Bellant v. Snyder: fighting racist "Emergency Manager" laws and corporatization in Michigan
Last week, five Michigan officials, including the head of the state health department, were charged with involuntary manslaughter for their role in Flint's water crisis. The charges follow state felony charges brought against two former state-appointed emergency managers in Flint back in December. Since 2013, CCR, together with the Sugar Law Center and other Michigan groups, has been fighting the laws that allowed emergency managers to take control of Flint's government in Bellant v. Snyder; the case challenges the constitutionality of replacing democratically-elected mayors and city and town councils in predominantly Black and brown communities of Michigan with unelected, state-appointed emergency managers.
CCR argues that Michigan's appointing of emergency managers shows profound racial bias, with 50 percent of all Black Michigan residents currently being governed by emergency managers and, in essence, being denied their fundamental right to vote and be represented by elected officials. Meanwhile, only two percent of Michigan's white residents are subject to the unchecked authority of emergency managers. We are waiting to see if the Supreme Court will take our case.
The battle against emergency manager laws is at its core a fight for the dignity and self-determination of Black and brown communities in Flint and greater Michigan. But the implications of these laws reach even further than the Flint water crisis, and behind them is an insidious agenda of privatization in Michigan and across the country.
Central to this agenda is The Mackinac Center, a right-wing "think tank" funded in part by Dick DeVos, the father-in-law of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. As noted in Mother Jones, The Mackinac Center is a leading member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has developed and lobbied for passage into law such notorious legislation as the 'self-deportation,' 'stand-your-ground,' voter ID, and many union-gutting laws across the country. Longtime Mackinac associate Louis Schimmel was appointed by Governor Snyder to be emergency manager for Pontiac, Michigan, after which he promptly fired the city's clerk, attorney, and director of public works. Governor Snyder has also used the threat of appointing an emergency manager to bargain for the renegotiation of union contracts and outsourcing of city work in Detroit.
In Bellant v. Snyder and beyond, CCR will continue to stand with Black and brown communities in Michigan and everywhere to fight the racist practices and corporate agendas of privatization.
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