This major panel took place at the 2016 #Law4thePeople Convention at the NYU School of Law in New York City.
This panel discusses broad implications that have come out of the man-made water crisis in Flint and Detroit, MI. When local government is run like a business, state-appointed “Emergency Managers” are able to wield water as a weapon over poor and black communities. This is seen most clearly in Flint, where state-appointed EM Darnell Earley switched the city over from Detroit water to the Flint River, poisoning the entire county with lead for over a year. This panel focuses on the role of litigation in conjunction with community organizing in city restructuring, and offers lessons for litigators and organizers in other cities facing similar scenarios. Presenters examine the neoliberal political and legal strategies being used to dismantle democracy and move communities of color and the poor out of their neighborhoods by removing access to clean water, the privatization of the public sector, and tax foreclosure. They also discuss strategies communities, lawyers and activists are using to fight back.
Presenters:
Nayyirah Shariff is an organizer for the Flint Democracy Defense League.
Curt Guyette became the ACLU of Michigan’s first investigative reporter in 2013, taking a newly created position funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. He now writes exclusively about issues involving emergency management and open government. In January 2016, Guyette was recognized as Michigan’s “Journalist of the Year.” Prior to joining the ACLU, Curt worked as a print journalist for more than 30 years, including 18 years at the Metro Times, an alternative newsweekly based in Detroit. Curt graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in English writing. He is the recipient of numerous local, state and national journalism awards, including a Hillman Prize in 2016. The State Bar of Michigan has honored him three times for his outstanding coverage of legal issues.
Peter J. Hammer is a Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School and Director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, dedicated to promoting the educational, economic and political empowerment of under-represented communities in urban areas and ensuring that the phrase equal justice under law applies to all members of society. Prof. Hammer was instrumental in editing and compiling Judge Damon J. Keith’s new biography, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (2013). Prof. Hammer has become a leading voice on the economic and social issues impacting the city of Detroit.
John Philo is the Executive and Legal Director of the Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice and is Of Counsel to Constitutional Litigation Associates. Mr. Philo has litigated cases throughout Michigan and in dozens of states representing low-income workers, communities, and injured persons on matters of employment, constitutional, and tort law. He has served as counsel on lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act, which permits state officials to suspend democratic governance and suspend collective bargaining rights of city workers in low income communities. He serves on the steering committee of the NLG’s Labor & Employment Committee and is a past president of the Detroit & Michigan Chapter of the NLG. He is a graduate of the St. Louis University School of Law and McGill University’s Faculty of Law.
Julie Hurwitz is in private practice in Detroit, Michigan, a partner in the firm of Goodman & Hurwitz, P.C., where she specializes in civil rights and government misconduct/§1983 litigation. She has been adjunct professor of law at the University of Detroit/Mercy School of Law, and was the founding former Executive Director of the NLG/Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice. She has successfully tried several civil rights cases to verdicts in excess of $1 million, including police misconduct, prisoner rights, malicious prosecution, wrongful conviction, failure to protect and sexual harassment cases. She is currently V.P. of the Michigan/Detroit NLG Chapter and is on the Boards of Directors of the Sugar Law Center, and the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights. She currently represents the plaintiffs in several Flint water class actions, and is co-counsel, on behalf of the NLG and with the Sugar Law Center, in the federal Constitutional challenge to the Michigan Emergency Manager Law, and is representing the criminal civil disobedience defendants who were arrested in July 2014 protesting the Detroit mass water shut-offs. She is a 1978 graduate of UC Berkeley, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics, and a 1982 graduate from the University of Michigan Law School.
Vince Warren (moderator), Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights.
