder’s to file what they said is a bogus case riddled with fraud by the banks and corporations which have devastated Detroit. They also said they have been denied due process, being notified of the filing only days before the eligibility objection deadline, if at all, and were therefore unable to find attorneys in that time.
Following are in-depth summaries of many objectors’ remarks, which were skimpily reported in the daily media. They are in alpabetical order, as they were taken in court. The entire hearing can be heard on the court’s website at http://www.mieb.uscourts.gov/apps/detroit/DetroitAudio.cfm.
“Emergency Manager Orr is not an elected official,” testified city retiree Hassan Aleem Sept. 19 in front of U.S Bankruptcy Judge Steven W. Rhodes. “Nowhere in the City Council Journal does it indicate where they voted for the bankruptcy. . . .Orr never has been the sharpest knife in the drawer. Recent emails showed he was selected because he was Black. We are talking about people’s livelihoods here. We are being stabbed in the back and robbed.”
Objector Dempsey Addison (r) with (l to r) Chris Griffith and Cecily McClellan at first Occupy Detroit march in 2011.
The Detroit Free Press reported Sept. 22 that a poll has shown 75 percent of Detroiters strongly oppose any attack on city pensions, which Orr and Snyder have repeatedly said in public and in private emails is a prime goal of the bankruptcy filing. If they are successful, cities in other states with constitutional public pension guarantees across the U.S. face a domino effect, according to many observers.
“The people of Michigan voted down Public Act 4,” testified Dempsey Addison, president of the Association of Professional and Technical Employees (APTE). “Orr is not qualified to file. The city is not insolvent. Detroit has a plethora of revenue streams available. The city catalyzed the bankruptcy by shutting down federally-funded departments including Human Services, Workforce Development and the Health Department. Planning and Development is next. All of these employees, and their pensions and health care were funded by the federal government.”
U.S. Pres. Barack Obama at Detroit area Chrysler plant after company declared bankruptcy in 2010. The feds bailed out GM and Chrysler with billions of taxpayer dollars.
Officials from U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration including Attorney General Eric Holder, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, and Gene Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council will be in Detroit Sept. 27, to meet with “state and local elected officials and community leaders,” according to the Detroit News.
Ironically, Detroit Mayor Bing and City Council President Saunteel Jenkins have said they are hoping for an outcome to include federal grants to the city. However, Bing initiated the shutdowns of the three departments, supported by Jenkins and the Council majority.
Objector Russ Bellant
“On June 22, 2013, EM Orr announced he plans to transfer Public Lighting Department customers to DTE,” Library Commission President Russ Bellant testified. “They are planning to pull PLD meters and replace them with DTE meters, eliminating millions in revenue collection for the city. DTE gets to use the PLD grid for five to seven years, however, while it gets its own grid set up. This violates express prohibitions of PA 436 which say, ‘An emergency manager appointed for a city or village shall not sell or transfer a public utility furnishing light, heat, or power without the approval of a majority of the electors of the city or village voting thereon, or a greater number if the city or village charter provides, as required by section 25 of article VII of the state constitution of 1963.’ I am asking this court to issue a declaration opposing this.”
Bellant pointed out the constant elimination of city workers from all departments is eroding the retirement systems’ funding base.
Attorney Charles Brown testified that the global Jones Day law firm, Orr’s former employer and now the city’s hired legal guns, has “financial and ethical” conflicts representing Detroit in the bankruptcy, since it also represents most of the city’s major corporate creditors in other cases.
“No other Chapter 9 bankruptcies are taking place with emergency manager laws usurping the City Charter approved by the people,” Brown said. “This filing violates the Tenth Amendment, which says, ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Lorene Brown said, “The people of Detroit are hurting, oppressed, and suffering. I am calling on the pastors of this city to join others in declaring the Year of the Jubilee—canceling all debts [to the banks].”
Jubilee is a concept originating from various religious sources world-wide that calls for the people’s debts to be forgiven, among other provisions.
Moratorium Now! demands cancellation of city’s debt May 9, 2012.
Paulette Brown said she just retired from her position as Manager I in the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.
“I worked with people who sacrificed their health and safety to ensure that the customers of the Department have clean water. We worked in unsanitary conditions involving the presence of feces and raw sewage, going above and beyond the call of duty. For that, we are supposed to receive life-time medical benefits and pensions based on an agreed-upon formula. Michael Vick went to jail for cruelty to animals. Who’s going to prison for cruelty to retirees?”
During her objection, this reporter pointed out to Rhodes that the Official Retirees Committee, formed by his order at Orr’s request, has joined forces with the pension funds and unions in opposing bankruptcy eligibility. She said that no investigation has been undertaken of likely criminal factors involved in the $2.8 billion of Pension Obligation Certificates debt to UBS AG and Siebert, Brandford and Shank, including the undisputed fact that then CFO Sean Werdlow, who pressed for the loan in Feb. 2005, got a job as a Managing Director with Siebert that year and was in that position when the debt was re-negotiated from a 14 to a 30 year term in 2006. She requested that the entire debt be eliminated from eligibility consideration. (Click on Mary Diane Bukowski affidavit for eligibility objection 2.)
Mike Illitch plans to build $881 million hockey stadium complex as Detroit goes through bankruptcy.
“A federal court should decide whether the EM laws are legal,” said Leola Regina Crittendon. “I object to my tax dollars going to the EM to spend while billionaires who already owe the city millions of dollars are building a new hockey stadium. Orr will outsource all city jobs to non-residents, and has said he plans to sell our city’s assets.”
Louis Dukens, an architect, decried the devastation of the Detroit Public Schools under emergency managers. He said architecturally sound and beautiful schools have been demolished to build inferior structures, benefiting contractors, citing Martin Luther King, Jr. High School as an example.
“The city is not bankrupt,” said David Dye, citing Detroit’s 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). He said debt not due until the future has been invalidly included in the claimed budget deficit.
Objector David Dye (Facebook photo)
“The Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodities Future Trading Commission have convicted [some corporate creditors of the city] of fraud,” Dye noted. “They are also implicated in the LIBOR and ISDAfix scandals. . .But Kevyn Orr has only sought to investigate the pension boards, not banks who are already convicted of criminal activity and manipulating interest rates.”
LaVern Holloway said, “My voting rights have been violated. Snyder broke the law with Public Act 436, a mirror image of what the voters rejected in PA4. PA 436 is unconstitutional—it established a new form of government in Michigan. It is a violating of the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment, which says the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged. . . .Now we have an emergency manager who has called us ‘dumb, lazy, happy and rich.’”
JoAnn Jackson is the wife of a city retiree.
Objector JoAnn Jackson testifies at City Council hearing on hockey stadium Sept. 5, 2013.
“Mr. Jackson worked for the Public Lighting Department at the Mistersky Plant for 30 years, six to seven days a week. He retired in 200o and in 2002 he developed kidney disease. I am concerned about his pension and health care. He takes 16 pills a day jus tot stay alive. He paid into the annuities in the pension system from day one. We’ve paid our dues.”
Retired city attorney Michael Karwoski, who is on the nine-member Retirees Committee, said Orr is misrepresenting reality, claiming pensions are not an issue until the plan confirmation. He said Orr made it clear in his Proposal to Creditors that he plans to enact “significant cuts” in accrued vested pensions, in violation of PA 436. He cited Section 12 (m) ii of PA 436, which says, “The emergency manager shall fully comply with the public employee retirement system investment act, 1965 PA 314, MCL 38.1132 to 38.1140m, and section 24 of article IX of the state constitution of 1963, and any actions taken shall be consistent with the pension fund’s qualified plan status under the federal internal revenue code.”
Karwoski said “It is appropriate for the court to sever pension benefits from the bankruptcy proceedings.”
Althea Long said, “I object to the EM saying he is going to sell off assets, but saying nothing about making large corporations pay what they owe.”
A number of speakers including Lou Ann Pelletier noted that “pensions are not a debt but a binding obligation entered into with good faith by city workers.” Pelletier also noted that the likely majority of retirees are women and people of color, constituting a protected group of people under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Objector Sam Riddle stressed that current cases initiated by AFSCME and the NAACP challenging the constitutionality of PA4, currently pending in federal court in front of U.S. District Court Judge George Caram Steeh, should be expedited and heard before the bankruptcy case.
Objector Mike Shane at rally vs. banks May 4, 2013.
“PA 436 requires the investigation of criminal conduct [that led to the crisis], but that has not been done,” said Mike Shane. “The role of the banks in the destruction of Detroit’s tax base was admitted in Orr’s deposition. One hundred thousand people have been evicted illegally after predatory loans by the banks, which have been fined tens of millions of dollars. Property and income taxes dropped precipitously, but the banks have refused to pay property taxes on the foreclosed homes. The banks have been convicted of money laundering, bribery, rigging mortgage securities and municipal bonds, and manipulating the LIBOR, metal markets, ISDAfix, and recently loans to ethanol manufacturers.”
Attorney Tom Stephens testified, “The bankruptcy court is not the proper forum to litigate the issues [including the constitionality of PA 436]. The bankruptcy has been shoved down our throats through the Jones Day/Orr form of government. It is well established that courts have the power to stay proceedings pending other judicial proceedings,” referring to the AFSCME and NAACP federal challenges.
Jean Vortkamp related a recent incident in her community where a young man who had been shot to death lay in the street for five hours while hundreds of his family members and friends gathered.
Objector Jean Vortkamp.
Weeping, she said, “His body lay there because of the cutbacks in EMS. Other cities that have gone through bankruptcy have not received relief, only more cutbacks. There is no more room for austerity. Retirees in my community are suspicious that they are trying to lower the senior population. There is a small group of racist white men and the banks who have actually controlled Detroit for decades. They are to blame. Cancel the debt. Leave the good people of Detroit in power.”
Retiree William Curtis Walton said he retired early under duress.
“This [bankruptcy] move is coldly calculated, an unethical, immoral breach of the public trust,” he said. “The city and Orr have not bargained in good faith with the retirees. Orr’s actions are diametrically opposed to the state Constitution.”
Councilwoman JoAnn Watson
Detroit City Council members JoAnn Watson and Brenda Jones also testified.
“The federal bankruptcy code does not allow involuntary filing,” Watson said. “Neither the City Council nor the elected Mayor voted on the filing. The State of Michigan has material conflicts with the City of Detroit. The State Treasurer [Andy Dillon] admitted the same in my office.”
Watson referred to the 1998 agreement between former Mayor Dennis Archer and former Gov. John Engler which guaranteed revenue-sharing payments to the city in exchange for the city’s giving up its right to tax non-residents who work in Detroit.
“At least $220 million in revenue-sharing was never paid,” she said. “We have lost hundreds of millions more from people who work in the city but continue to live elsewhere.”
Councilwoman Brenda Jones
Jones said, “The conspiracy that led to this bankruptcy began with the pretense of a ‘consent agreement.’ Then the unions came up with many cost-savings in negotiations that were done in bad faith by the state.
Objector Carl Williams noted that PA 436 never received a two-thirds vote as required to overturn a public referendum, the repeal of PA 4.
That section says, “Any law submitted to the people by either initiative or referendum petition and approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon at any election shall take effect 10 days after the date of the official declaration of the vote. No law initiated or adopted by the people shall be subject to the veto power of the governor, and no law adopted by the people at the polls under the initiative provisions of this section shall be amended or repealed, except by a vote of the electors unless otherwise provided in the initiative measure or by three-fourths of the members elected to and serving in each house of the legislature.”
(L to r) Bruce Bennett of Jones Day, contractor Kenneth Buckfire, and EM Kevyn Orr at meeting with creditors June 14, 2013.
In rebuttal, Bruce Bennett of Jones Day said, “I have found Detroit filled with talented advocates. I hope to convince them to become allies rather than opponents. . . .No one is ever going to convince anyone in this room that the bankruptcy case is a good thing. But this is better than the alternatives. Sometimes leaving things the way they are is worse.”
He added that Orr cannot reach a debt adjustment plan on his own, that it must be approved by the bankruptcy judge.
To date, however, Rhodes has concurred with Jones Day attorneys on virtually every issue.
“The exercise of arbitrary power allows the ‘Stephens’ of the Black Misleadership Class to feel more a part of the oligarchy they serve.”
Detroit’s Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) dictatorship runs the city the way Samuel L. Jackson’s “Stephen” character ran the white man’s plantation in Django. Without warning, and just to let the niggras know who’s boss, Chief Compliance Officer Gary Brown shut off the electricity to much of the public infrastructure in the downtown area on Friday, September 11th – of all days! – stranding numerous frightened people in elevators in 90-degree-plus heat, resulting in a least one injury. Asked why he had given no warning to the thousands affected before pulling the switch, Brown smiled like a bad cop who had just beat the hell out of a street kid (he’s a former deputy chief of police). 
