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
Aug 19, 2013
Kevyn Orr, Emergency Manager over Detroit, obviously says what he wants. After all, he has a BA and JD degree and is a big shot lawyer who earned $700 an hour for doing bankruptcies. After all, he was appointed to “take over” and “run the city” by Michigan’s Governor Snyder and the wealthy class he represents.
Orr recently said that, “For a long time, the city was dumb, lazy, happy and rich.”
If that wasn’t insult enough, he followed it up with “... that wealth allowed us to have a covenant [that held] if you had an eighth-grade education, you’ll get 30 years of a good job and a pension and great health care, but you don’t have to worry about what’s going to come.”
How dare he? Easy for him!
He is a servant of the upper class. He said exactly what he and his wealthy sponsors find useful to justify the planned robbery of Detroit’s city workers by Wall Street.
He uses all of the racist, anti-worker stereotypes that have been thrown around for years about Detroit and those who built it, and swaggers while doing it. According to Orr, the workers, the poor, the taxpayers of Detroit are the reason the city is in dire financial shape.
Yes indeed, the city is in trouble. But that has nothing to do with workers toiling for 30 years in the shops or with agreements signed by the bosses and authorities that guaranteed pensions after a lifetime of work to keep a city running or to build an auto empire.
Detroit’s financial problems were imposed by Wall Street, by the banks and corporations that paid no taxes, imposed predatory loans and most recently, took homes away from more than 100,000 families in predatory mortgage schemes.
“Lazy, happy and rich?” He must be talking about his bosses—the Ilitches, the Fords, the Morouns and the Gilberts; the very sharks who will benefit from a bankruptcy.
He sure as hell is not talking about us.
“Dumb?” He mocks those of us who had an eighth grade education. He would mock the slaves also: because it is all these laborers who built the basic capital that enriched the bourgeoisie of this country to the point of becoming rulers of the world. “Dumb?” those who made possible public education for millions by all they produced, including Orr and his generation?
“Don’t have to worry about what’s going to come?” Men and women who for 30 years worried about everything and everyone and built this city and built this economy and paid the taxes and fought in every damn, rotten war?
Orr should be mindful that dictators bigger and smarter than he have been deposed, debunked, exposed for the bagmen they are and run out of town. And none would be prouder to do it than all of us workers in Detroit, active and retired, who would find it most enjoyable to boot!