Two Unsupportable Congressional Candidates in District 13

by Russ Bellant

Adam Hollier first drew attention in 2012 when he was City Council liaison for then-Mayor Dave Bing. They were pushing the Council to dismantle the street lighting system that Dennis Archer had upgraded in 1997. Bing cut most of the street light maintenance staff to make the streets go dark so that he could turn the system over to DTE, where he was once a Director.

In 2012 Bing got City Council to support a "consent agreement" concept that would give away Belle Isle, kill off our public lighting system and a page full of items that would reduce or dismantle City capacity. The overall force behind this was then-Governor Rick Snyder, who was hell-bent on stripping Detroit of its services and regional stature. He was guiding Bing. The person picked to push this agenda at the City Council table was Adam Hollier.

Fast forwarding to today, a review of all his donors shows that the key Snyder staff for implementing these anti-Detroit measures in 2012 are now donors to Adam Hollier. Those donors include Dennis Muchmore, Snyder's Chief of Staff; Bill Rustem, Snyder's Chief of Strategy (regarding the dismantling of Detroit, Flint and Benton Harbor) and Tony Saunders, Snyder's "Emergency" Manager and asset-stripper over Benton Harbor.

Additionally, donors to far-right causes such as Edward Levy, a major donor to the Mackinac Center and Eliot Weiner, his V.P. kicked in over $11,000. Steve Hamp is also a major donor. He founded the Michigan Education Excellence Foundation (MEEF) and partnered with Rick Baird, who headed Rick Snyder's "skunkworks," a once-secret program in Snyder's office to dismantle public school systems and public services. Their MEEF was supported Snyder's EAA and other "alternatives" to public schools.

It should be remembered that Snyder targets were only in Black cities and schools - Flint, Detroit, Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Buena Vista Schools, Muskegon Heights and Inkster. There the school district was dismantled and buildings were demolished to prevent restart even though citizens were paying bonds on the them. Ecorse, Highland Park and River Rouge were also impaired by EMs.

In addition to this cast of characters, Dan Gilbert, major Trump and Snyder donor, kicked in a big check to Hollier. You know Gilbert - he's the guy with $17 billion that said Detroit need to love him with $60 million or he might not like Detroit any more.

! Another Democratic candidate in the 13th District Congressional primary that is of concern is Michael Griffie. When Rick Snyder started the take-down of Detroit Public Schools he created his own (very unconstitutional) school district, the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), and took 15 schools from Detroit and created and appointed his own school board.

His EAA did not want credentialed, experienced (and pro-union) teachers. They wanted new faces that would have any kind of four year degree. So Teach for America set up shop to supply college grads that could use a job and some paydown on their student debt. They gave them a five week boot camp and presto! - they were called teachers. TFA gave Snyder's district about 200 people to fill teaching slots and told these hires that they were on their own.

Since they were not in fact trained to teach, they floundered, they left in large numbers even before their two year commitments were up. Teaching vacancies accelerated and education scores on the state exams showed dramatic losses of educational attainment in all of Snyder's stolen schools.

The TFA model was set up with a planned continuous turnover. Hence only a two year commitment. Any four year degree qualified you to lead a classroom with just a short orientation from TFA. Forget colleges of education. Forget real experience.

This is what Michael Griffie promoted. It caused irremmedial harm to the education of thousands of Detroit children. It was set up to weaken the public education system. It fed charter schools with unqualified adults to stand in classrooms so that charters, 80% of which were private for-profit corporations, could get state aid which should have gone to public schools. TFA displaced proportionally more veteran African-American teachers with white inexperienced, culturally disconnected young adults. By collaborating with Snyder's takedown of schools and leaving a harmful imprint on Detroit to this day, Griffie earns a passover when people are looking for a caring, trustworthy representative in Congress.