Detroit Will Breathe plans St. Clair Shores, Warren events
Group aims to protest anywhere ‘our Black brothers and sisters are under attack’
Activist group Detroit Will Breathe returns to Macomb County on Saturday and also are targeting Warren Mayor Jim Fouts for removal from office over alleged racist comments the mayor hasmade in the past.
“This Saturday we’re returning to Harper Woods to demand transparency and justice for Priscilla Slater, whose death in custody was covered up by Harper Woods police,” the group said at a rally that was carried live on Facebook this week.
The group plans to meet at 4 p.m. at 20701 E. Eight Mile in St. Clair Shores, the address of a L.A. Fitness gym. A man answer
ing the phone there Thursday said he was not aware of the meeting.
After meeting at the Eight Mile address, Detroit Will Breathe members will march over to the Harper Woods City Hall, several blocks away.
They are protesting over what they say are unanswered questions that remain over the June 10 death of 37-year- old Priscilla Slater. She had been arrested at the Parkcrest Inn on Harper Avenue by police responding to a report of shots fired. A man who was with Slater, Lewis Nichols, 27, was also taken into custody and charged with 20 felonies relating to the incident.
Slater, who is Black, was later found dead in a holding cell at the police department.
Kenneth Poynter, the city’s longtime mayor, was forced to resign in July following a public outcry over his reported remark that he understood why people “become white supremacists.” Poynter had been mayor since 1997 and worked as a media specialist at Carter Middle School in Warren.
The city’s deputy police chief and a patrol officer were fired in August in connection with the investigation into Slater’s incustody death. City Manager John Szymanski said the two had attempted to “conceal and manipulate evidence” in the probe.
“We’ve got a fight we haven’t finished in Harper Woods,” a Detroit Will Breathe spokesman said. “We’ve got to continue to fight that fight until we get justice for Priscilla and her family. We want the full story of what happened in that jail cell.”
Meanwhile, Detroit Will Breathe and members of SWARM (South Warren Alliance of Radical Movement) and the Detroit Defense Committee say they plan to return soon to Warren conduct another protest march.
The Black Lives Matter proponents organized a protest Sept. 20 for Eddie and Candace Hall, an African-American couple who has been harassed and attacked in their Warren home by a masked man who remains on the loose. Warren police have labeled the incidents as “hate crimes.”
That protest started on Hoover near 11 Mile Road, but also wound through some of the nearby residential neighborhoods.
Two days af ter the march, Fouts issued a lengthy statement on his Facebook page that credited police with keeping the peace, but criticized the groups, saying residents were not happy with an “unjustified invasion by outsiders.”
Themayor said although he supports peaceful protests, the groups have a reputation for violence and property destruction, and said Warren avoided trouble by being “patient and respectful.”
“A quiet neighborhood is not a place to protest or create fear and anger,” Fouts wrote. “All livesmatter in our neighborhoods regardless of race, creed of color.”
But a spokesman for the Detroit Defense Council noted Fouts has come under fire in recent years for allegedly being taped making disturbing remarks about the elderly, people of color and the disabled community.
Fouts has long denied it is his voice that was captured on the surreptitiously recorded audiotapes that have haunted him for the past four years.
“We know what kind of person this mayor is, and we know the power of this movement, and the potential to get racist-(expletive) mayors out of cities where they don’t (expletive) belong when they don’t represent communities they are supposed to be representing,” the spokesman said.
The groups did not specify when they will march again in Michigan’s thirdlargest city.
But they did say theywill continue to address racial issues in Macomb County. They say an event is being planned in Macomb where people can “express their experiences” with racism and discrimination.
“We can’t say, ‘Oh, that’s in Warren, that’s in St. Clair Shores, that’s where ever,” the Detroit Will Breathe speaker said. “It’s anywhere where our Black brothers and sisters and siblings and cousins are under attack.”