USSF National-Local Planning Kicks Off in Detroit!

Planning for the United States Social Forum in Detroit 2010 kicked off this week with a reception for national and local planners and funders. The reception was held at the Hannan House in Detroit, Michigan, a senior citizen-based foundation that addresses housing and other service needs

The reception was a cross-generational event with nearly 100 people from across the country and Detroit, representing diverse peoples and backgrounds.

Local organizers and national activists are meeting over the weekend to lay the groundwork for launching this tremendous grassroots effort. Much more information will be coming soon about how you can get involved, engage your community, and make plans to get to Detroit as we work toward "Another World Is Possible. Another U.S. Is Necessary"!

(Photo courtesy of Lou Novak, Green Party Detroit)

World Water Day: Protect Your Right to Water

March 22nd is World Water Day, a day set aside to celebrate and protect one of life's most precious gifts. But is has also become a day when people around the world are forced to defend and demand their right to water!

World Water Day also coincides with the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey. At the Forum, hundreds of United Nations representatives, policy-makers, and business leaders come together to discuss world water solutions but mostly with the intent of driving profits on water. It has also excluded the concerns and input of grassroots groups and world citizens. Hence, water activists hold a Counter World Water Forum to promote water rights and local decision-making around water needs.

Fresh water has become like oil: a once abundant resource that is commodified, taken from the people, and sold to the highest bidder. But critical differences exist. No one owns water, it belongs to everyone. Like air, it is necessary for life and without it, people die.

This possibility is no longer fiction. Countries around the world are allowing their fresh water supplies in rivers, lakes, aquifers, and even rainwater to be tapped, bottled, sold, and distributed by companies seeking easy profits. As a result, children are dying, people are ill, and communities are collapsing. Water belongs to no government, no company, and no international cartel. It belongs to the earth, it belongs to the people.

No one has the right to deny people of their right to life-sustaining water because of their inability to pay. Moreover, companies and governments have no right to enter into agreements that sacrifice clean water access at the expense of local community needs. In Chile, for example, companies are draining more water than they are permitted and entire cities, villages and farms are being decimated.

Food & Water Watch has launched a petition campaign to ask Congress to protect out water and water infrastructure with a Water Trust. Join in and find out what your local officials are doing to safeguard your municipal water system. The solutions to water access and sanitation will not come from big business or free-market governments. Don't be duped! The solutions rests with local communities leading the effort to determine their needs and rights so that everyone can benefit from this life-giving natural resource.

(Image courtesy of U.N. World Water Day)

Whirlpool — The Gentrifier Of Benton Harbor

(reposted from BANCO)
By Dorothy Pinkney

The Harbor Shores development provides an opportunity for the rest of the country to see how easy it is to steal land from the poor community of Benton Harbor when there is no true leadership.

David R. Whitwan, Chairman of the Harbor Shores Community Redevelopment, Chairman for Alliance For World-Class Communities, and former Chairman of Whirlpool, said much of our effort will also focus on assuring that wealthy citizens are prepared to participate and benefit from this huge project.

Harbor Shores will develop 530 acres along the Paw Paw and St. Joseph River, land that belongs to the residents of Benton Harbor. The development will have 860 units of elegant condominiums; commercial retail property; a 27,000 square foot beach and golf lodge with a 60,000 square foot lodge with 140 rooms. There will be a Hotel/Conference Center with 350 rooms, an indoor water park, a signature Jack Nicklaus golf course, plus a golf club structure.

All of this is taking place in a community where 90% of the residents are living below the poverty level, where over 70% are unemployed and where 94% of the residents are Black. Their will be no jobs donateavailable for the residents of Benton Harbor. The project has been made possible because of the cooperation of Jeff Fettig and Whirlpool Corporation, Governor Granholm, Congressman Fred Upton, who is heir to Whirlpool, and many Michigan state agencies.

All of these leaders continually assure the community that the focus of this huge project was just an economic development effort —a broad-based community gentrification project. Gentrification is a word that has become common place in Benton Harbor, Michigan. A common understanding of the word is where urban areas are inhabited by minority populations until rich white people move in. Then, the original residents are unable to pay or keep up the tax costs and are forced out of their home and community. Gentrifiers are oblivious and ignorant to the realities of people that inhabit the community. The original people are replaced because of an increase in property tax, removal of jobs and destruction of a social community.

The most potent weapon in the arsenal of the oppressor — in order to maintain hegemony over a people who outnumbers their adversary — is the mind of the oppressed. The oppressor and his institutions must eventually attempt to manipulate the thinking of the target group so that the oppressed accepts their oppression as their natural lot in life and views their oppressors not as their oppressor, but as their benefactor, or at least as invincible. Our society deserves better. Our children deserve better. We must say enough is enough.

(Image courtesy of Workers World and Abayomi Azikiwe; photo includes Dorothy Pinkney from BANCO with Marian Kramer and Maureen Taylor, MWRO)

Poor People's Activists Protest Foreclosure Sales

A coalition of activists in Minneapolis, MN, demanded an end to home foreclosure sales last week by attempting to stop the sale of homes owned by low-income people or occupied by similar renters. Hennepin County Sheriff Deputies allowed only three protesters into the courtroom for the procedure. When one of the activists bid 'a penny' for one of the foreclosed homes, she was forcibly thrown out of the courtroom.

Other activists chanted protest slogans and songs, and later instituted a sit-in at the Hennepin County Sheriff's office. After insisting on a meeting with the Sheriff, a group of them was escorted to a private room meeting to meet with a deputy and county commissioner. (The Sheriff was out of town.)

The group announced that following this meeting, all parties would sit down within two weeks in an official meeting to review the foreclosure and eviction process, and determine how to make it better, within the law.

The action was organized by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, ACORN, Economic Crisis Action group, Homes Not Jails and the IWW. See the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign for more info.

Bail Out The People — Not The Corporations

(reposted from the People's Tribune, March 2009)

Over the past year, more than 2.2 million homes have been lost to foreclosure, a record number. Some four million jobs have vanished, and jobs continue to be lost at the rate of about 650,000 a month. One American in three has suffered a job loss or a pay cut in their household. Those once stably employed are becoming destitute, and those who were already destitute are dying.

The question on everyone’s lips is, what is our government doing to stop the ongoing economic catastrophe that threatens us all? What should it do? Where do the interests of the people lie?

As this issue of the People’s Tribune goes to press, President Obama has signed an economic stimulus bill which, we’re told, will create or save a few million jobs and expand public assistance to the unemployed, among other things. The government is also pondering how best to bail out the banks, arguing that helping the banks will restart the flow of credit and help get the economy going again. And the administration announced a $75 billion foreclosure-prevention plan that it says could help up to nine million homeowners keep their homes.

We should be on guard. We should ask ourselves, what actually needs to be achieved? The end result of the government’s intervention should be to guarantee the necessities of life for anyone who is doing without them. If this isn’t happening, then we need to demand that the government do what is right.

The underlying cause of the crisis is that more and more production is carried on with less and less labor, because of the introduction of labor-replacing technology into the economy. This technology has wiped out jobs and driven down wages for those still working. Because people with low wages or no jobs buy less, the market for goods and services is being wiped out. As the market has been undermined, the economy was kept going with debt – the massive extension of credit to workers and businesses. Credit was also used to fuel a huge orgy of speculation in stocks, bonds, credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and all sorts of exotic financial instruments that really had no value. On a temporary basis, this speculation brought huge profits to the financial sector.

This house of credit, debt and speculation has been standing on a “real” economy that has been hollowed out by labor-replacing technology. Eventually the debt-based bubble had to burst, and now that it has, the real economy is falling to its true level.
In the short term, what is needed is to nationalize large parts of the economy, such as the banking system, in the interest of the people, not the corporations. We should be nationalizing the assets of the corporations—not their risks—and putting those assets to work in such a way as to guarantee every person has access to housing, health care and the other necessities of life.

In the longer term, we are going to have to decide whether we’ll have a society that serves the majority of the people, or a society organized to serve only the wealthy few. Either the people are going to have to take the corporations over and run them in society’s interest, or the privately owned corporations will decide whether the rest of us live or die. This is the ultimate question we must answer.
(Image courtesy of the People's Tribune)

"Explicit Ills" film from PPEHRC Activist and Actor

Mark Webber, Poor People's Economic Economic Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) activist and professional actor, has written and produced a touching film about families in Philadelphia. It's based on personal experiences with family and friends in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country.

Explicit Ills aims to tell the truth about poverty and homelessness in the USA through four interconnected stories of love, drugs, and poverty.

The film is currently in limited release. Contact PPEHRC to find out how you can get Explicit Ills screened in your city.

See video interview with Mark Webber about the making of Explicit Ills.

Homelessness: "America's Youngest Outcasts"

Yesterday's national story reporting that 1 in 50 children in America are homeless raises, again, our concerns about how much the current financial bailout plans will help low-income and poor families. “Children without homes are on the frontline of the nation’s economic crisis. These numbers will grow as home foreclosures continue to rise,” said Ellen L. Bassuk, M.D., president of the National Center on Family Homelessness.

The report concludes that states with the highest number of homeless children are: TX, CA, LA, GA, and FL. When the numbers are examined along with children's health problems, the worst performing states are: TX, GA, AR, NM, and LA. Moreover, one-third of the nation's homeless population are families with children. It's also believed that "the current home foreclosure crisis will be adding a new demographic to these statistics: middle-class blacks and Latinos" who were previously stable until pieces of their life--jobs, health, home--continued to break away.

In this report, Michigan ranks 29th overall among America's Youngest Outcasts for (1) Extent of Child Homelessness, (2) Child Well-being, (3) Risk for Child Homelessness, and (4) State Policy and Planning Efforts. However, it ranks 36th for Risk for Child Homelessness, and 38th for Child Well-Being (with 1 being best, 50 being worst).

In the first half of 2006, the Baseline Data Report on the state of Michigan’s Homeless (pdf) found that 56% of homeless persons in families were children, most under the age of 10. Poverty continues to be the greatest cause of homelessness for families.

President Obama has allocated $1.5 billion in stimulus funds to help with homeless prevention funds. Through state governments, families and individuals will be able to apply for short-term mortgage and rental assistance, including help with security deposits and utilities. This is helpful but it's not enough!

The Michigan economy is the worst in the nation! Homeless individuals and poor families are on the edge of survival. With massive housing foreclosures and evictions, large social service cuts, and no job prospects in Michigan, we must do more as a people to help our most vulnerable members of society. Push your elected officials and business leaders to allocate more funding to low-income and poor people's needs. "Bail out the people, not the banks!"

(Image from National Center of Family Homelessness)

No End in Sight for Working People

Excerpt from Commentary by the editors of Fight Back!, March 2009

...In Minnesota, welfare rights, labor, student and other community groups have formed a People’s Bailout Coalition to make the rich pay and to protect the interests of working people. In California, high schools students have walked out of class to protest budget cuts.

Looking towards the future, we need to reject capitalism and fight for socialism. Is all that we can hope for is a return to what existed before the crisis? A return to a capitalist economy where millions go without health insurance even when the economy is growing? An economy where working peoples’ incomes fall in the long run while the rich get richer? An economy where we have to go up to our necks in debt to make ends meet while always having to worry where the next paycheck is coming from? An economy that is drained by one or more wars thousands of miles away to protect the interests of big oil? An economy where more than forty years after the civil rights act, African American, Latinos and women still earn less than whites and men? We can do better.

Working and oppressed people need a socialist system where political power is in the hands of the working class and the economy serves the people.

So as we fight for our needs and rights today, we should educate and organize for a socialist government and economy that will benefit us, and not Wall Street and big business.

See Fight Back News for the full editorial.

PRESS RELEASE - Water Affordability Plan Petition Campaign Launched

For immediate release: March 9, 2009

For more information contact: Maureen Taylor, chairperson, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization – 313-964-6018.

Water affordability petition campaign launched!
Voters can support it in November election.

Michigan Welfare Rights Organization launches a petition campaign to put a water affordability plan on the November, 2009 ballot. The campaign was launched with a spirited meeting of over 40 volunteers, Saturday, March 7, at its offices inside the Central United Methodist Church in downtown Detroit .

The campaign needs signatures of 3% of the turnout for the last mayoral race, or about 7400 signatures. Campaign leader Ann Rall said that the campaign’s goal is 10,000 signatures by May 18.

The plan ensures that every Detroiter will have water from their publicly-owned utility, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD). The plan reduces the monthly bill based on affordable structured rates and ends the practice of mass water shut-offs. It has been successfully implemented in other cities.

“Water is a right that all Detroiters deserve. This plan, originally passed by Detroit City Council in 2006, was not implemented by the DWSD. The people need to speak and win our right to affordable water,” declared Marian Kramer, co-chair National Welfare Rights Union and active in organizing the campaign.

“Now more than ever Detroiters need affordable water, as more people lose their jobs and city and state budgets are balanced on the backs of the poor,” said Maureen Taylor, chairperson of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. “We can win it but only if we get organized. Once we win it in Detroit , we will move the campaign to the suburban communities serviced by DWSD where people are suffering from this recession, too.”

Volunteers are needed to circulate petitions. Contact Michigan Welfare Rights Organization at 313-964-0618 or at www.mwro.org. MWRO is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Detroit Petition Rally--Our Water, Our City!

On Saturday, March 7th, dozens of Detroit residents and activists will meet for a kick off rally to stop water shut-offs in Detroit. MWRO is coordinating a petition drive to put on the November ballot a measure that will prevent the shutting off of water to residents, especially low-income families and seniors.

For the past several years, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Dept (DWSD)--the third largest municipal provider in the country--has shut off water service to over 70,000 households. Between 2002-2003, over 40,000 homes were without water service because of their inability to pay!

Water is a human right. It is owned by no one and those who are tasked with processing it to ensure that it is safe to drink and use also have a responsibility to make sure that it is affordable and accessible to all!

Detroit residents and community organizations have battled for over seven years to draft and enact a water affordability program. These efforts have been stalled, switched, and squashed by local politicians and corporate interests who are concerned not with families but with profits. Moreover, the DWSD Board of Directors has made no effort to investigate the public health crisis associated with massive water shut-offs.

Several Detroit and Highland Park documentaries have been made that illustrate the desperation and fear experienced by families living without water. In Michigan, the crisis is exacerbated by Dept of Human Services case workers who can and do remove children from homes without the proper utilities.

Join the "Our Water, Our City" rally on Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 10am-12pm at Central United Methodist Church (23 E. Adams, 4th Floor, downtown Detroit). Flyers available on the MWRO website.

Will Housing Stimulus Funds Help Michigan?

Michigan remains among the top five states with homeowners in foreclosure or late in their mortgage payments. Along with California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, Michigan has had some of the sharpest increases in delinquent loans over the past 90 days.

Many have hoped that President Obama's $275 billion housing stimulus bill would help struggling families but it seems many in Michigan won't qualify for mortgage relief. The funding is too narrowly tailored and many low-income Michigan homeowners have loans outside of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lenders such as Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and GMAC Financial Services would also have to agree to comply.

The federal government is setting up a new website where (among other things) homeowners can find out if their loans qualify for housing stimulus bill assistance. However, still missing from legislation and all of the surrounding conversations is a concerted effort by government and banks to stop the tidal wave of foreclosures for low-income homeowners.

MWRO calls once again for moratorium on home foreclosures for low-income and working families! They need an opportunity to retain their homes while they work out other arrangements, jobs, and funding sources. Moratoriums can help not only these homeowners but the surrounding communities. The Michigan Moratorium Now Coalition offers Resources for Fighting an Individual Foreclosure.

It's time there was more assistance and effort being made to help struggling families keep what little left that they have. Housing is a human right!

(Image from Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs - Michigan blog)

Speakers for a New America

Streaming online tonight...
Speakers for a New America

Speakers from America's Rust Belt discuss the crisis in auto, the bailout, poverty and solutions.


Claire McClinton will be on KPFK Beautiful Struggle, at 7pm (PST), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 discussing the crisis in auto. Claire McClinton is an auto-worker from Flint, Michigan, a labor leader and community activist. She discusses the bailout and the crisis in auto. You can listen to the program live at or download the program from the KPFK archives after it airs.

"Ask Welfare Rights," with Maureen Taylor and Marian Kramer of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, will be on WHPR TV and radio from Detroit, MI tonight from 7-8:00 PM (EST). The lively weekly discussions deal with the growing poverty, the struggle for water for Detroit residents, politics, solutions and more.You can view the program on your computer each week.

See Speakers for a New America for a list of national leaders and activists who can speak to your group or community about grassroots solutions to U.S. problems and more.