PHOTO/DAYMONJHARTLEY.COM
DETROIT, MI — Named the “Homrich 9“ for blocking trucks owned by Homrich demolition company from shutting off thousands of poor people‘s water, our actions stood up to Michigan’s undemocratic, corporate power structure known as “Emergency Management.” Under this law, the state’s governor can unilaterally replace elected city/school district officials with a dictator accountable only to him instead of to the people of that city/school district.
The Homrich trucks we blocked were contracted by Detroit‘s “emergency manager,” Kevyn Orr. Since our arrest for that act of civil disobedience, city prosecutors manipulated and stalled any opportunity for our actions to be judged favorably by one of the last best vestiges of democracy in America: a jury.
A jury is for the Homrich 9 as elections are for the people of Detroit and the many other Michigan cities/school districts usurped by “Emergency Management“: democracy denied. City prosecutors maneuvered so that only two of the Homrich defendants could be tried at a time and argued pretrial to disallow our using the “necessity defense” (a defense demonstrating that breaking the law is justified when/if preventing imminent harm). Two defendants conceded this issue so their trial would not be further delayed, during which prosecutors repeatedly and unsuccessfully objected to allowing testimony regarding the city’s immoral mass water shutoffs. Fortunately, our trial judge ruled this to be relevant information for the jury’s consideration.
Realizing they would lose because of this, city prosecutors sought a mistrial from a higher-court judge the day before jury deliberations, resulting in his staying the trial until he rules on that motion.
Despite his many rulings favoring the prosecution, this same higher-court judge bluntly remarked in a recent hearing that “the best word to describe the prosecution of this case is ‘stupid,’” noting that especially with the backdrop of the nearby Flint Water Crisis, “the chances of the city winning a case like this [in front of a Detroit jury] are nonexistent,” and that “this case has gotten completely out of hand. It has taken on a life of its own way beyond its importance.”
The reality of its importance is that our prospective vindication through this trial, making the mass water shutoffs look as bad as they are, has proven to be so worrisome to the city’s corporate power structure that they’ve turned our minor misdemeanor charge into a twenty month saga. The Homrich 9’s experience shows how democracy, whether in the form of a jury or an election, is a righteous threat to corporate rule.
