News & Commentary

Given everything that Flint has been through in recent years, the last thing we want to do is beat up on the city’s challenged school district. While some critics may suggest otherwise, the legal action we took last fall aimed at improving conditions in the schools is simply designed to ensure that every child who walks into a classroom, including those who need special-education services, receives the support necessary to thrive.

A newly announced plan to permanently keep Flint on the Detroit-based regional water system has both sparked hope and raised important questions.

This story first published on the Detroit Metro Times.

By: Desire Vincent, Associate Director of Communications

Michigan public education is being eroded – through the advancement of for-profit charter schools, by way of threats of school closures, and now with the diversion of public school funding to private schools. 

Shameful. Political pandering. Heartless. Cowardly. A terrible message to send to some of our most vulnerable youth.

Michigan’s emergency manager law is once again being fingered as a primary culprit in the lead poisoning of Flint’s water supply.

Freedom of speech is being threated this week by a criminal prosecution brought by the State of Michigan against Nheru Littleton, a Detroit man being charged with making a “terroristic threat” for statements he posted on Facebook last year in the tense period following the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the subsequent attack on Dallas officers during a protest there. If convicted, Littleton could face up to 20 years in prison, simply for posting his opinion online. The ACLU of Michigan has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case urging the court to dismiss criminal charges that are based solely on Mr. Littleton’s Facebook posts.