Detroit upgraded

[Charles Brown]

The current Mayor of Detroit is quite a neo-liberal. He is a vigorous, enthusiastic , demonstrative servant of the big bourgeoisie. One of his slogans is to make Detroit a "world class city", by which he means a free trade zone of a sort like what it seems to me from my education on this list and others is being established anywhere and everywhere around the world. You might wonder "wasn't Detroit already that ?" Evidently not, from the standpoint of the big bourgeosie. The legendary , twenty year Mayor Coleman Young , Detroit Red , including in the commie sense, made many deals with Henry Ford II and other big bourgies and corps, but somehow he must have been holding out and getting something for the population in those deals, although the Left largely fell out with Young too. Anyway, the bond grades and the monopoly media running anti-Young commentary confirm that for whatever reason, Detroit was to be economically blockaded something like Cuba. Young did win two auto plants here in the era of plantclosings (especially in Detroit), but somehow the media theme remained that Detroit was not working or had lost its "world class status". 

But the personality analysis I give falls into the error the media wants me to make. Coleman Young was not so much the problem as the overwhelmingly Black population, which was the basis of his election and reelections, carrying forth the spirit of activism and revolt from the 1967 rebellion etc.
The Black majority was created not by a Black invasion , but by White flight to the suburbs. The bourgeoisie were not comfortable with investing in an overwhelmingly proletarian AND Black population, which Detroit is, especially when it symbollically continued to represent its militancy and Blackness and working class elan by repeatedly electing Young, a legendary Black red, even when he had made many compromises. There arose a whole insanely backward media theme that somehow Young and Detroit was doing something to the suburbs. How crazy ! We didn't run from them. They ran from us in their hideous prejudice. White flight was an obvious phenomenon. Young and Detroiters had no power over the lives or economics of the suburbs. It was a true and typcial blaming of the victims.

Now all the big bourgeoisie are happy with current Mayor Archer, so Detroit gets a good grade as a reward , and good press. We are "coming back", according to them. Compuware is now going to locate a headquarters downtown. GM just moved its headquarters from midcity to downtown ( the significance being they didn't move it OUT of the city). Casinos are being built. Land values are going up. Archer wants to abolish the city business tax altogether.

To use  poetic imagination :>), the image that comes to my mind is a field left fallow for a long time becomes ripe for the picking and for cheap. They are coming in to reap the benefits of their scorched earth policy of twenty-five years. You are reading their celebration of reconquering what they never really lost control of.

Charles Brown


>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 05/06/99 02:22PM >>>
from Grant's Municipal Finance Observer's email update:


>-> DETROIT?
>"That cities are coming back is not news. Week chases week, and everywhere we
>read about this or that downtown' flourishing, and sometimes in the most
>unlikely of spots. St. Louis? In the 1980s, St. Louis was dubbed  The Carthage
>of America.' At the end of the 1990s, St. Louis is written up in Saveur, a
>glossy magazine that carries under it title the slogan  Savor a world of
>authentic cuisine.' We were shocked, then, but not surprised, when Fitch IBCA
>upgraded Detroit to A- from BBB+.  After recent years of stagnation, the City
>of Detroit is experiencing renewed growth because of increased private and
>public investment and continued conservative financial management of city
>operations,' the Detroit upgrade report read."

Charles, anyone, what in god's name is this all about?

Doug