Save Our City! Rally Planned

DETROIT (WWJ) - A group of Detroit students and workers are planning to take to the streets to show their displeasure with plans to cut programs and increase class sizes in the city's public schools.

Students at both Southeastern High School and CMA organized several walkouts to protest plans by DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb to close more schools and increase class size to 60 students.

"We demand no more school closings, no more destruction of school programs and no classes with 60 students," said Monica Smith, a graduate of Cass Tech, the University of Michigan and Wayne State Law School. "We refuse to accept that there are insufficient funds for our futures and our city. We will not live under a new Jim Crow system in which black and Latino/a communities have no democratic rights, separate and unequal schools, jobs, services and living conditions."

"Even our most basic democratic rights are under attack," added AFSCME 207 Secretary-Treasurer Michael Mulholland. "The people of Egypt have shown that when poor and working-class people mobilize a mass movement, they can halt business as usual and bring down the most tyrannical dictator. Today the workers of Detroit are uniting with the high school and college students of our city to put the corporate elite on notice: together, we will defy you and we will defeat you."

The demonstration - scheduled for Wed., March 2 - includes a rally at noon at Wayne State University's Gullen Mall, a march down Woodward at 1:30 pm and a rally at the Spirit of Detroit at 4:30 pm.

WWJ Newsradio 950 will cover the scheduled events. Stay with WWJ and check back with CBS Detroit.com for complete coverage.