Water wars
Showdown between City, suburbs only latest act
By MARTIN SCHREADER
Editor, The Michigan SocialistWHAT IS DETROIT? For the 1 million or so residents of the City (which includes those the Census did not count), Detroit is their home. It is where they want to live, or it is where they have to live.
However, if you ask some people who live outside of the City, you get a very different answer. It is where "those people" live. It is "dangerous" and "wild;" the residents of the City are "animals."
Certainly, if this is how you see Detroit, then it only makes sense to impose control from the outside ... "for the good of the people," of course.
This has to be how the Republican-controlled Michigan State Legislature in Lansing sees Detroit, because they have spent the last decade doing everything possible to make sure municipal functions are under state control.
They began by ramming through the dissolution of the Detroit Recorder's Court, replacing it with the Wayne County Circuit Court -- thus establishing a dynamic where City residents are not tried by their peers.
That was the appetizer. The meal itself was larger, with broader implications: the Detroit Public Schools.
The State Legislature, with the aid of then-Governor John Engler and then-mayor Dennis Archer, stripped the citizens of Detroit of their right to vote for School Board, and turned over the school system to a consortium of area bosses.
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