Detroit: The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions People's Summit June 14-17
By Kris Hamel
Detroit
Mar 7, 2009
The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions voted
unanimously on Feb. 28 to call a People’s Summit in Detroit from June
14-17, 2009. Organizers will begin widespread outreach to garner endorsers and draw
other organizations into building for the June activities. These actions will
include a march along Woodward Avenue for jobs and housing and a tent city in
Grand Circus Park of the foreclosed-upon, jobless, underpaid, homeless and all
who struggle for social and economic justice.
The People’s Summit will occur simultaneously with the National
Business Summit, sponsored by the Detroit Economic Club, taking place at Ford
Field in downtown Detroit. Millionaire and billionaire capitalists, including
the heads of ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Chrysler, Humana
Inc., Ascension Health, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, BNSF Railway Co. and PVS
Chemicals, will gather at this event June 15-17. The presidents of the National
Council on Competitiveness and U.S. Chamber of Commerce will also be
attending.
Calling it “a Gathering to Define America’s Future,” the
business summit’s Web site states: “Participants will have direct
access to ... top business, government and academic leaders and a voice in
shaping the outcome of the discussion.” In order to have a voice,
however, a registration fee of $1,495 per person is required.
Those who can afford this exorbitant registration fee will be putting their
heads together to discuss “innovation and policy ideas in technology,
energy, environment and manufacturing.” In other words, they will be
strategizing on how to further increase their profits at the expense of the
ever-shrinking middle class, the vast working class and the growing millions
living in utter poverty.
These business tycoons will gather in a city reeling from rampant
foreclosures and evictions, record unemployment, plant closings, mass layoffs,
school closings, cutbacks, union busting and other forms of devastation.
President Barack Obama and cabinet members have been invited to this
gathering. Will these business tycoons allow Obama’s economic stimulus
plan to proceed? Will they create jobs at living wages? Will homeowners have
real opportunities to avoid foreclosure? Or will the suffering and misery
continue?
Only a mass struggle of those most affected by the capitalist economic
crisis will turn the tide. The Moratorium NOW! Coalition organizers note that
so far only the banks and mortgage lenders have been bailed out, to the tune of
trillions of dollars of workers’ tax money—money sorely needed to
rebuild the lives of the people.
Organizers hope that the People’s Summit will attract everyone
struggling for social and economic justice, not just in Detroit and Michigan,
but on a national level. Everyone involved in any progressive struggle is urged
to organize for the June 14-17 event.
