An Urgent Call to Action:

 Interim Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has announced his master plan for the City of Detroit, and it constitutes a declaration of war on working families!

Bing has announced that police, fire, EMS and homeland security are the services the city should actually provide, and everything else is on the chopping block.  Other departments and services will be privatized, consolidated, or eliminated.  Specific examples cited as ripe for privatization include trash collection, bus services, tax collection and payroll.

Bing advocates the “Yellow Pages” approach - if a listing appears in the Yellow Pages for a service, the city should not be providing it - the service should be contracted out.  He will begin the annual budget process by demanding that all department heads justify the existence of their departments, and he has announced he will cut at least 10 percent of the city workforce.

He may be a new mayor, but his “master plan” is a collection of tired old ideas that boil down to one: privatization.

AFSCME has withdrawn support for Dave Bing for a full term as Detroit Mayor.  We have now endorsed Tom Barrow for Detroit Mayor.  We have launched the We Vote! Campaign, to assure that all members, family, friends and coworkers are registered to vote, and we will work to assure that all these people get to the polls to cast their votes.

We are fighting for our working lives!  It is essential that each and every one of us realizes this, and puts maximum energy, time and commitment into the effort to run Dave Bing out of office and replace him with Tom Barrow.

There is a pledge form on the link below.  Take a minute or two to fill in your pledge form, and list some folks you will register or re-register to vote.  Then watch for further information as the campaign proceeds and we need your help in other ways!

Albert Garrett

President

Pledge Form:     PDF     MS Word Form