Municipal water privatization victimized and blamed already-impoverished Highland Park residents

Evidence

With Highland Park’s tax-base severely affected by white flight and the loss of auto industry jobs, utilities in the city fell into disrepair, as residents were forced to pay ever-increasing water bills. The city hired an emergency financial manager, whose solution to the economic crisis was to raise prices even further. When some residents were unable to pay, water was shut off to their homes and the bills were added to their city taxes. To make matters worse, the people in Highland Park who were already suffering from the impoverishment of the city, were often blamed for their inability to pay, and charged with being bad parents when social services were legally forced to remove their children from their homes. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1520

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The punitive shame of poor families hit by enclosure strongly parallels the shame framing in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ about moralizing the stigmatized.
• XREF: connects to: State officials reversed a court win for commoners under industry influence — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1519; Corporate privatization of water and seeds erodes local communities’ decision-making power — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 223