Detroit

A city viewed as a model for America in the late 1960’s has in just over 40 years experienced the largest fall in living standards and population of any American city comparable in size. Why? It is easy to look to the auto industry, bleeding thousands of jobs a year since the 70’s and 80’s, as the culprit, but it is only a lesser factor. Falling industry just means less opportunity, it does not explain why there are such disparate conditions in Oakland and Wayne counties. It does not explain injustice in the court room or at the hands of the police. It does not explain the rampant corruption in the halls of government. It does not explain why people are shot in the streets, in their homes or in their schools with a terrifying degree of regularity. Explaining the reasons behind these issues requires a deeper look than headlines. To understand Detroit’s fall is to understand the runs in the fabric that holds most American cities and society together.

The first issue is the historic injustice done to the black race in this country through well over a century of slavery followed by centuries of violated civil rights. While the last 40 years have seen dramatic improvement in the letter of the law in this country, the spirit still has not taken full hold. In Detroit, while the courts and school boards were desegregating schools and juror pools, its citizens were moving in droves. Moving to a new county where they could build their own courts, their own school districts, their own jails to enforce their own justice to which many minorities was injustice: housing segregation, high incarceration rates, racial profiling. This was motorized America, with higher average degrees of affluence, education and mobility than the rest of the world. The public policy of ghettoizing blacks in certain parts of the city became a general strategy to let the city proper serve as a holding ground, while suburban residents built their wall of highly paid police, prosecution and detention facilities. The motivation for this was less the virulent racism that proliferated and more the desire to feel safe at home, work and school. However, often unwittingly this unconscious design for peace and homogeneity were stoking the fires of injustice that were the true source of the lack of peace and security in Detroit proper.

The second issue is that with the pull-out of capital from the downtown community by both businesses and citizens, for the first time in this city government took on the role of the biggest employer. This is not itself a reason for failure, but the unbalanced political scene that was racially charged Detroit politics allowed unchallenged party dominance of government ranks. This is best exemplified by the 20 year reign of Coleman Young, and the resulting network of patronage that came with it. Corruption and stagnation of the economy are the necessary results of such monopolization. Just like GM managers and the UAW in the 1980’s, white collar and blue collar workers in Detroit public ranks instinctively sought maximum benefits for minimum time served. However, instead of shareholders that made the conscious choice to buy-in getting the short shrift, in Detroit’s it has been the residents that have suffered. This is the reason Detroit’s revitalization has been so slow in coming. It has the highest property tax combined with an income tax, for which you will receive broken services. While criminals steal copper from churches and schools, police shake down prostitutes and drug dealers, and mayors shake down the taxpayers themselves. City commissioners and councilors use their positions to ask for bribes and to promote their personal interests just as wanton as the crooks in Congress. Kwame is the very obnoxious tip of a very large iceberg that has penetrated all levels of government, from the cop in the station to the social services agent. One of Detroit’s successes is that an oppressed minority were able to marshal their talents and overturn bad laws. People like Ken Cockrel won cases that desegregated jury selection practices, and restored civil rights to prisoners. They kicked out STRESS death squads and a segregated school system more effectively than most any other city. However, once empowered with the authority they also came to view the systems of government as a means to affluence not only justice. A problem in all of America and much of the wider world and the result of such imbalance is just as universal, civic breakdown.

The third issue, possibly the most responsible for the lower living standards of Detroiters, is a demon child of the first two: the war on drugs and subsequent criminalization of a culture. While drug abuse is a serious question and one that all of us must consider in our lives and culture, the absolute chaos resultant of government efforts to solve it has no adequate foundation in reason or justice. When prohibition of alcohol was attempted it was quickly overturned, because of the destruction it wrought. The prohibition of drugs has a far wider scope, has resulted in countless more costs and pains, but continues. Why? The fuel of this terrifying fire can be found in the previously covered issues. First, the War on Drugs is viewed by its proponents as the physical toll of protecting their culture. This allows traditional cultural prejudices to serve as a personal justification for the deadly violations of minority rights. While the impoverished have greater incentive to deal drugs the war on drugs gives more incentive to hurt than help these suffering people. Cops get involved in shoot-outs in neighborhoods they will never patrol. How much corruption will one million dollars by? In any community and any country around the world, the answer is a lot. The result: Detroit has had the highest murder rate for 40 years, and the level of violence and victimization in this culture is unimaginable. Some of our most capable and able-bodied citizens on both sides of the justice system are killing each other, because government has made a law that gold grows on trees. The reason these failed policies have so much staying power ties into the patronage network of government. Drug laws and drug legislation is a blank check for public officials. It provides a salaried paycheck, and when that is not enough the enforcers simply abuse their authority and join the ranks of the criminals they are charged to prosecute. Detroit has seen a Police Commissioner indicted for dealing drugs from which millions of dollars in proceeds were laundered through the Mayors campaign funds. A judicial monitor was installed, partially because drug dealer complaints that police continually abused them and took their money without further prosecution. And it’s not just the Devils in disguise. Michigan has one of the largest and most heavily funded prison systems and criminal justice systems largely paid for by the drug war. This makes drug legislation a tool of frightening political power. A gut reaction of everyone in discussing the War on Drugs is “well we have to do something.” This is undeniable. Drug addiction is the biggest health problem in the world, but equally undeniable is that the current conduct of this war is anti-American, unconstitutional and morally insupportable. To hell with taxation, this is incarceration without representation and it is KILLING our society. It is an abomination and it needs to be stopped.




More personal note…

How do we resolve these problems and return Detroit to health? The answers to these problems are the same as the answer to all problems. You strengthen yourself and those around you. You stand up for those people that are too weak to stand up for themselves, whether it’s a hungry child or an ex-convict. That is what built this country, not words on paper. Become an unwavering advocate for the equality of all people under the law. You must speak out. Rights enforced selectively are not rights. We get so worked up waving the flag and championing our form of government around the world, little time is spent coming to terms with our historic prejudice. Women and minorities were oppressed under the law, and only recently have been granted more equal rights, and even when the letter of the law changed the spirit lagged for generations, and sometimes centuries. We have to fight the tyranny of statist injustices no matter how deep their roots. The war we must wage is with our personal hesitation that a solution is out of reach. History and love have shown it isn’t.