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

ALSO: KEEP THE VOTE/NO TAKEOVER MEETING, TUE. SEPT. 4 AT 6PM, 11825 DEXTER CENTER. 

Elder Helen Moore of the Keep the Vote No Takeover Coalition protested the devastation of Detroit Public Schools through bank debt that has drained district of per-pupil funding.

From Helen Moore: Why are the news stories only saying the contaminated water is in DPS’s?  What about the charter schools who bought the schools from DPS.  What about the other buildings in Detroit that have been there for years?  How long has our water been contaminated?  Who is covering up this crisis?

We the People of Detroit and Welfare Rights have been warning us for years to no avail.  We need answers and we are going to find out what has been covered up!!!!!!!  IF YOU HAVE ANSWERS, ATTEND THE KEEP THE VOTE/NO TAKEOVER MEETING. LET’S ORGANIZE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!

COALITION RELEASE: The recent announcement that drinking water in all of Detroit public schools is being shut off due to the water supply being contaminated with toxic levels of lead and copper reflects a crisis of immense gravity.  It comes at a time when the Detroit Public Schools Community District has no funding supply available to effectuate the $500 million in repairs they acknowledge are needed to insure the safety of the students.

The late Tashi Kiya at protest against water shut-offs in Detroit.

Copper and lead contamination in drinking water can cause permanent brain damage, kidney problems and retardation of physical growth, and is toxic to every organ in the human body. Children are particularly vulnerable to its effects.

Teachers who came to work last week in preparation for the school year found themselves working in schools with no operating water fountains and no bottled water being supplied.  They have received no information as to how much water will be supplied.  In some schools such as Gompers, the water was completely shut off in the entire building last Wednesday, with no water provided to staff to wash their hands or flush toilets.  There are reports that the air conditioning is off in the elementary wing of John L. King.

Even when the water fountains are shut off, toxic water is still running in sinks and toilets for flushing.  If students ingest that water, they are subject to the dangerous longtime effects of lead and copper poisoning.

These issues are not new.  On April 16, 2016, 19 DPSCD schools had their drinking water shut off due to dangerous levels of lead and/or copper in the water supply.  The bottled water that was supplied was one four-ounce (half-cup) bottle to each child per day, far below the amount of water needed.  Despite the drinking water not being turned on through the summer months, the supply of bottled water was terminated after about one month. 

In August 2016, the water was turned on via a big public relations announcement that nearly all DPSCD schools buildings were safe. But after a couple weeks, new testing showed the water was still toxic and water had to be shut again to many of the schools, with the result that the students had been fully exposed to toxic water during that time.  The DPSCD has been cited and fined for its toxic water supply by MIOSHA over the years.

Superintendent Vitti acknowledges that problems with the infrastructure are likely responsible for the toxic water in Detroit schools. Last June the DPSCD estimated that the repairs would cost $500 million. But under terms of the state “bailout” the district has only $25 million available for repairs and no authority to raise funds.  There has never been an audit of what happened to the $2 billion that was raised for infrastructure repair under state oversight.

With these overwhelming structural problems in the schools, it is not hard to understand why recent tests reflected that only 11.3% of 3^rd grade DPSCD students were proficient in English Arts and only 10.7% were proficient in Math.

Called by a Coalition of Water Activists including People’s Water Board, Welfare Rights Organization, Moratorium Now Coalition, and many others – Call 313-319-0870 for info.

VOD COMMENTARY:

It is questionable whether it is only the DPS infrastructure at fault here. The same excuse was given for the lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint, when in fact it was directly related to Gov. Rick Snyder and his Flint Emergency Manager, who ordered that Flint separate from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) system, in anticipation of the creation of a duplicate pipeline by the profit-hungry Karegnondi Water Authority. Eventually, Flint was forced to reconnect to Detroit’s system, but the Great Lakes Water Authority had already taken over the DWSD.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, hands on Detroit, shows how much of 6-county DWSD region will be taken over by Great Lakes Water Authority, during bankruptcy proceedings Sept. 9, 2014

Ever since that takeover, sanctioned by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the Wayne, Oakland and Macomb County Executives during the Detroit bankruptcy proceedings in 2014, there have been constant “boil water alerts” throughout the six county region originally governed by the DWSD.

At least 41 percent of DWSD workers were laid off prior to the takeover, including sanitary chemists who monitor the water for health and safety purposes. Management announced it was combining their duties with those of lower-paid operators, who had no specializing training and even had to be given remedial math education.

Under the GLWA, things have worsened greatly. The DWSD operates only a small part of its original system, minor pipelines within the borders of Detroit. All wastewater treatment plants, other facilities and major pipelines are run by the GLWA, a regional takeover of breathtaking proportions since DWSD originally provided water to 40 percent of Michigan’s population. 

No doubt the Detroit Public Schools infrastructure has deteriorated over the years as huge chunks of its public revenue went to pay off its debt to the banks, but it cannot be the only cause of this latest greed-driven crisis.

See previous related VOD stories:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2017/03/08/do-not-drink-the-water-no-qualified-testers-in-detroit-glwa-crises-cause-ongoing-contamination/ 

BI-PARTISAN DEAL LED TO FLINT WATER POISONING FOR PROFIT: THE KAREGNONDI WATER AUTHORITY (KWA)

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2014/09/10/detroit-bankruptcy-great-lakes-water-authority-to-steal-largest-asset-of-largest-u-s-black-city-4/ 

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2015/10/13/will-regional-takeover-of-detroit-water-make-residents-of-6-counties-drink-flint-water/ 

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2017/08/18/streets-of-detroit-76-other-communities-serviced-by-glwa-could-soon-be-filled-with-sewage/ 

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2014/08/21/near-catastrophic-failure-of-detroit-sewage-pumps-caused-detroit-floods-toledo-water-crisis-city-retirees-say/ 

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2014/08/03/detroit-water-shut-offs-city-takeover-still-on-full-blast/ 

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/12/grand-theft-of-detroits-water-dept-imminent-water-board-mtg-wed-march-13-2pm/

The Voice of Detroit is planning an update on this latest crisis, which will include the Michigan Employment Relations Commission decision to affirm the layoffs of DWSD chemists. But we are struggling to stay afloat right now, (no pun intended), and desperately need whatever people can afford in donations to the newspaper. 

DONATE TO VOICE OF DETROIT TO KEEP OUR STORIES COMING:

Voice of Detroit is published pro bono. You don’t have to pay to access our stories. But there are substantial out-of pocket costs associated with its publication. Currently we are running in the red, so any donation amount is much appreciated. Donate by clicking https://www.gofundme.com/VOD-readers-up. 

Marchers occupy Michigan Avenue in Lansing, MI to support the demands of prisoners striking across the U.S., Canada, and Palestine.

Immigrants in detention in Tacoma, Washington join strike

Heroic Sept. 9, 2016 strike at Michigan’s Kinross prison and retaliation against strikers publicized by march’s organizers

By Diane Bukowski

August 28, 2018

Lansing, MI – More than 100 people took the streets in Lansing Aug. 23 to support the national prisoner’s strike taking place from Aug. 21 to Sept. 9, called by a coalition of prisoners and their organizations. The march began with a rally in Durant Park and blocked Michigan Avenue for miles afterwards, proceeding past City Hall, where speakers addressed the crowd, and then to the Michigan Department of Corrections headquarters, where organizers posted placards supporting the prison strike on its doors.

Michigan Avenue rang with chants of  “No Mass Incarceration, We Don’t Want a Prison Nation,”  “Fire to the Prisons, Free all the Prisoners,” and “Brick by Brick, Wall by Wall, We Will Make the Prisons Fall,” as drums and noisemakers sounded. Drivers of many cars honked their horns in solidarity, although they were temporarily blocked by the march.

Video above: Alejo Stark, a PhD candidate at U-M, and spokesperson for Michigan Abolition and Prison Solidarity summarizes goals of rally.

Stark added in a release, “We want a world in which prisons do not act as catch-all solutions to our society’s problems, a society that perpetuates violence with more violence–by putting people in cages. Prisoners are going to keep rebelling against confinement, so we can’t help but ask, ‘Can we imagine a society without prisons? Michigan spends just over $2 billion dollars on the MDOC. Imagine what we could do with that money in a state where Flint still does not have clean water and Detroit is closing down schools to the students.”

Since 2004, Detroit has virtually demolished its entire public education system, once considered world-class and high-achieving. The majority of youth in Detroit now attend non-accountable charter schools, many of them for-profit. Most have inferior curriculae, not including music, band, athletics, social workers, libraries, and many other programs that made the schools unifying anchors for communities.

Southwestern High School, now closed and devastated, as are many other once proud public schools in Detroit.

Long-term prisoners in the MDOC have noted a new influx of young prisoners, a product of the “School-to-Prison-Pipeline.”

The devastation of education for Detroit’s majority-Black youth has created despair, involvement in crime to support families, and killings throughout the city’s neighborhoods tied to the drug trade and a lack of direction for the youth.

Dennis Boatwright spent 24 years in the Michigan prison system and now devotes his time to raising public awareness and organizing to abolish the prison system, a demand that many young people raised after the historic Attica Rebellion in September, 1971. Then, they chanted, “Tear Down the Walls,” and “Prisons are Concentration Camps for the Poor.” The Attica Rebellion gave birth to other uprisings in prisons across the country, and a new consciousness about a country that has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its incarcerated population.

Dennis Boatwright spent 24 years in the Michigan prison system and now devotes his time to raising public awareness and organizing to abolish the prison system, a demand that many young people raised after the historic Attica Rebellion in September, 1971. Then, they chanted, “Tear Down the Walls,” and “Prisons are Concentration Camps for the Poor.” The Attica Rebellion gave birth to other uprisings in prisons across the country, and a new consciousness about a country that has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its incarcerated population, at least 70 percent of whom are Black and Latino. They are treated worse than animals.

Ricardo Ferrell, 60, in prison since 1982.

Charles Lewis, 59, in prison since 1976.

MDOC prisoner Ricardo Ferrell quoted Kate Cox of the Osborne National and Burden Association in a recent article addressing the aging population of prisoners in the U.S.

“At its most basic, hard time is profoundly hard on the body,” Cox wrote. “Incarceration makes existing medical issues worse and increases the risk of developing new ones. It leads to a process of ‘accelerated aging’—which is a gentle way of saying that inmates’ physiological age begins to outpace their chronological age, sometimes by as much as ten or fifteen years, such that 50 year-olds seem more like 60- and 65-year olds, and 70-year-olds seem as old as 85.”

Charles Lewis, 59, who has been wrongfully incarcerated for 42 years in the MDOC, frequently lists the names of men he has befriended who died far earlier than expected due to the horrible medical care and food that Michigan prisoners receive. He himself developed severe diabetes after going to prison at the age of 17, has had three heart attacks, and suffers from numerous other ailments. 

As a long-time prison activist herself, and now editor of the Voice of Detroit, Diane Bukowski also addressed the rally to call attention to the plight of Michigan’s 247 “juvenile lifers.” They continue to be incarcerated despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama (2012) and Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016) outlawed the practice of sending children ages 17 and under to die in prison. The Michigan Supreme Court recently contravened the highest court in the U.S., claiming that judges who are re-sentencing these men and women, many of whom have spent decades in prison, do not have to specify factually whether they are the “rarest” child incapable of rehabilitation.

Boat with huge banner declaring “Solidarity with the National Prisoners Strike”  on Grand River in Lansing

“In 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation in southern schools in Brown v. the Board of Education,”  she noted. “When the states refused to comply, federal troops were sent to force them to obey the law of the land. We need federal troops to free our juvenile lifers.”

Organizers also recalled the historic rebellion at Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility on Sept. 9, 2016, during which hundreds of prisoners rose up against bestial conditions and treatment. The radio broadcast below contains reports from Kinross prisoners of those events, and the severe retaliation meted out to them afterward. Another source said at least three Kinross organizers died in the aftermath; the cause of death is not known.

For more information on the organizers of this march, go to:

https://michiganabolition.org

https://www.facebook.com/michiganabolition/

https://rustbeltradio.org/

PRISONERS NOW STRIKING IN AT LEAST 11 STATES

IMMIGRANTS IN WASHINGTON DETENTION CENTER JOIN NATIONAL PRISON STRIKE

 Aug 28, 2018, 5:14pm Tina Vasquez

Re-Wire News

Prisoners at Hyde Correctional Facility, N.C. join nation-wide action

Immigrants detained in the Tacoma, Washington Northwest Detention Center have joined the national strike, whose leaders also call for the abolition of I.C.E.

In a handwritten letter shared on the NWDC Resistance Facebook page, immigrants participating in the hunger strike said they were “demanding change and closure of these detention centers.”

“We are acting with solidarity for all those people who are being detained wrongfully and stand together to help support all those women who have been separated from their children, and to stop all the family separations happening today for a lot of us are also being separated and we have U.S. citizen children,” immigrants participating in the hunger strike said in a handwritten letter shared on the NWDC Resistance Facebook page.

One week into the national prison strike, a movement led by incarcerated people demanding an end to “prison slavery” and improvements that recognize their humanity, immigrants in detention have launched a strike of their own in solidarity.

Newsweek first reported on Thursday that an estimated 60 immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington, are participating in a hunger strike. In a statement to Newsweek, ICE initially denied the hunger strike was taking place. On Tuesday afternoon, in an emailed statement to Rewire.News, the agency confirmed that six people detained at NWDC are currently participating in a hunger strike. 

“Rumors of a widespread hunger strike are false,” the agency said.

This morning, Maru Mora Villalpando, a spokesperson for the undocumented-led immigrant rights group, NWDC Resistance, told Rewire.News the number of immigrants participating in the strike is fluctuating. She said that she could confirm six hunger strikers at NWDC had been placed in solitary confinement by ICE and that the strike may spread to Oregon and California.

“People are getting moved to different pods, people are being sent to solitary; it’s hard to track. We thought it officially launched on Tuesday, but we’ve now heard that some may have begun striking on Monday,” Mora Villalpando said in a phone call. “I spoke to a hunger striker last night and he told me that the medical unit is full, and so is the solitary unit and that he is one of six people in medical isolation. They could be full because people are being transferred there for retaliation or because people are getting sick from not eating or drinking because of the strike. Of course that is concerning because of the poor medical care they will receive. We want to make it clear that we are not the ones organizing this strike. That is the last thing we would do. This is being led by people in the facility. They are already tortured in there, we would never tell them not to eat or drink.”

In a handwritten letter shared on the NWDC Resistance Facebook page, immigrants participating in the hunger strike said they were “demanding change and closure of these detention centers.”

“We are acting with solidarity for all those people who are being detained wrongfully and stand together to help support all those women who have been separated from their children, and to stop all the family separations happening today for a lot of us are also being separated and we have U.S. citizen children,” the letter reads.

Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, GA/AP photo

Women in detention have told Mora Villalpando that they too would like to participate in the hunger strike, but she said, ICE has told them that if they hunger strike, they will be moved to a different facility, away from their children. ICE has a history of transferring hunger strikers to other facilities.

The prison strike, launched by prisoners in SouthCarolina in response to
the riot in the state’s Lee Correctional Institution in which seven prisoners lost their lives, began August 21, on the anniversary of the death of incarcerated activist George Jackson. “Jackson, a member of the Black Panther Party, was a leading voice and theorist in the 1970s prison movement—a time that saw hundreds of uprisings behind bars. On April 24, prisoners in South Carolina announced the strike, which is expected to last for 19 days and ends on the anniversary of the Attica prison uprising in New York,” Raven Rakia reported in the Nation,

In April 2018, Project South filed a lawsuit against the nation’s largest private prison company, CoreCivic, on behalf of Shoaib Ahmed and other immigrants detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. The lawsuit alleges that the company “violates human trafficking laws and employs a deprivation scheme to force immigrants detained at Stewart to work for sub-minimum wages, and then threatens to punish them for refusing to work through solitary confinement or loss of access to necessities.” In 2014, the law firm Outten & Golden filed a similar lawsuit against the nation’s second largest private prison company, GEO Group, for engaging in similar practices at the Aurora Detention Center in Colorado, in violation the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Both U.S. citizens in prisons and immigrants in detention centers are detained in facilities run by private prison companies, and they are subjected to similar conditions. Much like the immigrant detention system, which has become synonymous with human rights abuses and in-custody deaths, advocates have called the nation’s private prison system a “national disgrace,” synonymous with “violence, abuse, and death.”

“The huge strike is about solidarity, but a lot of the people in detention also came from prisons. After they served their sentence or got parole, they were immediately transferred to ICE custody. They were never really free,” Mora Villalpando told Rewire.News. “I’m not joking when I say that these people who have known both kinds of facilities actually say that prison is ‘better.’ By that I mean we all know prison is horrible, but in prison you have some sense of when you will get out or there is equation programs. Sometimes you get contact visits. That’s not how it works in detention centers, so these people truly understand the prison strike. Those who have not been in a prison still want to participate in the [hunger] strike because no matter what GEO says about NWDC, it is a prison.”

Currently, Mora Villalpando and other organizers with NWDC Resistance are in search of legal representation for the hunger strikers in solitary confinement, one of whom says ICE told him that if he does not eat, he will be force-fed. While ICE has previously denied it retaliates against detainees, there are documented cases of the agency moving to force-feed hunger strikers. As Rewire.News reported in December 2015, detainees at the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, ended a 14-day hunger strike after hearing that a district judge authorized officials to force-feed one of the hunger strikers at Etowah.

An enslaved African is depicted being force-fed.

“The idea that immigrants are being threatened with force-feeding in the United States is so wild to me, but it also isn’t. We have a history of this. This happened during slavery,” said Kevin Steel. Steel, an organizer with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, which is led by formerly incarcerated people, is referring to the ways enslaved people were force-fed if they attempted to stop eating.

“When I think of what they’re risking to be in solidarity with us, that touches me. As a Black man, as someone who was in prison, that is important to me. I stand with them, and I’m glad they’re standing with us in this fight.”

Steel, who was incarcerated in New York and still remembers seeing men put their feet in toilets because their cells were so hot during summer days and the facility had no fans or air conditioning, said he understands why prisoners are striking.

“It’s about basic human decency,” Steel told Rewire.News. “It’s about not having access to basic human stuff, like cool air and food that isn’t raw and disgusting.”

Over 100 prisoners rally on the Hyde Correctional Facility, N.C.  yard while holding up banners featuring demands. Banners read, “Parole,” “Better Food,” and “In Solidarity.”

Protesters outside Hyde support prisoners there.

Related from the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/opinion/national-prison-strike-slavery-.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/us/national-prison-strike-2018.html

Jefferson North Assembly plant  line shut down on news of Aretha Franklin’s death.

Above, videographer “MacSpeaking” interviewed grass roots Detroiters standing outside New Bethel Baptist Church, 8430 Linwood Street (C. L. Franklin Blvd.), Detroit, MI 48206, on Aug. 16, 2018. The church had opened its doors to people who were grieving the loss of Aretha Franklin and, apparently, some people set up a temporary memorial space outside the church doors. Franklin died in hospice at her home after a long bout with cancer, as Detroiters held vigils everywhere.

The funeral for Aretha Franklin will be held August 31 in Detroit, according to the singer’s publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn. The service, for family and friends, will be held at 10 a.m. ET that day at Greater Grace Temple. Public viewings will be held August 28 and 29 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Quinn said.  Franklin will be entombed at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit.

ABOVE: Videographer Kenny Snodgrass paid tribute to Aretha Franklin with selection from Chaka Khan at her funeral.

Below is her obituary as published by the Swanson Funeral Home in Detroit (taken from the New York Times).

Photo published by Swanson Funeral Home.

DETROIT–Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the “Queen of Soul” and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76. The cause was advanced pancreatic cancer, her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said.

In her indelible late-1960s hits, Ms. Franklin brought the righteous fervor of gospel music to secular songs that were about much more than romance. Hits like “Do Right Woman — Do Right Man,” “Think,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools” defined a modern female archetype: sensual and strong, long-suffering but ultimately indomitable, loving but not to be taken for granted.

Aretha Franklin wasn’t just a vocal genius. She was a model of empowerment and pride.

When Ms. Franklin sang “Respect,” the Otis Redding song that became her signature, it was never just about how a woman wanted to be greeted by a spouse coming home from work. It was a demand for equality and freedom and a harbinger of feminism, carried by a voice that would accept nothing less.

Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards, along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.

Aretha Franklin in earlier years.

Succeeding generations of R&B singers, among them Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Alicia Keys, openly emulated her. When Rolling Stone magazine put Ms. Franklin at the top of its 2010 list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time,” Mary J. Blige paid tribute: “Aretha is a gift from God. When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no one who can touch her. She is the reason why women want to sing.”

Ms. Franklin’s airborne, constantly improvisatory vocals had their roots in gospel. It was the music she grew up on in the Baptist churches where her father, the Rev. Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, known as C. L., preached. She began singing in the choir of her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, and soon became a star soloist.

Gospel shaped her quivering swoops, her pointed rasps, her galvanizing buildups and her percussive exhortations; it also shaped her piano playing and the call-and-response vocal arrangements she shared with her backup singers. Through her career in pop, soul and R&B, Ms. Franklin periodically recharged herself with gospel albums: “Amazing Grace” in 1972 and “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism,” recorded at the New Bethel church, in 1987.

But gospel was only part of her vocabulary. The playfulness and harmonic sophistication of jazz, the ache and sensuality of the blues, the vehemence of rock and, later, the sustained emotionality of opera were all hers to command.

Ms. Franklin did not read music, but she was a consummate American singer, connecting everywhere. In an interview with The New York Times in 2007, she said her father had told her that she “would sing for kings and queens.”

“Fortunately I’ve had the good fortune to do so,” she added. “And presidents.”

For all the admiration Ms. Franklin earned, her commercial fortunes were uneven, as her recordings moved in and out of sync with the tastes of the pop market.

https://youtu.be/1Q6LYPdX9-8

After her late-1960s soul breakthroughs and a string of pop hits in the early 1970s, the disco era sidelined her. But Ms. Franklin had a resurgence in the 1980s with her album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” and its Grammy-winning single, “Freeway of Love,” and she followed through in the next decades as a kind of soul singer emeritus: an indomitable diva and a duet partner conferring authenticity on collaborators like George Michael and Annie Lennox. Her latter-day producers included stars like Luther Vandross and Lauryn Hill, who had grown up as her fans. Onstage, Ms. Franklin proved herself night after night, forever keeping audiences guessing about what she would do next and marveling at how many ways her voice could move.

Mother Sang Gospel

https://youtu.be/8FdFrtNacgU

Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis on March 25, 1942. Her mother, Barbara Siggers Franklin, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her parents separated when Aretha was 6, leaving her in her father’s care. Her mother died four years later after a heart attack.
C. L. Franklin’s career as a pastor led the family from Memphis to Buffalo and then to Detroit, where he joined the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1946. With his dynamic sermons broadcast nationwide and recorded, he became known as “the man with the golden voice.”

The Franklin household was filled with music. Mr. Franklin welcomed visiting gospel and secular musicians: the jazz pianist Art Tatum, the singer Dinah Washington, and gospel figures like the young Sam Cooke (before his turn to pop), Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland, who became Ms. Franklin’s mentors.

Future Motown artists like Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross lived nearby. Aretha’s sisters, Erma and Carolyn, also sang and wrote songs, among them “Piece of My Heart,” a song Erma Franklin recorded before Janis Joplin did, and Carolyn Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way,” a hit for Aretha. The sisters also provided backup vocals for Ms. Franklin on songs like “Respect.” From 1968 until his death in 1989, her brother Cecil was her manager.

Ms. Franklin started teaching herself to play the piano — there were two in the house — before she was 10, picking up songs from the radio and from Ms. Ward’s gospel records. Around the same time, she stood on a chair and sang her first solos in church. In David Ritz’s biography “Respect,” Cecil Franklin recalled that his sister could hear a song once and immediately sing and play it. “Her ear was infallible,” he said.

At 12, Ms. Franklin joined her father on tour, sharing concert bills with Ms. Ward and other leading gospel performers. Recordings of a 14-year-old Ms. Franklin performing in churches — playing piano and belting gospel standards to ecstatic congregations — were released in 1956. Her voice was already spectacular.

But Ms. Franklin became pregnant, dropped out of high school and had a child two months before her 13th birthday. She had a second child at 15 by a different father. She also had two sons, Ted White Jr. and Kecalf Cunningham (her son with Ken Cunningham, a boyfriend during the 1970s).

Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.

In the late 1950s, following the example of Sam Cooke — who left the gospel group the Soul Stirrers and started a solo career with “You Send Me” in 1957 — Ms. Franklin decided to build a career in secular music. Leaving her children with family in Detroit, she moved to New York City. John Hammond, the Columbia Records executive who had championed Billie Holiday and would also bring Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to the label, signed the 18-year-old Ms. Franklin in 1960.

Mr. Hammond saw Ms. Franklin as a jazz singer tinged with blues and gospel. He recorded her with the pianist Ray Bryant’s small groups in 1960 and 1961 for her first studio album, “Aretha,” which sent two singles to the R&B Top 10: “Today I Sing the Blues” and “Won’t Be Long.” The annual critics’ poll in the jazz magazine DownBeat named her the new female vocal star of the year.

Her next album, “The Electrifying Aretha Franklin,” featured jazz standards and used big-band orchestrations; it gave her a Top 40 pop single in 1961 with “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody.”

Her later Columbia albums were scattershot, veering in and out of jazz, pop and R&B. Ms. Franklin met and married Ted White in 1961 and made him her manager; he shares credit on some of the songs Ms. Franklin wrote in the 1960s, including “Dr. Feelgood.” In 1964 they had a son, Ted White Jr., who would lead his mother’s band decades later. (She divorced Mr. White, after a turbulent marriage, in 1969.)

Mr. White later said his strategy was for Ms. Franklin to switch styles from album to album, to reach a variety of audiences, but the results — a Dinah Washington tribute, jazz standards with strings, remakes of recent pop and soul hits — left radio stations and audiences confused. When her Columbia contract expired in 1966, Ms. Franklin signed with Atlantic Records, which specialized in rhythm and blues.

Pivot Point in Muscle Shoals

Jerry Wexler, the producer who brought Ms. Franklin to Atlantic, persuaded her to record in the South. Ms. Franklin spent one night in January 1967 at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., recording with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, the backup band behind dozens of 1960s soul hits. Ms. Franklin shaped the arrangements and played piano herself, as she had rarely done in the studio since her first gospel recordings.

The new songs were rooted in blues and gospel. And the combination finally ignited the passion in Ms. Franklin’s voice, the spirit that was only glimpsed in many of her Columbia recordings.

The Muscle Shoals session broke down, with just one song complete and another half-finished, in a drunken dispute between a trumpet player and Mr. White. He and Ms. Franklin returned to New York. Yet when the song completed in that session, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You),” was released as a single, it reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 9 on the pop charts, eventually selling more than a million copies.

Some of the Muscle Shoals musicians came north to complete the album in New York. And with that album, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” the supper-club singer of Ms. Franklin’s Columbia years made way for the “Queen of Soul.”

“We were simply trying to compose real music from my heart,” Ms. Franklin said in her autobiography, “Aretha: From These Roots,” written with Mr. Ritz and published in 1999.

Aretha Franklin performs during the 85th annual Christmas tree lighting at the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

“Respect,” recorded on Valentine’s Day 1967 and released in April, was a bluesy demand for dignity, as well as an instruction to “give it it to me when you get home” and “take care of T.C.B.” (The letters stood for “taking care of business.”) Her version of the song resonated beyond individual relationships to the civil rights, counterculture and feminism movements.

“It was the need of the nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect,” she wrote in her autobiography.

“Respect” surged to No. 1 and would bring Ms. Franklin her first two Grammy Awards, for best R&B recording and best solo female R&B performance (an award she won each succeeding year through 1975). By the end of 1968, she had made three more albums for Atlantic and had seven more Top 10 pop hits, including “Baby I Love You,” “Chain of Fools,” “Think” (written by Ms. Franklin and Mr. White) and “I Say a Little Prayer.”

But amid the success, Ms. Franklin’s personal life was in upheaval. Songs like “Think,” “Chain of Fools” and “The House That Jack Built” hinted at marital woes that she kept private. She fought with her husband and manager, Mr. White, who had roughed her up in public, a 1968 Time magazine cover story noted, and whose musical decisions had grown increasingly counterproductive. Before their divorce in 1969, she dropped him as manager and eventually filed restraining orders against him. She also went through a period of heavy drinking before getting sober in the 1970s.

Her early 1970s pop hits, like her own “Day Dreaming” and the Stevie Wonder composition “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” took a lighter, more lilting tone, a contrast to her rip-roaring 1972 gospel album, “Amazing Grace,” which sold more than two million copies, making it one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time. Ms. Franklin recorded steadily through the 1970s and continued to have rhythm-and-blues hits like “Angel,” a No. 1 R&B single in 1973 written by her sister Carolyn.

But her pop presence waned in the disco era, and her 1976 album, “Sparkle,” written and produced by Curtis Mayfield, was her last gold album of the decade. It included “Something He Can Feel,” a No. 1 R&B single. When Ms. Franklin made a show-stopping appearance as a waitress in the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers,” she revived an oldie: her 1968 song “Think.”

Ms. Franklin was married to the actor Glynn Turman from 1978 to 1984, and the divorce was amicable enough for her to sing the title song for the television series “A Different World” when Mr. Turman joined its cast in 1988.

Ms. Franklin’s father was shot in the head during a break-in at his home in 1979 and stayed in a coma until his death in 1984. During those years Ms. Franklin shuttled monthly between her home in California and Detroit. As her marriage to Mr. Turman was ending, she moved back to Detroit in 1982.

Ms. Franklin was deeply traumatized in 1983 by a ride through turbulence in a two-engine plane that was “dipsy-doodling all over the place,” she recalled. She gave up flying, traveling instead by bus to her shows, and ended all international performances. In recent years she had hoped to desensitize herself and fly again, “even if it’s just one more time,” she said in 2007.

Divas and Duets

Ms. Franklin changed labels in 1980, to Arista. There, her albums mingled remakes of 1960s and ’70s hits — “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Everyday People,” “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” “What a Fool Believes” — with contemporary songs.

Luther Vandross’s production of her 1982 album, “Jump to It,” restored her to the R&B charts, where it reached No. 1. But Ms. Franklin did not reconquer the pop charts until 1985, with the million-selling, synthesizer-driven album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” The singles “Freeway of Love” and “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” both produced by Narada Michael Walden, placed Ms. Franklin back in the pop Top 10, and a collaboration with Eurythmics, “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” reached No. 18.

https://youtu.be/VtUWs6muGzg

Ms. Franklin had her last No. 1 pop hit with “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” a duet with George Michael from her 1986 album, “Aretha.” Her 1987 gospel album, “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism,” featured performances with her sisters Carolyn and Erma, and with Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers, as well as preaching from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Cecil Franklin.

Ms. Franklin recorded more duets (with Elton John, Whitney Houston and James Brown) on “Through the Storm” in 1989, and she made another attempt to connect with youth culture on “What You See Is What You Sweat” in 1991. She released only a few songs — singles and soundtrack material — through the mid-1990s.

But she rallied in 1998 with televised triumphs. She made a noteworthy appearance at the 1998 Grammy Awards, substituting at the last minute for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti by singing a Puccini aria, “Nessun dorma,” to overwhelming effect. On “Divas Live,” for VH1, she steamrollered her fellow stars in duets, among them Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. In the meantime, she had been working with younger producers again for her 1998 album, “A Rose Is Still a Rose”; the title track, produced by Lauryn Hill, reached No. 26 on the pop chart. After her 2003 album, “So Damn Happy,” Ms. Franklin left Arista, saying she would record independently.

Arista released the collection “Jewels in the Crown: All-Star Duets With the Queen” in 2007, including a previously unreleased song with the “American Idol” winner Fantasia. Ms. Franklin said in 2007 that she had completed an album to be called “Aretha: A Woman Falling Out of Love,” with songs she had written and produced herself, but it was not released until 2011, on her own Aretha’s Records label. In 2008 she released a holiday album, “This Christmas.”

Ms. Franklin stayed musically ambitious. She repeatedly announced plans to study classical piano and finally learn to sight-read music at the Juilliard School, but she never enrolled. She received several honorary degrees, including from Yale, Princeton and Harvard.

In 2014, Ms. Franklin returned to a major label, RCA Records, with her executive producer from her Arista years, Clive Davis. “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics” presented her remakes of proven material: songs that had been hits for Adele, Alicia Keys, Chaka Khan, Gloria Gaynor, Barbra Streisand and Sinead O’Connor. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard album chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart.

She had five decades of recordings behind her, but listeners still thrilled to her voice.

OBITUARY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES/AUGUST 16, 2018

Arrangements handled by Swanson Funeral Home in Detroit, Michigan.
Winnfield Funeral Home will conduct a memorial service in Alexandria for local fans.

Aretha Franklin’s final public performance took place in New York on November 7, 2017 at a gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of Elton John’s AIDS foundation. AP

Eliminate warehousing of the severely mentally disturbed in our prisons; continuing to do so spells poor management by state corrections officials.

By Ricardo Ferrell,

VOD Field Editor

Ricardo Ferrell

Three decades ago we began to see a significant number of the severely mentally ill pop up in jails & prisons. In Michigan, somewhere between 1987-2002, the majority of the mental hospitals/institutions were ordered closed by both the Blanchard and Engler Administrations. Thus, jails and prisons became immediate dumping grounds for those diagnosed with severe mental illnesses, but prior to them starting to pop up in jails & prisons – many found themselves on the streets, usually homeless and without proper care for their needs.

I have often wondered how convenient it was during this period that the prison expansion and boom also happened. The mid to late 80’s ushered in a prison build up like we have never before seen. At least 30 or more correctional facilities were constructed; boosting the Michigan prison population from approximately 10,000 – 12,000 to roughly over 51,000 an increase of around 400%.

Today, there are some 9,000, or 23% diagnosed with a severe mental illness within the Michigan Department of Corrections. The number is likely higher as there are many who go on without letting their issues be known to a (QMHP) Qualified Mental Health Professional usually due to not wanting to have the stigma which they believe to be associated with a negative connotation of some sort and the perception of shame that they would be tagged for a better term, a bug.

Chart from national Bureau of Justice Statistics.

And, in a prison setting nobody wants to receive the ridicule, mistreatment, belittling, and embarrassment of such a diagnosis. Let’s take Ronalle Hizerick, a name I created to protect the true identity of an individual who I would be called to observe after he had been placed on suicide watch from a near life ending self-injury to one of his main arteries.

During my second observation with Ronalle he revealed to me that the reason he attempted to take his own life was that he had just learned that both his wife and young daughter had been diagnosed with brain cancer and he just couldn’t take not being there for them. Ronalle had less than one year to his earliest release date, yet still his mental illness was so severe that being locked up in prison actually caused him more harm because simply put, prison is no substitute for a mental institution.

A lawsuit against the MDOC has been filed on behalf of Janika Edmund, who hung herself last year in the Huron Valley Women’s facility, known for its horrible conditions. Prison guards failed to intercede although they knew she was suicidal.

This writer over the last five years has worked in the Prisoner Observation Aide Program known as Suicide Watch which utilizes carefully selected and specially trained prisoners with the task of observing fellow prisoners in trying to curtail and/or prevent them from engaging in suicidal and self-injurious behaviors because it has been proven by evidence-based analysis that those experiencing mental instabilities and disorders may be more willing to open up and share with another prisoner why they are having a crisis before revealing such to a staff member or QMHP.

Additionally, the program has proved to be cost effective as well because prior to the utilization of prisoners; corrections officers were assigned an added task of observing at-risk inmates, but it was costing millions and millions of dollars, so the MDOC elected to train prisoners instead to render such services in conjunction with a treatment plan assessed by a Qualified Mental Health Professional.

Rendering this service at three different facilities has afforded me the opportunity to better understand a severely mentally ill individual who engages in harmful behaviors and on many occasions I have been able to prevent them from self-injurious episodes and saved many of their lives.

Although the above-mentioned 9,000, or 23% who have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness is the reported number, there are certainly a higher number of those within Michigan prisons who have a mental illness yet to be reported and diagnosed which is making today’s prisons more like modern day mental institutions. If the State of Michigan wish to address this serious problem it must find viable ways to tackle it head-on maybe by reversing the practice of housing mentally disturbed individuals in its prisons.

Prisoners wait for medications, often for psychiatric problems that should be treated in hospital or outpatient settings.

Using the monies it costs to house the mentally ill (approximately $36,000 — $40,000 per year) to reopen or construct new mental institutions would be the best course of action assuring this special needs population receives the maximum treatment they require. The following calculations could help reach such a goal: 1) $36,000 per year for each mentally ill prisoner; 2) 9,000, or 23% equates to $324,000,000 per year; and 3) $324,000,000 or more depending on the actual yearly cost of above group amounts to over two-thirds of a billion dollars. More than enough to open and operate mental institutions and provide quality mental health services to the severely mentally ill.

Currently, there are approximately 400,000 Michigan citizens diagnosed as being severely mentally Ill, and if nothing is done to reverse the failed policies of old administrations and current practices by the MDOC of housing mentally disturbed individuals in a prison setting, then we are looking at quite possibly a higher number in the near future. The Woodland Corrections Center located in Whitmore Lake, was converted to become a mental health facility which is operated by the MDOC. Some of the vacant correctional facilities across the state could easily be converted to mental health facilities to accommodate the growing demand for this particular group in our prisons.

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SURVEILLANCE STATE USA CAN MONITOR YOUR CELL PHONE CALLS 

Charles Lewis

By Charles Lewis

August 4, 2018

I just read the following article in the July issue of “Criminal Legal News,” “Cell-Site Simulators: Police Use Military Technology To Reach Out And Spy On You,” by Christopher Zoukis. The article is about CellSite Simulators. This according to CLN was technology that was developed by the military to fight foreign terrorists.

According to CLN, “Cell-site simulators, also known as stingrays, trick cell phones into connecting to the device instead of an actual cell tower. Police operating the devices can track the location of all connected cellphones within a certain radius, (500 meters, 547 yards) and also can potentially intercept metadata about phone calls (the number of calls made and length of the call), the content of the calls and text messages, as well as the nature of data usage-including brower information.All of this takes place unbeknownst to users whose cellphones have been hijacked.”

It is absolutely mind-blowing to know that your local police force could possibly have a device that they can use to track and listen to cell phones in say a hundred block radius. Stingrays are also used by the FBI, ATF, DHS, ICE, DEA, NSA and US Marshalls. CLN also wrote “Cell-site simulators are suitcase-size devices that mimic the signal of actual cellphone towers-they even emit a stronger signal than legitimate towers. And, because cellphones are programmed to seek the best signal, all phones within the radius of the signal will connect to the device.

“Despite he growing popularity of these powerful devices, little is known about their exact capabilities. Perhaps more importantly, even less is known about what police are doing with their stingrays.”

Some of hundreds of protesters condemn justice system outside Detroit home where police killed Terrance Kellom,19, in 2015. Photo: Kenneth Snodgrass

Can you imagine stingrays in the hands of corrupt cops? Can you imagine what they could do with a device like that? Manufacturers have gone to great lengths to keep information about stingray capabilities, and use, secret.

The Harris Corporation has worked with the FBI to create a NonDisclosure Agreement (NDA) that prevents local and state law enforcement agencies from revealing any information about the stingrays, including its very existence.

Your local police department could be using this device right now without your knowledge. There is nothing to stop rogue officers with access to stingrays from spying on those running for public office. Imagine what a rogue officer could do with highly sensitive information illegally obtained about a particular public official? A rogue officer could determine the outcome of many political positions with the right information. The moral of this story is watch what you say on your cell phone because your conversations are not personal or private. And, watch what you text. If you don’t want to end up in a compromising situation say nothing that will hurt you.

https://youtu.be/9ri0bCmlQ7c