Detroit Water Shut-offs Prompts Canadian Solidarity Amid World Crisis

Efforts by the emergency manager Kevyn Orr to carry out the program of re-structuring favoring the banks and corporations during the bankruptcy proceedings has drawn growing opposition from both inside the city and beyond.

On Thurs. July 24, a delegation from Windsor, Ontario representing the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) arrived to a crowd of over 100 people waiting outside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center (CAYMAC) where the local political officials and the emergency manager have their offices. During the period of waiting a number of community organizations spoke out against the ongoing attacks being leveled against the working class and poor residents of the majority African American municipality.

Representatives from the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO), the People’s Water Board (PWB) and others, are calling for an indefinite halt to the water shut-offs which have escalated since the spring. They are also demanding that every household’s whose water services have been terminated, should be turned back on and that there should no privatization of the public water system in Detroit.

The Detroit Water & Sewerage Dept. (DWSD) announced in federal bankruptcy court on July 21 that it was suspending shut-offs for 15 days. However, the dreaded Homrich trucks, the private firm hired by the emergency manager to carry out many of the shut-offs, were still on the job this time going after those who have allegedly “turned their water back on illegally.”

The slogan for several months in Detroit has been “Water is a Human Right: Fight, Fight, Fight!” With the National Nurses United (NNU) declaring a “public health emergency” in Detroit due to the shut-offs, it only confirmed what many have been saying in the wake of the most recent onslaught by the emergency manager, who works for the right-wing, multi-millionaire Gov. Rick Snyder, with both of them carry out the bidding of the corporations and banks.

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