Post Government Detroit ( and America)

It's been quite a while since i wrote on this blog. In recent weeks, several Detroiters have been: Organizing to write a new charter for the City of Detroit since the privateers tried unsuccessfully to sneak it onto the ballot without any press coverage from Detroit's lapdog media.

Since we last met, the main organ of The People of Detroit has closed its doors. The Michigan Citizen was a weekly newspaper, independently owned by Charles and Teresa Kelley, who spoke truth to power for 37 years. When Mr. Kelly died, his wife Teresa and her daughter Katherine continued to publish.

Teresa was the publisher who wrote sharp analysis every week in the editorial. She chronicled Emergency Management in Benton Harbor, where the paper originated, to Highland Park, where it moved in the 90s, to Detroit, where it spent its final days. All three of these cities are majority Black and all three had been put under state control, robbed, raped and left for dead.

But dead we are not.

It takes a long time to recover from emergency management because the State takes all the resources from the people and then penalizes the city for not educating its children, for not paying its bills, despite the fact that it can't because the State took them. Because the cities are all majority Black, it's possible to hold this narrative in place. To beat, maim, rape and rob a people and then imprison or fine them because they are not carrying the burden of self determination. To impose exorbitant insurance fees and fines, then deny people insurance for having "bad credit ratings." To take away the right to hire a school superintendent, then penalize the District for failing students. To beat people down so badly that when they are finally free of emergency management, they voluntarily hire the very emergency manager that looted them to be their "CEO." Such is the case with Highland Park School Board and EM turned consultant Kevin Smith.

I raise this because Teresa Kelly, now 80 years old is a resident of Highland Park and is a member of the HP school board. So i know the situation there intimately because all of the seven years I was a member of Detroit School Board In Exile, Terry came to every board meeting and reported on them for the Michigan Citizen.

A former Dominican nun, she met her late husband, Charles Kelley in Chicago, where she was a teacher.

Note: This post was written two years ago. Since that time, Teresa Kelley resigned from the Highland Park School Board due to frustration over the state of HP and the fact that the board voted to make the Emergency Manager their CEO, a result of years of being under State control leading to Stockholm Syndrome. 

I have since filed to run for Detroit Public School Board - although it's a shadow district called Detroit Public Schools Community District and is now at large instead of district voting. It will be a challenge to get elected, but the current board voted UNANIMOUSLY to send the children back in, face to face in the height of a pandemic that hit Detroit harder than anywhere in the world. 

Stay tuned. 

Exiled in the Promised Land

Beloved Detroit;
In an ironic twist of Detroit life, we find ourselves internally exiled. We are school board members and four of 9 city council members who stand in defiant opposition of immoral authority called emergency managers. "Emergency Manager" is actually a misnomer; this is a straw boss sent by the Emergency Creator, who is the governor of Michigan acting on behalf of the banks and bond holders.
The irony of the title of "exile" is this. In a Detroit Times article from 1928, "Exiles from the Promised Land," a story about Mexicans being deported from Detroit follows. My own father's family was among the thousands who left Detroit, their home, to their parents' homeland- not their own. The Depression brought the Repatriation, and Mexicans who came to work were scapegoated and exiled. This period of our history was so heartbreaking that for generations, we knew nothing. No one would talk about it or explain the strange behaviors of Mexican Americans- Chicanos- who spoke no Spanish and took their beloved heritage and culture inward.
Now as an elected school board member representing the Mexican/ Latino community, I am exiled, along with the other elected school board members. Anyone who fights back against the neo liberal agenda of austerity is exiled. - Tiny children carry the burden of debt they did nothing to create, Children are labeled "failures" before they have a chance to start school so they can be used as fodder for the Educational Achievement Authority. It's a privatization scheme for shareholders whose children would never be subjected to such conditions- all this is the brain child of philanthropy in charge. Detroit is being carved up and doled out to profiteers while we do without public transportation, health care, recreation and now public schools. This week, another 15 are slated to be closed by the little straw boss called Emergency Manager. They come with bad news to the people who live, work and pay taxes in Detroit and good news for Wall Street.
A change is gonna come.
Detroit will prevail; we need only to have faith in ourselves and turn off the mouthpiece media.
We must evict the functionaries carrying out the business of the banks.
Without them, this could not happen as easily and their positions will be laid bare. We know the banks and shareholders are looting our city.
We need to stop them now.

Crack and Heroin Out: Charter Schools In

Dear Detroit;
This week's battles have been mounting over the past year or more, but here is a brief report from the front. On Wednesday, a group of Chicano Boricua alumni, along with several other activists attended a meeting at Wayne State with the president, Alan Gilmore. The purpose of the meeting, where most press were denied entrance, was to address a rumor- soon to be codified into policy-- that WSU, our contested alma mater, would begin to "weight" scores of Detroit Public Schools graduates in the following manner: a 2.75 would be treated as a 2.5 and 21 ACT score would be treated as 21.  Students from affluent districts' scores would be weighted in the opposite direction: 2.5 would be treated as 2.75 and 21 is treated as 21 on ACT. In other words, the two students whose scores are the same would  not be given access. Privelege is protected and the student who gets a 21 on an ACT from Detroit would be kept out, despite her good grade point average and test score.
In the meantime, Detroit Public Schools, under direction from the State, is creating two separate and highly unequal districts. In fact, the EAA, the statewide district that has only Detroit in it, is called "the failing district." That means that the state's lowest 5% scoring schools go into this private district, with no public oversight, just public money.
Neighborhoods who have lost their schools may have only the failing schools or a charter in it. Now that the legislature gave a huge Christmas bonus to charter companies. No caps on numbers in a particular geographic area and there is no need to show a good track record.
The legislation flew through the house and the senate in Michigan. Now all they have to do is divide up the spoils. The good news is this: there is never honor among thieves and if we organize good people with good intentions, we can defeat this madness.
If you have a child in Detroit, you do not have to put her/him in a "Failing School."
Stay tuned!
FYI: The Wayne State Board of Governors has not passed this separate and unequal admissions policy yet. We will keep you informed and please stand ready to fight for education for Detroit on all fronts! Take a little piece of the battle up; no one can do all of it. But all of us can do some of it.
In love and struggle,
Elena Herrada.
Detroit Public Schools District 2 representative

Voter Rights, Ballot Initiatives, and People's Court in Detroitistan

While serving on the Detroit Public Schools Board of Educaton, representing District 2, Southwest Detroit, I am also actively participating on a ballot iniative to repeal Public Act 4, Emergency Manager legislation. This legislation currently only effects Black communities, which by definition effect Latino communities because we are neighbors in every single instance where this occurs. Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Flint, Detroit and more to come, are under siege via this legislation that removes our rights to govern ourselves.
Rachel Maddow, the public commentator did a very descriptive piece on this with regard to Michigan's Emergency Manager law and how it effects Benton Harbor, a little community on Lake Michigan. Detroit Schools are under Emergency Manager, but we are not part of the city. The mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, recently requested that Detroit get put under and EM and asked if he could be it. This would mean that the city of Detroit would no longer need to pay into its own employees' pension funds, would be free to terminate collective bargaining agreements with all its unions, and privatize the bus system, the water, the lighting, and all other Detroit held properties.
This may cause the people of Detroit to revolt. Many people who live here live on their pensions. Teachers, public employees and the hundreds, if not thousands of others who can not move out because they cannot sell their homes would lose them if they could not keep up their taxes and utilities, which are higher than any other part of the state of Michigan.
Meanwhile, Wayne County, where Detroit lives, is riddled with corruption and theft. Every day we learn of millions of dollars meant for poor people, for economic initiatives, for job creation going into the pockets of the county's lucky contractors and political aappointees of Robert Ficano, the Wayne County Execuitive. This looters' paradise has no oversight and deals with millions of dollars in tax payer money. People in Detroit expect so little from our government or elected and especially appointed officials that there is little outrage.
There is no talk of putting Wayne County under Emergency Management.
Our school system in Detroit has been kidnapped, robbed and raped by state government and private contractors. Now there is a move to make a separate and unequal district for "failing schools" with completely private and secret oversight. Public money goes into private troughs for the lucky few. Goverment works like charter schools here; cream the jewels off the top and let the public pay for whatever is left.
The good news is that there are many people; thousands of people here who love Detroit. People who simultaneously grieve and fight the corrupt privatization of all things public.
There are young people documenting everything that goes on; art projects, literacy projects, investigative work, and organizing going on all over the city.
The candles are being lit in the darkness that fell over Detroit when DTE cuts off energy to poor people; we hope for the young people who do energy efficient projects to come in to Highland Park. If we start our own court, maybe we can get the thieves to just give our money back and get them to teach literacry, some alternative lifestyle to the greed that has overtaken the human spirit. We do not need anyone else going to prison; that is just another money making machine for the contractors.
Transformation is evident every day here.
When there is nothing left to loot, these looters will leave us alone.
Any day now...

The Guilt Project: Can I Get a Witness?

 Innocence Projects are a very important development in the human rights arena. Many people are sitting in prison who have been wrongly convicted. Their incarceration destroys lives and serves no purpose, except to the profiteers of the prison industry. But there are also those who commit crimes with impunity, whose crimes create hardship and destroy lives of innocent people. Taking money meant for health care for the poor and enriching oneself is a crime against humanity. Taking money meant to create jobs in a desperate economy and diverting or wasting it to enrich some while cheating the poor is a special kind of crime and should be treated as such.
The news this week from Detroit - or for the past month- is strange and entertaining. It is also infuriating. If crime and punishment were treated in relative terms, no one in Detroit would have to go to prison. Our former mayor is awaiting trial on a series of charges arising from his time spent in office. The youngest mayor in our history, Kwame Kilpatrick committed a series of crimes in office which involve misuse of the city's precious resources. It does seem as if he is the whore who acted without any Johns. Some of his cronies are facing prison and others are already in prison.
Now fast forward:
Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano is now associated with countless no bid contracts, amounting to millions of dollars of tax payer money.   Shell corporations, non profits set up to divert money meant for health care for poor people, development projects... we will never know where it went, who took it and where it came from and where it was supposed to go.
We do know this: We trusted elected officials with stewardship of our precious tax dollars. In return, they gave their cronies contracts, gave them special tax credits for properties on which they pay no taxes while the rest of us pick up the tab in the form of our uneven and inequitable  property taxes While rank and file county workers took a 20% pay cut, home foreclosure is up exponentially,. the land bank Ficano oversees scoops up property for pennies on the dollar. People are going without health care and losing their homes as a direct consequence of this unbridled greed. .Ficano can fire people he says let him down; no one is talking about him going to prison.He will likely be able to run for re election.
What is the difference between the millions looted out of county government and the city corruption and the incredible difference in how such crimes are treated?
You do the math.
Don't forget your crayons.

What if Detroit were a white district?

 Detroit Public Schools, in its new IMF style of debt reduction, has placed upwards of 45 students in classrooms. Students who come from the most impoverished conditions- nearly all others have jumped ship from DPS- come to school without breakfast, without computers at home, often without the basic human needs met when they get to school. Put them now in a classroom with no books, one or no teacher- a different substitute each day- and then test them all together. The teachers were told the week of MEAP testing that there would be more layoffs coming. Despite the 40 million dollar Houghton Mifflin book contract between former superintendent Barbara Byrd Bennett and the District, students do not use the books because the District does not own the licensing for them. How is it that Byrd Bennett, Robert Bobb, countless other contractors can leave us in this condition and simply live their materially rich, morally bankrupt lives. They are on the speaking circuit. They have been rewarded for their part in the theft of Detroit's children's inheritance. Now comes their second act; The Failing District for schools that do not make the grade.
Does this look like a District trying to save its children from "failure.?" Put forty children who don't speak English into a classroom with no bilingual teacher, no aide for the teacher, a principal who speaks no Spanish and we have a wonderful source of new victims for the "Failing District."
There are people who once would have been allies, but they are keeping their council, hoping they can get a piece of the action. This helps to explain the silence of some of those who would be with us in this fight. No one has to have any particular credentials to get in on these sweet deals. Witness Catherine Ferguson Academy. Watch what happens in the other schools that simply close overnight. There are neighborhoods on the East Side with no elementary school for miles. There is no law stating that a neighborhood has to have a school. There is no law stating that a classroom has to have a teacher, or that there is a limit on the number of students in a classroom. Indeed, it was the fire marshall that shut down the Nolan Elementary School for having 57 children in a kindergarten room. If Detroit goes under the Emergency Manager rule, the fire marshall will not be able to come in to intervene. The Health Department can do nothing about the rats in the cafeteria at Academy of the Americas. The administration threatens all school personnel if they talk to the press. There is an atmosphere of fear and alienation throughout all the buildings. No teachers, no principals are protected, so children are on their own. Parents who don't speak English are absolutely on their own.
The good news is this: None of what we have recently lost just came to us. African centered curriculum, bilingual education, special education all came with great struggles. Battles were fought for school equity, which was lost before we ever got it. We had good teachers, dedicated parents, warriors in the community who fought long and hard for these things. We did not have the sinister forces of privatization, all protected by bought and paid for legislators, hidden behind anonymous foundation donors, none of whom
Then there are the Excellent Schools. These are not for everyone, though. They are for the favored neighborhoods of United Way, Skillman, Broad Foundation, and countless other merchants of misery posing as saviours. Don't forget Southwest Solutions, in its endless manifestations ( Our Kids Come First, Harriet Tubman Organization, Youthvoice, and on and on). Follow the money. Some of the most sinister forces are at work in Detroit. This is no time to our backs on Detroit schools. Foundations can decide who their favored students, schools, neighborhoods are. The rest of Detroit and its children and its neighborhood are at the mercy of forces we cannot see, elect, confront. It's a new battlefront and we have to research using our most criminal minds to understand what we are up against.
This is a good fight. Jump in.
In solidarity,
Elena Herrada
District 2 Representative, Detroit Public Schools

Chronicles of a city in Exile

This is the first of a dispatch from Detroit Public School Board member Elena Herrada, who represents District 2, Southwest Detroit. We are under an Emergency Manager. I was appointed to the Detroit School Board in July of 2010, after the elected board member was forced to step down. I was invited to request the appointment by other school board members. Since I was appointed to the board, I have been in a pitched battle to restore Detroit Public Schools' right to govern itself. We have been under Emergency Manager since 2009, when Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm sent Robert Bobb to take over our district. Since that time, we have been beset with 2/3 more debt than we had before the takeover, and have won a court battle for academic control, only to have the law changed by Republican governor Rick Snyder. In fact, the change in law also mandates that if the Board sues the State again, we cannot go to a Detroit court; we must go to Ingham County, where we would likely never get an African American judge again.
I am writing this missive to go on record. If we do not record our history, someone else will and it will not be our truth. It is important to go on the record and state who was with us, who was against us, and who stood idly by. It is important to note who, among the non profit community, who, among the activist community collaborated with the State against the children of Detroit; against public education, against the concept of equal education for all, not just those who live in the "Promise Neighborhoods" selected by non profits and foundations, leaving many out in the broken promise neighborhoods. I am seeking to engage the people of Detroit in dialogue about ideas, about justice, about ethics in our everyday dealings with each other.
Welcome to Dispatch from the Promised Land.