[D66] The Detroit water cutoffs

[Oto]

Kwa leermoment hecht ik toch meer waarde aan een quote van Bertolt
Brecht: 'What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?'


On 03/30/2014 04:22 PM, Ernst Debets wrote:
> Verbaast me niets: Detroit is een van de steden die dankzij de vorige en
> huidige crisis het meeste te lijden heeft gehad. Mogelijke (waarschijnlijke)
> oorzaak: de teloorgang van wat ooit Amerika's trots was: de auto industrie.
> Leermoment: in een bepaald gebied nooit inzetten op één soort industrie.
> 
> Ernst Debets/
> Zaanstad
> 
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: d66-bounces at tuxtown.net [mailto:d66-bounces at tuxtown.net] Namens Oto
> Verzonden: zondag 30 maart 2014 09:03
> Aan: informele D66 discussielijst
> Onderwerp: [D66] The Detroit water cutoffs
> 
> http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/29/pers-m29.html
> 
> The Detroit water cutoffs and the social counterrevolution in America
> 29 March 2014
> 
> Water, water, every where,
> Nor any drop to drink.
> 
> — “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
> 
> In a city that lies alongside the largest surface freshwater system in the
> world, the authorities have begun a shutoff of water services, targeting
> 3,000 households every week for the next several months. If these plans are
> fully implemented, by the beginning of the summer tens of thousands of
> families will no longer have access to one of the most fundamental
> necessities of life.
> 
> This is not only a stark expression of the irrationality of capitalism, it
> is a social crime, and those who are responsible are criminals.
> 
> The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is setting its sights on
> those who are delinquent on their bills. Incredibly, nearly 50 percent of
> all accounts (150,000 out of 324,000) fall into this category, in a city
> where more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line.
> 
> The consequences of this policy are easily foretold. It will mean a sharp
> increase in hardship, disease and death, as families are forced to live
> without basic sanitation or choose between running water and other
> necessities such as food, clothing and health care.
> 
> Lack of access to running water means an inability to shower, use the
> toilet, cook or take medications. It can lead to buildings or homes being
> condemned, forcing residents onto the street. It can mean the breakup of
> families, as children are shifted to relatives or removed by the state on
> charges of neglect. Like the cutoff of gas or electricity—a mass phenomenon
> in Detroit—a water shutoff is a destabilizing, debilitating and
> psychologically devastating experience.
> 
> That this fate is now facing tens of thousands of people in Detroit—a former
> center of manufacturing in America, which once boasted the highest per
> capita income in the country—is a damning indictment of American capitalism
> and the corporate and financial elite that runs the country.
> 
> Historically, access to water was seen as a benchmark of social progress. It
> was considered a national disgrace that, in 1950, a quarter of the
> population (and half of the rural population) did not have access to
> plumbing.
> 
> Government programs, along with a general increase in living standards,
> established plumbing for the vast majority of the population—though some
> 2 million Americans still have insufficient or no running water. At the same
> time, the cost of water for consumers was kept low as a matter of policy.
> Most water companies were set up as public utilities, subsidized by local
> and federal government spending.
> 
> As with all the gains of the working class in the post-World War II period,
> these advances were the product, directly or indirectly, of social struggle.
> But for more than three decades there has been a systematic effort by the
> ruling class to turn back the clock—a massive retrogression that, since the
> financial crisis of 2008, has turned into a social counterrevolution.
> 
> As it has targeted the jobs and wages of the working class, the ruling class
> has systematically slashed spending on social infrastructure. A recent
> report by the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute noted:
> “Historically, federal and state governments would cover some long-term
> costs in the form of infrastructure grants. Since the 1980s, however, these
> grants have given way to infrastructure loans, pushing water systems to
> charge their customers full-cost, or near full-cost, rates.”
> (“Tapped Out: Threats to the Human Right to Water in the Urban United
> States”)
> 
> Between 2000 and 2012, water rates in Detroit increased a shocking 119
> percent. Over the same period, median household income in the city declined
> by about 15 percent. Today, the average monthly water bill in the city is
> $75 ($900 a year)—or about 3.5 percent of the median income.
> 
> The high rate of delinquency is a direct consequence of these changes.
> And Detroit is not alone. A USA Today report in 2012 found that water rates
> have surged nationwide over the past decade, more than doubling in a quarter
> of the 100 cities surveyed.
> 
> Rather than a necessity of life, the provision of water is increasingly seen
> as a money-making opportunity. Some 85 percent of US water agencies are
> still nominally public utilities, though many, including the Detroit Water
> and Sewerage Department, have been aggressively financed through loans to
> big investors and bondholders—loans that are repaid by raising rates and
> eliminating services for those who cannot pay.
> 
> Moves to outright privatization are also well advanced. Detroit Emergency
> Manager Kevyn Orr is pushing for the possible sale of the water department,
> or its leasing to a regional authority in preparation for a future sale. The
> DWSD is the third largest water utility in the country, with $1 billion in
> annual revenue. It is considered a potential cash cow. To make the DWSD
> fully profitable, however, delinquent accounts must be ruthlessly
> eliminated.
> 
> This is the real face of the Detroit bankruptcy. While the media and the
> political establishment proclaim the “revival” of Detroit, what is taking
> place is the wholesale theft of public resources and the pensions and
> benefits of city workers and their families.
> 
> After undermining the finances of the city through the shutdown of auto
> production, predatory bank loans, tax abatements and other corporate
> handouts, and massive cuts in state and federal financial aid, the ruling
> class is moving to reduce large parts of the city to the type of conditions
> that prevail in the slums of Haiti and other impoverished countries. Other
> working class areas will simply be evacuated and made available to real
> estate speculators.
> 
> Detroit is seen as a model for the entire country, and, indeed, the world—in
> the shutoff and privatization of water services and the overall
> restructuring of which it is a part. It is for this reason that the
> bankruptcy of Detroit has been fully supported by the Obama administration
> and the political establishment as a whole, Democratic and Republican.
> 
> The source of the catastrophe lies not in the productive capacity of
> mankind, nor in the resources provided by nature, but in the social system
> of capitalism—a system based on private profit and the subordination of
> every social right to the rapacious dictates of the corporate and financial
> aristocracy.
> 
> The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers throughout the city to
> mobilize in opposition to the criminal policy of water shutoffs.
> Committees must be organized in every neighborhood to protect homes from the
> actions of city officials. We make an appeal to water and sewerage workers,
> who face a brutal attack on their own jobs and wages, to refuse to carry out
> the orders of their bosses.
> 
> This popular mobilization must be connected to a political struggle by the
> entire working class. The resources necessary to guarantee free and full
> access must be obtained by confiscating the fortunes of the
> corporate-financial elite. The water system in Detroit and throughout the
> country must be placed under genuine public ownership and the democratic
> control of the working population, as part of the socialist reorganization
> of economic life.
> 
> Joseph Kishore
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