Dry Detroit

Water is a human right: Even the much beleagured CEO of Nestle, who has been accused of trying to privatize the water resources of poor communities for the benefit of its bottled-water profits, officially agrees. He told the Guardian in 2013:

“This human right is the five litres of water we need for our daily hydration and the 25 litres we need for minimum hygiene. . . This amount of water is the primary responsibility of every government to make available to every citizen of this world.”

It’s not the most inspiring statement: everyone should have the bare minimum and we can profit off the rest?

And yet, in Detroit today, he’d sound like a radical.

Small, Gritty, and Equitable

At the United Tenants of Albany annual dinner last week, Mayor Kathy Sheehan spoke about her “equity agenda” for the city of Albany. We’re only as strong as our weakest neighborhoods, she said. We have to bring everyone along.

Making Reparations

I bought my house with the help of a downpayment from my parents. My parents got help to buy their house from my father’s parents. At the time when my father’s parents bought their house, a black family in most of America could not have gotten a traditional mortgage, certianly not an FHA-insured one, no matter how credit worthy, and probably could not have purchased in the neighborhood they did.

I am a direct beneficiary of explicitly racist government policies and the pervasive white violence that supported and surrounded them.