For Immediate Release
Media Advisory
Thursday May 1 (May Day)
Event: May Day (May 1), No Business as Usual
Gather: Hart Plaza at Noon, March Thru Downtown at 1:30
Contact: 313-680-5508, 671-3715
Co-Sponsor: Moratorium NOW! Coalition Along With 35 Other Organizations
URL: http://moratorium-mi.org
E-mail: panafnewswire@yahoo.com
NO BUSINESS AS USUAL! NO WORK! NO SCHOOL! NO PURCHASING OF CONSUMER GOODS FROM CORPORATIONS!
MARCH THROUGH DOWNTOWN DETROIT!
GATHER AT NOON AT HART PLAZA,
DEMONSTRATION AT 1:30
Worldwide solidarity on May Day!
March to save workers, retirees, our communities, and our planet!
Thursday May 1 is International Workers’ Day where people around the world gather to demonstrate for the rights of those who create all wealth within society. In Detroit we will honor May Day by calling for a “Day of No Business As Usual,” where workers will take to the streets staying away from work in solidarity with the struggle against the anti-worker, racist attacks being carried out on the City of Detroit.
People in Detroit and around the country have only known cut-backs, war, mass incarceration, and the destruction of our communities. The overall unemployment rate in the city of Detroit is 49.1% and for those under 30 years old it is 59%, and there is no change in sight. We don’t have any illusions; bankruptcy, gentrification, and more military occupations abroad aren’t going to give us jobs, education, and a decent place to live.
The state- appointed Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr, certainly does not have our interests in mind. In the last year Detroit has spent $95 million on a handful of corporate “consultants” to move into the city and come up with ideas to revitalize it. That is enough money to hire 3,000 people on a salary of $30,000 a year to do what these Wall Street goons have never done a day in their lives: real work.
We are marching to demand the end of the parasitic and systematic robbery of the city and its people. We demand an end to paying the loan sharks of Wall Street who destroyed the city and who are now demanding retirees’ pensions in the City’s bankruptcy.
We are also demanding an end to mass incarceration which makes a young person of color more likely to be in prison than to be living above the poverty line. We are demanding that the banks and federal government fund programs to hire young people to begin the process of revitalizing the city. We need people to repair the roads, to repair homes, to rebuild the schools and medical facilities. The resources exist, the money is there, and there are people who need the work!
WE DEMAND:
- Removal of the racist, anti-democratic, anti-worker, pro-bank
- Emergency Managers from Michigan cities and schools.
- Defeat of the “Plan of Adjustment” that destroys pensions and loots city assets.
- Banks must pay for destroying Detroit neighborhoods and jobs. Full support for Public Education and termination of the failed
- Education Achievement Authority. No to charter schools.
- NO tax giveaways to Illitch, Gilbert, and their ilk.
- Stop gentrification and the removal of poor and working people from Detroit.
- Restore and increase state revenue sharing.
- Jobs for all. With 60% Detroit youth unemployment — Hire youth to rebuild the neighborhoods. Money for People not for War. Stop U.S. intervention in Ukraine, Syria, Africa and Venezuela.
- Moratorium on all Bank and Tax foreclosures, evictions, and utility shutoffs for people. Housing and water are Human Rights!
- Public control of public spaces — the “commons”.
- No giveaway of public assets, including the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), to corporations and private foundations.
- End the attacks on women’s reproductive rights.
- Increase the minimum wage to $15/hr and end falling wages and unequal two-tier pay schemes — $7.45 is not enough.
- Stop the attacks on the LGBTQ community. Uphold marriage equality.
- Stop the attacks on communities and people of color.
- System change NOT climate change — No to tar sands, fracking, pet coke.
- Stop deportations and attacks on immigrants and undocumented workers.
- Stop police brutality. No to racial profiling.
- Repeal “Right-to-Work”.
- Overturn Public Act 436 and restore democracy.
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Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION PROJECT–
E MAIL: panafnewswire@gmail.com
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