Detroit MLK Rally & March Says: 'Bail Out the People, Not the Banks!'

Michael Reynolds, Cody High School student in Detroit and MCHR Freedom Summer alumni addresses the MLK Day Rally downtown on Monday January 20, 2014. Abayomi Azikiwe in background., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

'Bail out the people, not the banks!' Some 500 people participate in Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally in Detroit

David Muller | dmuller@mlive.com By David Muller | dmuller@mlive.com
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updated January 20, 2014 at 9:43 PM

To watch excerpts from the rally and march just click on the website below:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/01/martin_luther_king_jr_day_rall.html

DETROIT, MI – Victor Gibson is just four months removed from Detroit Public Schools.

The newly retired, 60-year-old former teacher at Malcolm X Academy said he has seen kids come through his classes whose only meal that day would be the ones that they have at their place of education.

Gibson came to Central United Methodist Church in Detroit to march with some 500 people Monday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day out of concern that poverty and education in his city are getting worse, not better. Several participants of the 11th Annual Rally & Freedom March for Jobs, Peace & Justice also blasted what they say is an unfair state takeover of Detroit, as well as reckless practices by banks that they said have decimated their communities.

“I came down here to march with people I know are part of the struggle, and enlist others in our struggle,” Gibson said, adding that he hoped a torch would be passed to a new generation.

He noted Michael Reynolds, the 16-year-old co-president of Youth Voice, a Detroit-based organization that seeks to empower youth and bring them together. Reynolds was among several people to speak passionately at the historic church before the crowd marched the streets of downtown Detroit.

“Yes, Dr. Martin Luther King helped kill Jim Crow," Reynolds said Monday, calling for youth to rally. "But there’s a new Jim Crow that’s rising.”

Detroit has been one of the hardest-hit areas in the country by the collapse of the housing market in 2008 and 2009. Known nationally for its blight, some Detroit neighborhoods look markedly different now than even just six years ago, when a wave of foreclosures and evictions began to sweep through the city.

There have been accusations of predatory lending on minority communities in Detroit, and at least one class-action lawsuit against a major financial institution. Last July, a federal judge ruled that a class action case alleging that Morgan Stanley pushed sub-prime mortgages on Detroit neighborhoods with minority populations can move forward.

The population of Detroit is about 83 percent African American and 90 percent minority.

At the same time, the city suffers from an extraordinarily high poverty rate, which is more than three times the national rate, at 35.5 percent, compared to 11.7 nationwide, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released in September.

The percentage of children living in poverty in Detroit is a staggering 57.3 percent. The national average is 22.5 percent.

On Monday, several speakers and marchers decried the state takeover of the city. Last March, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder named bankruptcy specialist and Jones Day attorney Kevyn Orr as the city’s emergency manager. Since then, Orr has been wrangling with the city’s creditors to try and ease the billions of dollars in debt saddling the city.

Orr took Detroit into bankruptcy proceedings July 18, citing $18 billion in debt. In the process, Orr has not ruled out cutting into city workers’ pensions.

The city has not yet moved to slash pensions, but Orr has made clear that he believes those obligations to some 21,000 retired workers are fair game in federal bankruptcy court, saying the pension shortfall to Detroit's general and Police and Fire pension funds is approximately $3.5 billion.
Marchers on Monday shouted slogans such as “Bail out the people! Not the banks!”

Some wore shirts that said, “Hands off my pension!”

The annual Rally & Freedom March seeks to keep alive King’s dream of realizing “The Beloved Community,” according to organizers of the event, and “being the change we wish to see.”

Most who attended the rally Monday would no doubt argue that the country, let alone Detroit, still has a long way to go toward King’s dream.

“President Johnson, he called for a war on poverty,” Reynolds told the crowd before the march. “Where’s that war at? 36 million Americans are still living in poverty. That’s 36 million Americans that are oppressed. That can barely put food on their table. That can barely send their kids to school. I’m one of that 36 million. I’m tired of being oppressed.”