- Throw out the emergency manager! End the bankers’ dictatorship in Detroit!
- Replace the City Council with a Workers’ Council!
- Break with the Democrats and Republicans!
- Rebuild Detroit in the interests of the working class! No to privatizations!
- Jobs, utilities, education, health care, and pensions are social rights!
- Hands off the DIA!
I call on all workers—young and old, employed and unemployed, in the city and throughout the Metro area—to attend an emergency meeting on the crisis in Detroit.
Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr has now submitted his economic plan—a slash-and-burn program to force the population of Detroit to pay back bondholders, while “restructuring” the city in the interests of the rich. Everything is on the chopping block: health care and pensions for retirees; wages and jobs for city workers; basic social services, including streetlights and the fire department. Whatever assets are profitable, including the Water and Sewerage Department and Belle Isle, are to be sold off to private investors.
Orr—appointed by Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder and backed by Democratic Treasurer Andy Dillon—has absolute power according to the anti-democratic and unconstitutional emergency manager law. He has already declared that the population has no say in what is happening, insisting that “we are not negotiating the terms of the plan.”
In fighting these dictatorial measures, absolutely no confidence can be placed in the trade unions or the corrupt Democratic Party establishment in Detroit, including the City Council and their allies. They all agree and have already implemented major cuts in wages, benefits and social programs. This is also true of all the candidates for mayor, including former DMC chief Mike Duggan and Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon.
What is happening in the city is part of an international process. The same measures are being imposed by the European banks and the International Monetary Fund, driving Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and other countries into depression.
We must reject this! They have their plan, we must have our plan. I am running for mayor to give a voice to the voiceless, to build a new mass political movement of the working class that fights for our rights, not the profits of the banks and wealthy investors.
I call on workers throughout the city and across the Metropolitan area to attend this emergency meeting to discuss a political program and organization for a new counter-offensive of the working class.
Thursday, May 30, 7pm
Wayne State University
General Lectures 150
Corner of Warren Avenue and Anthony Wayne Dr. (3rd St.)
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/fWIU1