By Maureen Taylor, state chairperson, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization
DETROIT, MI – The 2nd International Gathering of Social Movements on Water has now passed into history. The Gathering was a great accomplishment and a tremendous success.
This event stretched over four days, brought together some of the best minds, the deepest thinkers, the clearest visionaries all in an effort to analyze and suggest steps to continue a national theme that water is a human right regardless of the capacity to pay for it.
Speakers from Mexico, Liberia, Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil and from states across the nation, including indigenous peoples, convened in sites across Detroit.
Opening Day saw us at Wayne County Community College where the parameters of the issue were laid out. Day 2 was at the Hotel St. Regis main ballroom where our best attorneys and most assertive legislators shared the national details of pending litigation and legislation connected to water issues like making mass shutoffs illegal.
Day 3 was at the Local 58 union hall of the I.B.E.W. Grassroots speakers detailed their efforts, starting with a political analysis of why we are facing this crisis, followed by stories from across the country of water rights of millions of people being violated, often by the same corporate pirates.
The last day, attendees met near the Detroit River to plan strategies and next steps that highlight the Gathering theme.
One major subject that surfaced often was the discussion about the fight on the front porch! This is the place where many visionaries are unable to move past which is the battle of “race” being the only issue at hand. Many of us have spent lifetimes on the porch, fighting that single but powerful fight only to learn that we can’t gain possession of the entire house if we only stop there. People of color can never escape the shadow of the plantation. The “race” struggle is always with us since it has historically been the most effective American tool yet to separate us from each other and to cloud the truth. True revolutionaries have to engage that battle by meeting fighters where they are then open the door to see what’s down the hall. The issue of “class” is what’s being hidden and what we have to conquer if we are to gain control over the entire house! The Gathering is the embodiment of the “low-hanging fruit” that has already galvanized the nation when the word spread that mass shutoffs were occurring at thousands of residents’ homes in Detroit followed by the scandal of the poisoning of Flint. The fight to maintain accessible water and sanitation is critical and serves as an entry point to a much larger and more detailed conflict that has eluded the American working class for decades.
Ours is a strategic battle, long-term but winnable, if we understand the rules of engagement and what we are fighting for! We want ownership of the whole house. We do battle at Point ‘A’ because we have to, but the fight has to expose the class nature of who the enemy is. The enemy is the 1% who would privatize public ownership of municipal water, pollute the air, destroy farms, build dams that threaten entire communities, poison entire cities, attack our quality of life and deliver death in many forms as they seek profit before people. The fight on the front porch has to lead us to the truth which lies down the hall. Let’s make that journey united as a class so we can stop this madness.
