the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 17, 2025
Two children, a nine-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl, froze to death in a van in the parking structure of the Greektown Casino in Detroit. The kids, their mother, her two other children, and their grandmother were homeless and living in their mother’s van.
Their mother, Tateona Williams, had parked the van in the structure at 1 a.m. early that morning. They could park for free in the structure at that time of night because the casinos are open 24 hours and generally don’t charge to park there. The van’s battery apparently had died and the van stopped running and lost heat amid the frigid winter temperature.
Williams said she had called the city’s homeless response team several times back in November, but was told there were no beds available, and the response team never reached out to her in the nearly three months since. She says she kept calling individual shelters, only to be told repeatedly they had no beds available.
Williams is certainly not alone in experiencing difficulty getting help from the city. The city’s referral system for getting homeless people into shelters is run by a private religious non-profit group, Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries. The group’s own CEO, Chad Audi, openly admitted the system is broken following the tragedy. The mission has 650 beds and has been full up. Not surprising since estimates show that Detroit and its two enclosed suburbs, Hamtramck and Highland Park, had 1,725 homeless people last year, up 16% from the year before!
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan was quick to reassure the public the city was moving to provide more shelter for the city’s homeless, after news broke of the children’s deaths. City officials suddenly managed to find housing for the family after the children’s deaths, to which Tateona Williams rightfully responded, “Now that my two kids are dead, oh, all of a sudden you got beds available.”
The tragedy of these kids’ needless death hit home to many people. This will certainly not be the last tragedy to occur in the face of increasing homelessness, and Detroit is certainly not alone in facing this growing problem. It’s a symptom of a capitalist society that is falling apart in so many ways. It needs to go.