So we did this thing where we filed a Title VI complaint to stop Rick Synder

It's been a couple of decades of Republican fuckery in Michigan education, and specifically in Detroit. Well, we got sick of it and worked together with the Detroit School Board to file a Title VI complaint with the Department of Justice. It's GAME ON.

("We" is the folks over at Go Left America, the citizen activism division of Bold Blue Media, the state and local political services company I launched here on Dkos in May 2013)

The basis of this 450 page complaint is that Rick Snyder's education policies, and his installation of emergency managers who have shut down schools in predominantly minority communities, has brought real damage to the city and residents of Detroit, and is harming students in the process.

We invested more than 2000 hours of research and spoke with more than 400 residents, teachers, students and families in the area. Here's what we learned:

1 - The school board, having been completely stripped if it's power and forced to get approval from the emergency manager before even making copies on a copy machine, has been retaliated against for speaking out about the conditions and abuses and for and attempting to represent the people who elected them.

2 - A competing school district, set up by Snyder, which he created stealing the newly renovated schools from the tax payers. This district, called an EAA (coming to a district near you soon!), is a farce. It involves closing schools in certain areas and forcing kids to travel long distances to get to other schools. This is not a problem if you have a car. Or a lot of bus money. But it is a problem if you have to leave home at Oh-Dark-Thirty and walk through gang infested territory, unprotected, to get to school. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? We have spoken with victims of rape and other gang violence who should NOT have had to experience these things, and would NOT have, were it not for Snyder's policies. Many of them wind up dropping out of school or joining gangs  - which only further exacerbates and prolongs the problems and the cycle of poverty in Detroit.

Here's video of one child's walk to school:

3 - Of course, school closures mean spiraling home values in pockets of various neighborhoods. Those who can leave, leave, further eroding the tax base and harming the value of property for those who stay.

And perhaps most importantly,

4 - What exists in Detroit now, is essentially a separate and unequal school system. Something we THOUGHT we dealt with some 60 years ago.

So we filed the Title VI complaint. In addition to collecting and verifying the reports of students, teachers and citizens, we had an accountant actually quantify this damage and it turns out there is $438,000,000 worth of actual financial harm to the district and its residents. We have asked that the Department of Justice investigate Rick Snyder, his inappropriate use of federal funds in the district, the impact his policies have had on communities of color and the handicapped, and the constitutionality of stripping a duly elected board of any oversight or power to serve those who elected them.

We're sick of it. We are hopeful that the DOJ investigates and this process can serve as a blueprint for other states and jurisdictions across the country where the GOP is duplicating, in some measure, this same pattern.

You can take a look at a summary of the Title VI complaint here.

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