![Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman]()
Arrested water warriors use trial to make shutoff strategy public
By Phreddy Wischusen
The Michigan Citizen
DETROIT — At an emotional press conference, Dec. 8, members of the Homrich 9 laid out the legal strategy they would pursue in their defense, and the moral foundations for the act of civil disobedience that led to their arrest.
Nine people were arrested July 18, after blocking the entryway of Homrich’s facility on E. Grand Blvd in Detroit, barring trucks from leaving to shut off water to Detroit residences.
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![Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman]()
Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman PHREDDY WISCHUSEN PHOTO[/caption]
Earlier this year, The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, under the authority of Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, commenced a mass shutoff of water to city residences who were behind on payments. DWSD did not systematically pursue unpaid commercial accounts in the same way.
DWSD contracted Homrich, based in Carleton, Mich., to execute two-years-worth of shutoffs at a price of $5.5 million.
After water to thousands of homes were shut off, activists demonstrated in front of Homrich for the first time on July 11, holding back the trucks for more than three hours. Ten people were arrested, most of whom were clergy or elderly. No charges were brought against that group.
The protest resumed July 18, obstructing the trucks for hours. When most media outlets had left the standoff to cover a shutoff demonstration thousands-strong downtown, police arrested Marian Kramer, Kim Redigan, David Olson, Dr. James Perkinson, Joan Smith, Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, Marianne McGuire, David Olson, Hans Barbe, and Baxter Jones. Eight of the nine were charged with disorderly conduct; Baxter Jones, who is disabled and wheelchair-bound, was not charged at all.
Since July 18, in addition to a growing public outcry, two special rapporteurs from the U.N. called the shutoffs a human rights violation and urged Mayor Mike Duggan to restore water to those who could not afford it under international human rights law.
SHUTOFFS CONTINUE
Still, although Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr publicly restored control of DWSD to Duggan, the shutoffs continue despite admonitions from the international governing body. To date over 30,000 homes in the city have been shut off.
The Dec. 8 press conference took place two hours before the first hearing in the case against the Homrich 9. Attorney John Royal, president of the Detroit chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, said, “along with defending and organizing the legal support for the Homrich 9, (NLG) attorneys have also been heavily involved in the civil lawsuit against the city to demand the city stop the water shut offs until they have implemented a water affordability plan.”
Royal says the nine engaged in “civil disobedience,” because they have been deprived of all other legal recourse through the political system. “When Gov. (Rick) Snyder took over the city of Detroit by appointing an emergency manager or an emergency dictator, he stripped all of us who live in Detroit of our rights to votes and our rights to recall elected officials who are not doing their job in accordance to the wishes of the people.”
The defendants petitioned the court for a collective legal defense in hopes of single jury trial.
According to Wylie-Kellerman, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes legitimated emergency management and predatory loans, but admitted the shutoffs caused “irreparable harm to the people of Detroit, but he said the financial needs… of the banks required that action.
“We want to put that in front of a jury, which is actually the last vestige of democracy in the city of Detroit given emergency management. We want to put this before ordinary citizens our peers and we’ll argue… we had an obligation, we were under duress. It was a necessity to take the action that we did…”
DISABLED, TOO
Tangela Harris spoke directly to the duress Detroiters affected by the shutoffs were feeling. Harris confessed, possibly contrary to appearances, she is physically and mentally handicapped, “and one of the ways I am able to disguise it,” she told the attendant press “is because I take medication. I am able to sit with my back strong and my head held high because I have a glass of water today to take my medication. But recently, when my water was shut off, I did not have the opportunity to take this medication. I did not have the opportunity to stand up and hold my head high because I was in pain.”
Harris says she had not been billed for several months when DWSD informed her she owed $4,000, comprised of almost $800 a month charges. The Harris household is made up of Harris, her paralyzed, mute and bedridden grandmother, her daughter, two infants and her niece. Harris says she called DWSD multiple times to report water gushing from an abandoned home across the street and no one ever responded.
In July, multiple calls from this reporter to DWSD to report various main breaks went unanswered.
Harris’ grandmother’s room faces the house with the gushing water, and she described seeing the look of pain in her eyes as the contractors shut off their water while the house across the street continued to gush water.
Harris made a personal appeal to people watching on TV, who may not have experienced struggles with poverty first hand.
“Just as this is happening to those in the inner city, please note that this is coming to you. If this water gets privatized, you’re going to be on the front lines just like us. … But will you be able to handle it? These poor people they’ve been poor all of their lives. So they kind of take it in stride.
“But, all of you who have never experienced a utility shutoff, all of you who have legacy, who have been given money, who live inside a family where the money has trickled down, where you have had the privilege of old money, and we have the privilege of no money, I swear to you, you’re going to be looking at people like me and saying, ‘how did you do it?’”
The defendants hope to make the trial a public examination of the shutoffs themselves.
SHINING LIGHT
“We’ve filed a motion for discovery… That discovery request asks for a good bit of information about the shutoffs: Who’s been shut off, where… because that’s not information they’ve made publicly available,” Wylie-Kellerman said. “We’re hoping to get that information in the course of this trial.”
Wylie-Kellerman, who is staging his own defense in order to have more time to speak on his own behalf, told the Michigan Citizen that any materials Homrich had provided to the city concerning shutoffs and reconnections of people from the period of months leading up to the action are necessary for their defense because they intend to argue what they did was under necessity to defend against “irreparable harm.”
According to Wylie-Kellerman, the prosecution argued discovery was not allowed in misdemeanors.
Royal argued the contrary — discovery is applicable on a case-by-case basis as decided by a judge.
Judge Cylenthia Miller, 36th District Court, is considering both arguments.
The next hearing will take place on Feb. 23. Judge Miller will likely rule on the discovery motion, and whether or not the defendants will have a collective trial or will be subject to separate proceedings of no more than two defendants per trial, as the prosecution wishes.
Meanwhile, DWSD vows to continue the shutoffs through the winter.
During the press conference, Sister Mary Ellen Howard, executive director of the St. Frances Cabrini Clinic, who was herself arrested July 10 blocking Homrich, cited a recent study by The United Way of Michigan on poverty in Detroit: “It shows that 67 percent of the residents of Detroit do not have income sufficient to meet their basic needs, including water. The quantity and quality of water available to the community are important determinants of public health, but so is the cost and the ability to pay.
“Where there is no water or handwashing, disease will spread,” she warned.
Transfer of control over Detroit’s water to a regional authority in September did provide some funds for those who are unable to afford water, but the deal does not address affordability. Currently, Detroit water prices are approximately double the national average.
To address water affordability, the new regional authority, Great Lakes Water Authority, made available $4.5 million of funding — over a million dollars less than Homrich’s shutoff contract — for those with limited means. These funds will be doled out not only to Detroit but to the tri-county region, whose population exceeds 3.85 million.
Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman PHREDDY WISCHUSEN PHOTO[/caption]
Earlier this year, The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, under the authority of Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, commenced a mass shutoff of water to city residences who were behind on payments. DWSD did not systematically pursue unpaid commercial accounts in the same way.
DWSD contracted Homrich, based in Carleton, Mich., to execute two-years-worth of shutoffs at a price of $5.5 million.
After water to thousands of homes were shut off, activists demonstrated in front of Homrich for the first time on July 11, holding back the trucks for more than three hours. Ten people were arrested, most of whom were clergy or elderly. No charges were brought against that group.
The protest resumed July 18, obstructing the trucks for hours. When most media outlets had left the standoff to cover a shutoff demonstration thousands-strong downtown, police arrested Marian Kramer, Kim Redigan, David Olson, Dr. James Perkinson, Joan Smith, Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, Marianne McGuire, David Olson, Hans Barbe, and Baxter Jones. Eight of the nine were charged with disorderly conduct; Baxter Jones, who is disabled and wheelchair-bound, was not charged at all.
Since July 18, in addition to a growing public outcry, two special rapporteurs from the U.N. called the shutoffs a human rights violation and urged Mayor Mike Duggan to restore water to those who could not afford it under international human rights law.
SHUTOFFS CONTINUE
Still, although Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr publicly restored control of DWSD to Duggan, the shutoffs continue despite admonitions from the international governing body. To date over 30,000 homes in the city have been shut off.
The Dec. 8 press conference took place two hours before the first hearing in the case against the Homrich 9. Attorney John Royal, president of the Detroit chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, said, “along with defending and organizing the legal support for the Homrich 9, (NLG) attorneys have also been heavily involved in the civil lawsuit against the city to demand the city stop the water shut offs until they have implemented a water affordability plan.”
Royal says the nine engaged in “civil disobedience,” because they have been deprived of all other legal recourse through the political system. “When Gov. (Rick) Snyder took over the city of Detroit by appointing an emergency manager or an emergency dictator, he stripped all of us who live in Detroit of our rights to votes and our rights to recall elected officials who are not doing their job in accordance to the wishes of the people.”
The defendants petitioned the court for a collective legal defense in hopes of single jury trial.
According to Wylie-Kellerman, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes legitimated emergency management and predatory loans, but admitted the shutoffs caused “irreparable harm to the people of Detroit, but he said the financial needs… of the banks required that action.
“We want to put that in front of a jury, which is actually the last vestige of democracy in the city of Detroit given emergency management. We want to put this before ordinary citizens our peers and we’ll argue… we had an obligation, we were under duress. It was a necessity to take the action that we did…”
DISABLED, TOO
Tangela Harris spoke directly to the duress Detroiters affected by the shutoffs were feeling. Harris confessed, possibly contrary to appearances, she is physically and mentally handicapped, “and one of the ways I am able to disguise it,” she told the attendant press “is because I take medication. I am able to sit with my back strong and my head held high because I have a glass of water today to take my medication. But recently, when my water was shut off, I did not have the opportunity to take this medication. I did not have the opportunity to stand up and hold my head high because I was in pain.”
Harris says she had not been billed for several months when DWSD informed her she owed $4,000, comprised of almost $800 a month charges. The Harris household is made up of Harris, her paralyzed, mute and bedridden grandmother, her daughter, two infants and her niece. Harris says she called DWSD multiple times to report water gushing from an abandoned home across the street and no one ever responded.
In July, multiple calls from this reporter to DWSD to report various main breaks went unanswered.
Harris’ grandmother’s room faces the house with the gushing water, and she described seeing the look of pain in her eyes as the contractors shut off their water while the house across the street continued to gush water.
Harris made a personal appeal to people watching on TV, who may not have experienced struggles with poverty first hand.
“Just as this is happening to those in the inner city, please note that this is coming to you. If this water gets privatized, you’re going to be on the front lines just like us. … But will you be able to handle it? These poor people they’ve been poor all of their lives. So they kind of take it in stride.
“But, all of you who have never experienced a utility shutoff, all of you who have legacy, who have been given money, who live inside a family where the money has trickled down, where you have had the privilege of old money, and we have the privilege of no money, I swear to you, you’re going to be looking at people like me and saying, ‘how did you do it?’”
The defendants hope to make the trial a public examination of the shutoffs themselves.
SHINING LIGHT
“We’ve filed a motion for discovery… That discovery request asks for a good bit of information about the shutoffs: Who’s been shut off, where… because that’s not information they’ve made publicly available,” Wylie-Kellerman said. “We’re hoping to get that information in the course of this trial.”
Wylie-Kellerman, who is staging his own defense in order to have more time to speak on his own behalf, told the Michigan Citizen that any materials Homrich had provided to the city concerning shutoffs and reconnections of people from the period of months leading up to the action are necessary for their defense because they intend to argue what they did was under necessity to defend against “irreparable harm.”
According to Wylie-Kellerman, the prosecution argued discovery was not allowed in misdemeanors.
Royal argued the contrary — discovery is applicable on a case-by-case basis as decided by a judge.
Judge Cylenthia Miller, 36th District Court, is considering both arguments.
The next hearing will take place on Feb. 23. Judge Miller will likely rule on the discovery motion, and whether or not the defendants will have a collective trial or will be subject to separate proceedings of no more than two defendants per trial, as the prosecution wishes.
Meanwhile, DWSD vows to continue the shutoffs through the winter.
During the press conference, Sister Mary Ellen Howard, executive director of the St. Frances Cabrini Clinic, who was herself arrested July 10 blocking Homrich, cited a recent study by The United Way of Michigan on poverty in Detroit: “It shows that 67 percent of the residents of Detroit do not have income sufficient to meet their basic needs, including water. The quantity and quality of water available to the community are important determinants of public health, but so is the cost and the ability to pay.
“Where there is no water or handwashing, disease will spread,” she warned.
Transfer of control over Detroit’s water to a regional authority in September did provide some funds for those who are unable to afford water, but the deal does not address affordability. Currently, Detroit water prices are approximately double the national average.
To address water affordability, the new regional authority, Great Lakes Water Authority, made available $4.5 million of funding — over a million dollars less than Homrich’s shutoff contract — for those with limited means. These funds will be doled out not only to Detroit but to the tri-county region, whose population exceeds 3.85 million.