This post was written and reported by contributor Dawn R. Wolfe through our new Daily Kos freelance program.
Seven Detroit-area activists are refusing to accept plea deals in an effort to bring continued attention to inequality—including water shutoffs to as many as a quarter million residents—in what many have touted as the “comeback city.”
The seven, who turned down the plea deals on Sept. 18, are among 22 Poor People's Campaign members who were arrested during the organization's June march and protest in Detroit. Some of the arrestees were charged with misdemeanors for blocking the entrance to Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert's One Campus Martius building. Others face misdemeanor charges for blocking the QLine, a project that many say was built to suit the whims of the city's wealthy landowners.
According to the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-founder of the national Poor People's Campaign, the Detroit activists are among more than 5,000 individuals who engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience in 42 states and the District of Columbia in May and June. A national campaign spokeswoman told Daily Kos that 3,000 individuals nationwide were arrested, but no nationwide information is available on the number of activists who have chosen to go to trial. “We're leaving the decision to go to trial to the individual activists in each state,” she said.
Detroit-area retiree Greg Olszta, who told Daily Kos that the Detroit action was his first time being arrested for civil disobedience, said that going to trial is "the right thing to do, morally and politically now more than ever." Olszta explained that, though he worked in mental health and social service education for 40 years, he felt that his work hadn't begun to "move the needle" to improve the lives of people in poverty. Besides, he added, "I'm an old, retired white man. What are they going to do to me? I can make more of a statement by standing with this group of veteran activists and trying to help in that way."
One of those veteran activists, Bill Wylie-Kellermann, said that he and the other Poor People's Campaign members think of the legal consequences they face as "part of the moral trajectory of the action." Adding that his group expects to be convicted, he said that the trials themselves will be an opportunity to state, for the record, the issues facing poor Detroiters.
According to Wylie-Kellermann, the trials will allow the group to put impoverished Detroiters on the stand to testify about their experiences. "In Detroit, the dominant narrative is that the city is back, it's in recovery. The question is for whom," he said.
Wylie-Kellermann, an author and retired Methodist minister, has been part of the progressive movement since the 1970s. Most recently he was one of the "Homrich 9" group of activists arrested for protesting widespread water shutoffs in Detroit.
Attorney Deb Choly of the Detroit and Michigan chapters of the National Lawyers Guild, which is assisting Poor People's Campaign activists in both Detroit and Lansing with their legal cases, said that if found guilty the 7 activists could face fines of up to $500 each or 90 days in jail. However, she added that it's "very unlikely" that anyone will actually end up incarcerated.
"I think they will pay fines and court costs, and possibly be put on probation," she said. "And they will have a conviction on their record." The 15 people who accepted plea deals were each fined $240. If they aren't arrested again between their court date and Dec. 17, their cases will be dismissed.
But while the criminal justice chapter of the Poor People's Campaign's initial work is winding to its conclusion, the organization overall remains in full gear. The Campaign, a resurrection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last major effort, has turned its efforts to voter education, registration, and mobilization.
"We're targeting our country's 140 million poor and low-income citizens," who are frequently ignored by traditional GOTV efforts, the Poor People's Campaign spokeswoman said. The midterms are also just the beginning. While plans are still being determined, the spokeswoman said that the 2018 midterms will be part of a multi-year campaign to give our country’s poor a voice at the ballot box.
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you‘d like to help support more stories like this through our freelance program, contribute here.
