[Marxism] Feed the cities, starve the Pentagon

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Detroit crisis leads to call: 

Feed the cities, starve the Pentagon

By Cheryl LaBash 
Detroit 

Published Apr 14, 2005 11:35 PM 

The hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the Pentagon on the illegal war
and occupation of Iraq have meant more poverty, more cutbacks and a
plummeting standard of living for the workers, poor and people of color in
the U.S. 

Now a national call has been issued for a broad, multinational, united
fightback movement to push back the White House and the military generals.

This fightback response comes from Black elected officials as well as trade
unionists and community activists, based mainly here in Detroit. The call is
for a national conference to ?Reclaim Our Cities and Fight the Bush Budget
that Starves the Cities to Feed the Pentagon??to be held this coming fall in
Detroit.

The initial endorsers of this call range from unionists to community leaders
to elected officials.

They include Maryann Mahaffey, president of the Detroit City Council; JoAnn
Watson, Detroit City Council member; Marian Kramer, co-president of the
National Welfare Rights Union; Millie Hall, president of Metro-Detroit
Coalition of Labor Union Women; Nathan Head, president of Metro-Detroit
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; David Sole, president of UAW Local 2334;
Maureen Taylor, chairperson of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and
Sylvia Orduno of the same group; Tom Stephens, staff attorney of the
Guild/Sugar Law Center; and Clarence Thomas, national co-chair of the
Million Worker March and a leader of Local 10 of the International Longshore
and Warehouse Union.

The call expresses the frustration of so many who are burdened with the
budget cuts: 

?Many cities are facing devastating budget crises. We are tired of accepting
further cutbacks, more layoffs and pressure to privatize. We need a national
movement to demand that the billions wasted on war and the occupation of
Iraq and Afghanistan be used instead to meet the needs of the people here at
home.

?The new Bush budget cuts 150 domestic programs while it pushes the spending
for war to over half a trillion dollars a year! Tax breaks for the rich,
attacks on our Social Security, and skyrocketing health care costs (with
tens of millions having no health coverage at all) all add to the crisis.
Debts to the big banks strangle our cities with tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars in interest alone each year.

?It is time to launch a struggle to win our right to health care, quality
education, decent housing, food, utilities and a job. The money is there to
guarantee everyone a decent life. This is the richest country in the world.?

A May 14 strategy meeting called by the Million Worker March leadership will
take place in Detroit to take up this conference initiative, among other
important issues.

There are plenty of good reasons for holding an important conference of this
kind in large cities and even small towns. Detroit, once the heartland of
the auto industry, has come to symbolize a crisis that is creating a
seething anger from the workers and oppressed population in many parts of
the country.

Black city ready for struggle 

For instance, on April 6, Detroit city workers closely watched the aftermath
of a 42-inch water main break on Jefferson Avenue. Round-the-clock emergency
crews swung into action to restore pressure to a hospital, four schools,
residences and the General Motor?s headquarters in the Renaissance Center.
But it wasn?t employees of the city out there?a private contractor got the
job. 

Those privately contracted crews were a sneak peek of what to expect from
the 2005-2006 proposed City Budget, to be announced April 12. City workers
and residents will be told to pay for the budget deficit through layoffs,
service cuts, health and pension benefit cuts and
privatization. 

Already, shortened hours at Neighborhood Services offices are hurting the
homeless and other desperate Detroiters. Layoffs have robbed almost 1,000
workers of their secure livelihood. The Belle Isle Aquarium, a 100-year-old
cultural institution, has closed down. 

City workers and the community won?t accept the wage and service cuts
quietly. Resistance has already prevented or reduced some of the city
administration?s attempts to balance the budget at the expense of the
people. 

Reflecting the mood and concerns of the residents, half the members of the
Detroit City Council question and oppose the proposed budget cuts. That is
why the word ?receivership? is appearing more often in the media. Right now
it?s a threat to cool the resistance.

Under receivership, the state appoints an Emergency Financial Manager to run
the city?s financial affairs in place of the elected representatives. 

Some 86 percent of Detroit?s residents are African American. They remember
well the hard and bloody battles only 40 years ago for the right of Black
people to vote. Even fresher is the memory of thousands of disenfranchised
voters in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. 

In November 2004, Detroiters refused to accept a second-class school board
any longer, voting down Proposal E by a two-to-one margin. The vote followed
an unrelenting, five-year grassroots struggle to regain control of the
School Board from a state-appointed ?reform? board. 

Why should a representative of the bond traders or banks take over a
financially troubled city? Isn?t that the fox guarding the chicken coop? Why
not a community/labor committee to run the city?s financial affairs instead
of a state Emergency Financial Manager?

Wouldn?t the first order of business be to protect and expand city jobs and
services, to implement a policy of no utility shut-offs for households, to
open up vacant public housing units for homeless families and to stop
evictions? What about implementing free universal health care and reducing
class sizes in the schools? 

Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick?s ?right-sizing? city government is the public
sector version of industrial restructuring in auto, steel, electric,
telephone and the news media. The result is union busting, lower wages,
slashed benefits and a nomadic future as workers try to cobble together an
economically secure life. Only 12 percent of U.S. workers have union
protection. The public sector has the highest rate of union jobs. 

General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and the City of Detroit point to traditional
defined benefit pensions and health care costs as the root of financial
woes. Instead of demanding national health care and better social security
programs to equal their capitalist competitors overseas, their solution is
to attack benefits and shift the financial burden to the working class.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Workers, who watched their work go to outside
contractors this week, told their union for the first time that they want to
do something to fight back. In the coming weeks, as the class lines and
issues get even clearer, they?ll get their chance to do just that.

These developments and many more speak to the need for a national conference
that demands ?Feed the Cities, Starve the Pentagon.?

For more information about the National Conference to Reclaim Our Cities,
call UAW Local 2334 at (313) 680-5508 

or email national_conference_of_cities
@earthlink.net.



MARCH ON
MANOOGIAN!

Demand that Mayor Kilpatrick stop layoffs against Detroit workers, stop
utility shut-offs, stop cuts in bus service, and stop further cuts to City
services!


Saturday, April 16th, 2005
11:30 a.m.

Meet at Erma Henderson Park
NE corner at E. Jefferson Ave at Marina Dr. in Detroit
(1/2 mile east of Van Dyke)

March to the Manoogian Mansion on Dwight Dr.
Take your signs, banners, family, and friends!

Organized by
AFSCME Local 207   AFSCME Local 2920   Michigan Welfare Rights Organization
(MWRO)
Detroit Million Worker March (MWM)   Detroit Green Party   Sweetwater
Alliance
Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI)
Highland Park Human Rights Coalition

For more information contact (313) 832-0618


 

Carpooling encouraged!




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