Detroit Activists Run Progressive City-Wide Campaign

CPR slate will advance a roots agenda without corporate funding.

DETROIT, 1 July, 2001--"Even if we win, we will need a movement behind us in order to make our offices effective," says City Council candidate, Charles Simmons, who spoke at a community forum sponsored by the Committee for the Political Resurrection of Detroit (CPR-D) on June 28.

Simmons, a co-chair of CPR, which was founded over a year ago in the city by a group of veteran political activists, is seeking public office for the first time along with two other CPR members, Maureen Taylor of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, and Abayomi Robert Norfolk, a CPR Steering Committee member and independent journalist.

All three candidates come to the field of over 100 contestants for City Council with backgrounds rich in political organizing and transformation.

Charles Simmons, an educator and journalist, is also heavily involved in the new urban environmental movement, which is highlighting the often neglected crisis of the imbalance between hazardous waste management and community safety.

Simmons is currently working with a group of parents who are seeking to prevent the opening of the Beard School on the city's Southwest side. The school was built on a former industrial site that still contains dangerous toxic residue that is potentially harmful to humans.

Maureen Taylor, another CPR Slate candidate for City Council, has worked for years organizing to protect the human rights of the poor, the homeless, women and welfare clients. She has built up the support of over two dozen community organizations, including CPR, who drafted her to run for elective office in the upcoming September 11 city-wide primary.

Taylor is very concerned about the impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act passed by the US Congress and signed by former President Bill Clinton. The bill set an effective 5 year limit on public assistance to poor families.

This October the 5 year time period will expire which could lead to the total abolition of any semblance of a social safety net for poor families in the United States, many of which are headed by women.

Abayomi Robert Norfolk, has worked in the areas of educational testing and evaluation for the last two years. He is editor of the Pan-African News Wire, an electronic press agency and a former Detroit Public School teacher.

Abayomi is concerned about a number of issues including the development of a regional mass transit system in southeastern Michigan, the burgeoning prison-industrial-complex, the erosion of affirmative action and the threats against the concept of a universal franchise in the United States.

This year's election in Detroit comes at a time when the current Mayor, Dennis W. Archer, recently announced that he would not seek a third term.

Archer's administration was subjected to a number of challenges over the last four years including a referendum on his handling of casino gambling contracts, an attempt to hold a recall election that gathered over 126,000 signatures, and a growing vocal campaign against police use of lethal force that has prompted the intervention of the US Department of Justice and Amnesty International.

All three candidates on the CPR Slate have pledged not to accept campaign contributions from wealthy developers and other corporate interests that are either operating in Detroit or seeking to win lucrative business contracts inside the city.

The candidates feel that such contributions would negatively affect their ability to genuinely represent the interests of the community residents of the city who have been neglected over the last 8 years by the Archer administration.