In Detroit, even the thin gruel of democracy that America advertises to
the world, has ceased to exist. Not one of its 700,000 residents retains
the political rights of citizens, those rights having been usurped by
the agents of Wall Street: Governor Rick Snyder and bankruptcy lawyer
Kevyn Orr, the Lone Ranger and Tonto who were the sole authorities
empowered to file bankruptcy for the city. Their mission is to render
the judgment of capital that Detroit is too poor, in its present
demographic composition, for participation in the democratic order, and
must be forcibly reconstituted, beginning with a divvying up of its
assets. At the end of this process, a “new” Detroit is supposed to
emerge, which will have divested itself of enough Black and poor people
to allow the reinstatement of some form of electoral franchise.
-- Glen Ford, "Detroit: The Bell Tolls for All of Us" (Black Agenda Report).