Michigan Welfare Rights is issuing a "Call to Action." Most critical to the survival of thousands is access to free and clean drinking water, a requirement for life. The Water Affordability Plan has been mired in bureaucratic madness since it was submitted for review and passage by the Detroit City Council. The Water Dept. administration has hijacked the Plan by treacherous methods. Endless memos and empty correspondences have been issued and responded to week after week while the Dept. continues its diabolical pattern of cutting water off at thousands of homes, month after month.
The second part of the "Call to Action" involves the other great crisis we suffer, which is the rising homelessness. What sense does it make to have 21,000 or more homeless people in our area, and 44,000 vacant properties also standing, many of which are livable, owned by the State of Michigan?
We are proposing direct action of both these fronts. We will be organizing efforts to move homeless people into these properties, and will also organize the escrow accounts to pay for our occupancy. We need carpenters to help restore these homes. We need plumbers to help restore these homes. We need seniors to help sew curtains and bake casseroles to help feed these families when they first move in. We need lawyers to help get Welfare Rights members out of jail when we defy the banks and move our people inside. We need Judges to release us. We need Police Officers to refuse to arrest us. We need students to ring the properties and help kick in doors. We need locksmiths to help us install new locks on these doors. We need organized homeless providers to get on this page and work to end this scandalous condition. We need the clergy who truly believe in a higher power, to forsake the safety of their warm, inside pulpits to be the barrier in front of us when the forces of evil come to bring us pain.
We either organize to save our community, our people, our city, our state and our country, or we stand and watch as slow and consuming death picks us off, one by one. Stand with us, and let us not fall for systematic suffering not another damned moment!
— Maureen D. Taylor, State Chair, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization.
From the Editors
The $100 Billion water industry in America is growing fast! The giant corporations are set to make mountains of profit by privatizing the publicly owned water systems in the U.S. Who will afford the soaring rates? Human beings must have water! We think the only solution is for society to take over these giant corporations and make them public property. Send the People's Tribune your water stories and ideas. Write PT, PO Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 or email info@peoplestribune.org
