|
The
Michigan Socialist | News | Michigan
News
Water wars
Showdown between City,
suburbs only latest act
By MARTIN
SCHREADER
Editor, The Michigan
Socialist
WHAT IS DETROIT? For the 1 million or so
residents of the City (which includes those the Census did not
count), Detroit is their home. It is where they want to live,
or it is where they have to live.
However, if you ask some people who live
outside of the City, you get a very different answer. It is
where "those people" live. It is "dangerous" and "wild;" the
residents of the City are "animals."
Certainly, if this is how you see Detroit,
then it only makes sense to impose control from the outside
... "for the good of the people," of course.
This has to be how the Republican-controlled
Michigan State Legislature in Lansing sees Detroit, because
they have spent the last decade doing everything possible to
make sure municipal functions are under state control.
They began by ramming through the dissolution
of the Detroit Recorder's Court, replacing it with the Wayne
County Circuit Court -- thus establishing a dynamic where City
residents are not tried by their peers.
That was the appetizer. The meal itself was
larger, with broader implications: the Detroit Public Schools.
The State Legislature, with the aid of
then-Governor John Engler and then-mayor Dennis Archer,
stripped the citizens of Detroit of their right to vote for
School Board, and turned over the school system to a
consortium of area bosses.
THEN CAME A few subtle moves -- "between-meal
snacks," so to speak. In the name of "boosting business," the
City government gave millions in tax breaks and other
corporate welfare.
They demolished block after block of
low-income housing, occupied mainly by retirees, to make way
for new sports stadiums.
They expanded the "Renaissance Zones," where
greedy bosses can pay workers minimum wage to do what other
workers in the area do for two- or three-times the wage.
Meanwhile, land speculators and developers
began bulldozing more low-income housing to make way for
condominiums and other properties that few in the City can
afford.
(The federal government, not to be outdone,
seized control of the Detroit Police Department, and placed
them under the control of John Ashcroft's Department of
Justice.)
To crown their achievements, they managed to
get a new mayor elected who would "play ball."
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is so beholden to the
bosses and tied in to the rightwing powers in Lansing and
Washington as to be nearly indistinguishable in his actions
from his Republican allies.
At the same time, though, he is someone who
can relate to the "hip-hop" crowd, and can make the attacks
more acceptable. This makes him the perfect combination.
However, it is becoming increasingly clear
that the City still has too much power, as far as the bosses
and their politicians, locally and statewide, are concerned.
So, it is now time again for the state to sit
down and binge on the City's assets.
THE DETROIT WATER and Sewage Department is one
of the few public utilities remaining in the City's hands.
It was built primarily to serve the City, but
as the suburbs have expanded, the DWSD has expanded its role
and now provides services for much of the metropolitan region.
New water mains; new sewer pipes; new pumping
stations; more personnel; more construction (mostly
underground). All of this costs a lot of money in a capitalist
society.
Who should pay for all of this? It almost
seems like a silly question. By all rights, those who are
moving farther and farther out to get away from the City
should ante up for their new water and sewage service.
And so they have been, indirectly. By previous
agreement, the DWSD passes on the cost of this new
construction to the regional (usually countywide) boards,
which then pass it on to their customers.
But the suburbs are now upset with this
arrangement. They want a new deal.
Some of the older suburbs, which have been
connected to the DWSD system for a long time, are a little
tired of having to help foot the bill for their fellow county
residents living on the margins of the area.
Now, these suburbs, through their
mostly-Republican state legislators, are planning to introduce
a bill that would make the Detroit water system a City service
in name only.
The bill would establish a seven-member board
to oversee DWSD billing practices. Most of these board members
would be from the suburbs or the out-state area.
The current board is composed of five people
appointed by the mayor that are drawn mainly from the City.
WHY ARE THEY doing this? The answer is not so
straightforward.
To a certain extent, the anger and frustration
many suburban residents -- mainly those in the "inner
suburbs," many (if not most) of whom are current or former
autoworkers -- is legitimate.
They are being forced to foot the bill for
their managers and bosses as the latter move out into their
new subdivisions and gated communities.
They have seen substantial rate increases over
the last decade, as the once-rural communities of upper
Oakland and Macomb counties have been developed, and
million-dollar homes began to dot, and then black out, the
landscape.
They have been paying disproportionately for
the bosses' "urban sprawl," and are a little sick and tired of
it. You cannot blame them.
Enter the Republicans, who represent those who
"sprawl." Their constituents, mainly the people we all have to
call "sir" or "ma'am" for eight hours (or more) a day, are
also angry. But their anger is quite different.
Their rates are higher, and they begin to
whine that it is "unfair," even though their running water and
sewer system seems to say something else.
What is "unfair" about it? To put it simply,
and bluntly: from their point of view, it is "unfair" because
they have to pay more than the residents of the City.
Construction costs are factored into a formula
used by the DWSD to calculate rates for suburban customers. It
is this formula that the bosses, through their Republican
agents, consider "unfair" and want eliminated.
More to the point, they want the whole region
covered by DWSD to pay the costs of the new water and sewer
lines. They want to shift the burden from themselves on to the
residents of the City.
 |
| Community residents and anti-privatization
activists protest outside of public utilities in Detroit
against mass shutoffs of lights, heat and
water. |
SINCE THE REPUBLICANS control most of the
seats in these counties, they are able to channel the
discontent of working people in the suburbs into this
reactionary power grab.
Thus, the battle lines are drawn: City
vs. suburbs; Black vs. white; poverty vs.
privilege.
There is little doubt that the Republicans, as
they push this legislation through the State House and Senate,
will play the "race card."
It is a tried and tested standard, and still
works quite well for mobilizing their voting base. It may not
have worked completely the last time they used it, during the
gubernatorial election in 2002, but it is still an effective
tool.
There is little doubt that, as the debate over
the reorganization of the DWSD heats up, the fact that City
residents are not paying for suburban capitalists' waste
removal will be twisted into some kind of form of "welfare."
If that doesn't work, they will use more coded
language, saying that the City is being "divisive" because
they have the audacity to think they should control their
municipal services.
Certainly, when confronted with this, the City
government will do what it has done for the last decade: roll
over and die for it.
There is little room for doubt that Mayor
Kilpatrick will go along with the Republicans' proposal. He
may try to "compromise" by co-opting hand-picked suburban
representatives for the existing DWSD board; but if Lansing
objects he will toe their line.
After all, he has done it before -- with
Recorder's Court, the School Board and the capitalist
developers.
WE SOCIALISTS OFFER a fundamentally different
approach.
Instead of bickering over the composition of
the DWSD board, we would propose a whole new structure for the
administration of the area's water.
First, we would immediate declare the whole
water and sewage system public property, run not for profit
but for human need.
Second, administration of the water system
would be directed by local bodies of water department workers
and representatives elected on a neighborhood or citywide
basis (depending on the size).
Those local bodies would elect a new executive
board or council that would oversee the administration of the
whole system, and would be democratically accountable to the
local bodies and the community as a whole.
This system offers two distinct advantages for
working people who need public water and sewage. The most
immediate advantage would be lower rates.
A system of democratic workers' control would
all but completely eliminate the many useless layers of
bureaucracy and waste that capitalist entities need (because
they need those layers as a buffer between themselves and the
workers).
The other distinct advantage would be a more
localized method of calculating rates.
With local bodies, the ability to redistrict
how rates are determined would mean those places where
maintenance and repair are the main concerns, and not new
construction, would not be forced to pay for the new
extensions unless it was agreed to voluntarily.
Other, more long-term, advantages would emerge
as well. For example, as these bodies discussed new and better
ways to improve service, they would also be free to explore
new options for waste treatment and management that could
assist with rehabilitating the environment.
Such a system of public ownership and workers'
control is the cornerstone of democratic socialism.
But you will never see such a system exist as
long as capitalists control society. While much more effective
and efficient, it is not "profitable" and therefore cannot be
allowed to exist.
THE CAMPAIGN TO attack the working people of
the City is already underway.
The recent moves by DWSD to "cut costs" in
order to placate the capitalists and their agents in Lansing
has resulted in tens of thousands of poor and working class
residents of Detroit having their water cut off.
This was the "two" in the "one-two punch"
demanded by the suburban capitalists. First, to try and
appease the masters, DWSD raised rates for City customers;
when that did not completely work, they started turning off
the spigot.
Thus, the dynamic of City vs. suburbs,
etc., has already begun. Those workers from the suburbs who
are supporting the Republican drive out of narrow self
interest are backhandedly aiding in these barbaric attacks.
It is time for working people, in the City and
in the suburb, to take a step back and look at what is
happening.
If you're not being used as a pawn, then
you're being used as a punching bag.
Both situations have to stop. The plan of
public ownership and workers' control is the only way left to
do
this. | 
