VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

by Sean O'Neal May 28, 2011

Published on AV Club

(VOD ed. note: I was stunned and heartbroken when I woke up this morning to the news that Gil Scott-Heron had died at the age of 62. We were the same age. He was a hero of unparalleled stature to my generation. His profound and unique soul, his love for the people, and the fact that he never left them for fame and fortune are his legacy, along with his songs. All of them are available on line for free. The following biography was the best I could find, along with videos of his songs. We love you Gil, and we will carry you in our hearts forever.)

 News broke last night of the death of Gil Scott-Heron, the influential writer, poet, and musician whose marriage of politically charged spoken verse, propulsive rhythm, and blues and soul textures paved the way for hip-hop (though he would often reject that notion). The cause of death was not immediately made public, although his publicist said that he had taken ill shortly after returning from a European trip. He was 62.

“I’ll take care of U” Jan. 2011, from “I’m new here”

Scott-Heron started out as a devotee of the poet and novelist Langston Hughes, moving from his Jackson, Tennessee hometown—where he was raised after being born in Chicago—to study at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University, where Hughes had matriculated. It was there that Scott-Heron would write two early novels, The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, the first being published when he was only 19. He also formed the band Black & Blues with Brian Jackson, who would become one of his most frequent collaborators throughout the 1970s.

His first album, 1970’s Small Talk At 125th At Lenox, was recorded live at a nightclub at the titular address, with Scott-Heron (proclaimed on the cover as “A New Black Poet”) reciting his fiery verse over a minimalist backing of congas, piano, and guitar. It contains two of Scott-Heron’s most famous works: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “Whitey On The Moon.” The latter was a mordant bit of street-level social commentary in which Scott-Heron contrasted the government’s recent triumph of the moon landing with the very real problems that were left behind here on Earth (“Was all that money I made last year / For whitey on the moon?”).

Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b54rB64fXY4 to watch video of “We Almost Lost Detroit,” which discusses how DTE’s Monroe nuclear power plant almost melted down in 1966.

“Spirit” album with “Message to the Messengers”

And “Revolution”—which became even more popular after a full band re-recorded version was released in 1971—offered a dizzying array of pop culture references in its sly satire of a nation distracted by movie stars and sitcoms and the empty promises of consumerism, its wake-up call (and titular refrain) becoming a touchstone for generations of activists, poets, and musicians.

Scott-Heron’s incredible run of 13 albums in the ’70s and early ’80s, beginning with 1971’s more musically oriented Pieces Of A Man and continuing through 1982’s Moving Target, made him a critical darling, though widespread popularity eluded him. His essential 1974 album Winter In America came closest to breaking him through to a mainstream audience, thanks to the success of Caribbean-flavored single “The Bottle” (a song that’s been sampled by many hip-hop artists over the years, from the Jungle Brothers to De La Soul) and a jazz-fusion sound that incorporated African and funk rhythms. Many critics and artists over the years have pointed to Winter In America as a sort of blueprint for the hip-hop and neo-soul that would soon spring up in its wake.

Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b2F-XX0Ol0 for music video of “The Bottle.” Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VqGWfq0Btg for “Pieces of a Man.”

“The Bottle” from Pieces of a Man

For his part, Scott-Heron always rejected the notion that he had anything to do with hip-hop, preferring to call his music “bluesology,” and even occasionally saying that he didn’t want to “take the blame” for what rap would become. He would address his uneasy relationship with the genre he helped inspire most directly on 1994’s “Message To The Messengers”: The opening track on Spirits, Scott-Heron’s first album since taking a nearly 12-year break from recording, “Message” acknowledged that hip-hop was coming from the same place as the street poetry movement he’d been a part of alongside people like The Last Poets and The Watts Prophets, with Scott-Heron offering them some sage advice from the elder generation.

Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaD-FKIfYgk to listen to “Message to the Messengers.”

Album cover “Pieces of a Man”

“We got respect for you rappers and the way they be free-weighin’” he said, “But if you’re gon’ be teachin’ folks things, make sure you know what you’re sayin’”—urging them to learn “the real deal about past situations,” preach a message of peace to “all them gun-totin’ young brothers” killing each other, and clean up all the derogatory rhymes aimed at objectifying women.

While not everyone in the rap community heeded his words, obviously, Scott-Heron nevertheless became a hero to scores of hip-hop artists over the years, championed by everyone from Chuck D to Kanye West (who most recently sampled “Comment #1,” from Scott Heron’s debut, on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s “Who Will Survive In America”). And thus Scott-Heron remained a looming cult figure throughout the ’90s and beyond, even as his career was often derailed by problems with drugs, which led to two incarcerations for cocaine possession in the last decade as he struggled openly with his addictions.

Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJJi0k8wPhc for music video of “The Needle’s Eye” from album “Pieces of a Man.”

Nevertheless, Scott-Heron remained active in his later years, enjoying a renaissance in 2010 with the acclaimed, XL-released I’m New Here, which set his words to minimalist electronic music by producer Richard Russell. It’s a dark and haunting album, full of some of Scott-Heron’s most autobiographically searching material ever, and at times it borders on weary elegy in its ruminations on his own mortality. The black pall that hangs over it was lifted somewhat by the follow-up remix We’re New Here, in which The xx’s Jamie Smith provides new context with slightly brighter samples, turning the eulogy into something downright exuberant at times. Taken as a pair, both albums provide a fitting bookend to Scott-Heron’s musical worldview, which wallowed in street grime but found the hope and beauty in it too. Listening to either would make a worthy tribute to the man today—as would, of course, any of the other albums we’ve talked about here, or any that we didn’t mention, all of which are essential pieces of Scott-Heron’s legacy.

Gil Scott-Heron lives on

To listen to more Gil Scott Heron songs, only a small part of his vast repertoire, click on the links below:

Mexican workers protest against union-busting bill

By Dan La Botz

April 25, 2011

(Ed. note: the unions that stopped the bill are independent of the country’s parties. Recent actions against PA 4 in Michigan have been carried out by unions in league with the Democratic Party. See upcoming story on Benton Harbor protest against Gov. Rick Snyder May 7, whose organizers ruled out targeting Whirlpool for its corporate takeover of the city.)

Independent unions in Mexico, including the embattled electrical workers (SME), forced legislators to shelve their union-busting bill with weeks of protest.

Tens of thousands demonstrated for weeks against a right-wing attempt to destroy union rights in the legislature. They appear to have stopped the bill, at least for now.

 No, this is not Wisconsin but Mexico, where employers and the official government-connected unions joined with a center-right party (the PRI) to push a law that would virtually dismantle workers’ rights despite longstanding constitutional protections. Continue reading →

Smoke rises above buildings in Tripoli early on Tuesday after numerous heavy explosions, reportedly from NATO airstrikes, were heard in the Libyan capital. Louafi Larbi/Reuters

Smoke wafts over the city, including from an area close to the Gadhafi compound  

msnbc.com news services 5/23/2011  

TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO warplanes bombarded targets in Tripoli with more than 20 airstrikes early Tuesday, striking around Moammar Gadhafi’s residential compound in what appeared to be the heaviest night of bombing of the Libyan capital since the Western alliance launched its air campaign against his forces.

(Click on  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fUxVgxj0vc to hear specialist discuss how war against Libya has long been planned. Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeSjEOY2fd8&feature=share to see video of extensive protests in Libya against bombing and in support of Libyan leader Gadhafi.)

The rapid string of strikes, all within less than half an hour, set off thunderous booms that rattled windows, sent heavy, acrid-smelling plumes of smoke over the city, including from an area close to Gadhafi’s sprawling Bab al-Aziziya compound.

Libya bombing May 23

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said at least three people were killed and dozens wounded in NATO strikes that targeted what he described as buildings used by volunteer units of the Libyan army.

NATO said in a statement that a number of the strikes hit a vehicle storage facility adjacent to Bab al-Aziziya that has been used in supplying regime forces “conducting attacks on civilians.” It was not immediately clear if the facility was the only target hit in the barrage. Bab al-Aziziya, which includes a number of military facilities, has been pounded repeatedly by NATO strikes.

Libyans protest NATO bombing

The military aircraft whooshed low over the city during the night, the strikes coming in series of three loud booms, a pause of minutes punctuated by the hissing sound of low-flying jets, then more shaking, shuddering strikes, shaking windows miles away from Bab al-Aziziya. The sound of other more distant explosions could also be heard.

Pro-Gadhafi loyalists beeped their car horns and fired guns, shouting their support for the Libyan leader. Armed men sprayed the night sky with gunfire in response. Men screamed and shouted outside the hotel where journalists were staying, declaring their loyalty to Gadhafi.

Baby injured by NATO in Libya

Observers described the bombing as the heaviest attack on the Libyan capital since NATO began its air campaign on March 19 after the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution to protect civilians after Gadhafi responded to the public uprising against his rule by unleashing his military and his militias.

In one room of the Tripoli Central Hospital, the bodies of three mangled men in their twenties lay on stretchers, their clothing ripped and their faces partially blown away and dusty. A nurse, Ahmad Shara, told reporters taken on a government-escorted visit to the facility soon after the strikes that the men were standing outside their homes when they were killed, presumably by shrapnel.

May Day protest of U.S./NATO war on Libya, in San Salvador

One man who identified himself as a relative walked into the room where the bodies lay. He halted at their sight, turned around and loudly slapped his hands on a wall as he cried out in shock.

Around 10 other men and women lay on stretchers. They appeared moderately to lightly wounded.

“We thought it was the day of judgment,” said Fathallah Salem, a 45-year-old contractor who rushed his 75-year-old mother to the hospital after she suffered shock. The wide-eyed man described how his home trembled, his mother fainted and how the younger of his seven children cried as they heard the rolling explosions.

Protest in Britain

“You were in the hotel and you were terrified by the shaking — imagine what it was like for the people who live in slums!” Salem said, as he interrupted a government spokesman to speak to a crowd of foreign reporters at the hospital.

“Honestly, we used to have problems (with the regime),” he said in Arabic. “But today we are all Moammar Gadhafi.”

NATO to use attack helicopters
Despite NATO bombing runs, the rebels have not been able to break Gadhafi’s grip on the west of the country, including the capital Tripoli.

NATO attack helicopter

In a significant new deployment of firepower, France and Britain are bringing attack helicopters to use in the strikes in Libya as soon as possible, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said Monday.

The use of attack helicopters would appear to mark a new strategy for NATO, which has relied on strikes by fighter planes and seen that result in a stalemate on the ground as Gadhafi forces adapted, often turning to urban fighting to make such strikes more difficult.

Nimble, low-flying helicopters have much more leeway to pick targets with precision than high-flying jets. But they also are much more vulnerable to ground fire. The alliance has had no military deaths since it first started enforcing a no-fly zone on March 31.

Protest in Minneapolis

Longuet said the helicopters would be used to target military equipment such as Libyan tanker and ammunition trucks in crowded urban areas while causing fewer civilian casualties. Longuet said France would essentially use Gazelle helicopters, which have been around for some 40 years, but can also use the Tigre, a modern helicopter gunship.

NATO, which said in its statement that it took care to “minimize the risk of collateral damage to the fullest extent possible,” has been escalating and widening the scope of its strikes over the past weeks, hiking the pressure on Gadhafi, while the alliance’s members have built closer ties with the rebel movement that has control of the eastern half of Libya.

‘Signal’ of US support for rebels

U.S. and Obama behind war on Libya; NATO is a smokescreen

Meanwhile, the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in the Middle East was in the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya on Monday — a show of growing support for the loosely formed movement that seeks to oust Gadhafi.

A State Department statement called a visit to Benghazi by Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, “another signal of the U.S.’s support” for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, which it called “a legitimate and credible interlocutor for the Libyan people.”

Several countries, including France and Italy, have recognized the NTC, while the United States, Britain and others have established a diplomatic presence in Benghazi. Germany has also opened an office in Benghazi, the German government said Monday.

Aircraft carrier off Libyan shores

Qatar is the only Arab country that has recognized the rebels, and Gambia is the only nation in Africa to offer recognition.

Libya’s rebels have scrambled to organize their fighters and create a political leadership since the outbreak in mid-February of the uprising that seeks to oust Gadhafi, in power for more than four decades. Rebels now control the populated coastal strip in the country’s east and the western port city of Misrata, which Gadhafi’s forces have besieged for months. They also control pockets in Libya’s western Nafusa mountain range.

During his three-day visit, Feltman will meet with council head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil and others. Feltman departs Tuesday. He declined to answer questions by a reporter from The Associated Press Monday.

The visit follows the opening of a European Union office on Sunday by that body’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, who said she looked forward to a better Libya “where Gadhafi will not be in the picture.”

Rebel leaders welcome the diplomatic contact, but say only better weapons will help them defeat Gadhafi.

“It is just not enough to recognize (us) and visit the liberated areas,” spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga told The Associated Press. “We have tried very hard to explain to them that we need the arms, we need funding, to be able to bring this to a successful conclusion at the earliest possible time and with the fewest humanitarian costs possible.” Continue reading →

Greg Thrasher at April 13 Lansing rally against PA 4

 In our nation because of America’s greatness, dissent and alternative opinions are not only protected but in some venues even welcomed.  In a republic where democracy exists due process and the rule of law are part of the foundation of a civil society.  When politics define if a person is a terrorist or criminal the summary execution of Osama bin Laden, rather than his capture alive by our military forces brings pause.
 
For a nation that suffered and still reeks with pain of 9/11 does a war on terror bring justice or vengeance? I prefer justice from the scene of a courtroom rather than the barrel of a gun. The death of Osama bin Laden must be viewed not only in the context of the war on terror. We must also evaluate his death from the perspective of retribution and vengeance. Yet these insights have to be reviewed in the context of our values and principles. Even the purpose of people like Osama bin Laden requires examination.

Osama bin Laden

After we return from the celebrations, political bravado and the media’s agenda in the portrayal of this event at some point we must have the courage to understand why people would wage war against another nation. Why would people wrap themselves in bombs and kill innocents. Why do nations invade the sovereignty of another’s borders? Is there ever a reason for the killing of innocents even when the reasons are inhumanity and oppression?

Is it appropriate for a nation in its quest to defend its borders and citizens to execute a terrorist rather than capture that person and bring them to justice? Can a military force make justice? Should a nation allow its principles and rules of law to be articulated by a barrel of a gun or the rules of engagement in a war on terror? Does justice just belong to those who define it? Are the rules of law just for those who have power? It is JUSTUS or JUSTICE depending on what side you are on?

Bombing in Libya escalates

Can one wage war in a humanitarian fashion? Is a nation correct in ignoring those who call themselves freedom fighters but instead indicting them as terrorists? Is a patriot a cheerleader for a nation’s ego and nationalism? We must have the courage and integrity to ask the questions and challenge the dogma, rhetoric and propaganda.

I choose not to run outside and wave my flag after the death of Osama bin Laden. Instead I prefer to understand why people do what they do. Is it the conditions one lives in or is it a personal decision? I want to wage a movement of humanity. I want to serve in the community of peace and be an advocate for civility and justice that revolves around the respect and dignity of all people everywhere on our planet.

In a nation where evil and good exists I want to always have the ability to decipher the code of justice or vengeance and not allow my government, media, political interest groups and others to decipher this code of justice or vengeance for me. I will always reject the politics of an execution whether it involves a terrorist or the execution of a criminal by the state. 

By Greg Thrasher, VOD Contributing Editor

Continue reading →

Mother begs plantation owner not to sell her children at auction

By Diane Bukowski

Putting Detroit Public Schools on the charter auction block recalls nothing more clearly than the sale of African children by plantation owners as their families wept. After kidnapped Africans won their freedom, one of the first things they did was establish a system of public schools for all, without regard to race, class, or gender.

In the DPS release announcing that 18 charter organizations had bid on 50 Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb said, “We are pleased with the broad experience of many of the organizations that applied and their potential to transform academically-challenged schools . In a number of cases, applicants already run one or more schools that significantly outperform the DPS schools they seek to operate, as measured by the Excellent Schools Detroit report cards.”

The bidders listed have specifically selected DPS schools Jemison, Gardner, Carver, Howe, Davison, White, Loving, Burns, Noble, Nolan, Stewart, Brewer, Detroit City High, Catherine Ferguson, Hancock, Barsamian, MacDowell and Clark, although they are expected to be in the running for a total of 50 schools.

Grades for schools run by charter bidders run mainly in the C overall range, with several showing F’s in reading.  Of the 18 DPS schools the bidders specified, however, 8 have B scores, 4 have C scores, and one has a D-Alert on the state’s Ed YES! Scale. For the most part, they outperform schools operated by bidders on the chart below. Many charter schools listed with better grades are not located in poor urban areas.

Four of the charter organizations listed were blasted in a Detroit News article as posted on a website below:

SUBSTANDARD CHARTERS FAIL MICHIGAN STUDENTS

Posted at http://www.susanohanian.org/atrocity_fetch.php?id=1225

By Brad Heath
Detroit News 10/26/03

Marchers take off from Catherine Ferguson Academy May 10

Six companies responsible for teaching more than 17,000 of Michigan’s charter school students provide an education that falls short even of some of the state’s most troubled inner-city schools.

A Detroit News analysis shows those shortcomings are hidden by minimal scrutiny of how the companies manage more than $123.7 million in tax money each year.

The low-performing companies include three of the biggest for-profit charter school managers in the state, whose students often fall far below minimum standards in reading, writing and math, state education records show. The companies’ schools also spend a smaller share of their budgets in the classroom than others.

Marchers tell DABO: NO charter schools!

While charter schools overall are less likely to meet state standards than traditional schools, Michigan has put thousands of students’ educations in the hands of a few companies that lag behind even faltering districts like Flint and Grand Rapids. Of the 40 companies that run charter schools, six had lower fourth-grade English and math scores than those cities.

Management companies oversee nearly every aspect of 151 of the state’s 200 charter schools, including what is taught and who teaches it, making Michigan one of the nation’s biggest venues for private control of public education.

What’s more, there has been no comprehensive attempt to monitor how the companies perform.

CFA marchers head down Woodward May 10 (photographer was in her car behind the march with a phalanx of other cars; she was later ticketed for blockading traffic because she wouldn't pull over into the marchers)

Instead, oversight rests with more than two dozen universities and school districts that track individual schools. The state Education Department lacks even a full list of which companies run charters in Michigan, let alone a way to measure their success.

“Nobody has asked whether they’re doing a decent job,” said Nancy Van Meter, the director of the American Federation of Teachers’ Center on Privatization. “Nobody has a handle on this, and it’s a question taxpayers in Michigan need to ask: Are you satisfied with this use of your tax dollars?”

Mother protects children from rain outside DABO May 19

State officials say they want more scrutiny of management companies, including performance and financial reviews, but say limited money and staff makes that impossible.

Critics have argued for years that letting companies run public schools — instead of merely supplying textbooks and buses — will hurt students as the companies cut costs to turn a profit. That concern takes on increasing importance as Michigan continues its rancorous debate over whether to raise the cap on the number of schools public universities can charter.

The News found that students attending schools run by the Leona Group, Mosaica Education and Charter School Administration Services have test scores that lag even compared with other charters. Those companies serve more than a quarter of students in Michigan’s charter schools. Three others — Alpha-Omega Education Management, Black Star Education Management and CAN Associates — each manage one school.

School operator fired

Monica Smith and speaker at CFA rally at Fisher Bldg. May 10

In the 10 Michigan schools run by Mosaica Education Inc., for example, only two of every five fourth-graders was able to read as well as the state says they should. And one in five met the state’s minimum standards in writing and math, according to the Michigan Educational Assessment Program tests.

One of those schools, Detroit Advantage Academy on the city’s west side, fired Mosaica last year after board members complained that the company wasn’t making promised improvements, missed reporting deadlines and failed to give school board members timely updates on how tax money was being spent.

“Had they been able to do everything they were required to do in our contract, we wouldn’t have terminated them. That includes educational goals. It includes providing financial reports,” said Karlena Glenn, a Detroiter who serves on the school’s board.

The bottom line was that the board no longer trusted Mosaica to administer public money, she said.

Outside Fisher Bldg. May 20

Mosaica contends the board didn’t have the authority to fire it.

Mosaica and other management companies say they take their own measurements of students’ progress, and each claims to be making gains. Companies contend parents who aren’t satisfied would leave. Enrollment waiting lists, they say, are evidence of success.

Gabrielle Garner of Southfield enrolled her daughter in Charter School Administration Services’ Southfield Academy this year, in part because she liked how closely it resembles a private school, with students required to wear uniforms. Students at the school have lower test scores than Southfield’s traditional public schools.

More important than who runs the school, she said, is that her daughter is happier and seems to be getting a better education than she was in an Oak Park public school last year.

“What’s important are the results we get,” she said. “Everyone here is working parents, and we just want the best for our kids.”

Explanation falls short

Demo at Mayor Bing's state of the city address March 2010

One classroom at the Voyageur Academy, a for-profit charter school in Detroit run by the Leona Group, bubbles with fourth-grade voices speaking Spanish. The school is small, with about 330 students. Parents get report cards every week. Principal Roderick Atkins knows his students by name.

Still, students at Voyageur lag behind the Detroit Public Schools on elementary school exams. Last year, 39 percent of fourth-graders read as well as the state said they should, compared with 55 percent in Detroit Public Schools.

Voyageur was warned by the state this year that those scores didn’t show enough progress.

“It wasn’t good. We’re still trying to figure out what happened,” said Atkins, who left a marketing job with General Motors Corp. to run the school. Test scores for Voyageur’s seventh- and eighth-graders, taught in a different school, exceeded public school averages. Continue reading →

By Diane Bukowski

CFA students marching from school May 10

DETROIT—Encouraged by extensive national coverage of their occupation of Catherine Ferguson Academy (CFA) April 15, the school’s young mothers, their babies and supporters have kept up their battle to save not only that unique school, but all Detroit Public Schools.

In the last two weeks, they targeted charter school owner and bidder Rev. Horace Sheffield III in a march outside his offices at Wyoming and Grand River May 19. Drivers going by in heavy rush-hour traffic constantly blew their horns in support, laying on them when police arrived, until the cops retreated into a parking lot across the street.

Marching to save CFA May 10

Previously, they took Woodward Avenue May 10, closing it off to northbound traffic, as they marched miles from CFA at Selden and 16th to the Fisher Building to protest the pending installation of new Emergency Manager Roy Roberts. That march too was accompanied by loud horn-blowing.

“Whose schools? Our schools! Whose streets? Our streets!” they cried out. Young mothers wheeled their babies in their carriages, others had their children help make signs, and one taught her son how to read a sign during the rally outside the Fisher Building.

Teaching daughter how to read protest sign

“I’m here because my school is very important to Detroit,” Dalana Gray, accompanied by her little daughter Danyla Gray, said May 19. “Not only do we care about our school, but we care about all of DPS.”

CFA student Breanna Thomas said of the drivers honking their horns, “I think they should join us to support us. With the little people we do have, we have been able to stop the closing of three schools so far, and we are going to do an occupation again if they don’t back off CFA!”

“Hell, no, DABO has got to go!” marchers outside Sheffield’s Detroit Association of Black Organizations office chanted. Sheffield drove by the picket, rounded the corner and kept going, but police showed up not long afterwards. One of the officers said they had received a call to come to the scene, although protesters were picketing on the sidewalk in compliance with city regulations.

DABO still has Last Chance flier on website, but school obsolete

Sheffield’s DABO has joined 17 other bidders who are seeking to charterize schools that DPS Czar Robert Bobb put on a list of 45 slated for closing this June. DABO already operates the Detroit Cares Alternative School, formerly the Last Chance Academy, out of the former location of the city’s fabled Courtis Elementary School, at 8100 W. Davison. Previously, according to state records, Sheffield also operated a charter school known as “Galilee.”

Galilee is listed with a 0 score on the 2008 Michigan School Report Card list, while no records of the scholastic progress achieved at the Last Chance Academy or Detroit Cares are currently on the list.

Rev. Horace Sheffield III

In an interview on MSNBC about Detroit Cares, Sheffield said, “”I don’t think college preparation is the cornerstone of Detroit Public Schools anymore. The vast majority of these kids are looking for a high school diploma and to get jobs.”

The story went on to interview numerous students, including some from Detroit Cares, who said they cannot find jobs anywhere regardless.

Sheffield also runs a church, “New Destiny Baptist Church,” out of the Davison location. He was formerly the pastor at New Galilee Baptist Missionary Church on Detroit’s east side, but state documents show the president is now Karen Gray Sheffield. Detroit ministers have taken over many of over 80 DPS school buildings that have closed since 2004, as well as recreation centers and other city-owned facilities.

Sandra Hines speaking at anti-PA 4 rally in Lansing April 13

“The community fought for two years to keep Courtis Elementary School open,” said Sandra Hines of the Coalition to Restore Hope to DPS. Hines was active at school board meetings in the battle against closures in 2008 and 2009, especially that of Courtis. She was removed by DPS police from one meeting as she decried the closings. She also garnered 40 percent of the vote in a run for the school board in 2008.

 “Courtis made AYP (average yearly progress) until Robert Bobb took over,” Hines explained. “He did not fill vacancies for math and science teachers for the seventh and eighth grades, so class sizes increased to over 40 students,” Hines explained. “It was rumored that Sheffield had been trying to buy the school while it was still open, and now he owns the building. He is the reason Courtis closed.”

A Courtis parent commented on a school review website, “My child had some teachers that really cared about her education. Mr Weir is a sweetheart, Mrs Blankenship was simply wonderful, Mr Smith was a great math teacher, and Ms Blazo is an excellent counselor. This school has some good teachers as well as some not so good. I wish I could take all of the good …  Read more teachers from this school and combine them with my children’s previous good school teachers and just make one big great school. Its important to have good teachers that really care about the children’s well being.”

Sheffield with City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson at May 7 meeting at former Courtis Elementary School, now Sheffield's New Destiny Church; photo by Zenobia Jeffries, featured in Michigan Citizen

To add insult to injury, Sheffield held a “DABO House of Delegates” meeting there May 7, during which community leaders addressed the audience in opposition to PA 4, the Emergency Manager legislation which gives people like Bobb and Roberts dictatorial control over school districts and municipalities. The previous emergency financial manager act allowed Sheffield to take over Courtis.

A review of DABO’s 2009 non-profit tax filing (click on DABO 990 2009 for full copy) shows it had $1.2 million in revenue, and $1.184 million in expenses. Of its revenue, $690,646 was for its “alternative academy” (public tax revenue from the school aid fund).  Sheffield was paid $80,400 in salary, but took out a $175,145 loan from the agency.

Christine Abood, DPS teacher for 38 years

Sheffield was called at three numbers, including his cell phone, but was not available for comment on this story.

During the protest at DABO, Christine Abood, a teacher at Carleton Elementary, said it was one of the three schools taken off the list for closure or charter auction. She said she has been a teacher for 38 years, and all she wants is smaller class size.

“I’m against all school closings,” she said. “They tear up neighborhoods, causing private companies who want to invest in Detroit not to do so. They need stable neighborhoods. So-called ‘declining enrollment’ in DPS schools actually makes us equal to the suburbs. We get smaller class sizes of 26 or 27 instead of the 40 and more that we used to have. You cannot run a school system the same way you run a business; an industry mindset is different than an education professional’s mindset.”

Drivers kept honking horns all though protest at DABO

Abood denounced charter schools.
“Most of them are for profit, and the only way they can profit is by cutting back on the quality of the teachers, many of whom are not even certified, and charging students for things like extracurricular activities. Our students are not for sale on the marketplace!”

CFA student Catherine Buckens, there with her 2-year-old son Da’Mire Zimmons, vowed, “Turning Catherine Ferguson into a charter school is not going to work or happen. Our students are having an impact, and they know we’re serious.”

Catherine Buckens and son at DABO protest May 19

Monica Smith, leader of the By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) coalition, which has supported the CFA students, called on hundreds more to come out to keep CFA and other Detroit public schools from closing or being put on the charter auction block.

For more information, call 313-585-3637 or email monica.smith@bamn.com. Follow BAMN on YouTube and MySpace as well, and go to their website at www.bamn.com. To read about occupation of Catherine Ferguson Academy and see video, click on story “Young Mother Describes Occupation of Catherine Ferguson Academy” at  http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=6582.

CFA mother and baby: where will they go?

CFA mothers take Woodward

SIGN PETITION TO SAVE CATHERINE FERGUSON  ACADEMY AT:  http://www.grownindetroitmovie.com/school.php  

Prison overcrowding in California

The 5-4 decision represents one of the largest prison release orders in U.S. history. The court majority says overcrowding has caused ‘suffering and death.’ In a sharp dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia warns ‘terrible things are sure to happen.

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By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau, LA TIMES

May 23, 2011, 8:56 a.m.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ordered California on Monday to release tens of thousands of its prisoners to relieve overcrowding, saying that “needless suffering and death” had resulted from putting too many inmates into facilities that cannot hold them in decent conditions.

It is one of the largest prison release orders in the nation’s history, and it sharply split the high court.

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  Inmates bunked in triple tiers

Justices upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that called for releasing 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners. Since then, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. As a result, the total prison population is now about 32,000 more than the capacity limit set by the panel.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the majority, said California’s prisons had “fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements” because of overcrowding. As many as 200 prisoners may live in gymnasium, he said, and as many as 54 prisoners share a single toilet.

Kennedy insisted that the state had no choice but to release more prisoners. The justices, however, agreed that California officials should be given more time to make the needed reductions.

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia called the ruling “staggering” and “absurd.”

He said the high court had repeatedly overruled the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for ordering the release of individual prisoners. Now, he said, the majority were ordering the release of “46,000 happy-go-lucky felons.” He added that “terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order.” Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with him.

In a separate dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the ruling conflicted with a federal law intended to limit the power of federal judges to order a release of prisoners.

State officials and lawyers for inmates differ over just how many prisoners will have to be released. In recent figures, the state said it had about 142,000 inmates behind bars, and the judges calculated the prison population would need to be reduced to about 110,000 to comply with constitutional standards.

Depiction of slave ship conditiosn

Kennedy said the judges in California overseeing the prison-release order should “accord the state considerable latitude to find mechanisms and make plans” that are “consistent with the public safety.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said the court had “done the right thing” by addressing the “egregious and extreme overcrowding in California’s prisons.”

David Fathi, director of the ACLU national prison project, said “reducing the number of people in prison not only would save the state taxpayers half a billion annually, it would lead to the implementation of truly rehabilitative programs that lower recidivism rates and create safer communities.”

Meanwhile, the court took no action on another California case in which a conservative group is challenging the state’s policy of granting in-state tuition at its colleges and universities to students who are illegal immigrants and have graduated from its high schools.

The justices said they would consider the appeal in a later private conference.

Carole Kronberg of Detroit

 By Carole Kronberg

Dear Charter Commission Members and Members of the Media Serving Detroit: 

I write in the hope of mitigating the future, potentially disastrous effects (which will reflect upon all of you) of what I continue to see as a great injustice being done to myself and most other civic-minded citizens of Detroit.  

Detroit’s New City Charter, as it is proposed now, includes some very constructive improvements, but for all the work you obviously have done, it fails to preserve/perpetuate the most basic of Detroit values: self-determination through democracy or, stated another way, freedom through hard-won voting rights.

DWSD worker Andrew Daniels-El says charter must bar privatization and sell-off of city assets

If adopted without amendment, the new City Charter will not only give each Detroit resident/voter FEWER votes and options through which to make “our” City Council more accountable; it will also give us representatives who may be the most outstanding of (not the whole city, but) smaller neighborhood pools. but deprive us of choosing more than one city-wide champion. It will also provide for a WEAKER, more divided Council (less able to defend the interests of the city as a whole — our collective culture as well as property interests) and NO defense whatsoever against potential misuse of police presence/powers by uniquely (not electively/democratically) empowered entities. 

We have been advised that those of us reconsidering (or STILL alarmed by) the prospect of leaving our city so vulnerable and “up for grabs” are “too late” to undo the damage already done by certain interests’ deliberate misrepresentation of their plan in order to promote (and go BACKWARDS to) “Council-by-District.”  

Therefore, I write to ask this:  Is it too late for the People of Detroit to demand inclusion in the new Charter of a “contingency plan” which would describe and provide a non-violent means to return control of the city to its residents if/when a majority of Detroiters realize that they have been systematically deceived and robbed?

Respectfully submitted,

Carole A. Kronberg

VOD ed, note: DETROITERS HAVE THE OPTION TO VOTE THIS CHARTER DOWN AS A WHOLE. IF IT IS NOT SATISFACTORY, VOTE NO!! IN NOVEMBER!.