[lbo-talk] Now That the Factories Are Closed, It's Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich.

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Fri Dec 16 05:01:26 PST 2011


Carrol: "My home town. There has been serious repression of black political activity there in recent years."

[WS:] I am afraid you got it all backwards, Carrol. The NYT piece is about Black entrepreneurs, enabled by GOP enacted legislation, screwing Black proletariat reduced to lumpenproletariat by the loss of jobs. You should have said "there has been serious repression of working class communities in MI by neoliberal policies in recent years."

Speaking of Eastern MI, my wife is from that area (Montague/White Lake environs), her dad was a union steward at a chemical plant, and she tells me horror stories about industrial pollution poisoning local residents, polluters pulling out of the area to Third World countries when asked to clean up their act, tons of difficult to clean pollutants left behind while the area was declared "clean" and slated for development, while locals blaming unions and environmentalists for their economic hardship.

When I was FOB in 1981, I landed in Grand Rapids, MI. It looked like a war zone. I experiences a serious culture shock.

Wojtek

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 11:29 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> My home town. There has been serious repression of black political activity
> there in recent years.
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Michael Smith
> Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 9:56 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Now That the Factories Are Closed, It's Tee Time in
> Benton Harbor, Mich.
>
> On Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:19:33 -0500
> Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/magazine/benton-harbor.html?_r=1&hp
>>
>>   an
>> unelected state appointee will be running your city until further
>> notice."
>>
>> [WS:] A glimpse to the not so distant future of the Etats-Unis.
>
> Future? This has been present reality for a couple of
> generations now. The ones I think of are New York-centric --
> Robert Moses, the MTA -- but examples certainly abound
> elsewhere, or so I hear.
> --
> --
>
> Michael J. Smith
> mjs at smithbowen.net
>
> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
> http://www.cars-suck.org
> http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
>
> Any proposition that seems self-evident
> is almost certainly false.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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