This coming Saturday, March 20, two events will take place. In Washington, D.C., antiwar activists will be gathering to commemorate the anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and protest ongoing U.S. involvement.

This will be the standard protest affair: puppets and signs and banners and leaflets and literature tables and left groups all begging the Democrats to “stop the war.” Some might throw in a radical phrase or two, or even talk about the working class.

But it is in Detroit where we will see a pressing issue for working people be addressed. While so much of the left, including from southeast Michigan, will be in Washington for the next protest, members and supporters of the Workers Party in the region will be attending the Citizen’s Inquiry into the Dexter Avenue Fire.

The Citizen’s Inquiry was organized in response to a series of devastating and fatal house fires that have resulted in the deaths of 14 people so far this winter. In virtually all of these incidents, the shutoff of electricity and gas heat by the local energy monopoly, DTE Energy, has been directly responsible. Only the SEP and WPA have reported on these incidents in their press, as far as we know. However, the SEP, which has a positive history of taking up these struggles, has again taken it a step forward.

In 1993, the predecessor of the SEP, the Workers League, convened a Citizen’s Inquiry into a fire that occurred on Mack Avenue, where five children were killed, again, due to utility shutoffs by DTE. As in the cases today, the local media and the energy monopoly sought to demonize and criminalize the surviving victims.

Many self-described socialists and communists at the time thought the Citizen’s Inquiry was a gimmick, just as many do now. But we disagree. The only shame is that more workers’ organizations did not come out in support of this hearing sooner.

While we may have fundamental disagreements with the overall program and strategy of the SEP, the convening of the Citizen’s Inquiry is an honorable and wholly supportable act, and genuinely contributes to the struggle of working people for their rights and livelihoods. As such, the Central Committee of the Workers Party has formally endorsed the Citizen’s Inquiry and will do what we can to build for it.

We encourage our readers and all working people to support and, if possible, attend the Citizen’s Inquiry into the Dexter Avenue Fire on March 20. It is being held in Room 150 of the General Lectures Hall (at the corner of Anthony Wayne Drive and West Warren Avenue) of Wayne State University, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

For a map and directions, click here.