Last night I spoke on the phone with Pastor David Bullock, the president of the Michigan Chapter of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Highland Park NAACP. He and his group are organizing a Martin Luther King Day march on the Ann Arbor home of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Details on the “Occupy for Democracy Rally” to protest Michigan’s anti-democratic […]

It’s been no secret that Governor Snyder and his team were going to force union members to bear the full brunt of the financial problems Detroit faces. Now they have finally gotten around to saying it publicly. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council must reach concessions with city unions by early February to avoid a recommendation of state […]

Julie Mack at the Kalamazoo Gazette has a piece titled “Are emergency managers part of the problem or part of the solution?” that quotes me extensively and asks, if not an emergency manager, then what is the solution to our failing cities’ problems? You can vote on the answer HERE. Two comments to Ms. Mack: characterizing me a just a […]

Earlier this week, the Muskegon Chronicle published an op-ed by Steve Gunn, the conservative Communications Director of the anti-teachers union Education Action Group. In his op-ed he places the blame for the financial catastrophes happening in Michigan cities and school districts at the feet of unionized public employees. The people who hate the [Emergency Manager] law want you to believe […]

At a Detroit rally yesterday to protest the imposition of an Emergency Manager on the city, Brandon Jessup of Michigan Forward announced that Michigan Forward has gathered over 170,000 petition signatures for their effort to put the repeal of Public Act 4, the Emergency Manager law, on the November 2012 ballot. Only 161,305 are needed. Michigan Forward started the petition […]

A couple of weeks ago, Michigan Radio reported that Benton Harbor mayor-elect James Hightower held an informational meeting for City Commissioners and Benton Harbor City department heads to prepare for the departure of Emergency Manager Joe Harris. A further story today suggests that Hightower and the newly elected commissioners are taking the return of their city to democratic rule very […]

One of the main points I have raised repeatedly since the passage of Michigan’s Emergency Manager law, Public Act 4, is that the imposition of an Emergency Manager (EM) does little, if anything, to solve the underlying problems that bring municipalities and school districts to the crisis point where an EM is deemed necessary. With Joe Harris set to depart […]

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder took the next step toward placing Michigan’s largest city under the control of an Emergency Manager this afternoon, appointing a review team to go over Detroit’s finances. A former Detroit police chief and a former Wayne State University president are among the members of a state-appointed team that will review Detroit’s finances under the emergency manager […]

A recap of sorts by Rachel Maddow tonight of Michigan’s Emergency Manager law and its impacts, particularly on Benton Harbor. A bunch of my photos from one of the early rallies are featured. The bit at 5:15 is probably the most significant: 2011 is the year when the Republicans in the great state of Michigan decided that small “d” democracy […]

This could signal an important foreshadowing of the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Michigan’s Emergency Manager law and its disparate impact on African Americans. The U.S. Department of Justice will block the voter ID provisions of an election law passed in South Carolina earlier this year because the state’s own statistics demonstrated that the photo identification requirement would have a […]

Reverend Al Sharpton covered Michigan’s Emergency Manager law last night on Politics Nation. My now-famous chart showing the number of African Americans that will be impacted by this was mentioned with credit to me at around the 2:30 minute mark. They also used my audio of Emergency Manager Joe Harris without attribution. That comes in around 5:50 and is incorrectly […]