The drive to establish safe, affordable water in Michigan intensified over this past week. Through direct action, public education, legal initiatives, public testimony, and court trials, people are pressuring federal, state and local governments to live up to their responsibilities of providing safe, affordable water while protecting our Great Lakes.

On Friday, the jury was seated in the trialof two members of the Homrich 9, who blocked water shut off trucks from leaving their garages in July of 2014. The Reverend Bill Wylie-Kellerman, Pastor of St Peter’s Episcopal Church, and Marian Kramer of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization explained their decision to stop the trucks at a press conference on Wednesday. They said their decision was necessary. All other avenues were blocked because of the limitation on democratic rights under the bankruptcy process and emergency management. "It was, at the time, the last vestige of democracy in the city," Wylie-Kellermann said. Protesters acted out of necessity to defend "the rights of Detroiters to have water in their homes."

"What we did, we understood to be preventing harm," Wylie-Kellermann said. "Water is a human right, and that's why we're here."

Defendant Marian Kramer spoke to the hypocrisyin the city. The City is criminally charging and prosecuting defendants for nonviolent defense of Detroiters’ right to water. “The true crime is that thousands of people who are struggling to pay their water bills are being deprived of a basic necessity of life. Instead of implementing the Water Affordability Plan, which would tie water rates to income and which Detroit City Council supports, the Mayor chooses to shut off the water of thousands of Detroiters. Who is the real criminal?”

Detroit announced last month it has already cut off water to more than 16,000 residences and warned another 49,000 that their water will be shut off soon. People whose water has been shutoffare living in homes using buckets of water from neighbors and family.

Meanwhile Flint mother and water warrior Melissa Mays joined a group of lawmakers in Lansing who introduced a package of bills dealing with concerns from water testing to preventing water shut offs to our most vulnerable citizens. Representative Stephanie Chang, who introduced the legislation said about the shut offs in Detroit and Highland Park, "What happened in our cities could happen in others." They already are in Flint.

The legislation would require water utilities to disclose shut-off statistics, provide clearer notices about shutoffs, prohibit shutoffs for vulnerable residents, provide more payment options and make illegal water reconnections a misdemeanor instead of felony.

Ms. Mays framed the essential reason for the legislative initiatives, "Something that is supposed to nourish us and keep us alive was treated as a commodity — the quality was ignored, the signs were ignored. What we're seeing is a complete disregard for human life, human safety and the future of our children."

This “disregard for human life and human safety” was vividly chronicled in a screening of Detroit Does Mind Dying, a new film by Kate Levy. Levy’s work has been hailed as critical in bringing the human costs of the state’s water policies to light. Over 60 people gathered at the Detroit Public Library to watch the film and talk about how they could become more involved.

On Thursday evening the Detroit Active and Retired Employees Association gathered at the DIA to protestthe decision by the Michigan Bar to honor bankruptcy judges Steven Rhodes and Gerald Rosen with the Archer Award for public service. Judge Rhodes refused to stop the water shut offs or restore services to thousands, saying there was no right to water in Michigan law.

Such narrow, callous thinking cannot be sustained. It is being challenged on every front.

100 Years a Freedom School

for Grace Lee Boggs, 2015

William Copeland aka Will See

these kids are colored indigo

they don’t need all the limits, yo

you don’t have to tell a flower

       when to grow

Freedom Schooling is community        identity      beauty

Where the workers, artists, makers, students

Do things in unity/ we’re not enemies

We can be interdependently

And put the children’s needs at the center

Where our attention be.

Coz no one’s living perfectly.

This world is not serving the

Needs of hardly no one/ it takes one to know one

You reap one/ you sow one.

The winds they keep blowin’                To keep the seeds growin’

The winds they keep blowin’                To keep the seeds growin’

Now it’s a norm that the storm’s roaring on

Blurry your vision!

I hear the thugs and the gangstas

But the warriors missing.

We’re in a crumbling village that resembles a prison

It’s complex to communicate

But chillin that’s simple

What it resembles

Is a circle of ideas and clear visions

Daily weekly       seasonally

Gathered around a dear woman.

These are tikkun talkers, watchers of

The clock of social living.

Theories of sands falling in glass

These hands that held sharpest gears

So diverse in their years, stories, spirits assembled here.

We pounding out beats and tweets,

Snaps, raps, and apps,

PVC and MP3, future shock and quantum clocks,

From trash on hand

We salvage the land

And blow living breath in a city that

Dollars had left for dead.

The winds they keep blowin’                To keep the seeds growin’

Growing growing

growing

Before Hoggwarts and the Mocking Jay

We wide eyed wizards hit the east side

Searching for schooling in the social justice spells to summon.

There was Field Street, American Revolutionaries, Detroit Summer and you

Valued unlucky in the rigged lottery of this American life.

Jimmy said they were counting your position

In boarded up schools and prison bars, lead feet smashing down

on sweet potato toes,

intimate abuse and angels whose death is by their own wings,

thousands of digital likes upon bodies

bruised by hulking blue

authority.

But there’s resurrection in these eyes. We see there’s magic in these lots

Left to grow in nature’s rhythm. There’s revolution in these children

And there’s genius in these Detroit blocks. And we’re proud.

The winds they keep blowin’

We were blackened and burned in 100 years of contradictions

Your criticism titanium sharpened our words and thoughts

Now we sit with wet faces determined

To keep our eyes open & defy man made laws that would see our lives broken.

From how we read and how we speak            we keep our minds growing

From how we listen and how we spit               we see our souls flowin’

The winds they keep blowin’                To keep the seeds growin’

To keep the seeds growin’

We say goodbye/ we say What up Doe

We say Yes Amen/ we say Hell No

We say Black Power! Black Power!

We say Yowza Yowza Yowza!

We say Run Barack Run!

We say every contradiction under the sun

Daggummit

We say Liberation Liberation Liberation

Until our work here is done