Brit Satchwell, President of the Ann Arbor Education Association gives six reason why you should join the Occupy Democracy Protest Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 16 at 4PM.

Colleagues,

Unions, community activists, and churches from across lower Michigan will gather outside of Governor Snyder’s gated home on Geddes Rd. to support the repeal of PA4 (Emergency Managers) on Monday, January 16th.  Here is an excellent info link:

Buses are coming from seven Detroit locations and five other Michigan cities.  Park at Washtenaw Community College, 4800 E. Huron River Dr. at 4 pm (map http://mapq.st/xSLpar).  This peaceful march has a permit.   Police will shut down Geddes Rd. to traffic, and rally marshalls will direct us.  From WCC, folks can either walk to Parker Mill Park on Geddes Rd or take a shuttle.   Speakers from Rainbow Push Detroit, NAACP, Michigan Forward, several Detroit and local churches, and the Washtenaw Community Action Team (which AAEA helped launch last summer!) will address the abuses of PA4.  We’ll then march down Geddes to the gilded gates guarding Snyder’s subdivision to hold a silent candlelight vigil.  A letter for Snyder will be delivered, probably to the guard at the gate.  The rally will end by 7 pm.

Why should you attend?

1)The nation honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on January 16th.  What better way to keep Dr. King’s words alive in the world than by living what he preached through peaceful civic protest?  Educators have the day off.  Dr. King’s dream never does.

2) Emergency Managers (EMs) can, do, and will:  replace mayors, city councils, school boards and bargaining teams; tear up contracts to bust unions; dictate their own wage and benefit packages to employees who have no choice but to accept them or quit; eliminate public meetings (EMs don’t need to meet with anybody); sell public assets and facilities to private interests; dictate school programs and curricula; cut essential public safety services such as police and fire.

3) EMs have already un-voted the votes of hundreds of thousands of Michigan’s citizens – including a hugely disproportionate number of African-Americans – in Benton Harbor, Flint, Inkster, Pontiac, and Ecorse.  Detroit (where the schools have already been taken over by an EM) is next in the cross hairs.  If the governor installs an EM in Detroit, over half of the African-Americans in Michigan will have lost their right to elect and run their own city governments.  PA4 is a tacitly racist mutant virus dressed up as “color blind financial accountability” attacking the very DNA of American democracy where these four words are enshrined: ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE.

4) Michigan’s Senate Fiscal Agency last year forecast that as many as 150 public school districts could fall into the red by 2012/13 and become targets for an EM.  Detroit schools have had an EM for several years where their teachers have been force fed huge concessions.  Relatively affluent Northville used the mere threat of an EM to wring unprecedented concessions from their educators last summer.  Muskegon Hts and Highland Park schools are the latest districts to be targeted for EMs.  Join this rally to stand up for fellow educators and students across the state!

5) EMs don’t work!  They cannot solve the underlying financial problem… inadequate state funding!

• Exhibit A: Proof that Michigan’s Emergency Mgrs don’t work: 3 cities that had them in financial trouble again
• Exhibit B: Benton Harbor still deep in the red. Is the magic of an Emergency Manager simply not enough?

So if the verdict is in and EMs don’t work, why impose EMs to replace local government and school boards?  A process of elimination leads to the obvious answers: to bust unions, bypass collective bargaining, pass public assets and property to private hands, and place urban centers/schools under centralized state control.  It’s a power grab, plain and simple.  Go ahead… it’s OK to say the unsavory but unavoidable “D” word… dictatorship.  Yes, in America, in Michigan.  This is why Rachel Maddow’s show has called PA4 the nation’s most important and under-covered story.

6) I was proud to stand at Missionary Tabernacle Baptist Church last week to tell over 1,000 Detroiters that AAEA members, in concert with scores of educators from neighboring school districts, had organized and collected over 20,000 repeal PA4 petitions signatures this summer.  Since we’ve gone back to work, other local activists have taken up the cause.  By attending this rally, you’ll recognize and honor the time and work those warriors for democracy spent on hot sidewalks and at community events.  This is the final push!  PA4 will be suspended, frozen in its tracks, as soon as we submit our petitions.  Hundreds of thousands of citizens will have their right to cast a meaningful vote restored.  Thousands of employees will have their contracts spared.

If you took a Repeal PA4 petition home over the holiday break, please bring it to the rally or drop it off at the AAEA office ASAP!  If you have not yet signed a petition to repeal PA4, this is your chance!  And finally, please bring paper cups and small candles for the silent vigil!

Please come to defend democracy, union colleagues, government accountability, bargaining rights, civil liberties and the right to vote for all.  I hope to see you there, and thanks!