On July 24. BAMN National Chair Shanta Driver spoke at a picket of the Detroit sewage plant organized by Local 207 to stop union busting.
Below is a transcript of the speech:
“We came out here today, a lot of young people here are from BAMN [applause and screams]. We came out because we know, we know that our futures depend on your will to fight, we know that if we go on strike, you’re going to need an army of people organizing the city to stay behind you and we know from all our experience that if there was ever a good time to fight it’s now.
We’ve been involved over the last week in trying to stop a women from being evicted. We’ve had 50 people in front of her house and whenever they threatened to bring the dumpster in, we blocked the roads with cars, we get people out into the streets and now they are saying that her case is reopened and they are looking into making a settlement because of a little bit of resistance by Bamn and other people to another eviction in Detroit.
The Democrats have nothing but bad intentions, however they do not think that at this moment they can look bad. If you all are out on strike, I will say this with great confidence, you will settle and you will settle quickly. Because the image of Detroit on strike is something that Obama is not going to wanna have before the public with the election coming up. I think will get a settlement. I think you could turn the corner for Detroit. Stop our destruction. Stop the decimation of our city, save our city for the next generation. Thank you so much, we’ll keep fighting with you. ”
