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Aiyana Jones’ grieving mother Dominika is led out of court by relatives as mistrial declared June 18, 2013.

 Hung jury June 18 in case of killer cop Joseph Weekley

Trial date set for Aiyana’s father and aunt’s fiancée

Police arrest another uncle and cousin during Weekley trial

A & E producer gets probation, perjury charges dropped 

By Diane Bukowski 

June 25, 2013 

Aiyana’s grandmother Mertilla Jones speaks to media June 18. “He’s a lying cop,” she said, referring to Weekley.

DETROIT – The family of Aiyana Jones, 7, killed by a Detroit police paramilitary unit May 16, 2010 as she slept with her grandmother, endured more torture last week. 

Wayne County Circuit Court Cynthia Gray Hathaway declared a hung jury June 18 in the trial of the shooter, Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley, after only three days of deliberations. Hathaway set a new pre-trial date for Weekley on charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm for July 25. 

Aiyana’s mother Dominika Jones collapsed in the arms of her uncle, who carried her out of the courthouse. “Ohmigod, this day, I just couldn’t take it no more,” she said on her Facebook page, which showed a news photo (above) from the hearing that day. 

On June 22, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Richard Skutt set trial dates for Aiyana’s father Charles Jones and her aunt’s former long-time fiancé Chauncey Owens in the killing of Je’Rean Blake, 17 on May 14, 2010, the excuse police used to raid the Jones’ home. Dominika and Charles Jones, who had four children until Aiyana’s killing, are still together. She attends every one of his court hearings with his mother Mertilla and sister LaKrystal.

Charles Jones with his only daughter, Aiyana, at an earlier age. Family photo.

The trial had been postponed pending a state Supreme Court ruling on whether “jail-house snitch” Jay Schlenkerman could testify against Jones. Skutt earlier barred the testimony as third-hand hearsay, but an Appeals Court summarily overturned his ruling. The Supreme Court refused to hear Jones’ appeal June 5, 2013. 

Skutt set Mon. Oct. 21, 2013 as the trial date, and Sept. 20 as the deadline for pre-trial motions. Both men are being held at Wayne County Jail on charges of first-degree murder, while Weekley remains free on personal bond, at home with his wife and two daughters in Grosse Pointe Park. 

Robert Moran

Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Moran is prosecuting them as well as Weekley, in what many have called a direct conflict of interest. 

To add further grief, Detroit police arrested and charged an uncle and cousin of Aiyana’s as they were coming home during the trial, on undisclosed charges. Mertilla Jones has said police have continually stalked her family since Aiyana’s death, and that she was advised by an official to get the young men in her family out of town to avoid further arrests. 

HUNG JURY 

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and Joseph Weekley at his arraignment in Oct. 2011. A & E producer Allison Howard and her attorney are in background.

On the morning of June 18, loud shouting was heard as the Weekley jury, composed of 11 whites and one Black, continued a third day of deliberations in their room. 

Later, they sent three notes to Hathaway. The first said they were “stuck,” the second asked if they could find Weekley guilty of only some of the elements of involuntary manslaughter, and the final note, sent only an hour later, said they could not reach a verdict. They had been told they could only consider the second charge of reckless discharge of a firearm resulting in death if they found Weekley guilty of the first charge, according to a report from Detroit’s Channel 7 News. 

Hathaway told them they had to find Weekley guilty of all elements, and asked them to continue deliberating after the first two notes. After the third note, she declared a mistrial and thanked the jury profusely for their service. 

Rafael Jones, 14, leads march for Justice for Aiyana and Charles Jones April 23 2012 at Frank Murphy Hall in downtown Detroit, grandmother Mertilla Jones at left, aunt LaKrystal Sanders at right.

Aiyana’s grandmother Mertilla Jones rushed out of the courtroom angrily. 

“I’ve lost Aiyana, my precious grandbaby, and two of my sisters behind this,” she said outside the courthouse afterwards. “She was only seven years old. [Weekley’s] a lying cop, and the rest of them are liars too. You’re going to smile on the stand, knowing you caused a child’s death. I’m tired of this.” 

Jones’s sister JoAnn Robinson was sleeping on another couch in the living room when police stormed the house. She said at a press conference May 18, 2010 that she asked police for a copy of the search warrant, but they did not bring it until around 5 a.m. No arrest warrant for Chauncey Owens, the target of the search, was signed until May 19, 2010.

JoAnn Robinson died a little over a year later. 

SRT officer Shawn Stallard.

Much of Weekley’s testimony directly contradicted that of other officers on the scene, who said they heard a gunshot, the only one fired during the incident, “three seconds” after entry. 

Weekley maintained that he and Officer Shawn Stallard were going after Vincent Ellis, who was standing in a bedroom doorway, when “a woman” whose braids he could see knocked his gun downwards, causing it to fire and hit Aiyana.  Stallard testified earlier that he heard the shot before they pursued Ellis and that he thought that Ellis had fired it. Stallard also said he never saw Weekley struggle with anyone. 

“I was afraid Weekley was going to shoot Vincent as well as Aiyana,” Mertilla Jones told VOD later regarding her son. 

Firearms expert with Weekley’s MP5 testifies during trial.

A firearms expert who tested Weekley’s actual MP5 said he threw it on the ground, stomped on it and conducted other tests to determine if it could be discharged without pulling the trigger. He said it could not, and that it took six to eight pounds of pressure to pull the trigger. Nearly every officer testified on direct that they are trained to keep their finger off the trigger of their weapons, even while in a struggle. 

But all officers clearly lied when they said they did not see brightly colored children’s toys in front of the family’s home on Lillibridge, shown repeatedly during the trial in an evidence technician’s photo. Most had conducted surveillance of the home prior to the raid. A relative of Aiyana’s told VOD the toys had been out there all day, and they are the same toys seen in a photo taken by this reporter that morning, 

Toys in front yard of Aiyana home are same ones seen in evidence tech photos at trial Photo by Diane Bukowski 5 16 2010

“It’s a pity because the people that are overseeing this case from both sides are biased,” Aiyana’s uncle (who remains unnamed in this article to avoid further police retaliation) said afterwards. “These people hang out together before court and after court. He’s a cop. The judge is married to a cop. They don’t know what it’s like to be harassed, stalked, and discriminated against.” 

Hathaway, who kept her married name after her divorce from Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Michael Hathaway, is now married to Wayne County Deputy Sheriff Dewayne Hayes. 

During the trial, testimony from officers that the Jones family’s home was a “crack house” and that Owens, who has not yet been tried, was a “murderer,” was never challenged as “facts not in evidence” by the prosecution, defense, or the judge.  

“People don’t want to convict you just because you’re a cop,” said Gimbu Omowale, a supporter of the Jones family. “Is he [Weekley] a human being or God that he can’t make a mistake?” 

JONES-OWENS CHARGES 

Charles Jones, little sons, and family members before Aiyana’s funeral.

Charles Jones, Aiyana’s father, was present in the house during the police raid. His mother Mertilla testified he was forced to crawl out of the bedroom where he and Aiyana’s mother Dominika were sleeping with their three younger children, on his hands and knees, over broken glass. She said he picked up bits of Aiyana’s brains on the way to the couch where the child lay before SRT Officer Kata’Ante Taylor ran her out of the house. 

The morning of the raid, Jones sat outside the house crying in agony, sitting next to the blood-soaked couch where Aiyana, his only daughter died, as family members, friends and neighbors consoled him. 

He told this reporter then, “It hurts so bad, I just lost my baby, she was so beautiful. She was an honor roll student and very artistic. She loved her family and friends and was very popular in school with her classmates. She loved Disney characters but lately she’s been getting into Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber. She loved to dance.” 

Evidence photo shows couch where Weekley shot Aiyana in the head. Hannah Montana blanket is at bottom of photo.

Aiyana was lying under a Hannah Montana blanket when Weekley shot her, which was laid in front of her mother Dominika as an exhibit during her testimony in Weekley’s trial. 

Police leaked a story to the daily media only days after the raid that Jones had given a gun to Owens to kill Je’Rean Blake during a confrontation outside a party store May 14, 2010.  The first question asked during a press conference held by family attorney Geoffrey Fieger May 18 related to that allegation.  Jones, however, was not charged with first-degree murder in the case until October, 2011. 

Mertilla Jones earlier told VOD that police trained guns on Charles and Dominika’s three young sons when they arrested him where they were staying at the time. 

Chauncey Owens at Charles Jones’ preliminary exam.

Owens at first pled guilty to second-degree murder in Blake’s death. His plea agreement said only that he would “tell the truth,” but the daily media kept reporting that he said Jones gave him the gun. This reporter combed through every page of his extensive court file but found no such statement. Later, Owens repeatedly refused to testify against Jones during his pre-trial exam. 

The Jones family has said they actually suspect another person in Blake’s killing.  Owens’ attorneys earlier tried unsuccessfully to get his first statement to police thrown out, saying it was given under pressure after police allowed him to talk to LaKrystal Sanders on the phone, and he discovered that Aiyana was dead. 

Prosecutor Robert Moran then resorted to using Jay Schlenkerman, who several acquaintances told VOD was a career “jail-house snitch,” to testify against Jones. Schlenkerman has been convicted of numerous counts involving abuse and torture of women as well as drunk driving. He gave testimony at Jones’ pre-trial, as if from a memorized statement, that Owens told him Jones supplied the gun. 

Jail-house snitch Jay Schlenkerman testifies at Charles Jones’ preliminary exam.

“Charles had nothing to with that incident, my child had nothing to do with killing that child,” Mertilla Jones said after the hearing June 22. “My grandsons need their father. All my sons have been hands-on dads who take care of their children, but they just keep this going and keep this going.” 

During the hearing, Judge Skutt granted Owens’ attorney’s request for a complete transcript of the Weekley trial. Attorney David Cripps noted that his client was referred to multiple times during the trial. Jones’ attorney Leon Weiss, of the Fieger law firm, said he believed the only real evidence the prosecutor has against Jones is Schlenkerman’s statement. He said the prosecution has since recruited a second “jail-house snitch” to testify against him, but did not indicate whether he will file another motion to exclude that testimony. 

In a case related to the filming of the raid on Aiyana’s home by A & E’s “The First 48,” A & E producer Allison Howard pleaded no contest to obstruction of justice charges, in exchange for the dropping of perjury charges against her.

Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller said in a statement, “Howard has a sentence agreement of 18 to 24 months  probation, which will be conducted by the State of Massachusetts. There is a fine of $2,000 and up to 200 hours of community service. Howard’s no contest plea was granted by Judge Cynthia Hathaway based on the possibility of civil liability.”

Assistant Prosecutor Moran earlier contended that Howard went to a party in the Detroit suburb of Canton with a police officer after Aiyana Jones was killed, and sold a copy of the A & E videotape to another man. However, police also locked up two other men in the Wayne County jail for several months, saying they showed a copy of the police videotape of the raid to a third party. A source told VOD earlier that police replaced that videotape, which was the one shown to the family’s attorney Geoffrey Fieger, with a second tape, wiping out crucial evidence.

The prosecution never showed the Weekley jury a police videotape, only that taken by A&E, which does not show the inside of the house as Weekley shot Aiyana.

Dominika Stanley (front) with relatives and friends before mistrial was declared.

Related articles from VOD, others by this author:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/06/25/why-aiyana-jones-matters/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/06/17/weekley-maintains-story-that-someone-hit-his-mp5-says-he-did-not-feel-it-go-off-when-he-killed-aiyana-stanley-jones-7/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/06/15/mertilla-jones-testifies-police-murdered-grand-baby-aiyana-stanley-jones-in-front-of-her-eyes/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/06/09/family-describes-military-raid-on-aiyana-jones-home-cop-says-presence-of-kids-didnt-matter-in-mission/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/06/04/aiyana-stanley-jones-police-horror-in-detroit/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/06/01/detroit-killer-cop-trial-begins-in-death-of-aiyana-jones-7/ Continue reading →

Dominika and Charles Jones, parents of Aiyana Jones, 7, killed by Detroit police May 16, 2010.

 By Mychal Denzel Smith 

June 19, 2013 – 3:52 PM ET 

VOD story on hung jury, continued persecution of family members, coming next. 

Detroit Special Response Team officer Joseph Weekley.

 The trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin will grab most of the major headlines this summer, but there is another trial involving the death of a black child that warrants our attention. Yesterday, June 18, a judge declared a mistrial in the case of Joseph Weekley, the Detroit police officer charged with involuntary manslaughter after shooting and killing 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones back in May 2010.

Weekley was the lead officer in a raid on the home of Chauncey Owens, a suspect in the murder of a 17-year-old. The Special Response Team (Detroit’s version of SWAT) entered the home just after midnight, throwing a flash-bang grenade through the window and kicking down the unlocked door. Aiyana was asleep on the couch. Weekley fired a single shot that struck her in the head and killed her. The police entered on the first floor; Owens lived in the upstairs unit.

Weekley was indicted on October 4, 2011, and his trial started on May 29 of this year. He faced up to fifteen years in prison, but after three days of deliberations a jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision.

Family members of Aiyana Jones rally March 8, 2013 outside courthhouse. Bottom (l) mother Dominika Jones. (r) Aunt LaKrystal Sanders. Behind Dominika is Aiyana;s paternal grandmother Mertilla Jones, and behind her is maternal grandfather Jimmie Stanley.

Even if what Weekley claims is true, that his weapon was discharged by accident after a tussling with Aiyana’s grandmother, the entire ordeal could have been avoided if the police acted as police should. If it sounds irrational to require a SWAT team to apprehend one man accused of killing one person, that’s because it is—but it has become standard operating procedure. What happened to Aiyana is the result of the militarization of police in this country, itself a byproduct of the “war on drugs.” Over the course of the past thirty-plus years, police have become more and more reliant on military weaponry and tactics (big and small police forces alike have bazookas, machine guns and mini-tanks for domestic use) in response to crime. They hardly pretend to be interested in information gathering, investigating, protecting and serving any longer.

New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t being hyperbolic when he said he has own army in the form of the NYPD. The same is true for mayors across the country, and the people most vulnerable to these heavily armed militias just so happen to be among America’s most maligned.

Members of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department Special Enforcement Detail move onto Poway’s Abraxas High School’s grounds in a “Lockdown and Active Shooter Response” simulation.

Part of what it means to be black in America now is watching your neighborhood become the training ground for our increasingly militarized police units. The issue is that while, ideally, police would be interested in maintaining peace, when you turn them into soldiers who believe they’re fighting a war they will do what soldiers in a war zone do: harm and kill indiscriminately. Children aren’t exempt.

If the death of 7-year-old Aiyana isn’t enough to change the way we feel about our militarized police forces, perhaps a more selfish motive would do.

Writing to political prisoner Angela Davis in 1970, James Baldwin told her: “…we must fight for your life as though it were our own… For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” What Baldwin knew was that the attack on Davis was not just an attack on her, or black women, or self-proclaimed communists or the black liberation movement. It was an attack by the powerful on the powerless. And sure enough, if the powerful get away with one attack there will be more to come.

Angela Davis

Concern about paramilitary police forces sprung up in the wake of the Occupy movement and the excessive force experienced by protesters, and somewhat in the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11, but they got their start in predominantly black neighborhoods. And the country collectively shrugged because the specter of black criminality loomed large.

If you want to know what’s going to happen to powerless people of any color in this country, watch what happens in black America. If you don’t want it at your doorstep, show concern when it affects the least protected and most marginalized among us. We’ve seen these forces in action in Seattle, New York, Chapel Hill and Anaheim. But it wouldn’t be that way if we cared enough to stand up and demand an end to this when kids like Aiyana were placed in harms way.

Read more: Why Aiyana Jones Matters | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/174859/why-aiyana-jones-matters#ixzz2XAEnNVFW
Follow us: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook

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.

 VOD ed.note: ‘Detroit Goddam’

This essay was sent by VOD video/reporter Kenneth Snodgrass. It is being published appropriately at a time when Detroit, the largest Black majority city in the country, faces dismemberment by the white supremacist ruling class including the banks, corporations, and their politician lackeys. Jackson, MS, as the essay notes, is the second largest Black majority city in the country. Chokwe Lumumba was born in Detroit and helped form the Republic of New Afrika here.) 

Jackson, MS. Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s victory speech in its entirety: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151668360718738

The Jackson Plan, the program of the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement and the Jackson People’s Assembly, the basis of Lumumba’s platform.

By Bob Wing*

June 5, 2013

“His election is a lightning bolt: Has anyone with Lumumba’s deep radical political history and who still leads a radical black organization ever been elected mayor of a significant U.S. city?”

JACKSON, MS –Chokwe Lumumba–a founder and leader of the Republic of New Afrika, the New Afrikan People’s Organization and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, defense attorney for Tupac Shakur and others, and a first term city councilman–is the new Mayor of Jackson, Miss. His June 4 victory is a stirring tribute to the courageous Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers who fifty years ago on June 12, 1963 was gunned down at his Jackson home.

Chokwe Lumumba with Detroit peoples’ activist and advocate Cornell Squires during an appeals court hearing in Detroit in 2011. Photo by Diane Bukowski

In a stunning turn of events Chokwe defeated Jackson’s three-term incumbent and first African American mayor Harvey Johnson, the white Republican-financed young Black businessman Jonathan Lee, and others to win leadership of the city with the second highest percentage of Black people in the United States.

I was privileged to briefly participate in the victory of one of the most radical mayors in U.S. history, right in the heart of Dixie, and to glimpse a new Black-led progressive coalition that intends to fight for the state. Nina Simone famously cussed Mississippi white supremacy in her 1964 civil rights anthem “Mississippi Goddam.” (see video above.) The election of Chokwe Lumumba is now an occasion to say “Jackson Hell Yes!”

‘Impressed with the People’

Jackson has a partisan mayoral electoral system that allows all voters regardless of party affiliation to cast ballots in any party’s primary election. With their deep pockets and high turnout bloc voting, this so-called “crossover primary” often enables Mississippi’s ultra-conservative white voters and businessmen to influence the candidates of both parties. Not this time.

In a reversal, the near unanimous financial and political support that whites gave Jonathan Lee backfired. By depriving incumbent Johnson of their support, whites inadvertently helped Lumumba upset Johnson in the primary. And in the Lee/Lumumba runoff the full throated white backing of Lee helped most Black voters come crystal clear who he really represented in stark contrast to the powerful progressive grassroots candidacy of Chokwe Lumumba. Lee flaunted his deep pockets by filling the airwaves with dire warnings of Lumumba’s “militancy,” “divisiveness” and “anti-Christianity,” but a large Black majority went for Lumumba in huge percentages.

Jonathan Lee

Lumumba told the Clarion Ledger, “I was even more impressed with the people and…their ability to, I think, take on the issues and to see through what I think in many instances was misdirection. They [voters] had a lot of distractions, and they saw through them.”

21st Century ‘Mississippi Goddam’ persists: about ninety percent of the state’s whites regularly cast their ballots for Republicans thereby continuing the historic dominance of white supremacy in the state. Blacks became the majority in Jackson in the 1980s, but were unable to elect the first African American mayor until 1997.

Jackson, Mississippi – March 24, 2009) – Harvard Alternative Spring after-school prograsm for youth. Staff Photo: Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office

Jackson is the capital of the poorest state in the union. Eighty percent of its 188,000 residents are African American, a percentage surpassed only by Detroit. Despite the growing “reverse Black migration” from the North to the South in recent decades that has lifted the percentage of Blacks living in that region to its highest rate since the 1950s, Jackson is losing population and resources. The city lost 19,485 white residents from 2000 to 2010, even as it added 7,976 black residents.

While most U.S. cities are experiencing gentrification, Jackson is still dealing with white flight—and resources are fleeing with them. But it would be a big mistake to write off Mississippi as redneck Tea Party territory. Mississippi is also the state with the highest percentage of Black voters in the nation, about 35 percent. Black Mississippians have one of the proudest and most courageous histories of freedom struggle in the country.

Chokwe Lumumba with sone Chokwe Antar, daughter Rukia, and supporters celebrate victory June 5, 2013.

Mississippi also has a growing Latino population. Members of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Coalition, acting as individuals, played a strong role in Lumumba’s election. In fact the Republicans have a mere three seat majority in the Mississippi House of Representatives. And, shocking all “common sense” about Mississippi politics, a proposed state constitutional amendment defining “personhood” as beginning at conception and prohibiting abortion “from the moment of fertilization” was defeated by 55 percent of voters in Nov. 2011.

Derrick Johnson, State President of the Mississippi NAACP and Executive Director of One Voice which played a key role in defeating the amendment, told me, “Politics in the state are often defined by race or religion. But many people, especially white women, felt that the personhood ballot initiative went too far, and voted against it based on their personal interests. This is promising for the future of Mississippi politics.”

The Stars Align in the Primary

Jackson MS students arrested for storming a white library and reading in it in 1961.

Jackson is 80 percent Black, so the Democratic primary is where the main electoral action takes place. However, the wild card is Jackson’s crossover primary system that allows any voter to participate in any party primary or runoff. In fact Mississippi does not require political party registration. There were numerous candidates on the May 7 Democratic primary ballot for mayor, but four Blacks led the way. Going in, the favorites were incumbent Mayor Harvey Johnson and 35-year-old businessman Jonathan Lee who billed himself as representing a new generation of Black leadership. Councilperson Chokwe Lumumba and attorney Regina Quinn were considered long shots.

Below is video of Nina Simone singing “Mississippi Goddam”

As mentioned white business interests shunned Johnson and white voters came in big behind Lee by about ninety percent. The Jackson Free Press reported that Lee contributors had previously given more than $1.25 million to Republicans such as Mitt Romney. Lumumba and Johnson each took about 30 percent of the Black vote with Lee and Quinn garnering about 15 percent of African Americans. In an upset, Lumumba managed to narrowly edge out Johnson to make the runoff due to the white racial block vote for Lee, the splintering of African American middle class voters among all four main candidates, and a big turnout for Lumumba by Black voters, especially in his City Council district, the largely affluent and Second Ward.

Mayor Lumumba named himself in honor of Patrice Lumumba, revolutionary leader of the Congo, murdered by CIA.

Upon his election as city councilman four years ago, Lumumba had organized a People’s Assembly in the Second Ward to educate and activate his constituents. Four years later that People’s Assembly urged Lumumba to run for Mayor and helped draft his program, the Jackson Plan (see link at top of story). The big turnout was the fruit of that bottom up nomination process. Overall, 30.7 percent (34,652) of Jackson’s 110,000 voters cast ballots, slightly higher than the previous mayoral race. Lee took 34.2% (11,929); Lumumba won 24.7% (8,290); Johnson 21%; and Quinn 11 percent.

Lumumba defeated Lee in 56 of Jackson’s 89 precincts, but white voter turnout was more than twice that of Blacks. In the four highest-percentage voting precincts in the predominantly white Wards 1 and 7, Lee crushed Lumumba 2,087 votes to 20. Jackson voters signaled that they wanted new leadership, but the question was, who would turnout to vote and what kind of new leadership did they want: the activist veteran Lumumba or the business candidate Lee?

Down and Dirty Runoff

The challenge facing Lumumba in the runoff was daunting. Overall he was outspent by Lee $410,109 to $100,710. And to win he had to turn out and carry virtually all of the Black voters who had supported incumbent Johnson and attorney Quinn in the primary. Continue reading →

Moratorium NOW! demands debt cancellation outside EM creditors’ meeting June 14, 2013. Orr declared a phony moratorium in which defaulted debts will be paid off by insurers hired by the City of Detroit.

 Wall Street creditors fully insured, will get paid

Orr, advisors declare State Constitutional pension guarantee invalid

Want residents, workers, retirees to take severe cuts

Drastic action by unions, peoples’ leaders needed 

By Diane Bukowski 

June 19, 2013    PART ONE OF VOD’S COVERAGE OF ORR ATTACK

Bruce Bennett of Jones Day, Kenneth Buckfire of Buckfire, and EM Kevyn Orr at press briefing before creditors’ meeting. Orr’s advisors came up with his proposal, at the expense of the city of Detroit, which hired them,

DETROIT – According to business analysts, the city’s pension funds and unions should not be fooled by Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s declaration June 14 that the city’s corporate creditors will make equal sacrifices under his plan, including a “moratorium” on $2.5 billion in “unsecured” debt service.

The plan also calls for investment of $1.25 billion in public services over a ten-year period, most of it in “public safety” (police and fire.) 

In fact, according to reports from The Bond Buyer and Bloomberg, corporate creditors will get paid in full for any defaults, since the city PAID to insure their debt when they floated the bonds. 

“The city has defined a way by which we will treat all creditors in a class equally,” Orr told reporters at a briefing before his meeting with creditors at Detroit’s Metro Airport. “If we don’t do this there is no way for the city to continue.” He claimed the city has a total of $17 billion in outstanding debt over the coming decades.

City of Detroit Proposal for Creditors

The full report can be read by scrolling through the Scribd above. For easier reading in larger print, page by page, hit the little rectangle at lower right.

In exchange for the “moratorium,” Orr wants the takeover of the city’s pre-eminent assets including the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department and Belle Isle, by a regional authority and the state respectively. He is also demanding cuts to retirees’ actual pensions as well as health care benefits, further elimination of city workers’ “headcount” without regard to the effect on the city’s tax base, and reduction of services including public lighting to conform with what he called the “reduced footprint” of city population. 

Orr’s plan does not address what is OWED to the city, including approximately $800 million in corporate debt, as well as state payments that former City Corporation Counsel Krystal Crittendon estimated at over $300 million. His deficit figures and estimates for past and forthcoming years do not include funds the city borrowed to cover the deficits. 

Mayoral candidate and former Corporation Counsel Krystal Crittendon

“Why does Kevyn Orr continue to threaten to cut health care for seniors and retirees, but refuse to go after millions of dollars owed by millionaires and billionaires?” Crittendon asked in a release. 

“Why is it that Kevyn Orr’s reports do not even mention a plan to evaluate the City’s continued practice of granting tax abatements, even though it can no longer afford to do so, or mention a plan to require the banks and mortgage companies which own thousands of parcels of abandoned and blighted properties to either rehabilitate, sell or demolish those properties?” 

Orr’s explanation for the city’s dramatic drop in revenues says nothing about the 135,000 families in Detroit who have been forced out of their homes through predatory lending and fraudulent foreclosures, or the thousands of city workers who have lost their jobs through the years due to Wall Street threats to downgrade the city’s debt rating if they were not laid off. 

Like a magician whipping the veil off a dove, Orr peremptorily canceled payment of  $39.7 million due on $1.4 billion of the city’s “pension obligation certificates” debt to bankers USB AG and SBS Financial June 14. The POC’s are called “Certificates of Participation” (COPS) in Orr’s proposal. 

The full 130-page “Proposal for Creditors” carries a significant note regarding that debt. 

 ‘The City has identified certain issues related to the validity and/or enforceability of the COPS that may warrant further investigation,” says the report. 

Joe O’Keefe of Fitch Ratings and Stephen Murphy of Standard & Poor’s push City Council to pass $1.5 Billion predatory loanfrom UBS AG in 2005. Should they go to jail for what was a clear conflict of interest? Why isn’t Kevyn Orr investigating them?

That statement implies that the entire debt owed to UBS AG and SBS may be null and void, not just the percentage due to interest rate-rigging in the global LIBOR scandal which has targeted UBS and virtually every other bank the city owes money to. UBS has also been fined $1.5 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice for fraudulent practices, while many have demanded instead that its executives be jailed. 

Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick with his CFO Sean Werdlow–is there more dirt under the rug?

In Detroit’s case, ratings agencies Standard and Poor’s and Fitch came to the Detroit City Council to push for the POC loan, threatening to downgrade the city’s debt rating if it didn’t pass, a complete conflict of interest. Later, they downgraded the debt rating anyway.  

Then Detroit CFO Sean Werdlow took a high-level management position with SBS Financial, the minority partner in the deal, shortly thereafter. Was that his pay-off? 

After first raising strong opposition to the loan, Detroit’s City Council caved unanimously, including the members known then as the “Fabulous Four,” Sharon McPhail, JoAnn Watson, Barbara Rose-Collins, and Maryann Mahaffey. What happened to cause them to change their minds abruptly? 

Birmingham residents protest JPMorgan Chase fraud.

In the Jefferson County, Alabama bankruptcy filing, JPMorgan Chase was forced to forego 70 percent of its debt claims because its officials allegedly bribed the county’s sewage administrators to get a contract.  

A clause in Public Act 436, under which Orr is operating, says that he has the obligation to investigate criminal activity that may have led to the city’s financial crisis. 

Asked about that clause after the creditors’ meeting, Orr referred only to current pension fund investigations by the federal government, which have resulted in indictments of pension officials, ignoring completely the criminal activities of banks and mortgage holders.

Protest against city’s debt to banks May 9, 2012.

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition is demanding that he investigate these entities and even cancel the city’s debt to them. However, since Jones Day represents virtually all of the city’s bondholders as clients in other actions, such an investigation would obviously lead nowhere. Orr proved later that he has no such intention, telling union and pension representatives June 20 only that he is launching his own criminal investigation of the city’s pension funds. 

Regarding payment of the pension obligation certificates, the Bond Buyer reported, “The certificates, like nearly all of Detroit’s bonds issued before 2010, carry insurance by one of the six insurers. FGIC [Financial Guaranty Insurance Company] and Syncora Guaranty Inc. insure the pension COPs.”

“The company will pay such claims when, and in the amounts due, under and in accordance with the terms of its insurance policies,” FGIC said in a release. “The company continues to assess the situation in Detroit, Michigan.”

FGIC also insures DWSD bonds, as well as Jefferson County Alabama sewage bonds, where Syncora is also involved.

FGIC itself is facing an ongoing lawsuit in federal court in New York, a matter noted in the complete Proposal for creditors. The suit challenges MBIA Inc.’s division of its business into MBIA Insurance Corporation and National Public Finance Guarantee Corp in 2009, claiming the division was fraudulent under New Yorker Debtor and Creditor Law. See story at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/de5e0e28-4dc6-11e0-85e4-00144feab49a.html#axzz2WoSl7FxY

MBIA earlier contracted with the City of Detroit in a $3oo million deal to take over its income tax collection functions while raking in part of the take. The contract failed miserably.

The City of Detroit defaulted twice before on the POC debt, resulting in the assignment of a trustee, US Bank NA also present at the creditors’ meeting, to take control of the city’s revenues from the casinos first to ensure the debt would be paid. Reports from US Bank NA are nowhere to be found on what they did with all that money. The Reuters report below might give some idea.

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission has sued Detroit creditor US Bank NA for complicity in the “Midwest Madoff’s” bilking of Peregrine customers.

The news agency reported June 5, “Regulators on Wednesday launched the first lawsuit against a bank tied to the blow-up of brokerage Peregrine Financial, alleging U.S. Bancorp knowingly let Russell Wasendorf Sr. use customer money held at the bank to fund his lavish lifestyle.

“Peregrine founder Wasendorf, who has been dubbed ‘the Midwest Madoff’ for his near two-decade long scheme, began serving a 50-year sentence in February for bilking $215 million from customers.

US Bank NA sued by Commodities Futures Trading Commission June 5, 2013.

The lawsuit, brought by the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), alleges a unit of U.S. Bancorp [US Bank NA] let Wasendorf secure loans and other funding against money it knew belonged to his brokerage’s customers.”

Perhaps Orr needs to be investigating what US Bank NA has done with Detroit’s casino taxes.

Orr said the default on the June 14 bond payment will constitute a “termination event,” as did his appointment as Emergency Manager. This means that Wall Street can call in the entire amount of the debt owed. Orr is using the termination events as a cudgel to exact compliance from the city’s pension funds and unions, implying that Chapter 9 bankruptcy will result. Under federal law, public pensions are not specifically protected.

Invitees to the creditors’ meeting included representatives of numerous insurance companies. (Click on Creditors meeting invitees June 14 2013 for full listing from Bill Nowling, Orr’s press representative.) They included FGIC, Syncora, and FGIC’s former parent company MBIA, Inc., all involved in insuring the pension obligation debt. 

Nuveen Building in Chicago.

Three of the six insurers who wrap the city’s debt pledged to cover missed payments, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Nuveen Asset Management is the second largest holder of Detroit debt, overseeing at least $190 million of all types of debt. 

“John Miller, co-head of fixed income at Nuveen in Chicago, said he’s comfortable holding uninsured Detroit general obligations, some of which have seen yields rise to a record 16 percent,” said Bloomberg June 13. “In Jefferson County, Alabama, which reached a deal last week to exit bankruptcy, investors will get back about $1.8 billion of $3.1 billion. The uninsured bonds ‘are speculation about the ability of the emergency manager to succeed with what he’s charged with doing’ Miller said by telephone. He cited the state’s emergency-manager law, which calls for full repayment of the scheduled debt service on all muni debt.”

Orr said in his report that the city also has the option of raising taxes to cover general obligations bonds,

In anticipation of Orr’s cancellation of the POC debt payment, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the city’s debt rating to D June 12. 

Standard & Poors at opening of NASDAQ. Wall Street ratings agencies are paid by the banks they rate.

Bloomberg reported, “Detroit, the Michigan city that’s on the brink of bankruptcy, had its general-obligation bond rating cut four levels by Standard & Poor’s to CCC- from B. The so-called superdowngrade of more than three levels is based on recent announcements from the city’s emergency financial manager that Detroit may take steps to adjust payments to bondholders, as well as immediate plans to meet with bondholders to discuss the city’s financial condition and resources, S&P said today in a report.” 

Downgrades to Detroit’s debt rating only increase the amount of interest paid on outstanding as well as future debt. Orr said interest rates will not be subject to the moratorium. 

Standard and Poor’s is being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for fraudulent practices, including conspiracy with the banks it rates to jack up their profits. Wall Street ratings agencies have incurred wrath globally after they downgraded the debts of entire countries in Europe and elsewhere to force concessions from the workers and poor. 

London protest.demanding no cuts to pensions.

Meanwhile, Orr denied that the state Constitution protects public employees’ pensions, and said that changes could be negotiated with pension funds or brought to the state’s reactionary legislators. 

“We don’t view Article 9 Section 24of the State Constitution as a guarantee,” Orr said. 

His stance and that of his right-wing law firm Jones Day runs afoul of every interpretation of state constitutions in bankruptcy cases nationally, including those in California, where Stockton, Vallejo, and   have filed Chapter 9 cases. 

Stockton city worker leaves city hall; their pensions are in jeopardy,

The entire question at stake in the Stockton bankruptcy is whether federal law, which does NOT guarantee public employee pensions, can trump state law in a Chapter 9 filing. California’s Constitution has definitive protections for public pensions.There has been no definitive decision on that matter yet.

Article 9, Section 24 of Michigan’s Constitution section reads: 

“The accrued financial benefits of each pension plan and retirement system of the state and its political subdivisions shall be a contractual obligation thereof which shall not be diminished or impaired thereby. Financial benefits arising on account of service rendered in each fiscal year shall be funded during that year and such funding shall not be used for financing unfunded accrued liabilities.” 

Attorney Michael Van Overbeke, spokesperson for the Detroit General Retirement System (DGRS), which represents  non-uniformed employees and retirees, said, “We disagree completely with [Orr’s] contention. The State Constitution since 1963 has guaranteed pension benefits for public retirees. In order to change the Constitution, a general vote of the people must be held.”

He said public workers are not investors like corporations and banks, but worked for their pension benefits. If the pension benefits were not there, they would have been paid higher salaries. Public employees also match their employers’ contributions through their own annuity plans. 

Regarding the proposal’s contention that the DGRS and Police and Fire Retirement Systems (DPFRS) are vastly more underfunded than the systems’ own auditors have said, Van Overbeke said the pension systems have been given no figures to show that. 

Mlliman CEO Stephen White

The Milliman company, also hired by the city, has so far issued two reports contending severe underfunding, but they have been shown to no one. VOD never received a response to its Freedom of Information Act request for the first report, despite the fact that it was commissioned with public funds. 

DRGS’ own auditor, Gabriel, Roeder and Smith, gave it a clean bill of health and noted that it is proper practice when another company audits a system for that company to consult with the auditor in place, which has not been done. 

Van Overbeke said that if Orr tries to cut pensions and benefits for retirees, or change the composition of the pension board or even take it over as sole trustee under PA 436, “appropriate action” will be taken by the pension fund. 

He said however, that the fund would be willing to sit down and “negotiate” over matters like governance changes. 

Mike Mulholland, VP AFSCME Local 207, protests job cuts likely to be enacted under takeover.

Mike Mulholland, Vice-President of Local 207 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents water and public lighting department workers, denounced Orr’s plan to regionalize the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and separate it from Detroit after the meeting. 

“You can be assured that if and when an authority takes over, privatization will run rampant,” Mulholland said. “It’s been going on in the department. Jobs of building attendants and groundskeepers have recently been outsourced. The jobs of workers at the new dewatering sludge facility will not be city jobs.” 

He criticized the top leadership of AFSCME Council 25, which sabotaged a wildcat strike in September, 2010, for not organizing the membership to take militant direct action against such a grave attack on the city’s most valuable asset. Mulholland himself, like former Local 207 President John Riehl, both militant leaders of the strike, came under a veiled attack by Council 25 to oust them, even as DWSD is being taken from under the noses of Council 25 President Al Garrett and other top leaders who were in the creditors’ meeting. 

Wastewater Treatment Plant strike, Sept. 30, 2012

“There comes a time when you’re right against the wall and they’re beating you to death,” Mulholland said. “That is when you have to fight. At this point, strike action is the only answer, the wider the better, not only for our workers, but for the City of Detroit. The UAW took huge historic concessions in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies. At some point, the unions will cease to exist as viable entities, except as dues-collecting bodies. If that happens, it will be a terrible loss to the working class as a whole. The workers right now are in shock just like the rest of the City of Detroit. Getting them to rise up out of their fog of fear to regain their self-respect is difficult given the sell-out of our strike by the top dogs.” 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proposed radical solutions.

Regarding what happened among the union leaders present at the creditors’ conference, Mulholland said, “People were right on the verge of jumping out of their seats. Nobody wants to see Orr’s plan happen, even the leaders of Council 25. Orr made it clear that he will remove the pension boards under PA 436, but said the pension boards can still negotiate with him. By that time, he will be the only representative of the pension boards.”

As organizers of the June 22 “Freedom Walk” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s’ historic march in Detroit June 23, 1963 prepare for the event, they had best examine their consciences. Sponsors include the NAACP and the UAW, as well as corporations like GM which have devastated Detroit with plant closings. Many will attend this march in honor of the great Dr. King, but Dr. King must be turning over in his grave to know that the erstwhile inheritors of his heroic and radical legacy have failed to come to the rescue of the largest Black majority city in the world outside of Africa, through the types of militant actions he advocated, including the Montgomery bus boycott and the massive strike of Memphis sanitation workers, during which he gave his life.

Kevin Carey (l), organizer of People’s Task Force, with family members of prisoners wrongly incarcerated due to crime lab errors, after City Council hearing May 11, 2009.

June 20, 2013

VOD: Just two days after he participated in a rally against Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr at Greater Grace Temple on June 6, long-time political activist Kevin Carey  passed away,  in his fifties. He is survived by his mother Vermell Mae Carey, 84, and sisters Vanessa and Latanya Carey, among many others. He will be sorely missed by many in the struggle for justice for the oppressed peoples of this country and the world, particularly by our incarcerated sisters and brothers. He corresponded regularly with many in Michigan’s prisons and was a co-founder of the People’s Task Force, composed of family members of prisoners who fought their unjust incarceration due to crime lab errors as well as other issues.

More details will be presented later. Meanwhile, funeral arrangements are below.

KEVIN CAREY: CELEBRATE HIS LIFE OF STRUGGLE!

FUNERAL

SAT. JUNE 22  

Family hour 5:30 PM Service 6 PM

JAMES H. COLE NORTHWEST CHAPEL

16100 Schaefer

Detroit, Michigan

_________________________________________________________________

Detroit People’s Task Force members including Exec. Director Kevin Carey, left, President Marilyn Jordan, center, and Task Force Mother Valarie Watts at right during rally June 17, 2011.

Kevin Carey speaks to media at crime lab protest outside Federal Building in Detroit.

Kevin Carey is seated in second wheelchair towards center of photo, demanding a moratorium on Detroit’s debt to the banks at Detroit EM Kevyn Orr’s scheduled appearance at Greater Grace Temple, Thurs. June 6, 2013. LONG LIVE KEVIN CAREY’S UNDAUNTED SPIRIT OF STRUGGLE!

 Related articles:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/07/15/people%e2%80%99s-task-force-continues-battle-to-expose-crime-lab-crimes-in-protests-at-fed-bldg-city-council/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/06/23/families-demand-worthy-must-go-free-prisoners-convicted-on-falsified-crime-lab-evidence/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/06/15/dpd-msp-and-worthy-guilty-in-crime-lab-cases-says-peoples-task-force/

Related article by Michael Harris, one of the prisoners Kevin Carey corresponded with:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/02/29/time-for-voting-rights-for-michigan-prisoners/

Anti-EM press conference: l to r Attorney Herbert Sanders, Rev. Jess Jackson, US Cong. John Conyers, Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, Wayne County Commissioner Martha Scott, Mayoral candidate Krystal Crittendon, AFSCME Co 25 Pres Al Garrett

From: Krystal Crittendon (crittendonformayor@att.net)

 June 19, 2013 

Dear Detroit Supporter:

Mayoral Candidate Krystal Crittendon

This year’s mayoral election continues to surprise us with many twists and turns. We must, however, remain focused on Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and his boss, Governor Rick Snyder, who continue to mislead Detroit residents.　

How is it that since Kevyn Orr took control over Detroit, the City’s long term debt allegedly rose from $15 billion to $22 billion?

Why does Kevyn Orr continue to insist that leasing Belle Isle to the State (to supposedly save $6 million over 10 years) is such an important priority to Detroit’s financial recovery?

Mass rally in Lansing April 13, 2011

How can Kevyn Orr say that the Detroit Water Department is of NO value to Detroit residents unless its control is turned over to a regional authority?

Why does Kevyn Orr continue to threaten to cut health care for seniors and retirees, but refuse to go after millions of dollars owed by millionaires and billionaires?

Why is it that Kevyn Orr’s reports do not even mention a plan to evaluate the City’s continued practice of granting tax abatements, even though it can no longer afford to do so, or mention a plan to require the banks and mortgage companies which own thousands of parcels of abandoned and blighted properties to either rehabilitate, sale or demolish those properties?

Mike Illitch owes millions to the City of Detroit but instead is planning to build a new $600 M Red Wings Arena, displacing poor Detroiters.

As Detroit’s next Mayor, I will continue to fight Kevyn Orr’s right to exist as dictator over Detroit’s finances.

As Detroit’s next Mayor, I will negotiate with City employee labor unions to secure the $150 million in wage and health care concessions that the unions agreed to more than a year ago.

As Detroit’s next Mayor, I will pursue, and if needed, sue to collect hundreds of millions of dollars owed by the State and private corporations.

As Detroit’s next Mayor, I will use money collected and saved to pay down Detroit’s debts and to improve City services for Detroit residents, businesses and visitors.

I am asking for your financial support to allow me to continue to spread my message that Detroit does not need an Emergency Manager; Detroit needs to manage its (alleged) emergency.

Please visit my web page:

www.kyrstalcrittendon.com, click the “Donate” tab, and use Pay Pal to donate $5, $10, $15, $20 or more to: Committee to Elect Krystal A. Crittendon Mayor.

Together, WE WILL WIN on Tuesday, August 6^th, and again in November!

Thank you in advance,

Krystal A. Crittendon

“What is coming is better than what has been.”

Obama-Inspired Surrender of Black Leadership Makes Real Criminal Code Reform, Mass Incarceration Rollback Unlikely

Wed, 06/19/2013 – 14:53  

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

 There’s a House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Overcriminalization committed to combing through the federal code looking for ways to lock up fewer people. Should we get our hopes up, or get our fight for justice and rolling back the state on? Will the black misleadership class be any help? Probably not much. Should that stop us? Let’s hope not. 

Bruce Dixon

The common, and grossly misguided pillars of African American political “wisdom” since the beginning of Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House in 2006 till the present day have been shut down discussions of differences between African Americans, so white folks will think we’re united; don’t press thorny and embarrassing political demands upon the First Black President, because he’s the President Of All Americans, not just us; close ranks around the First Black President to strengthen his hand against any and all critics.

Black America has deployed itself as a wall around Barack Obama [7]. In practice however, the only thing we really protect President Obama and the class of black political misleaders over which he presides from is their duty to represent and do right by us.

California prison accommodations recall those on slave ships.

There’s no issue that uniquely affects black lives, black families and black communities more than mass incarceration, the rise of the current prison state. Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to address the racist laws that specified penalties for crack vs. powdered cocaine at 100 to 1. But even with record black voter turnouts, a black Attorney General, 42 black members of Congress, Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and a black president, the disparity was lightened to a mere 18 to 1, while not a single one of the tens or hundreds of thousands of unfair sentences being served were lightened by a single hour.

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, AG Eric Holder

Members of Congress floated the excuse that it was the best they could do against Republican intransigence, even though Republicans were in a minority when they did that deal. The fact is that from the president and his attorney general on down none of our black political leaders were willing to put their star power, their oratorical and deal-making skills, their political careers on the line. None were willing to handcuff themselves to the White House fence, or go on a hunger strike. But opportunity is knocking again, this time in the form of a bipartisan House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Overcriminalization. Supposedly, they and their staffers will comb through the vast library of federal criminal code looking for ways to lock up fewer people.

Georgia prisoners who went on strike across the state in 2010 sustained severe beatings and ongoing torture there.

There are lots of opinions in play. Right On Crime, an influential and well-funded conservative imagine tank headed by Newt Gingrich, believes the only thing really wrong with the prison state is how much it costs. This was the guiding spirit in similar efforts to address “overincarceration” in Texas and Georgia. Others, even other conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation, want to address the lack of any intent and “mistake of law” provisions in thousands of current federal criminal laws. Lack of these provisions means that people can and are found guilty of offenses they have no knowledge that they’re committing and when defendants have no intention to violate any law.

There are and ought to be more progressive opinions in the mix too. The good people at places like the Sentencing Project and ACLU, and more like and unlike them, will weigh in as well. But these are organizations mainly of lawyers, good for producing briefing papers and giving respectful testimony at hearings. That won’t do the trick. Pushing the rock of the prison state uphill will take a lot more, including some profound disrespect of the authority that led us where we are today. It would be a great good thing to see local and national organizations composed of and led by the formerly incarcerated and the families of the imprisoned involved in aggressive, insistent and impolite advocacy for justice.

Santa Rosa Occupy participants confront riot police.

My guess, however, is that the traditional civil rights leaders funded by corporations and feeling a lot more responsibility to the White House and their funders than they do to the people and communities affected by the prison state, will cut a series of bad, lazy deals. Their top priority will be not embarrassing the president by demanding that he act like a leader on this issue.

NAACP President Ben Jealous and NAN President Al Sharpton.

Rev. Al and Ben Jealous will probably put on a show of involving the White House or Attorney General, have a DC rally or two and strive mightily to divert the energies of those outraged at the prison state into voting Democrat in the 2014 elections. The problem is that we’ve already been voting the last three elections in record numbers without much effect on the incarceration rate. It’s not that the current black leadership has forgotten the arts of creative confrontation and political organizing outside electoral mobilizations. Their predecessors stopped doing that stuff more than 4 decades ago, when many of them were toddlers or still unborn.

We’ll have to learn the arts of creative confrontation all over again for this new era. And it IS a new era, one in which anybody who disrupts business as usual to achieve political ends may be labeled a “domestic terrorist [14].”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. under arrest.

We can confidently predict that the current black political class will do its best to let this opportunity to roll back the prison state slip through its fingers just like they did the crack-vs-powder cocaine disparity back back in 2009 and 2010. Surrender and accommodation, and taking credit for imaginary victories are in their DNA. But we hope their voices aren’t the only ones heard in black America. We hope to use the existence of the House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Overcriminalization to breathe new life into honest explorations of how the prison state affects us all, and how we can challenge it.

Our black misleadership class  can and likely will make us lose this battle. But the war against the prison state is one that we will eventually win.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him via this site’s contact page, or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

Black Agenda Report is proud to partner with Black Talk Radio Network. You can hear Black Agenda Radio’s weekly commentaries as well as our hour-long weekly radio show at Black Talk Radio Network, along with much, much more.

By Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, Education Advocate

June 18, 2013

Talking to a group of students I was asked, “What are we marching for Ms. D?”. I realized during that conversation that there’s a generational gap and transfer of knowledge regarding our story and struggle. Throughout our lively dialog I shared the following:

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo speaking at City Council hearing Aug. 30, 2012

Every right we have in America, someone took a stand that wasn’t always popular or embraced. I shared that Detroit finds itself in utter turmoil with the existence of Emergency Managers controlling our city and schools, coupled with the existence of a separate and unequal education experiment the Educational Achievement Authority. While the aforementioned systems have systemic challenges that demand systematic resolution, the methodologies used by those in power does nothing more than widen the gap of race, power and privilege polarization.

Voter’s Rights are under attack and the basic quality of life we so freely enjoy is being eroded by the attack on labor, the lack of jobs, and legislation seeking to further nullify our rights. The Emergency Manager’s recent threat to misuse Michigan’s legislative process to place a choke hold on seniors’ pensions while protecting art at the DIA is wrong! We still have not recovered from the blatant attack on Democracy during the lame duck passage of a new EM Law and Right to Work legislation. This form of government is the very essence of hypocrisy of democracy.

Click Here to View: Citizen’s Reaction to the Threat of Taking their Pensions.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leading freedom march in Detroit, June 23, 1963. He had no corporate sponsors, and many ministers in the city, including Black pastors, refused to march with him., That situation is reminiscent of the reaction to the current EM/bankers’ takeover of Detroit,

Dr. King shared his views on unjust laws in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he addressed the media’s attempt to categorize him as lawless and contradictory to the cause of peace and nonviolence.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support striking AFSCME sanitation workers and was assassinated there shortly after he marched with them.

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Carpool during Montgomery bus boycott, which brought Jim Crow to its knees.

That is why we must all gather to march for a change in our legislature, a change in our educational systems, to protect our voting rights, to protect labor, to renounce power and privilege over the will of the people. We must march to write a new chapter in Detroit as we take a stand for Democracy during Freedom Walk, Saturday, June 22nd, 9 a.m., gathering at Woodward and Forest. Together we can restore Voting Rights and Democracy for Detroit!

To Register call: (313) 871-2087 or visit FreedomWalkDetroit.com

Education Advocate, M.Ed.

@DetroitEducator

Education in the News:

Freep: Thousands Expected to Rally Wednesday, 6/19, in Lansing for Education

Crains: 650 Layoffs resulting non-payment of Robert Bobb DPS Contract

Education Next: Why all the hype for Michelle Rhee?

Freep: Bills to dissolve Michigan Public Schools on Fast Track

Diane Ravitch Blog: Save Michigan Public Schools Rally

EAA Chancellor Fibbed on Grant Application

DetNews: E.A.A. Embellish Authority on Federal Grant

Rep. Ellen Lipton E.A.A. FOIA documents highlight $12 million loan from DPS

While VOD certainly supports any march commemorating the heroism of Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr., we question the NAACP and the UAW, indicated as sponsors of this march, on why they are not using Dr. King’s most effective tactics, e.g. the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the strike of Memphis AFSCME workers in 1968, during which he was assassinated.

Related article about the history of the 1963 March and the refusal of many ministers and others in the city, including the NAACP, to participate.

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/5286/forgotten_history_c_l_franklin_s_battle_to_stage_detroit_s_1963_march_to_freedom#.UcE8B8rNmSo

Detroit EM Kevyn Orr speaks to reporters after meeting with creditors Fri. June 14, 2013.

The Detroit Emergency Manager: A Historical Look Vs. the Standard Version… 

by Jamon Jordan (Notes) on Friday, June 14, 2013 at 11:03am

(VOD editor’s note: Story will be forthcoming shortly from VOD on Kevyn Orr’s meeting with the creditors, which we covered as seen in the photo above from the Detroit News. Meanwhile, this is an excellent article by Nsoroma Institute African Community Studies teacher and historian Jamon Jordan, published on his Facebook page.)

Detroit youth enjoy Belle Isle Sept. 14, 2012.

 Okay, so the Detroit Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr has said that he plans to give Belle Isle to the State (long term lease with administrative control over the island). He has also said that the Water Dept., which is the most powerful resource the city of Detroit has, will be surrendered to a private or regional entity and be refinanced so that the city’s control will be effectively ended.

Many applaud Orr as being a fiscally serious problem solver who is fixing what Detroit political leaders have been too lazy or inept to do for decades? But is THAT the case?

As a historian, I do NOT view present reality in a vacuum. One must take a HISTORICAL view to understand present-day conditions. So how REALLY did Detroit get in this financial quandary?

Dr. Ossian Sweet and his family’s house, which he defended from a white mob in the 1920’s. He was charged and later acquitted. His attorney was Clarence Darrow.

1.) In the early 1900s, Black people fled the South in what is known as the Great Migration. They were fleeing racism, sharecropping, lynchings and lack of political power and civil rights. They came to cities like Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Cincinnati and Detroit. This caused major racial tensions in the North. In Detroit in the 1920s, Dr. Ossian Sweet killed a white man who was part of a mob gathered outside of his house. In the 1940s, there were a number of incidents involving whites attacking Black people for moving in all-white areas. The most significant being the Detroit race riot of 1943.

2.) As a result of white supremacy, Henry Ford created a few white cities (Westland, Garden City, Wayne) so that whites would not have to live near the Black people who were working in his and other auto factories. However, this was not enough. So MORE suburbs were built and the federal government colluded with white leaders in Michigan to steer federal funds to build roads and highways that would lead whites out of the city to their federally financed homes, and INTO the city to their inner-city jobs. One of these freeways, I-75/375 was extended to downtown Detroit and destroyed the Black business district – Paradise Valley.

While Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries may have initiated the Detroit Plan in the late 1940s, it was his successor Mayor Albert Cobo, 1950-57, (above, pointing) who pile-drived the idea into something tangible. Though regarded as a good mayor by 1950s standards, Cobo definitely set in place a social minefield of problems which would later explode on his successors. Perhaps history has granted him leniency because he died in office. Nevertheless, his failure to address the acute black housing problem may have pleased his constituents, but it was to spell doom for the city in the racial upheaval of the 1960s.
From: Detroit: The Blood Never Dried.

3.) The city, which was run by white leaders totally, took out loans to build roads, water infrastructure, and all the necessities so that white workers would have the amenities they needed in their new suburban digs.

4.) To afford to live in these suburban areas, the city employees needed FAT retirement packages and LARGE health care benefits. The white city leaders granted these packages forcing the burden on future generations of Detroiters and workers. Understand, that this is the 40s, 50s, & 60s, and the city workforce was nearly ALL-WHITE.

Northland Mall in 1954. It was built on Southfield swampland just outside the white northwest side of Detroit by the J.L. Hudson Company,

5.) At the same time, with whites moving to the suburbs at increasing speed, the tax monies the city received began to fall. Major retailers and manufacturers began to move to the suburbs because they KNEW that whites were beginning to stop shopping in Detroit, while at the same time, they knew that Black people WOULD venture to the suburbs in order to shop. At that time, suburban malls and shopping centers became the mainstay of suburbs and Detroit retailers began to fold one by one.

6.) The MAJOR retailers were then given MAJOR tax abatements in order to keep them in the inner city – General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Hudson’s, Michigan Bell, and so on…However, many of them took the money they saved from tax abatements and build mall stores and suburban shops and CLOSED their stores, thus abandoning Detroit and depleting the finances of the city.

Hedge fund vultures

7.) Detroit HAD to sell bonds to try and stay afloat. Wall Street knew that municipal bonds would be paid with interest even if a state/federal bailout was necessary, as what happened in New York City in the 70s. Wall Street effectively controlled the economy of the city for the last 40 years, and much of the so-called debt, is NOT to vendors, but to Wall Street billionaire investors and firms.

8.) John Engler, in a bid to corporations and conservative politics, made a deal with then-Mayor Dennis Archer in 1998. The state of Michigan would give Detroit $333.9 million annually for nine years in revenue sharing funds — if the city would ratchet down its highest-in-the-state city income tax rates. The city could have gained $700 million in additional funds in the period – for a city that has run repeated deficits (and piled up billions in bond & pension debt to compensate. Detroit lost $220 million worth of revenue sharing, plus $433 million to $508 million in income tax it wasn’t allowed to collect.

Engler

Granholm

The next governor, Jennifer Granholm, had a failing economy and did not honor the deal, and no-Governor Rick Snyder, also acknowledges the deal, but refuses to honor following any part of it. Thus, at the very least, a half billion dollars due to Detroit is not forthcoming. 

9.) Numerous corporations owe back taxes, and other fees to the city ofetroit. However, Wall Street has effectively forced Detroit to NOT go after these businesses, many of which are CLIENTS of the major Wall Street firms. If Detroit had vigorously sought to retrieve the missing dollars from these corporations (DTE, Chrysler, GM, Ford, AT&T, etc), Wall Street investors would have called in their bond markers which would have rendered Detroit bankrupt overnight.

Snyder

10.) The reality is that Detroit’s emergency financial manager is NOT here to save the city. He is an agent not just of the state and Rick Snyder, but of the Wall Street investors and bond-holders who OWN Detroit’s debt. The same firms who bankrupted the nation in 2007-08, and destroyed the economy. At the same time, the rich and powerful are never made to feel the pinch of Detroit’s woes.

Whole Foods is now in Midtown because the city & state gave him tax abatements and development funds that will assure that the store makes money even if it never sells a thing. The deal for the tw0 Meijer’s Stores in Detroit is even larger.

Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History,

When the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) was threatened with its PRICELESS collections being sold, which would have wiped out the city’s debt IMMEDIATELY (one Rembrandt in the DIA is reportedly worth $250 million), the rich and powerful, who CONTROL the DIA and view it as their living room, forced the state to pass a law almost overnight to prevent that from EVER happening. However, that law does not pass on the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, which has items that are PRICELESS in our history. They may very well be sold or taken into receivership.

Jim Crow is dead! MLK Day March in Detroit, 2011.

The reality is, you don’t need to much of a historian or a media junkie to be aware that Emergency Managers and Emergency Financial Managers in Michigan have been largely unsuccessful in municipalities and school districts. No matter how they try to force-feed us fake fake facts, Robert Bobb and Roy Roberts have both failed to fix the finances of Detroit Public Schools. They have only been successful in giving large contracts to cronies, closing dozens of schools and giving many buildings away to charter schools and creating a rival district, the Educational Achievement Authority, that is FAILING. Numerous cities and school districts have had multiple emergency managers and/or have stayed in financial emergency for YEARS with the emergency manager being reappointed over and over again.

We must always challenge the standard narrative that is given to us in regards to what has happened. The standard version is generally speaking, a myth.

SOURCES:

1.) Arnesen, Eric (2002). Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents.

2.) Gregory, James N. (January 17, 2007). The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America.

3.) Wilkerson, Isabel (2010). The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.

4.) Sugrue, Thomas (2008) Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.

5.) Sugrue, Thomas (2005) The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.

6.) Coontz, Stephanie (1992) The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

7.) Freund, David (2010) Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America.

8.) Maura Webber Sadovi June 4, 2013, Wall Street Journal article, Whole Foods Bets Detroit (Whole Foods received about $6 million in city/state subsidies ) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324423904578523712663750112.html

9.) Robert Snell, Darren A. Nichols and Christine Ferretti June 14, 2013 – The Detroit Newshttp://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130614/METRO01/306140057#ixzz2WCc6mDaz

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130614/METRO01/306140057/EM-Orr-meets-creditors-plan-restructure-Detroit?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

10.) Mark Stryker and John Gallagher Detroit Free Press June 2, 2013, Detroit Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/20130602/NEWS01/306020080/Detroit-bankruptcy-assets-sale-DIA