Life is getting hellish for workers and poor in Detroit

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DETRO—In January 1991, John Engler took office as governor of Michigan. He won a close election largely due to abstention by Black voters disenchanted with the already conservative policies of Democratic governor James Blanchard.

Engler embarked on a mission to attack the poor and cut the so-called social safety net right from under the feet of the unemployed workers. This was done in the name of "cutting the budget deficit" and "lowering taxes."

All this reached a crucial point on Oct. 1, when the complete ending of General Assistance went into effect. General Assistance is the name in Michigan of the welfare program for single, supposedly "able-bodied" adults. This meant that 90,000 people were immediately without any means of support.

And this was merely the spearpoint of the attack. The Emergency Needs Program, a stopgap measure, was eliminated. Aid to Families with Dependent Children was cut back. Medical assistance was cut back, at the same time no provision was made for any of those on General Assistance to shift to programs for the disabled—where many really belonged in the first place.

As a final touch, Engler proposed that physicians treating Medicaid patients be made immune from malpractice suits—to lower Medicaid costs!

Engler also cut the budget allocation for institutions such as the Detroit Institute of the Arts (which he demagogically denounced as "elitist") and the Detroit Science Center, leading to the latter's closing. Both institutions are, in fact, known for offering working people and their schoolage children a chance at a broader vision of life.

And, with deliberate timing, Engler completely eliminated-while Anita Hill was being attacked by his fellow Republicans the Michigan Office of Women in Work, which was the agency that most directly assisted women in dealing with sexual harassment.

All these steps and others have taken the already large homeless population in Detroit (and other cities in Michigan) and made it massive.

Recent weeks have seen a variety of militant actions aimed at opening up public housing. This is particularly appropriate in Detroit, where the mismanagement and pro-business politics of Mayor Coleman Young, a leading Black Democrat, have resulted in a 40 percent vacancy rate!

Faced with these actions, Young, Engler, and HUD secretary Jack Kemp have engaged in a series of promises and halfmeasures—coupled with large-scale police action against protesters.

for rapid rise in inflation.

Bush sidesteps the issue Bush has done his best to sidestep the issue of the economy. Any major decisions on the economy, the president says, will be deferred at least until his State of the Union address in late January (when his re-election campaign gets underway).

In the meantime, the Democrats are circling around Bush's leaky ship like sharks who have tasted blood. At the the national AFL-CIO convention last month, delegates were greeted by no less than six Democratic Party candidates for president, who each did his utmost to speak to "labor issues." But the Democrats could offer few economic proposals other than the call for tax cuts-—which is little more than an electiontime stunt.

And how would a tax cut (designed mainly to appeal to middle-income voters) be the homeless-the by the trade unions.

The last decade has witnessed the largest transfer of wealth in history from working people to the capitalist class. This process must be reversed. Working people produce all the wealth; they should also own and control it.

To make these necessary changes, workers need a political movement that's devoted to their interests. We need a labor party

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people enter the ranks of the unemployed and

rich are getting much richer."