[How White Folks Do] Water Shut Offs to Begin Tuesday -- although Detroit was founded on a river, draws its name from a French word for "strait," and lies between two of the Great Lakes - - Water Denied to those Unable to Pay bill
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Access to water is such a fundamental human right that it should be denied only to people who are able to pay for it but refuse to do so. From [HERE] and [MORE] Detroit can expect more controversy as a monthlong moratorium against shutting off water for those behind on their bills expires at the end of the day Monday.
Nearly 19,500 Detroiters have had their water service interrupted since March 1. The Water and Sewerage Department, under pressure to reduce more than $90 million in bad debt, ordered shutoffs for customers who owed at least $150 or had fallen at least two months behind on their bills. The decision to take such drastic measures, done with little warning, ignited a controversy that prompted protests and arrests, more bad publicity for the struggling city, global dismay, and a warning from the United Nations. More than 80 percent of Detroiters are African-American.
As unusual as it is for the U.N. to raise public health concerns in a country like the United States, these are unusual times in Detroit. The fortunes of this once-prosperous home of the auto industry have plummeted so far that last year it became the largest city ever to file for bankruptcy. The population has dropped from nearly 1.8 million a half century ago to fewer than 700,000 today. Democratic rule was suspended last year when Michigan's racist suspect Republican governor appointed an emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, a coin operated Black Android, to take control.
[Pay no attention to Kevyn Orr or the other Black Android in the above clip - like potted plants they are just there for show or the appearance of fairness. Their real purpose is to shadowbox Black people. According to Neely Fuller, Racial Shadow Boxing occurs when victims of racism (non-white people) are directly or indirectly, "assigned", bribed, coerced, and/or otherwise influenced, by the racists (white Supremacist), to speak or act to do harm to other victims of racism. A victim of white supremacy programmed in service of white domination. White Supremacists oftentimes hide behind others whom they use as shadows of themselves. MORE]
Now, although Detroit was founded on a river, draws its name from a French word for "strait," and lies between two of the Great Lakes, water has become scarce for some of its poorest residents. With more than 40 percent of Detroiters living in poverty, the highest big-city rate in the nation, scraping together the money for something as basic as water can be a struggle unfamiliar to most [white] American households.
When the department was pushed by the city's bankruptcy to remedy that, it skipped such common shutoff alerts as door hangers and failed to deploy enough representatives to help customers. City officials say that every dollar that goes unpaid by one Detroiter must be paid by others and insist that a revised enforcement plan will be fair to all and accommodating to Detroiters unable to pay.
The city is paying a private company $5.6 million to shut off water in homes, but it's unclear how much it is doing to target commercial customers, a dozen with past-due amounts exceeding $100,000 each. The water department shut off water to 157 businesses for nonpayment since March 1, but service has been restored to all of them. About 5,450 homes, an unknown number vacant, remain without water.
To gauge the chaos engulfing the city's collection efforts, take a look at the list of more than 28,000 bills the department describes as "undeliverable" on its website. Among the overdue commercial accounts, you'll find $11,218.36 for Ford Field, where the National Football League's Detroit Lions play their home games. In the bill-pay section of the site, the same address also is associated with J.L. Hudson, the department store that was demolished in 1998.
In July and August, I spoke with a wide range of Detroiters affected by the water crisis, some of them waterless, many recently so and still more in fear of becoming so. Thousands have spent time this summer in all three categories. [MORE]
Whatever happened or did not happen in superslum Detroit is the result of racist suspects as they control everything in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labour, law, politics, religion, sex and war). Neely Fuller explains that "in a socio-material system dominated by White Supremacists, all major decisions involving non-white people are made by White Supremacists. "Whatever a Black person gets, and/or is allowed to keep, is the result of decisions made by White Supremacists. This is the functional meaning of White Supremacy (Racism) that many people — particularly non-white people — prefer not to acknowledge." [MORE]
