What Does the So-Called Corporate Takeover of Government Mean?
Democracy has failed in Michigan. In November, 2012, voters repealed a state law permitting the governor to impose state appointed austerity fiscal managers on local jurisdictions, but the legislature came back by the end of the year with a new, un-repealable, emergency manager law. For years the state emergency managers running Flint’s water system have insulted citizens who complained about water quality at the same time the same officials knew about the rising level of lead and other toxic substances in the water but kept poisoning Flint’s children anyway. And state emergency managers in Detroit’s public schools have run up a cumulative deficit of $3.5 billion at the same time they have neglected the decaying conditions in which children are expected to learn and teachers to work. Citizens in Michigan’s poorest communities have been rendered powerless by the loss of checks and balances.
Through weeks’ of rolling sick-outs, Detroit’s teachers have tried to bring attention to the roof leaks and buckling gym floors and rodents (alive and dead) littering the buildings where they work. Although photographs in newspapers have been distressing, Michigan’s laws, as they have been adjusted in recent years, don’t really provide a path for citizens to regain control. So last Thursday, according to Corey Mitchell writing for Education Week, “The Detroit Federation of Teachers, along with the American Federation of Teachers… filed a lawsuit against Detroit public schools and Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, alleging that the district has failed to ‘provide a minimally adequate education and to properly maintain the schools.’ Parents and students are also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the latest volley in a frenzied legal struggle between teachers and the leadership of the troubled state-run school district… Recent inspections of schools by city workers have uncovered numerous code violations including issues with mold, rodents, broken glass, and leaking roofs. The lawsuit said district officials, including Earley, have allowed the condition of the schools to ‘deteriorate to the point of crisis’….” Mitchell adds that Darnell Earley, Detroit Public Schools’ current emergency fiscal manager—and previously the state emergency manager involved with Flint’s water poisoning—has turned (unsuccessfully) to the courts to try to prevent What Does the So-Called Corporate Takeover of Government Mean? | janresseger:
