Toward Beloved Communities
The appointment of Kevyn Orr as the Emergency Manager of Detroit is a sad day for democracy. There is a growing understanding that the financial crisis justifying this move was manufactured by the withholding of state funds, the drive to protect the $474 millions paid to banks, and the desire to wrest control of the city away from its people and put it into the hands of the corporate elite. Further, we know that nowhere in the state have emergency managers solved any structural problems. Nor have they improved services. They have sold off city assets, shifted common responsibilities for public health, safety, and the general good into private hands for windfall profits. They have set aside contracts for immediate services and compacts made across generations.
Emergency managers violate the will of the people. In Detroit, the EM assumes power over the objections of the City Council and a broad array of civic leaders and organizations. The appointment has sparked widespread protest and civil disobedience that will no doubt continue as citizens seek to express their righteous anger at this assault on democratic rights. Today nearly half of all African Americans cannot vote to control their local government and 75% of African American elected officials have been removed from power. There is a rising cry for federal intervention to stop the EM.
The anguish of this moment is beyond words. It forces us to look deeply into our own history to find ways to remind one another of the kind of future we wish for ourselves and our children.
VietNam and the USA of Amnesia
By Frank Joyce
Forty years ago, on January 27, 1973, the United States officially stopped carrying out direct military attacks against Viet Nam. That phase of the war ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Henry Kissinger and Viet Nam’s Le Duc Tho subsequently won the Nobel Peace prize for negotiating the agreement.
In Viet Nam the anniversary was a very big deal. I know because I was part of a delegation of Americans and other anti-war activists from around the world invited to participate in events commemorating the Paris Peace accords. An official ceremony in Hanoi was carried live on national TV. Deep gratitude was expressed to the U.S. civilians and soldiers who resisted the war.
The Vietnamese government wants young people to better understand the war and its place in Viet Nam’s past, present and future. They think it’s especially important because 80 percent of the population has been born since the war ended.