Michigan Governor Rick Snyder implemented “Emergency Management” (EM) to override the authority of the elected officials in majority African American cities, including Detroit and Flint. This film shows the history of EM, who was involved in constructing the EM law, and how it was used to facilitate the bankruptcy to the detriment of the people of Detroit.
Film length – 32:08 minutes
RESOURCES ABOUT EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
- Civil rights panel seeks review of EM law after Flint water crisis
- Supreme Court could decide if Michigan EM law violates Voting Rights Act
- “Law in Times of Crisis” – history of emergency management
- The Mackinac Policy Center pushes the idea of Emergency Management
- Accounts of what happens once an unelected appointed “Emergency Manager” comes.
- How much do they get paid as unelected appointees? Interested in what happened in Flint? Or maybe you don’t want to know?
- For an overall financial look at how the EMs are doing in the cities they are in and some more Detroit voices on the matter from Voice of Detroit.
- And Belle Isle? Here is an example of a park in Benton Harbor, Jean Clock, that was partly turned into a golf course. The emergency manager didn’t make the whole mess, but this is what happens when a beautiful park gifted to a city is shimmied into private hands with the icing on the cake being the emergency manager.
- This website has information about a “Freedom of Information Act request seeking to have the city turn over 10 years’ worth of records related to all contracts and agreements between the city and banks or brokerage houses relating to the purchase of bonds, interest rate swaps, pension obligation certificates, hedge fund derivatives, termination or default agreements, or other forms of debt…” http://moratorium-mi.org/