Whether or not you attended the ninth annual Netroots Nation convention at Cobo Hall last weekend, you may have heard about downtown’s large demonstration against Detroit’s water shutoffs.
More than 1,000 people took to the streets to protest against the city’s ongoing shutoff initiative, while a number of civil rights organizations formally called for a moratorium on the practice. (By Monday, the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department actually announced a plan to halt shutoffs for 15 days, though officials held their tongue and declined to concede it was due to the continually increasing pressure from vocal opponents and even the judge overseeing Detroit’s historic bankruptcy.)
But besides the protest, a lot was happening inside Cobo, where Detroit was the focus of a number of panel discussions and keynote speakers.
Considering we’re a group who’s thrilled by sexy topics like municipal finance, we listened to a panel talk about the role of Wall Street lending practices. Wallace Turbeville, a senior fellow at the Demos Institute, explained what he thought was one the leading factors of Detroit’s tumble into bankruptcy.
