Support is growing from labor, community, clergy, and environmental activists, along with those attending the national Netroots Nation convention in Detroit this week for a march and rally Friday July 18 to call for an immediate moratorium on the water shutoffs.
 
National Nurses United, the lead sponsor of the event, and the dozens of groups and activists organizations supporting the action, call the shutoff a public health emergency and a major violation of human rights. NNU is the largest U.S. organization of nurses.
 
What:     March and rally calling for a moratorium on water shutoffs
When:     Friday, July 18
March:     1 p.m. Cobo Center, corner of Washington and W. Congress St., Detroit
Rally:     1:45 p.m. Hart Plaza, Detroit
 
The event will also call for a tax on Wall Street speculation which could raise hundreds of billions of dollars for communities like Detroit which have been pummeled by recession, unemployment, and other pain directly linked to the Wall Street meltdown and plunder of major urban areas. The Robin Hood tax on Wall Street trading, is embodied in HR 1579, sponsored by Rep. Keith Ellison, to rebuild Detroit and the rest of America.
 
Rally supporters charge that Gov. Rick Snyder and his handpicked emergency manager officials are enforcing the water shutoffs to promote the privatization of the public water department, the latest gift, they say, to Wall Street financial interests who have bankrupted the city.
 
Among the growing list of local, national, and international endorsers of the march and rally are: Netroots Nation, Michigan Nurses Association, Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO, UAW Local 600, AFSCME Council 25, CWA Local 400, National Action Network-Michigan, Food and Water Watch, People’s Water Board, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, We the People of Detroit, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Moratorium NOW Coalition, Detroit Eviction Defense, Detroiters Resisting Emergency, National People’s Action, Health GAP (Global Action Project), East Michigan Environmental Action Council,  Color of Change, Franciscan Action Network, Detroit Water Brigade, Detroit Public Schools Education Task Force, Michigan Election Reform Alliance, Student Global AIDS Campaign, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Detroit Active and Retired Employees, and many other groups.
 
 “Cutting off water to community residents is a disgraceful attack on the basic human right of access to safe, clean water,” said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN. “Nurses know the critical link between access to water and public health. Lack of water, like unsafe sanitation, is a major health disaster that can lead to disease outbreaks and pandemics. The city must end this shutoff now.”