No matter how the Governor tries to spin the crisis in Flint, Emergency Managers are at the core of this disaster. They are the means to destroy local democracy. Emergency Managers (EMs) are a tool in turning public goods into private wealth. They are the means to seize public lands; give away valuable property; poison people in Flint in the name of saving money; devastate Highland Park; deny life giving water in Detroit to keep bond ratings; increase debt to Wall Street; gut pension plans; dismantle public education; and intimidate, silence, and ridicule those who call attention to these effects.

As surely as Snyder needs to go, so does his Emergency Management law. Snyder’s championing of this law brought him support from the corporate elite in Michigan and such right wing forces as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. Now it is clear these same forces are willing to sacrifice Snyder, in order to keep their essential weapon.

Snyder came into office on the heels of intense challenges to emergency management legislation. Emergency Managers, appointed by Democratic Governor Granholm, had been exercising authority in areas beyond finances. In the case of the Detroit Public Schools, they were interfering with curriculum, class size, and academic decisions. Courts ruled EMs were overstepping their authority.

Snyder vowed to fix that problem. One of his first acts, PA 4 in 2011, gave sweeping powers to Emergency Managers. With the new act, financial problems became the excuse for appointed individuals to set aside elected officials, terminate contracts, reduce pensions, and make all the decisions of local governments without regard to charters, resolutions, or local laws. They exercise completed, unchecked authority.

The public outcry against this law was immediate. And it was widespread. In 2012 nearly 3 million people in Michigan voted to repeal this law. Snyder, and his right wing, white, wealthy legislators defied this democratic outpouring. Saying they knew better, the legislature enacted another Emergency Manager law. This time, by including a small appropriations item, they made the law immune from public referendum.

Thus began the series of managers in Flint, every one of whom is implicated in the fateful decisions that lead to the poisoning of that town. As Flint state senator Jim Ananich said recently of Snyder and the right wing legislators, “They’ve chosen this policy, and this is the outcome. We have poisonous water flowing through people’s faucets. In the Detroit Public Schools, they have overcrowded classrooms and rats. Unfortunately, the emergency managers in these communities have been failing.”

EMs have failed the people in every community. In almost every case, emergency managers have acted in arrogant, isolated, and ignorant ways. In Benton Harbor Emergency Managers sold off a popular public park to a private golf course. The Mayor says it was an “horrific experiment” and the city is now left defending itself from lawsuits caused by actions of EMs. In Pontiac, services were reduced to almost zero, crippling the capacities of the city. The new mayor described the EM experience as a “disruption in democracy.”

In Detroit the Emergency Manager rushed through a bankruptcy process where elderly pensioners bore more than 70% of the so-called savings. Public lands were sold to developers without oversight. Lucrative contracts were awarded to cronies, and a water shut-off policy was initiated that brought world-wide condemnation, including findings by a UN delegation of gross human rights violations.

The idea that business practices can provide the principles for public responsibilities exploded in Flint. Now is the time to repeal this draconian law. Democratic, open debate is our only protection from unchecked greed.

Building Blocks for Beloved Community in Brooklyn

Matthew Birkhold

On Saturday January 16, almost twenty people gathered at Align Brooklyn, a black owned yoga and chiropractic studio in Brooklyn to explore building a beloved community. They came for a two and a half hour praxis lab organized by Visionary Organizing Lab called “The Building Blocks of Beloved Community: Exploring Interconnections.” According to their website, a praxis lab is an interactive experience, aiming to “create conditions from which people emerge with an understanding that we are all interconnected and capable of contributing to the world.”

Through small group discussions of several different questions, participants left with a better understanding of the connections between us and our capacity to shape the world. One participant from Sunset Park called the experience “uplifting and beautiful.” Many others expressed gratitude to Visionary Organizing Lab for creating the space to have conversations that spoke to deeply felt desires to explore the human, social, and political connections that exist between us.

The praxis lab began when the facilitator’s asked everyone to write down ten things that made their lives possible so far that day. A Polish man talked about how political dissidents in Poland made it possible for him to leave Poland in the 1980s while others talked about farmers who grew the food they ate that day and the land it was grown on. People talked about the various working people in different regions of the world and others talked about people who worked in local stores.

Following this exercise we collectively teased out what kinds of connections exist among us and imagined what a world that honored these connections might look like. Collectively, we saw that people are connected all over the earth in ways that are personal, economic, ecological, political, social, and spiritual. If the world was to honor these connections, participants believed that we would consume less, would resolve conflicts in a community based way, and we would respect the limits of nature. Participants came to agree that such a world would place less emphasis on individuals and learn to recognize all people in relationship to larger communities. Finally, in a world that honors these connections, people would have “more things to do for each than have things to do with each other.”

To make this world a reality, we saw we had to change ourselves and the world around us. Participants said that all of us had to develop the kinds of skills needed for sustainable communities including agricultural skills and the kinds of skills needed for small-scale manufacturing. We also concluded that each of us has a responsibility to develop knowledge and understandings of ourselves that will allow us to better understand what unique contributions we have to make so that no one feels like they have to do it all. Finally, we all agreed we had to become new human beings, devoted to building character and practicing a sense of balance, discipline, and time management.

The praxis lab ended with all of us thinking of and offering to the group what we might begin doing right now in our neighborhoods to begin honoring these connections. Some of these suggestions included saying hello to strangers in the street, cooking for friends, taking the oral histories of our friends and neighbors, borrowing sugar from neighbors, sweeping our sidewalks, supporting our partners and neighbors, and trying to create larger projects like farmers markets and communal spaces where we can come together to share ourselves with neighbors and explore possibilities for the future.

Visionary Organizing Lab will offer part two of “Building Blocks of Beloved Community” with an emphasis on what Martin Luther King called “the sacredness of the human personality” on February 20th, once again at Align Brooklyn. More information is available here.