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Protest outside Detroit EM Kevyn Orr’s “public meeting” June 10, 2013.

  GRS Review of Milliman’s City of Detroit Retirement System Studies

May 2, 2013

Gabriel, Roeder, Smith & Company (GRS) is the retained actuary for both the General Retirement System of the City of Detroit and the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit. GRS is a Michigan based company with a national practice, and is a leader in Public Sector Retirement Consulting. Recently, the City of Detroit engaged Milliman, Inc., a Seattle based consulting firm, to perform certain actuarial analyses of the City of Detroit’s Retirement Systems in connection with the April 2012 financial stability agreement between the State of Michigan and the City of Detroit.

Child at protest outside CAYMA July 26, 2012.

GRS performs an actuarial valuation of both Retirement Systems each year. The actuarial valuations develop the liabilities and funded ratios of the plans as of the valuation date. They also develop the City’s contribution rates for the fiscal year that starts one year after the valuation date, based on established funding policies. The reports typically present information that allows the reader to understand the extent to which contribution rates may be expected to increase (or decrease) in the future and may provide recommendations on the operation of the System.

An article in the February 26, 2013 Detroit Free Press “Police, fire pension costs could crush Detroit’s finances, study shows” asserts that Milliman has “audited” our 2010 valuation reports and found that “the GRS numbers … don’t hold water.” Milliman’s work for the City was confidential and not available to us or to the Retirement Systems at the time the Detroit Free Press article appeared. Consequently, our ability to respond was very limited. We have since obtained a copy of the study which was dated July 6, 2012 and have reviewed it. Nowhere does the study contain the statement that “the GRS numbers … don’t hold water.” The study does, however imply that our calculations may be biased and it contains the following statement on page 2:

Milliman offices

“The following table contains our very rough preliminary guesstimates (“VRPG”) of the potential actual state of the [City of Detroit Retirement] systems. Please note that these VRPGs are based on a high level analysis using rules of thumb and knowledge from general experience are not based on any detailed calculations”

The study goes on to present figures that are remarkably different from the actuarial calculations that experienced public sector actuaries at GRS prepared using detailed data on the operation of the Systems and robust actuarial software. GRS work, which was not based on “VRPG”, complies with relevant pronouncements of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) and actuarial standards of practice.

Different actuaries can draw different conclusions from the same set of facts, just as different physicians could provide different advice to the same patient. While the Milliman firm is free to disagree with our analysis of the financial position of the City’s retirement systems, we believe that such disagreement must not be based upon VRPG and rules of thumb, but rather on detailed actuarial calculations performed by actuaries with significant experience with public sector retirement.

We are disappointed with the Detroit Free Press for publishing the “don’t hold water” comment, which was nowhere to be found in the Milliman report, and for not mentioning that all of Milliman’s figures were clearly disclosed as very rough preliminary guesstimates (“VRPG”). Indeed, Milliman’s report cautioned that “…any third party recipient of this report should be aided by its own actuary or other qualified professional when reviewing the report”.

We are also disappointed with Michigan’s Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) Law (PA 436), which adds power to the EFM in cases where a retirement system is less than 80% funded. First, the 80% figure itself is arbitrary. A system that is less than 80% funded can be in good financial condition and a system that is more than 80% funded could have problems.

Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant workers and their children walked strike lines Sept. 2012.

Second, the law provides the Emergency Financial Manager with very different powers over a retirement system that is 79.9% funded versus one that is 80.1% funded, which can lead to distracting arguments over minor differences in judgment regarding actuarial techniques or assumptions that affect the computed funding level. Finally, the law potentially requires the exclusion of certain assets from the calculation of the funded percent that would not normally be excluded in valuations that comply with GASB standards.

The City of Detroit has well known and very significant financial problems. Those problems were caused by a loss of industrial tax base, a very large drop in the City’s population, and obviously the credit crisis. The City’s Retirement Systems in total have about half the active members they had in 1983 and approximately twice as many retired people as active members.

Result of bank/tax foreclosure tidal wave in Detroit: vacant lots, abandoned homes.

With the market value of Retirement System assets dropping, and the payroll and tax base already having dropped, there is indeed a risk that the contribution needs of the Retirement Systems may rise to levels as a percentage of payroll that will be difficult for the City to afford. Indeed, both Milliman and GRS have produced projections showing similar results regarding future contribution needs. This means that the issues that the Retirement Systems face are,  for the most part, a consequence of the City’s problems, and not a cause of those problems.

Contrary to the title of the Detroit Free Press article, it is not the Retirement Systems that will crush the City. Both the City and its Retirement Systems are being harmed by external forces.

The problems that the City and its two Retirement Systems face will not be solved with poorly conceived newspaper articles, VRPG’s, and secret reports that are not made available to the Retirement System or the Retirement System’s public sector actuary in a timely manner.

The problems can be solved with all parties working together in a spirit of cooperation and in an environment of transparency.

Twenty Thousand retirees depend on the Retirement Systems for their financial security. These are people who have devoted their entire lives to the people of the City of Detroit. They deserve our best.

Statement from the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit regarding Pension Funding Levels. Continue reading →

June 26, 2013

Detroit City Council members who voted for the Consent Agreement April 4, 2012, on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

(From VOD editor, not Independent Undergound News & Talk): What goes around comes around. Charles Pugh has been an enemy of the people of Detroit since he became a City Council member. He colluded with Gov. Rick Snyder, Mayor Dave Bing, and five other members of the City Council (Gary Brown, now an aide to EM Kevyn Orr, Saunteel Jenkins, James Tate, Kenneth Cockrel, Jr, and Andre Spivey) in composing and approving the Public Act 4 Consent Agreement April 4, 2012, which Orr says is now HIS “roadmap,” as well as harmful contracts.

Pugh forced Detroit citizens including Sandra Hines (r) and others to wait in hallway while Council discussed vital matters.

The Sell-Out Six approved contracts with Jones Day, Miller Canfield, Milliman, Ernst & Young, and Miller Buckfire, all of whom helped Orr draft the devastating “Proposal for Creditors” presented June 14, 2013.

During Pugh’s tenure, he repeatedly gained the enmity of the public by refusing to hold Council meetings on such vital matters in the Auditorium, forcing seniors, disabled and others to wait outside in the hall to speak, and denying them access to the meetings, guaranteed under the Open Meeti.ngs Act. He also sits on the Root Cause Committee appointed to give advice on the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department along with Gary Brown. Both have signed on to documents recommending the EMA contract, which would eliminate 81 percent of jobs at DWSD, and regionalizing the Department. See links to VOD stories involving Pugh’s sell-out of the people below this article from Independent Undergraoud.)

Charles Pugh at Council meeting April 9, 2013 where protesters were arrested.

DETROIT – –As Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr prepares to suspend City Council President Charles Pugh (D) without pay due to a request to take weeks of paid medical leave from his elected duties, local news station WDIV – Channel 4 latest report alleges Pugh’s absence might be tied to another reason.

Reporter Mara McDonald attended a press conference this evening with a local attorney alleging that Pugh, who is openly gay, [had an inappropriate relationship with] a former Detroit Public School student.

Legal counsel for the student, 17 years old at the time, claims the alleged behavior with the City Council President occurred when Pugh operated a mentoring program out of Douglass Academy [formerly Murray-Wright High School].

The teen’s attorney claims text messages exist quantifying an alleged relationship existed between Pugh and the former student.

“A Metro Detroit attorney representing an 18-year-old man and his mother claims Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh had an inappropriate relationship with a student at Douglass Academy.

The attorney says he will not provide copies of texts between Pugh and the teenager and was not willing to elaborate on what Pugh may have written to the teen. During a Wednesday press conference he did, however, say Pugh took the student off campus in a city car and bought him gifts.”

Students walked out of Douglass Academy last year to protest “inferior” education they were receiving under DPS EM Roy Roberts.

Officials from DPS Douglass Academy released a statement stating school officialS recently learned of the alleged inappropriate texts or relationship from the accuser’s mother.er. A press release statement by Douglass Academy personnel confirmed school personnel were working with the mother in an attempt to resolve the matter, WDIV reported.

“The mother of a recent Douglass Academy graduate approached the school with concerns regarding her son’s mentor. At the time, the school reached out to the parent who stated that she would prefer to handle the matter personally.

Family spokesman Skip Mongo (l) with attorneys for teen in lawsuit vs. Pugh,

The school has since contacted the parent again in writing seeking to resolve the concerns, and is awaiting a response. The school and the district will fully review the program in question, as would be the case whenever concerns are expressed by a parent.”

The former student’s attorney also claimed to WDIV during this evening’s press conference Detroit Public Schools District did nothing to protect the boy, which DPS officials dispute.

Pugh has been absent from his duties on Detroit City Council for at least two weeks.

According to The Detroit Free Press, after Monday, June 24th formal council session Pugh’s office staff issued a memo stating the Council President would take medical leave for three to four weeks.

Detroit EM Kevyn Orr (r) with advisors (l-r) Bruce Bennett of Jones Day and Kenneth Buckfire during press briefing on Proposal for Creditors June 14, 2013.

Emergency Manager Kevin Orr’s Spokesperson Bill Nowling told the Freep, Pugh would have until 5pm ET June 26th to further explain reasons surrounding his absence or be suspended without pay.

Presently, it’s unknown who will fill Pugh’s official duties on Detroit City Council as President. Pro-Tem President Gary Brown resigned from his duly elected position June 26th to take a role as Deputy Emergency Manager under unelected Emergency Manager Kevin Orr’s leadership.

WIth President Pugh’s pending suspension, Brown’s resignation and former member Kwame Kenyatta’s resignation from council due to health reasons, the City of Detroit’s legislative branch of government is down from nine to six members.

Independent Underground News & Talk offers developments on this story, as warranted.

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 How Complacency, Complicity of Black Misleadership Class Led to Supreme Court Evisceration of the Voting Rights Act

Bruce Dixon

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

June 26, 2013

Did the Supreme Court kneecapping of the Voting Rights Act have to happen?  Could black leadership have seen it coming and prevented it? Why didn’t they, and what can we do now?

(VOD note: The Jones Day law firm, the former employer of Detroit EM Kevyn Orr, and also made the city’s “debt re-structuring consultant” by the Detroit City Council, supported the stance of Shelby County in Shelby County v. Holder.)

Yesterday’s June 25 Supreme Court ruling tearing the guts out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be a surprise to nobody. As recently as 2009, Chief Justice John Roberts telegraphed his specific intent to kneecap the Voting Rights Act by invalidating its enforcement formula.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts

“Things have changed in the South. Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels…”

Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act rested on the history of open and legal Jim Crow in the south persisting right up until the 1960s, along with the enormous disparities between black and white voter registration and turnout. In 1965 for example, only 7% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote, compared to 70% of whites.

Chicago’s first Black mayor, the late Harold Washington, declares victory.

By the early 1980s, when black registration and turnout in Chicago for the first time surpassed that of whites, enabling the election of that city’s first black mayor, it might have dawned on some that the rationale for the Voting Rights Act stood on increasingly shaky ground. If and when black voter participation reached similar levels nationwide, the victory of voting rights would have to be consolidated, put beyond the reach of succeeding Congresses, judges and executives. The only way to do that is by amending the US Constitution to make the vote a constitutional right.

The argument for putting the right to vote in a constitutional amendment was best made by Frank Watson and Jesse Jackson Jr. in their 2001 book Toward a More Perfect Union. A constitutional voting rights amendment, specifying a citizen’s right to vote, they explained, would have far reaching consequences.

It would require the establishment of a uniform standard of who could register and how registration takes place, along with standards for how voting machines are procured, allocated and operated, and how votes are counted. A constitutional right to vote would provide easy grounds for removing corporate money and the contributions of wealthy individuals from political campaigns, ending felony disenfranchisement, banning gerrymandering, voter caging, discriminatory voter ID laws, and a thousand other ruses and schemes employed to keep minorities and the poor away from the polls and to minimize the effect of their votes when these are cast.

The Black Political Class Looks the Other Way

Amending the US Constitution however, is hard work, not for the lazy or faint of heart. It requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by 38 state legislatures, a herculean task unthinkable without the creation of a powerful grassroots movement, the like of which black leaders no longer knew how to build. On the positive side, opponents of such an amendment would be stuck having to explain why the right to vote should NOT be a constitutional right. But the negatives won.

Revs. Wendell Anthony, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton joined reactionary Detroit Mayor Dave Bing in leading Detroit “Freedom Walk” June 22, 2013 commemorating Dr. King’s 1963 Detroit march. Photo: Ken Snodgrass

The black political class instead crossed its fingers, complacently pretended the partial victory of the Voting Rights Act was “settled law,” and concentrated on boosting their own and each others’ illustrious careers, and ceaselessly commemorating the victories of the sixties, since beyond those careers there was little indeed to show.

I worked with Barack Obama in a 1992 Project Vote Illinois registration drive that signed up 130,000 new voters and flogged them out to the polls. President Clinton signed a Motor Voter registration law to make voter registration easier in the brief period he had a congressional majority, but dozens of state governments dominated by Republicans including northern states like Illinois refused to implement it.

By the late 1990s states like Florida were deploying legal barriers to the conduct of similar registration drives, such as levying huge fines on volunteer registrars for clerical errors and making mistakes on registration forms felonies. A decade later, the kinds of successful voter registration drives we conducted in Illinois in the 80s and 90s were legally impossible in much of the United States, thanks to nearly identical legislation introduced in state after state. A coordinated assault on voting rights was clearly underway. Alarm bells should have been ringing from one end of the black political class to the other, but the black political class was too lazy to hear them.

Senator Barack Obama on the Judiciary Committee

Justices Alito, Roberts

Barack Obama, whose first political act was the successful 1992 voter registration drive in Illinois, reached the US Senate in the 2004 election. It was the same year Florida officials repeated everything they’d done four years earlier to reduce the black vote, and the same year county officials in Ohio sent new and functional voting machines to their white suburban constituents, and old and defective ones to minority areas. Black voters had to stand in line 10 hours for a chance to vote.

A freshman senator, Barack Obama was assigned right away to the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary Committees, prestigious assignments coveted by senators of many years’ seniority. The Judiciary Committee interviews, questions, and passes or rejects all presidential nominations to the US Supreme Court. While Obama sat on that committee, the nominations of Samuel Alito for associate justice and John Roberts for chief justice were considered.

It was no secret that both Alito and Roberts were committed right wing extremists, and associated with the Federalist Society, a fraternity of lawyers founded in 1982 dedicated to repealing social security, the New Deal, antitrust law, the FDA, consumer protections and civil rights legislation of all sorts, basically civilized and civilizing reform passed in the 20^th century. Though the Federalist Society does not disclose its membership, Roberts appeared in their 1997-98 leadership directory, and after his ascent to the high court, Alito has been an honored guest at more than one Federalist Society event.

Barack Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review as a student.

As a former president of the Harvard Law Review, Senator Obama was intimately familiar with the goals and objectives of the Federalist Society. Grassroots Democratic activists besieged Senators Obama and Kerry, both on the Judiciary Committee, to vote against Alito and Roberts, if need be to lead a filibuster against them.

Obama and Kerry said just enough encouraging words to get the pressure off themselves, then repudiated the idea of a filibuster altogether. When the nominees came before the committee, they passed up the opportunity to grill them on their Federalist Society associations and what this might tell about their expected rulings from the bench on civil rights and other questions, opting to ask softball questions instead. Obama’s decision on the Senate Judiciary Committee not to fight, filibuster or meaningfully oppose the advancement of neo-segregationist Federalist Society thugs Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court guaranteed the virtual nullification of the Voting Rights Act which has now occurred.

Slavemaster Mich. Gov. Rick Snyder goes after Michigan’s majority-Black cities.

By the time Barack Obama got to the White House the coordinated assault on voting rights took the form of ALEC-introduced voter ID laws. The Justice Department was slow, at best, at contesting voter ID laws, and paid no attention at all to state laws that criminalized voter registration drives such as the one the president once headed in Illinois. The rest of the black political class, following their president’s lead, did the same, and the rest is tragic history.

(VOD note: US Attorney General Eric Holder/Pres. Barack Obama did nothing to stop the attack on Black voting rights in Michigan, first under Public Act 4, and now under Public Act 436.)

The black political class, which was brought into existence by the voting rights act, has failed to protect its constituency, failed to protect even themselves. They possessed the moral high ground and the political initiative for a generation and squandered it through inattention and inaction. They spent more time celebrating the victories of the sixties than consolidating them, and we will all pay the price.

We can and must blame neo-segregationist Republican thugs in black robes for doing what they do.. That’s clear, cut and dry. But a large share of the blame in this week’s kneecapping of the Voting Rights Act also belongs to our lazy and complacent black political establishment, our black misleadership class, who lacked the vision to see this coming, or the courageous leadership to avoid it, or in most cases both.

It’s not too late to begin organizing for and demanding a constitutional right to vote, along with perhaps an amendment to take the rights of citizenship away from corporations. But we can’t expect any help from traditional black leadership on that one.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party.

Cheek swab for DNA.

Maryland V. King OKS pre-conviction DNA testing

Attorney Jermaine Wyrick

By Attorney Jermaine Wyrick

June 27, 2013
A June 3, 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling diminished the privacy that individuals have in their genes.  The crux of the controversy, as with any search, is balancing “the promotion of legitimate governmental interests” against the “degree to which the search intrudes upon an individual’s privacy.” 

In a landmark decision, Maryland v. King, the United States Supreme Court decided that police can swab the cheeks of arrested individuals for DNA samples – samples that contain the intimate details of each person’s genetic makeup, without violating the Fourth Amendment.  (Read decision at Maryland V King USSC.)

Alonzo King

In 2009, a 26 year old Maryland man, Alonzo King, DNA was collected after his arrest on assault charges.  His DNA was later matched with a sample from a rape kit in another case, six years prior.  Consequently, he appealed his rape conviction.  The Maryland Supreme Court held the state law that authorizes the warrantless collection and use of the pre-conviction DNA sample was unconstitutional.  Maryland is one of 28 states including Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, the Carolinas, and Virginia – to enact laws allowing the pre-conviction collection of DNA. 

Maryland Chief Deputy Attorney General Katherine Winfree argued a “Just trust us” defense that the law “enables the state to identify perpetrators of the crimes.”  Specifically, 225 DNA profile matches made led to 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions.  Furthermore the Maryland law limits DNA data collection to suspects in cases involving violent crimes.

Winfree distinguished between traffic stops, which are inherently “brief and temporary,” from arrestees in police custody that are suspected of dangerous offenses.  Moreover, Winfree argued, “The cornerstone of our argument is that when an individual is taken into custody on a probable cause arrest, that person by virtue of being in that class of individuals whose conduct has led the police to arrest him…surrenders a substantial amount of liberty and privacy.” 

Conversely, Justice Elena Kagan stated however, “Just because you’ve been arrested doesn’t mean that you lose the privacy expectations and things you have that aren’t related to the offense that you’ve been arrested for.” 

Defense attorney Kannon Shagmugam.

Attorney Kannon K. Shanmugan argued for the defendant that the Maryland statute violates the basic legal tenet that “warrantless, suspicionless searches are presumptively unconstitutional.”   Attorney Shanmugan stated that cheek swabs are a different matter, “There is an intrusion into the body that triggers the application of the Fourth Amendment.”  

The Supreme Court decided that DNA sampling, after an arrest “for a serious offense” and when officers “bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody,” does not violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches.  Moreover, the court reasoned that, “taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.  Justice Alito, at the oral argument stated that DNA sampling, “involves a very minimal intrusion on personal privacy.”       

Justice Roberts questioned whether the expectation of privacy in one’s DNA information is reasonable, “when it’s left everywhere you have been.”  Justice Stephen Breyer opined “It goes both ways.”  He questioned the practical application of a ruling that restricts the state’s use of DNA evidence to solve crimes at a time when defendants increasingly seek the same type of evidence to exonerate them – all based on its’ inherent accuracy.” 

The court reasoned DNA testing may “significantly improve the criminal justice system and police investigative practices, by making it possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty.”  Furthermore, from a practical matter, the “buccal swab” procedure, which is quick and painless, requires no “surgical intrusion beneath the skin, and poses no threat to the arrestee’s ‘health or safety.”            

Interestingly, even conservative Justice Antonin Scalia who usually sides with law enforcement over individual rights dissented in favor of individual rights.  He stated, “I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”  He stated at oral arguments, “To catch the bad guys is a good thing.  But you know the Fourth Amendment sometimes stands in the way.”   

Jermaine A. Wyrick,  Attorney  can be reached at (313) 964-8950, or by E-Mail:  Attyjaw1@Ameritech.net, and is available for speaking engagements on legal topics. 

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.