Tent City to organize for justice

An interview with Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke aired June 7 on the CBS television program “60 Minutes.” The Fed head talked about the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the U.S. economy that has propped up financial institutions, banks, and corporations such as insurance giant AIG. Bernanke glibly stated he was prepared to double the amount if necessary in order to stave off a collapse of the system.

Any worker or poor person watching this interview probably could not help but wonder: How come the federal government, which so easily handed over trillions of dollars to banks and corporations, does practically nothing on behalf of working people? Where is the bailout for them?

Where is the massive jobs program the “economic stimulus plan” should have provided? Why are workers still losing their homes at record rates to foreclosures?

Why are workers still being laid off? Why was General Motors ordered by the federal government to close plants?

Organizers for the People’s Summit and Tent City, which convenes June 14-17 in downtown Detroit, say it is past due for the situation to be radically changed. “Bail out the people, not banks and corporations!” has become a rallying cry for the four-day protest based at Grand Circus Park.

The People’s Summit and Tent City were called in response to the announcement of a big-business national summit taking place in Detroit June 15-17. Originally slated for Ford Field, the capitalists’ gathering has been moved to the GM Renaissance Center, the world headquarters of General Motors.

GM recently announced the shuttering of 14 plants, including seven in Michigan, in order to comply with the terms of its government-ordered restructuring and bailout. Michigan already has the highest unemployment rate in the U.S. at 12.9 percent as of April. Figures for May haven’t yet been released.

Organizers of the People’s Summit say Detroit is a microcosm of the economic devastation facing poor and working people around the country. Big-business leaders will be meeting in a city wracked by mass layoffs and plant closings and an official unemployment rate of more than 22 percent. They will gather “to define America’s future” in a city with neighborhoods filled with thousands of foreclosed, abandoned and vandalized homes, where 40,000 households have no running water, thousands have had their heat and electricity cut off, and where poverty, hunger and homelessness are rampant.

Combining a program of demands & tactics

But these capitalists will not go unopposed. The People’s Summit and Tent City will bring together activists from around Michigan as well as Atlanta, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami, Boston, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey.

They will define poor and working people’s own vision of their future, which includes income or union jobs at living wages for all, universal health care, quality education, the right to a home and utilities, and a life free from racism, sexism, and anti-gay/lesbian/bi/trans oppression.

The People’s Summit and Tent City is being organized by a diverse coalition of activists from many groups, including laid-off and retired members of the Auto Worker Caravan and other unionists, the National Lawyers Guild, Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions, the Martin Luther King Day Committee, Green Party, Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the disability-rights group Warriors On Wheels and the Detroit Action Network For Reproductive Rights.

Four days of rallies, marches and demonstrations are planned. Cultural programs and concerts along with special sessions on many struggles will take place, and an evening meal will be served everyday at the Tent City.

There will be a mass picket line and rally for jobs at the GM Renaissance Center on June 16 when former Michigan Gov. John Engler, now head of the National Manufacturers Association, and Richard Dauch, CEO of American Axle, speak to the big-business summit.

This will be the first demonstration in many years targeting General Motors in Detroit. Workers will protest the mass layoffs and plant closings and demand jobs and full employment. Union workers at American Axle, who lost a bitter months-long strike in 2008 and now face the closing of their plant, are organizing to attend the rally.

Dauch, who gave himself an $8.5 million bonus after the strike, had the audacity to tell the Detroit News on June 4 that “he was fed up with the absenteeism and entitlement-mindset of the Michigan worker.”

It is the workers who created the wealth of Dauch and all the capitalists to begin with. It was the blood, sweat and tears of their labor that created the surplus value that the capitalists have expropriated in the form of obscene profits. It is poor and working people who are fed up! It is the mindset of the People’s Summit and Tent City that this great wealth must be re-appropriated to provide jobs or income and a decent life for all.