Stephen Haynes drove to Lansing, spent a freezing cold night on the Capitol steps and got arrested in a sit-in inside the Capitol building to raise awareness about the Michigan law that allows the governor to appoint people to take over towns.
“I’m glad I did what I did,” said Haynes, 28, an international affairs student at Eastern Michigan University. “I wish that it wasn’t necessary.”
Haynes was among thousands who gathered in Lansing on March 16h to express opposition to planned budget cuts and to Michigan’s Emergency Manager bill — a law that allows the governor to appoint people to take over financially troubled local governments and school districts and fire elected officials, cancel contracts and privatize services. The bill gives Emergency Managers power to suspend collective bargaining rights for five years and power to dissolve local units of government and schools or merge them with others. It also gives local officials the power to break contracts under certain circumstances.
Gov. Rick Snyder and Republicans in the legislature claim that the measure is needed to force changes that will promote long-term economic stability, but many disagree.
“It really is an infringement on democracy itself,” Haynes said. “Things like this are so important you have to take a stand — or take a seat — for a cause.”
Haynes said he decided he needed to go to Lansing and protest when he learned about this bill.
When he saw that seniors were planning a rally on the 15th to protest Gov. Snyder’s plan to tax pensions he took to Facebook to try and mobilize younger people to show up in support. But when none of this friends ended up being able to travel to Lansing he made his way there alone.
After spending the day helping seniors with the pension protest he ended up camping out on the Capitol steps.
“I saw somebody was going to sleep on the steps of the capitol,” he said. “Part of it was a message, part of it was he didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t want him to be alone.”
It was about 30 degrees that night with freezing rain and snow.
“Aside from it being horrible because it was cold, it was great,” Haynes said.
Locals donated handwarmers, blankets and an extra shirt, and there was pizza, courtesy of supporters in Madison.
The next morning Haynes and the other campers woke up and joined an estimated 4-5,000 people in a daylong demonstration that featured rousing speeches of solidarity in front of a strongly pro-union crowd.
Haynes said that the Capitol closed at 5:30 and the police locked the building. An hour or so later, after a warning that they would be arrested if they did not leave, five people were arrested in a symbolic act of civil disobedience.
“All we did was sit down,” he said. “We didn’t lay down and play dead.”
When they were placed under arrest, he said, the group of five got up and walked.
“We were taken into another room, in the Capitol building and processed to some extent. We were taken outside and put in a van, taken to Ingham county jail. When we came outside … when they took us out of the Capital building to the van there were hundreds of people cheering.”
Haynes said that the group of protesters was released from Ingham County jail at 2am the next morning.
“We didn’t know who or what was going on, but we had people posting bail. … It appears union members, unions and some of the protesters outside pooled their resources and posted part of our bail.
“The bail was $250, what we had to pay was 75 dollars,” he said, adding, “I’ve never been arrested in any scenario before.”
Haynes and the other four men who linked arms and refused to leave the Capitol now face misdemeanor charges of trespassing on public property, he said.
Even though the demonstration and arrests were not enough to stop the governor from finalizing the bill, Haynes said he feels like the civil disobedience had an impact.
“One way I can tell,” he said. “Pizza showed up more than ever from Madison. … you could tell that Wisconsin was watching. It made national news and state news.”
“I would never take back what I have done, It is just sad that it is necessary to do something like this to make the voices of Michigan be heard.”
Haynes said that opposition to the Emergency Manager bill and the Republican economic agenda is continuing.
“People do show up and people do come here, Hayne said via cell phone as he headed back to the Capitol for another protest, this time focused on cuts to higher education, “but so far it hasn’t been like Wisconsin.”
“People in Michigan have been battered for so long they are so pessimistic about the prospects here.”
“I’ve seen people walking by and they root for us but they don’t join us, they say ‘what difference will it make?’”
“I think,” he said, “the business as usual mentality has just harmed the spirit of Michigan.”
A Facebook page has been founded to support Haynes and 12 others arrested during the demonstrations in Lansing on the 16th.
Supporters are raising money for legal defense and urging people to fill the Lansing District Court when Haynes and other protesters face arraignment on March 30 and April 12.
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