Prof. Cornell West to Occupiers: We have deep love for poor people

Dr. West speaks at Occupy Seattle, November 17, 2011:

"When you've done all the things you set out to do -- raising your voice...raising our voices, our individual voices, our collective voices -- for what? Out of the deep love we have for poor people, working people, people of color, our gay brothers and lesbian sisters -- all of those who have been dehumanized, pushed to the margins and we say, 'Yes, it is a love movement!...In the last 30 years this class war against poor and working people -- pushing folk against the wall as if somehow they're just marginalized utilities in a profit margin analysis. No, those are human beings there -- losing their houses, jobs unavailable, wages stagnating with profits at the top, breaking records year in and year out. And when they get in trouble, even when they hard on folk and welfare on below, they get the corporate welfare from the top. Oh, yes! I call it corporate socialism. That's what it is: tax payers' money supporting the oligarchs when they get into trouble -- talking to me about personal responsibility...nobody going to jail given the criminal activity that's been going on on Wall Street for the past 15 years. Not one person's gone to jail!"

Hear the rest of his speech. Preach on, Professor!

Why We March June 2012: Corporations Define What's Important

The foundation on which society rests has been changed forever. Visionaries from all sectors of working society must now caucus and take those necessary steps to ensure that the planet lives despite this vicious corporate assault that knows no end.

From where should advice come to help guide our steps? When you want to learn about domestic abuse, don’t go to the partner who rules with violence – the solution offered will be skewed. The remedy for slaves will not be found at the dinner table of the Master’s house.  All the Master can suggest are ways to protect and continue the system of slavery.

Why do we allow the water carriers for these corporations to define what is important to us? 

Your arms held up the debt ceiling and as soon as President Obama signed the joint agreement the stock market plunged. All this drama was supposed to avoid a bond-rating decline but the country’s rating was lowered anyway.

You and your colleagues get laid off and the stock market goes up because that means your former “company” is now leaner and meaner.  How is that logic working out for you and your family, especially since unemployment pays so close to what you were earning – RIGHT?  

Exxon/Mobile earned 41% more in profit over this last quarter than the quarter before. We are talking billions in profit yet the employee roster shows a consistently steady decline in Exxon workers over the last six years. If they keep more money, they will trickle it down to new workers, remember? 

The “haves” are sitting on $1 trillion dollars of ours in bank accounts/cash/under the mattress money and they won’t hire workers because they can’t see what will happen five years from now?  HOGWASH!!  If you take direction and advice from these sick people you will need psychotropic drugs to manage your schizophrenia and bi-polar manifestations. 

ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY has called for a MARCH ON WASHINGTON, June 30^th, 2012 to raise this poverty question for the final time.  Get involved in some way – endpoverty2012@gmail.com, or call: (313) 964-0618.  You have 328 days left to get busy. 

Image from ClipArtist.net through Creative Commons 

Workers, youth open fightback at Tent City

Excerpt reposted from Workers World

By Kris Hamel
Tent City, Detroit

June 16—Hundreds of poor and working people have gathered at the National People’s Summit and Tent City in downtown Detroit to put forward the people’s vision of a future with guaranteed jobs and income, universal health care, housing and utilities, and all rights that working class people are currently denied under the capitalist system.

More than 330 people registered for the four-day event. They have come from throughout metro Detroit and Michigan—even workers from the Upper Peninsula are at Tent City. Workers and activists from Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and more are represented.

The People’s Summit and Tent City, based in Grand Circus Park from June 14-17, was called in response to the National Summit of big-business CEOs and executives being held at the General Motors Renaissance Center—GM’s world headquarters.

“They’re going to regret the closing of 14 plants and the laying off of General Motors workers, because the workers are fighting back!” said Frank Hammer, a retired United Auto Workers International representative and leader of the Autoworker Caravan, as he opened the rally after a militant demonstration outside the big-business summit today.
American Axle workers.

More than 500 workers, including many from around Michigan and Ohio, marched in front of the GM Renaissance Center demanding jobs and human needs, not corporate greed. “The workers have spoken—keep the plants open!” was one of many chants that thundered from East Jefferson Avenue as dozens of cops and private thugs stood in formation guarding the privately owned Ren Cen.

As the workers marched and rallied for jobs, Richard Dauch, CEO of American Axle and Manufacturing, Inc., addressed the capitalists inside, along with former Michigan Gov. John Engler.

Read the rest of this story at Workers World. Image courtesy of Workers World. Tent City marchers photo by LeiLani Dowell.

Video: Despair, revival in Detroit , Part 1

Please check out this two part series from Al Jazeera's Fault Lines program May 14, 2009, Despair, revival in Detroit.

Journalist, Avi Lewis, interviews GM executives along with MWRO Chair, Maureen Taylor, and other local residents, activists, and workers. It's a great overview of the automotive industry collapse where Detroit was once "Ground Zero" of the automotive world.

One portion of the report includes a tour by Maureen Taylor of low-income housing that was torn down to make way for sporting facilities and casinos: "They call it urban renewal, we call it urban removal!"

There are also great interviews with Bobbi Thompson, Grace Lee Boggs, Ralph Nader, and other local and national figures. Check it out!

Wake The Hell Up!!

‘CIPIENTS SPEAK
by Maureen D. Taylor
State Chair, MWRO
May 2009

On Thursday, May 14th, 2009, most Americans woke up to the grim news that in order for Chrysler to save itself, 25% of the current dealers needed to be sacrificed. Some 789 Chrysler dealers were on a list to be closed, some as early as June 9th, after having served the master for decades. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of new families who are now facing unemployment, never mind the many community programs underwritten by these dealerships over the years, never mind the feeder businesses near by who rely on the traffic created by these car dealers - with one swipe of the pen, they will soon be “toast!”

Next comes the dreaded list issued by General Motors who will name the fate of thousands more GM dealerships that must close to save GM. All the while these horrific announcements are being made, a psychotic Wall Street reacts by closing higher, happy at the news that the Big Two are being saved by the sacrifices of millions. Is there not something insidious, sick, and diabolical about these happenings?

Perhaps what is most disturbing is the ease in which millions of car-related workers accept the premise that for America to be better, they must starve, lose healthcare, have homes taken from them, and in other ways stand “mute” while their very lives are being wrecked. The incomes offered to the next generation of workers is woefully lower than what their predecessors earned and will not allow the purchase of these hi-priced cars of the future.

The question is, where are the blue-collar and no-collar visionaries who have the answers to these current economic issues? Welfare Rights firmly believes that the solution to this deepening crisis is not to be found in the direction which we are all being pushed that calls for us to lose everything for the sake of the company. Don’t our lives and the future of our children count? Every response to the growing international crisis is one that suggests that we must bear the pain…closing schools, reduced wages, loss of retirement funds, loss of retiree health coverage, mounting foreclosures, rising domestic violence, rising suicide rates among children and veterans, rising incidents of police brutality…all things connected to rising stress levels. What do we get for our pain?

The time to bring up new ideas is now. The time to suggest a new and different course of action has arrived. The 6.5 million workers who now receive unemployment benefits must soon decide what is to be done when that last check arrives and a job has not been secured. The only answer to this greed-driven, corporate crisis is to engage in building an organized society that rests on certain foundations. People must eat, no matter what. People must have access to clean drinking water, no matter what. People and families must have homes to raise children in, no matter what. Elders deserve respect and a level of comfort, no matter what. We take care of sick people, we educate children so that they can make wise decisions as adults, we care for animals, and we live our days to serve a higher cause that includes kindness and concern.

The time has come to make a choice – “which side are YOU on?” Massa won’t let you live with him, so we must live without him. Wake the hell up!

What Is To Be Done?

‘Cipients Speak!!
By Maureen D. Taylor, State Chair, MWRO

Many cities across the country are experiencing economic declines like Detroit is going through, but we have the distinction of being “first” on many painful lists. We are in the top five in housing foreclosures, in unemployment, in tax foreclosures, in infant mortality rates, in school closures, in dropout rates, etc.

Some things, however, you can’t make up. Highland Park, Michigan, was one of the most beautiful small cities located entirely within the boundaries of Detroit. The trees stretched across the streets to touch each other, providing shade in the summer and giving all residents a panoramic winter view of deep and lasting beauty that all of us enjoyed. Along the edge of Highland Park was one of the Chrysler auto plants that employed 1000’s. It gave both a solid standard of living and a tax base that helped operate the local government.

Chrysler moved to upscale Auburn Hills, Michigan and took that tax base with them. The decline in Highland Park started. The population dwindled from a high of 66,000 residents to less than 16,000 today. Tough times in H.P.

Knowing this history, knowing about the 1000’s of residents who lost their jobs, knowing that water was disconnected because residents couldn’t pay the rising costs, a series of no-vision politicians vied for elected seats until the juice ran out. A disappointing Governor Jennifer Granholm, not allowing H.P. to declare bankruptcy on her watch, instead appointed a financial manager who took the place of an elected body. The first pirate crew was lead by a now defunct Ramona Pearson & Associates who were dismissed after some 20 months. They took more than $1 million dollars out of Highland Park in salaries. No improvements to turn the crisis around during that reign of terror were made except to benefit themselves at the people’s expense. Now we come to this.

Native son Arthur Blackwell shed tears when he was appointed to serve as the next Financial Manager of cash-strapped Highland Park in 2007. He was so touched by this appointment, and declared his love for the city that raised him & his family. The ‘HONOR” was so great, he vowed to work for $1.00 a year. After a series of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests were filed, we find that he collected since 2007, $495,000.00. Of course, he has an explanation for this, suggesting that it may only be an accounting error, plus noting that he has written back to the City $66,000 that he may have collected unwittingly. He was fired two days ago, and a 3rd Financial Manager from an upscale community has been appointed. Wonder how this is going to turn out?

Just losing his job is not enough. Blackwell should be the focus of a citizen’s arrest, and taken from his nice home kicking and screaming and off to jail where we decide how long he should stay there after stealing from poor people. Class war continues. Who pays for destroying the lives of working people? No one!

(Image courtesy City of Highland Park)

Engler's Legacy of Poverty

Across the country, millions of men and women in their mid-40s and older are finding it increasingly difficult to find work and start over. While many workers have lost retirement investments and savings and can't retire as planned, others are unable to find work and start over after company layoffs and downsizing.

In October 1991, Michigan was the first state to eliminate General Assistance (GA)--a state assistance program that provided $160/month, plus medical care, and Food Stamps for unemployed and childless men and women. It was the last safety net that non-elderly, single people had.

Governor Engler eliminated GA as part of a political quest to make a national name for himself. He made other huge social service cuts to fix the state's budget, such as pushing people onto federal aid (like SSI) and contracting with charity agencies to set up homeless shelters in attempts to privatize welfare.

A University of Michigan study (pdf) also found that half of those cut from GA were people primarily in Detroit and who had extensive barriers to employment. Only one-third of them were able to find work two years after being cut from GA. These cuts also occurred during another one of Michigan's severe economic recessions.

Today, Michigan and Detroit lead the country in the highest unemployment with some of the worst safety net benefits. Many MWRO members are poor and low-income single men and women who lack the education and skills to compete for the same measly job offerings alongside college-educated people.

What are any of us to do when we can't find work, can't get hired, can't get an education yet need a safe, warm place to sleep with some food on the table? In 1991, the public didn't care that GA was being cut to low-income individuals. Today, millions more are in need of such benefits but there is nearly nowhere to turn.

We have a right to live, a right to a decent quality of life. How will we make that happen?

(Image courtesy of MLive Blog)