Detroit Now Has a White, Republican Mayor and City Council: State Take Over Coming to a Black City Near You

By: Reverend Charles E. Williams II, The Huntington Post Black Voices

Sounds Confusing right? I know Detroit has seen its better days, and certainly with The Kwame Kilpatrick stain the rehabilitation of its reputation will take time and leadership to change it, but the latest national trending news is the most disheartening story that anybody could tell. The Day Democracy Died in Detroit. Just Recently, the Governor of the State of Michigan decided that the Democratic process just doesn’t work anymore and placed the city of Detroit under emergency management, giving himself and his proxy, Mr. Kevyn Orr, all power to usurp local authority on any decision that a legislative or executive branch body would make according to Huffingtonpost.com

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced Tuesday that the state would appoint an emergency financial manager to Detroit. Beginning Monday, Washington D.C. bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr will begin examining the city’s finances in the hopes that in the next 18 months he can make a dent in its massive debts.

Detroit’s reputation was mired across the world with the fiscal crisis stain Governor Snyder enacted in his first few months in office: a law called Public Act 4. Months later, 203,238 signatures placed this law on the 2012 ballot and 2,182,504 votes repealed it. This law basically gives all power within a municipality to one person who only is required to respond to the one who appointed him: the governor. Citizens spoke up and spoke out, utilizing the power of the ballot box, but the house, senate and governors office used the power of partisan politics, and rushed the new legislation, called public act 436 in the lame duct session that was also used to make Michigan a right to work state.

Now in 2013, the vote of citizens in Detroit and other cities across the state will effectively be rendered useless. No vote, no voice. Our mayor and city council simply can’t do anything but tap dance around the governor.

I often think about those who sacrificed their lives, like Goodman; Chaney and Shwarner; Medgar Evers, who was gunned down in a driveway in front his wife and kids; Fannie Lou Hamer, beaten bloodied in a jail cell; Dr. king and Ralph Abernathy. It’s a shame to think about so much sacrifice and and so much blood. I also think about those who came to Detroit, like my grandparents who left the south in the great migration because Jim Crow and tactics like poll taxes and grandfather clauses were the law of the land.

So here we are 2013. I’m 32 years old and I’m forced to see the conditions and new tactics that have been displayed to suppress and dismantle democracy, break the back of workers and directly attack our voting rights.

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