Stop Foreclosure & Eviction Friday May 3, 2013
Please call and email Bank of America Executives to demand they stop the eviction of the Murrays and negotiate a loan modification. The Murrays’ loan number is 023732976.
Call Daniel Vargas, Executive Customer Relations of BoA at 877.471.4367 , ext. 034580
Video: Stop the Murray Foreclosure and Eviction (by savethemurrayhome)
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I admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate.
That’s what Obama said about CNN at last night’s White House Correspondents Association dinner.
Let me explain why that is such a great line. CNN sees itself as “in the middle” between left and right, MSNBC and Fox. Just recently, in fact, CNN president Jeff Zucker praised the middle as the place to be. But CNN also sees itself as a great newsgathering organization that is all about truthtelling rather than ideology. “Keeping them honest,” as Anderson Cooper, face of the brand, likes to say.
Put them together and what do you have? Keep ‘em honest, but stay in the middle. Which doesn’t work. For what happens when one side is BS-ing us more than the other? What happens when independent and honest reporting shows that these people on this side are mostly right in what they’re saying, and those people on that side are distorting the case?
CNN wants to believe, tries to believe and I think does believe that this problem does not exist. Therefore we have to remind them about it, because it does exist. And that’s what Obama did: “cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate” is saying to CNN: Accuracy and truthtelling will be sacrificed to your ideology— the middle, no matter what it takes.
(via jayrosen)
The sad part is, they had all these problems before they hired Jeff Zucker. And then they hired Jeff Zucker, a man whose entire recent career has been built on tone-deaf failures to understand his network’s audience, whatever that network might have been.
(via shortformblog)
KEVIN ORR SPEAKS OF EMERGENCY MANAGER JOB
Source: The Detroit News
Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr speaks with the press about the job of Emergency Manager. He discusses in summary what he has encountered after 5 weeks in the position.
City can be broken out into several different cities
Downtown, Midtown, and Wayne State University areas are thriving and will continue to progress. Has met with people moving into and attracted from outside Detroit seeing these as desirable areas.
Outer lying areas are neglected and with intense need.
City structure needs attention. Employees wanting to do the right thing but may need to re-examine what that looks like given the current situation.
Police and fire meetings have been held, more needed to speak with people directly. Resolved to addressing 12 hour work days, reduction in pay, equipment, and simple matters like business cards for canvassing. This is balanced by statute requirements.
A major concern is that Detroit has as much of a chance as any other major city to recover from the current recession. The city has missed a few cycles of development and moving forward.
The police force without tasers makes no sense. There has to be a middle ground between no force and deadly force. Non-lethal force must be an option.
The world is becoming smaller and Detroit needs to be competitive.
A RESPONSE FROM THE PEOPLE
Mr. Orr you were invited to take this job by a group of people and organizations with whom the public has NO TRUST. The people of Detroit grew apathetic toward their government for decades due to continued neglect and oppression. Stepping up to address class struggles always meets resistance. Those with power are afraid to lose power to a people whom have had significant racially motivated riots three times in the city’s history. For this reason closed door, secretive dealings became the status quo in delivery of service to the city.
Detroit spans a large geographic area with at least 5-7 notable business districts from the past. Manufacturing zones have been abandoned and those homes near them, which were built for convenience in getting to work, sit in long forgotten. Ill served areas, struggling with pollution and the crumbling vestiges of behemoth factories next to them. Hazardous, unwanted areas of the city that need life breathed into them by administrations engaging in a War on the Poor by distributing incoming wealth into the city core.
This city grew as a manufacturing capitol to the world. The systems of the city were created with this in mind. Our location is ideal for transportation of manufactured goods - by water, rail, road, and air. However all these have been impacted when metropolitan place-making and globalization pulled nearly every manufacturer out of the city, sparing only those so in-grounded in city systems for carrying pollution. We now have the sad honor of the dirtiest zip code in America, that being 48217 in southwest Detroit.
Many community gardens have sprouted in the vast landscape of the city, working to re-mediate the toxic soil in a myriad of ways. Organizations working on food justice and land access have cried out for COMMONS to be established in each of our neighborhoods. It would seem the city could easily provide such as an opportunity paving a path toward localism with markets, learning, and entertainment scheduled through the commons.
DEMANDS FROM THE PEOPLE
- Provide assistance in each neighborhood to establish a Community Land Trust with desirable land freely offered for development. Allow the neighborhood CLT to run operations such as a marketplace, recreation center, community education, and open space to collaborate in gardening, rain water collection, clean energy solutions, and empower them to grow.
- Give communities a chance to restore localism with pride in producing what they need. Dissolve the centralized General Services Department giving it life through autonomy by district in the neighborhoods.
- Move away from a central power grid fostering dirty energy consumption. Detroit can be a green energy leader - we have enough manufacturing potential, space to utilize, and modes of creating (wind, water, earth, solar). Place power centers under neighborhood CLT, financing them by selling excess power.
APATHY SEEN IS BEING KILLED - We live in an age of genocide
People are being killed not because of their beliefs or values. They are being killed for what they claim to own. The law of the land is a European world construct supporting the belief of ownership. Wars are waged without regard for who is involved, they occur based on what one lays claim to. Capitalism is rooted in this, without a claim to something there is no perceived value.
When we place value in things owned, the owner is a steward maintaining the value. Observe land we claim to own and how effectively it is being cared for. There are a number of ways owners place trust in others to maintain value, for example as employees or resident custodians. There are other influences as well affecting value and these include market conditions, environmental changes, the health and well-being of the owners / stewards selected, and adjacent property both individually and as a collective neighborhood. One of the most oppressive determiners of value is the market of today with the various financial tools being used on property value.
We can take preventive, guiding measures that instill value through trust and rules for use. These zoning ordinances influence by law what activities can take place on the land, which in turn impacts neighborhood values and the ability to draw produce from the land in various ways.
The public has a right to lay claim to properties which sit housed by the city and classified as excess. Through using our tax dollars that property maintains value or faces decline. Groups around the city have actively discussed placing land under Community Trust and would petition the city to deed excess property into such trusts ran by neighborhood cooperatives.
Detroit needs a task force created bringing these discussions of land ownership and trust to a public forum, engaging our city departments openly so the process is transparent, participatory, and well documented for uniformity. Current practices in Detroit fail the test of uniformity and that is the undoing of trust.
Examples of lost trust include the following
- Piles of petroleum coke in areas zoned M4. A zoning ordinance which does not address hazardous waste. M5 zoning would be required under permission granted. We don’t want food or other human contact goods delivered to these contaminated areas after they have petcoke sitting on land that was unlined and not covered to prevent blow-away.
- Over half of property taxes have not been requested by the city for FEAR that there will be questions on how to process and have insufficient staff. Documented uniform procedures should be placed in the hands of the public and a rewards program established which engages in the collection of back-due taxes targeting non-resident owners and most specifically BANK OWNED properties. Alternatives for collection should include quit claim with deed transferred to waiting community trusts. Allow our communities to create and retain value LOCALLY. We encounter this land DAILY.
- Ensure all controlling government and regulatory bodies embrace transparency and participation by the public in stewardship of services impacting their quality of life. We should not be complacent being under corporate control, which amounts to enslavement when we find ourselves unable to access control.
- Our representatives in government must be held to their oath of office. It is proposed a public reading and affirmation by those elected and appointed of the trust placed by the public in our representatives occurs at the start of each meeting following Open Meetings Act.
I am submitting this testimony during public comments at Detroit City Council on Tuesday, April 9, 2013. I would appreciate the opportunity to address the concerns contained in a public forum with those parties in government, corporations, foundations, and the public present. Action must be taken as soon as possible.
Stephen Boyle
City of Detroit resident and activist
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdVhlshcRbsRFrq8j7kLmnZTuy1NZFdLv
Detroit Gangs - a YouTube playlist
- National Geographic Inside Detroit Gang Squad
- Gangland Detroit Mob Documentary
- Rollin Detroit by Al Profit
- Documentary on Devils Disciples
Detroit People Mover, 01-04-2011 (by jrahrig)
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The white perspective on “black privilege” is most often completely wrong.
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Information
Content for this blog is selected from Detroit residents, and topics of interest outside Detroit.
Topics of interest include: social reform, rights for youth & elders, freedom of voice and information, mutual respect,
One Love.
Topics of interest include: social reform, rights for youth & elders, freedom of voice and information, mutual respect,
One Love.
