Just disgusting. You know some politician’s getting rich off the back end, while people struggling to get by were billed $180 a month for water:
“It was six in the morning when city contractors showed up unannounced at Charity Hicks’ house.
Since spring, up to 3000 Detroit households per week have been getting their water shut-off – for owing as little as $150 or two months in bills. Now it was the turn of Charity’s block – and the contractor wouldn’t stand to wait an hour for her pregnant neighbour to fill up some jugs.
“Where’s your water termination notice?” Charity demanded, after staggering to the contractor’s truck. A widely-respected African-American community leader, she has been at the forefront of campaigns to ensure Detroiters’ right to public, accessible water.
The contractor’s answer was to drive away, knocking Charity over and injuring her leg. Two white policemen soon arrived – not to take her report, but to arrest her. Mocking Charity for questioning the water shut-offs, they brought her to jail, where she spent two days before being released without charge.
Welcome to Detroit’s water war – in which upward of 150,000 customers, late on bills that have increased 119 percent in the last decade, are now threatened with shut-offs. Local activists estimate this could impact nearly half of Detroit’s mostly poor and black population – between 200,000 and 300,000 people.
I’m just sputtering with outrage and disbelief. What are they trying to do – empty the city? And where could people go anyway – there’s no way they could sell their homes. I hope all the comfortable white suburbians who live there but don’t pay city taxes are proud.
What they are trying to do is to turn Detroit’s municipal water system into a for-profit, privately held company. To do that they first have to clean up the balance sheet by scaring the crap out of the poor and pissing off everybody who pays their water bill on time. A Capitalist “white knight” will soon appear offering to forgive all of the delinquent debt and pay the city a small yearly user fee in exchange for private control of the water system. Everybody will be happy for a New York minute. Then in a year or two or ten when the entire city is being price-gouged and the water provided is of poor quality the shit will hit the fan. The Capitalist owner will declare bankruptcy and leave town with millions in a Swiss bank account.
Taking away people’s access to water? The revolution just got moved up a day.