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The Michigan Socialist | News |
Michigan News
Kilpatrick takes aim
at workers, disabled
By MARTIN SCHREADER
Editor, the Michigan Socialist
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| Tears of
a clown: Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick tries to look concerned
about the possible layoffs and privatization. It’s not
convincing, is it? |
IT HAS BECOME something of a general rule that,
when capitalist politicians mismanage their affairs and run up huge
deficits, working people are expected to pick up the tab and clean
up the mess.
Thus, it is no surprise that the budget proposal
by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, presented to the City Council on
April 12, once again forces workers to pay for his — and his
paymasters’ — mistakes.
The City of Detroit is facing a budget gap of over
$330 million for the coming year. A large portion of this gap is due
to a loss of income tax revenues as a result of the recession.
Another major factor in the budget problem is the
rising cost of health care and pensions for City workers and
retirees. Skyrocketing health care costs have been breaking
municipal budgets across the country.
Kilpatrick’s budget calls for the elimination of
670 jobs, including laying off hundreds of maintenance workers at
the Detroit Department of Transportation — the agency responsible
for the City’s bus service.
As well, he proposes to charge disabled riders 75
cents to take the bus — a plan that will devastate the meager fixed
incomes on which most disabled people are forced to live; currently
disabled persons ride for free.
In addition, Kilpatrick proposes to “spin off”
(i.e., privatize) the City’s Housing Department and to mortgage the
City through the selling of municipal bonds.
Kilpatrick shed a few crocodile tears for the
workers he chose to condemn to starvation, but made it clear that he
plans to make the working people of the City pay for the bosses’
mistakes.
City workers who protested outside of the Coleman
Young Municipal Building during Kilpatrick’s presentation were not
fooled.
“It sounds as though the mayor is taking it out on
the worker ants,” said Dora Jennings, a DDOT mechanic with 18 years
seniority. “We work very hard for the City because we are the City.”
IT SHOULD COME as no surprise that Kilpatrick has
decided to make workers pay for his (and his masters’) mistakes.
One of the main reasons he was chosen by the
ruling class to be its mayor in the first place was because he was
perfectly willing to wage war against the working people of the
City.
Almost immediately after entering office in
January 2003, Kilpatrick demanded renegotiation of all City
contracts, with an eye toward imposing massive layoffs and cutbacks.
He reorganized the Detroit Police Dept. in order
to stage a “show of force” in working-class neighborhoods — and just
in time for the federal government to take it over.
Working in conjunction with the racist suburban
media, Kilpatrick also engaged in a number of high-profile stunts
aimed at “sending a message” to City workers: stand up to me and
you’ll be fired.
His proposed budget is little more than an
extension of this anti-union record.
In fact, all of what Kilpatrick does now as Mayor
of Detroit was fashioned when he was a leading member of the State
House of Representatives.
During his time in Lansing, Kilpatrick was
infamous for his “bipartisanship” — that is, his collaboration with,
and capitulation to, outstate Republican politicians and their
rightwing agenda.
This “bipartisanship” reached its highest point
when Kilpatrick sided with the Republicans to strip Detroit
residents of their right to vote and elect members of the Detroit
Board of Education.
(Kilpatrick even tried more recently to keep
Detroiters from getting back their right to vote by trying to push
through legislation in Lansing to declare him dictator over the
school district. See “Dictatorship 101,”
TMS Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2004.)
There is little doubt that, as long as he is in a
position to do so, Kilpatrick will use his power to make the workers
of Detroit responsible for repairing the damage he and his
capitalist handlers create in the City.
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| Detroit
City workers protest Mayor Kilpatrick’s proposed budget, which
will mean hundreds of laid off transit and maintenance workers.
|
KWAME KILPATRICK is, without a doubt, the “new”
face of the
Michigan Democratic Party — or, more accurately, the face of the
party machine.
The son of Congresswoman Carolyn
Cheeks-Kilpatrick, with several relatives in high places in the
state government, Kilpatrick represents the “New Democrat”/DLC wing
of the party, made famous by Bill Clinton and Al Gore (and Joe
Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards).
That is, he is in fact a conservative capitalist
politician using the party machine as a means of gaining office in a
traditionally liberal Democratic stronghold.
Once in office, however, he willingly serves his
capitalist masters, using heavy-handed bureaucratic tactics to
launch attacks on working people throughout the City.
His proposed budget is only the latest example.
For the moment, it looks like Kilpatrick is going
to have problems getting the City Council to approve the budget. The
Council has traditionally been more left leaning and
social-democratic in its outlook and composition.
Nevertheless, he will continue to use strong-arm
tactics to make sure his (and his bosses’) agenda of unionbusting
and massive cuts in services goes through.
At this point, it is clear that the City, under
the leadership of the Kilpatrick, is moving in the opposite
direction that its residents want.
For all of his imagery as the “hip-hop mayor” —
the flashy suits and gator shoes, the diamond earrings and sport
utility vehicles — Kilpatrick is, in the final analysis, little more
than a shill for capitalist corporations that want a free hand.
After all, if he really wanted to close the budget
gap in the City and state, he could have called on the City Council
and State Legislature to repeal the fat tax breaks and corporate
welfare handed out to capitalists in Michigan, to the tune of over
$6 billion a year.
If the legislature in Lansing were to end
corporate welfare, they could quite easily make up for all the
budget shortfalls found throughout the state.
In fact, the $6 billion saved by ending corporate
welfare in Michigan could not only fill all the budget gaps, it
could also restore school funding to previous levels, allow us to
finance schools without the “assistance” of federal funds tied to
Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” act, and would have enough left over
to put into repairing schools, reducing class sizes through new
hiring, etc.
NONE OF THIS, however, is in the interests of the
capitalists who pull the strings in City and state government, or
the politicians from both parties that administer them.
In order for the City of Detroit and the State of
Michigan to operate in the interests of the overwhelming majority —
the 7 million-plus working people and their families in the state —
requires a government and system that is guided by, composed of and
serving in the interests of working people.
This year, the Socialist Party is working to give
working people the opportunity to start building that system.
We are seeking to place our candidates on the
ballot for the November 2004 election in order to build support for
the principles and policies of democratic socialism, and for
measures that put the interests of the working majority ahead of
profit and corporations.
Much of the work we Socialists are doing today is
also in anticipation of local elections taking place in 2005,
including in the City of Detroit.
If there is anything that the tenure of Kwame
Kilpatrick has taught the working people of Detroit so far, it is
that the only way to have a City government that works in our class
interests is to elect our own — i.e., working people — to the City
Council and Mayor’s Office.
The Socialist Party of Michigan, working closely
with its brothers and sisters in the Detroit Socialist Party, and
other working-class and community organizations, will actively seek
to present a working people’s alternative in that election.
Our goal will be to finally give a voice to the
overwhelming majority of Detroit residents, and send a message to
the capitalists that we will no longer be slaves on their
21st-century “plantation.” |
