By Leona McElevene, MI12 CDPP for PDA (intended for PDA Blog posting)

The People’s Summit and Tent City, took place on June 14-17, 2009 at Grand Circus Park in Detroit, Michigan. It was a four day protest to the National Big-Business Summit.

The People’s Summit information literature of 05/30/09 stated:
“… The Big Business “National Summit” meets June 15-17 at the GM Renaissance Center. There the heads of corporate giants Conoco-Phillips, Dow Chemical, GM, Chrysler, Ascension Health, Nuclear Energy Institute Ltd., CitiBank, National Council on Competitiveness, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others claim they will “define America’s future.” American Axle & Mfg. CEO Richard Dauch, DTE Energy head Anthony Early, and former Michigan Gov. John Engler, now President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, will be among over 60 CEO speakers.

How dare these big business honchos come to Detroit to plot how the enrich themselves further while we struggle against mass layoffs and plant closings, home foreclosures and evictions, homelessness, utility and water cutoffs, school shutdowns, budget cuts, record-high unemployment, racism and every other kind of outrage!

The People’s Summit will be a dynamic event with daily demonstrations, rallies, speak-outs, town hall meetings and cultural events. We’ll confront the big-business CEOs and challenge their ‘definition’ of workers’ and poor people’s futures. We’ll come up with our own People’s Stimulus Plan and Economic Bill of Rights.”

As PDA member and CDPP, I attended The People’s Summit and Tent City and I’m very happy that I went. It was awesome! People came from New York, North Carolina, New Orleans, and as far away as Germany to attend. I distributed scores of Healthcare NOT Warfare flyers and lapel stickers, and I helped to sign up 50-60 new PDA members.

However, Robert “Dr. Bob” Wicke, PDA member, Progressive Democrats of Southeastern Michigan Chapter, attended The People’s Summit and had this to say:

“Detroit’s People’s Summit was potentially an excellent response to the National Summit convened by the Detroit Economic Club at the Renaissance Center. (Appropriately, now the GM building.). In spirit, it was certainly so; however, despite attendance from eight or ten surrounding states, over-all attendance at the people’s summit fell far below being an adequate response. Most of the people there had been long-time activists, and I already knew many of the local ones. Even the afternoon march on the ren-cen, though one of the more spirited Detroit marches for a while, was somewhat undercut by it’s too small size, as there were barely over 100 marchers.

There was a scattering of tents throughout the site and a few literature tables from local groups and local chapters of national ones. The literature from them was indicative of wider concerns than the economy, with probably single-payer and opposition to the wars being most prevalent. The morning speech-making and commentary session was quite a bit narrower, with nobody saying anything much about any other subject than the economy. The best summation of what was said would probably be “show us the jobs.” Considerable outrage was expressed over the fact that the stimulus package passed several months ago was making next to no difference in unemployment, partly because of the outrageous fact that jobs were still being off-shored, sanctioned in the case of the auto industry by the administration. In the case of GM, part of the package was that the company would close plants in the US, simultaneously with opening several new plants abroad.

This writer did speak towards the end of this session, pointing out that the Obama administration has not advanced to where the Roosevelt administration had reached before the end of 1933. The first efforts towards job creation back then was called the Public Works Administration, and it attempted to do what the Obama administration is now attempting, namely create jobs via the private sector, by granting money to contractors. Under the tutelage of Harry Hopkins, the administration, under the Works Project Administration, hired the jobless directly and built libraries, schools, bridges, and numerous other parts of the infrastructure. The Obama administration is ideologically committed to not taking that step.

I spent some time at the PDA table, pleasantly situated under some nice sized trees, talking to the people who came up, some of whom did end up on the sign-up sheets. My partner and I were interviewed for about fifteen minutes by a reporter from the Detroit News. We had a chance then to bring up the five priorities of PDA and to go into some detail on the stance the Democratic Party as a whole needs to adopt, in light of the several deep-seated crises that the country is confronted with. We emphasized the relationship of the health care crisis to the economic crisis, military expenditures to the economic crisis and the lack of real progress of the Federal Government with respect to the ecological crisis. “

In addition, Roger Long, Chapter Leader, Progressive Democrats of Southeastern Michigan, said:
“…The season is right for activism and it is an exciting time to do it; there are lots of energy and a demand for change. The People’s Summit and Tent City was a great experience. The middle class is hurting … Jesse Jackson gave an inspiring speech and made a case for change”.

For more information on The People’s Summit and Tent City, please visit: http://www.peoplessummit.org/
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