Detroit’s crisis demands
ABOLISH RACISM, CAPITALISM

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Detroit

After decades of rapacious capitalist policies aimed at the weakening of the trade union movement, the superexploitation of labor and the maintenance of racism and national oppression against African Americans, Detroit is the epicenter of the economic crisis in the United States.

Corporate Detroit — the financial institutions, insurance companies and other multinational corporations — continues to set the agenda for the future of the city. With such a political orientation, it is not surprising that the city of Detroit continues to decline in all the major economic indicators.

This economic policy failure is not confined to Detroit. In fact, the crisis is international in scope due to the phenomena of overproduction and the unequal distribution of wealth and economic power.

Over the last three years the economic situation throughout the country has taken a drastic turn towards disaster. In the fall of 2008 the collapse of several major banks, insurance companies and industrial firms caused panic among the ruling class and the state.

When President Obama won the elections in November 2008, there were reports that his administration would engage in a vigorous economic stimulus program similar to the New Deal of the 1930s. Yet when Obama announced his appointees to the treasury, foreign affairs, labor, housing and defense, it became obvious that there would not be any real shift in U.S. domestic or foreign policy.

How does this political crisis play itself out in the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan? The most pressing need in Detroit is for meaningful employment for nearly half the city’s population. Detroit has the highest unemployment rate among all major cities in the U.S.

Unemployment and underemployment

In Detroit, the problem of joblessness has multiple ramifications on the municipality’s overall social fabric. The city of Detroit has an extremely high rate of poverty — approximately 40 percent and rising. Many people who have not been working become discouraged and completely drop out of the labor market.

This income loss affects small businesses, housing, schools, and family and community life. These factors can even hamper the ability of people to mobilize and organize around their most basic needs.

In Detroit, the overall quality of life has deteriorated. There is a dearth not only of money for individual households but also of fresh foods, recreational facilities, cultural activities and reliable public transportation.

Despite ruling class propaganda that promotes the myth of an economic recovery, recent reports indicate that virtually every major urban area in the U.S. has seen an increase in unemployment over the last few months.

In the city of Detroit — where unemployment is highest and with its 85 percent African-American population — the crisis could accurately be described as being at depression levels. The disproportionately high unemployment rate among African Americans has become a cause of concern for many civil rights organizations.

The crisis in education

In Detroit, the school system has been severely affected by the decline in employment and the losses in individual household income. In 2009 Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed an emergency financial manager purportedly to address the growing deficit.

The problem of urban education is directly linked to the overall economic crisis and the national oppression of African Americans and other people of color in the U.S. Detroit’s overwhelmingly African-American school system has been in decline for decades due to underfunding, the loss of students and the foreclosure problem.

However, in 1999, when the state took over the Detroit public education system, the district had a surplus of funds as well as a voter-approved $1.5 billion bond for capital improvements. After five years of state control, the Detroit school system was virtually bankrupt. Since 2005, the district has fallen deeper into debt. With the appointment of the emergency financial manager, the deficit increased by $100 million in one year.

Plans are underway to close 32 schools this year and lay off more employees in the school district. The ultimate plan is complete privatization and charterization of Detroit schools. There has been a substantial growth in charter schools, which disallow unions and direct parental involvement.

Parents, teachers, students and the community have been outraged at the plans to close more schools. Unions have demonstrated against the proposed changes, which are imposed by the state under Granholm’s direction. The debt incurred by the district is hampering its ability to function, with 80 percent of state aid being directed to service the debt.

The Wayne County Circuit Court placed a preliminary injunction on the emergency financial manager on April 16 after hearing a lawsuit to halt him from implementing academic decisions and the closing of schools without the involvement of the locally elected Detroit Board of Education. However, a state appeals court ruling affirmed the undemocratic administration and control of the majority African-American school system.

A broad-based effort is needed to question the legitimacy of Public Act 72, which mandates the appointment of emergency financial managers in local governments and school districts.

Role of Pentagon budget

The Pentagon budget has been a consistent drain on the national economy of the U.S. These funds should be utilized to create jobs, housing, health care, senior services and quality education for all.

U.S. military involvement costs the working people of the country at least $800 billion a year, not to mention the toll taken in deaths, injuries, psychological distress and the lost labor power of those misused in a series of wars that cannot be won. The so-called “war on terrorism” is merely a cover to intensify the repressive apparatus against working people and the oppressed inside the country and around the world.

International opposition to imperialism can serve as a rallying point for exposing the hypocrisy of the U.S. ruling class, as well as building working-class solidarity throughout the world.

Ruling-class culpability and response

In order to build an effective struggle to fight the current onslaught against working people and the oppressed, we must be clear about the source of the problem.

In a city like Detroit, the population is reflected in the presence of African Americans in political institutions such as the mayor’s office, city council, election commission, charter commission, school board, etc. However, organizers must continue to emphasize that the economy of the city is still controlled by the capitalist class, which is exclusively white and based outside the city limits.

This phenomenon is somewhat similar to the conditions that prevail on the African continent and many other post-colonial societies where, despite the attainment of national independence, the economic sources of power still reside in the hands of the former colonial masters or the U.S., which is the leading imperialist power in the world.

The capitalist class in Detroit is responsible for the current crisis involving joblessness, home foreclosures and evictions, utility shutoffs, the usurpation of political power from existing elective bodies, police repression and the lack of health care and quality education. The emphasis of our overall political strategy, the tactics that we utilize, the demands we advance and the slogans we chant must always point to the actual source of the problem.

This is important because the ruling class will always attempt to blame the workers for their misfortune and poverty. In discussing the economic crisis in Detroit, the corporate media never point to the role of the automotive companies and their failed policies related to capital flight, the undermining of organized labor, outsourcing, downsizing and the lowering of wages. Instead the workers and oppressed are attacked viciously and made to feel that their plight results from a lack of correct values and hard work.

What is to be done? The need for a program of action

We must be organized around a political program that attacks the exploitative and racist system at its base. This is why locally based progressive organizations have for the last three years called for the immediate implementation of a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs, to keep people in their homes in Detroit.

The failure of the city administration, the state legislature and the governor to impose a moratorium has resulted in the large-scale destruction of the housing stock throughout the region. With the school systems heavily dependent on tax revenues for their operations, it is not surprising that huge cuts in education have taken place throughout the state.

The appointment of an emergency financial manager over the Detroit Public Schools represents the inability of elected politicians to effectively address the problems stemming from predatory lending, job loss and the decline in wages.

It also represents the failure of capitalist economic policies. Banks, insurance companies and multinational corporations have looted the cities through corrupt mortgage schemes, redlining and tax avoidance. Many of these firms do not pay any taxes to the cities, yet they continue to insist that they dominate the political and economic direction of local government.

We are encouraging all U.S. Social Forum participants to study the work of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs and the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, both of which continue to push for a halt to foreclosures, evictions and utility shut-offs.

The demand to stop school closures is also essential during this period, as the corporations engage in the theft of resources allocated for education and the weakening of unions within the school systems.

Ultimately the only solution to the current crisis in the capitalist system is the transformation of the economy and social structures toward socialism. This will require a total break with capitalism and imperialism and a protracted struggle for the realization of a society based on scientific socialist principles.

V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution and the founder of the Soviet Union, stated as early as 1903: “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity. ... At this point, we wish to state only that the role of the vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.” (“What Is To Be Done?”)

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