Michigan Civil Rights Leaders Plan an Occupy Protest at Gov. Rick Snyder’s Home on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Michigan civil rights leaders, saying the new emergency manager law unfairly targets predominantly African-American communities, pledged Monday to march in Superior Township–home of Gov. Rick Snyder–on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Thousands plan to march in the township, about 12 miles east of Ann Arbor, on Jan. 16 in an effort to call attention to a law that could soon lead to the appointment of an emergency manager in Detroit.

The cities under an emergency manager are Flint, Benton Harbor and Pontiac. Detroit Public Schools also has an emergency manager.

The leaders opposes the law because an emergency manager has unilateral authority to cut union contracts, sell assets and dismiss elected officials.

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“We started this fight in Benton Harbor but we plan to end it in Superior Township,” said the Rev. D. Alexander Bullock, leader of the Michigan Chapter Rainbow Push Coalition, a social justice group founded by Jesse Jackson. “We will show the world that democracy is at stake in Michigan just as it is in Libya or Egypt.”

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