Detroit: Faith and Hope
Conservatives love to see Detroit's misery. Detroit is the home of Motown. Conservatives mask their real animosities behind labels like "progressive" and "liberal" but they never draw a conceptually consistent conclusion across all of the city bankruptcies to identify causes.
List of Bankruptcy Filings Since January 2010
All Municipal Bankruptcy Filings: 36
City and Locality Bankruptcy Filings (8):
-- City of Detroit
-- City of San Bernardino, Calif.
-- Town of Mammoth Lakes, Calf. (Dismissed)
-- City of Stockton, Calif.
-- Jefferson County, Ala.
-- City of Harrisburg, Pa. (Dismissed)
-- City of Central Falls, R.I.
-- Boise County, Idaho (Dismissed)
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/munici......
Most people alive today remember the Black race riots of 1967. They see the "white flight" to the suburbs. They do not know about the Belle Isle Race Riots of 1943 instigated by Nazi sympathizers among the hillbillies who came to Detroit, at the same time as the Negroes whom they hated and feared. (As one country song tells it: "By day I make the cars;l By night I make the bars.")
Here on Gult's Gulch is a plaint by a Detroit business owner about his woes. I am sympathetic, but I do note this: he allows that public education in Detroit had failed (granted) but he hired people who did not need education. "Therein lies the rub..." They filed for unemployment and they filed for workman's compensation, and they made his life hell. What if he had hired graduates of Catholic high schools?
Working for my master's degree (2010), at Eastern Michigan University, I had a class in Local History, taught by Prof. JoEllen Vinyard from her book _For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805-1925_ (University of Illinois Press, 1998).
"Even before the massive European immigrations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Detroit had a tradition of Catholicism. Multiple immigrant groups became part of the city and considered it important to educate their daughters as well as their sons within the Church." http://press.illinois.edu/books/catalog/......
They got educated and they left for the suburbs, ever since Day One. White, black, rich, poor, Detroiters with aspirations left the inner city.
Meanwhile, from 1900 to 1980, the automotive manufacturers promised "good jobs" (high wages) that did not require an education. The result was FOUR GENERATIONS of parents who could not help their children with their homework. Ignorant whites clashed with ignorant blacks for power in the unions, while Americans of many ethnicities got educated and got out of town...
Moreover, the lesson of "Starnesville" is that its downfall originated with the owners of 20th Century Motors. That, too, applies to Detroit. Among the many failures, ills, evils, errors, and mistakes, they received tax breaks on their properties which replaced whole neighborhoods of homes. Poletown was the last disaster. The displaced homeowners went to other communities and the factory failed to pay off.
But if Detroit was destroyed by collectivism ( and mysticism) as I agree that it was, then so were a dozen other cities that failed because of mismanagement.
List of Bankruptcy Filings Since January 2010
All Municipal Bankruptcy Filings: 36
City and Locality Bankruptcy Filings (8):
-- City of Detroit
-- City of San Bernardino, Calif.
-- Town of Mammoth Lakes, Calf. (Dismissed)
-- City of Stockton, Calif.
-- Jefferson County, Ala.
-- City of Harrisburg, Pa. (Dismissed)
-- City of Central Falls, R.I.
-- Boise County, Idaho (Dismissed)
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/munici......
Most people alive today remember the Black race riots of 1967. They see the "white flight" to the suburbs. They do not know about the Belle Isle Race Riots of 1943 instigated by Nazi sympathizers among the hillbillies who came to Detroit, at the same time as the Negroes whom they hated and feared. (As one country song tells it: "By day I make the cars;l By night I make the bars.")
Here on Gult's Gulch is a plaint by a Detroit business owner about his woes. I am sympathetic, but I do note this: he allows that public education in Detroit had failed (granted) but he hired people who did not need education. "Therein lies the rub..." They filed for unemployment and they filed for workman's compensation, and they made his life hell. What if he had hired graduates of Catholic high schools?
Working for my master's degree (2010), at Eastern Michigan University, I had a class in Local History, taught by Prof. JoEllen Vinyard from her book _For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805-1925_ (University of Illinois Press, 1998).
"Even before the massive European immigrations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Detroit had a tradition of Catholicism. Multiple immigrant groups became part of the city and considered it important to educate their daughters as well as their sons within the Church." http://press.illinois.edu/books/catalog/......
They got educated and they left for the suburbs, ever since Day One. White, black, rich, poor, Detroiters with aspirations left the inner city.
Meanwhile, from 1900 to 1980, the automotive manufacturers promised "good jobs" (high wages) that did not require an education. The result was FOUR GENERATIONS of parents who could not help their children with their homework. Ignorant whites clashed with ignorant blacks for power in the unions, while Americans of many ethnicities got educated and got out of town...
Moreover, the lesson of "Starnesville" is that its downfall originated with the owners of 20th Century Motors. That, too, applies to Detroit. Among the many failures, ills, evils, errors, and mistakes, they received tax breaks on their properties which replaced whole neighborhoods of homes. Poletown was the last disaster. The displaced homeowners went to other communities and the factory failed to pay off.
But if Detroit was destroyed by collectivism ( and mysticism) as I agree that it was, then so were a dozen other cities that failed because of mismanagement.
I am a Mich. native. I remember the 67 riots. I am one of those Tool & Die Makers. Now
I have run a successful business for over thirty years in the suburbs. I would not call myself conservative, although I have many conservative views.
I believe it is a bit of a stretch and a generalization to say that “Conservatives love to see Detroit's misery.”
Even if this is so for some, I do not believe it is because they enjoy seeing others suffer. What they see is a microcosm of our national economy and the consequences of all the policies which created the problems you have provided and it frightens them knowing it is spreading. If they have any positive reaction it is a “told you so” kind of satisfaction. It is that they find themselves feeling good because they were right while being told for decades they were wrong, not of glee at someone’s misery. They, no doubt hope that pointing this out will reverse the direction.
In my time I have seen many companies leave Detroit and take their jobs out to the suburbs. The reasons I hear the most from my customers and fellow manufacturers is that the taxes are too high, the regulations too numerous and the crime and associated insurance costs are beyond any services or conveniences the city offered. There are many reasons for the downfall of the city, but the cost of doing business with the unions and the city government was a greater factor than lack of skilled workers.
Manufacturing in the highest tech facilities (and I know because I own one) still require jobs of low as well as high skill and finding applicants with skills in Detroit was harder because no one wanted to stay or commute to the city when they could follow the factories to the suburbs where the costs and crime were lower.
We didn’t start locking our doors at night till recently. We locked our car doors travelling within Detroit since 1967.
The City spent more than it took in and provided low service under corrupt democrat big government and the financial ruin was predictable for years and anybody who tried to point it out was shutdown as a racist. Why would you stay?
Were many other cities destroyed by collectivism? Yes! If your point is that the conservatives do not call progressives or liberals “collectivist” Then, Yes!
Respectfully,
O.A.
Among Detroit's many problems were the fact that it was a one-horse town, an automotive capital. True, Burroughs and later CompuWare were there, but GM and Ford dominated with Chrysler filling in.
Other automotive manufacturer (Nash, Willys, Winton) located in other towns (Kenosha, Toledo, Indianapolis, Cleveland), but those towns never developed the single-industry ecology that Detroit did.
The same story played out in Manchester, England, a textile center when Karl Marx met Friedrich Engels. Sheffield was another: steel cutlery. Pittsburgh and steel. Rochester and Kodak. Once the market changes, the floor falls out.
I found a lot of truth in THE ECONOMY OF CITIES by Jane Jacobs.