The Socialist Equality Party is holding a public meeting in defense of the Detroit Institute of Arts and in defense of culture as a social right for the working class. The main speaker will be D’Artagnan Collier, the SEP candidate for mayor of Detroit.

David Walsh, the arts editor of the World Socialist Web Site, will also be speaking.

The threat to sell off the DIA by the city’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr has provoked widespread revulsion in the metro Detroit area and nationally. Orr's rationale, unquestioned in both the media and the local political establishment, is that the artwork must be considered if Detroit is to pay back its $15 billion in long-term debt.

Orr has threatened that any city asset—from Belle Isle to the Detroit Zoo—is potentially for sale. This is part of the overall assault on city workers and essential services being carried out by the unelected emergency manager with the full backing of the mayor and city council. The corporate and financial elite believe the artistic achievements of mankind belong to them, not the working class.

A fight against this must begin with a political understanding of the crisis in Detroit and the development of a socialist movement of workers in the Detroit area, nationally and around the world to defend the social rights of the working class, including access to culture.

Thursday June 13, 7:00 PM

First Unitarian-Universalist Church

4605 Cass Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201