Debbie Schussel on the death of Detroit;
Forty years ago today, several days of race riots began in Detroit.
On July 23, 1967, Black Panthers and assorted other Black extremists (with White hippies and far-leftists backing and encouraging them) eventually wrote their political epitaphs with it (though their movement unfortunately died a long, slow death–far past its time, if there ever was a time). But they robbed and killed Detroit–and a significant portion of Black America with it.
Black Panthers and their radical allies, supported by a thousands of Black Detroiters, rioted for days, starting fires and destroying the city. They wanted more power in the city. They wanted a Black Mayor, a Black police chief, a Black city council.
[…]
With a pimp daddy mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who dresses like a Gangsta and is involved in scandal after scandal, the city is the laughing stock. But, hey, the Mayor made an appearance on “Living Large,” a now-cancelled national hip-hop show. Thank you very little. Kilpatrick, whom I like to call Kwame the Kingpin, was suspected in the drivebuy shooting of “Strawberry,” a stripper who allegedly performed in the Mayoral Manoogian Mansion for “His Honor.” He used his 21-bodyguard posse of police officers to serve as his personal harem-recruiter and to ferret him to and from different girlfriends.
These are the people who betrayed Blacks in Detroit, not the Whites who took White flight (followed by Black flight) from the city and gave them free reign to “run” the city . . . and fail magnificently. And, yet, they still blame even this on the White man.
Read it all.
Photo Tour – the “Fabulous Ruins Of Detroit”. (h/t)
My favourite quote from that period was from LBJs just after the Civil Rights Act passed. “We lost the South for a Generation”. He was right on the money. Ever wonder why that was?
In my more liberal days, I used to defend Detroit, growing up outside of gunshot range in Canada. The city has some nice buildings, the Fox Theatre, the Casinos, the Tigers and my perpetually losing Lions. Now I’ll openly admit it’s a toilet waiting for it’s own Katrina to flush it away.
Back in the 80’s, I believe that the local Detroit stations were carried across Canada on our cable systems. Meaning, most Canadians received their impressions about the average American city from local news coverage of Detroit, murder capital of the USA.
My mother grew up in Detroit. I remember in the 70’s and the 80’s, the entire family, one by one, moving out to the suburbs. I was barely a teen in the 80’s when Coleman Young was mayor. He didn’t exactly make white people want to stay either.
Moore’s next film should highlight Detroit illustrating the effects of white racism.
“Moore’s next film should highlight Detroit illustrating the effects of white racism.”
Don’t hold your breath.
Instead of focusing on the foibles of a few miscreants, we should look forward to a brighter tomorrow. What needs to happen? The city of Windsor, Ontario, needs to annex the city of Detroit. As a part of Canada, Detroit will bloom.
“He used his 21-bodyguard posse of police officers to serve as his personal harem-recruiter and to ferret him to and from different girlfriends.”
. .. taking lessons from Bill Clinton’s political play book I see
Mystery Meat, surely you jest? “Instead of focusing on the foibles of a few miscreants, we should look forward to a brighter tomorrow. What needs to happen? The city of Windsor, Ontario, needs to annex the city of Detroit. As a part of Canada, Detroit will bloom.”
Windsor, a socialist haven the many union shops of that city have produced, wedded to leftist/socialist leadership (sic), annexing Detroit would be like Toronto annexing Windsor: no help at all, just more trouble.
Nothing is more sad than to go to downtown Detroit and see all of the ruin thats left. This is truly the corpse of a great city. There are sign of renewal like green chutes after a forest fire, but as long as the likes of Kilpatrick run Detroit, it will always be a wasteland. There is no incentive for anyone to even think about trying to live or run a business there.
I woke up one morning two years ago to find a report of some arsonist going around the city burning down abandoned houses. Seems like as Schlussel points out, the riots have never stopped.
…but they do have a great hockey team.
It’s almost like those surveys that go terribly wrong for the ass hats trying to rig them.
“Give the blacks civil rights, and they will be limited only by the sky and their dreams…” the lefties sang.
“Give the blacks civil rights, and you will see sky rocketting crime. You will have to lock your doors at night. Your property values will plummet. Neighbourhoods will turn into slums. Drugs, prostitution, doom and gloom….” warned the racists.
It ain’t looking good for the smelly hippies and the politically correct crowd today. Africa is a write off, as is most every neighbourhood that has a majority of blacks living in it.
This is a fascinating photo archive on the ruins of Detroit:
http://detroityes.com/home.htm
At least the arsonist is getting rid of the decrepid vacant buildings. More than the city of Detroit is doing. Where’s OCP and RoboCop when we need them?
Jim (8:56AM)
I certainly don’t see it that way.
The revolution started by Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, truly giants, got sidetracked, with a BIG assist by social engineers; it has been taken over by race baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan… pip-squeaks.
The pip-squeaks have, unfortunately, been getting all the attention for the last 35+ years. The question is, why?
Answer that, and places like Detroit might be find a way back to the greatness-that-was.
And these blacks lead by RANDAL ROBINSON is callinf for reparations for slavery well frankly the people of detroit are owed reparations from the infamous terrorists group THE BLACK PANTHERS and from all those hoods who took part in those riots
Anyone who has crossed the boarder at Windsor knows that Detroit’s down town looks loke a nuked landscape…verry little revival or development….for a 15 min drive getting out of the core it is old, delapidated underclass welfare housing. All the major indistry and middle class have moved to Detroits ample suburbs.
The inner city has been abandoned by developers because no upscale renewal developers will risk projects in the core…they know the citt core does not attract middle class and upscale markets…they have a hard time getting people to Tigers games and when they end people party outside the core.
Detroit’s riots and the Panther Marxist militancy that spawned them, left a legacy…a perennial inner city welfare “plantation” which the unscrupulous Local “Democrat Machine” wants left intact so it can be harvested for votes.
The real legacy is a warning: those who think radical political movements and threats of militancy will get them something for nothing are just prey for bigger political predators.
But hey, ain’t Gordy Lightfoot’s song about it all romantic-like and full of civil justice? White Liberals are as thick mow as they were then.
Bit of crookedness in that post. First, the “pictures from the riot” includes a shot of the Black Panthers. Check the date: 1969.
The Black Panthers did not start the riot. The cause is very well-known. Police — including my mother’s first cousin — raided an illegal bar on 12th street at 3 a.m. on July 24, 1967. Some of the “found ins” were black ex-servicemen just returned from Viet Nam. The police did not have enough officers to control the found-ins and the crowd that gathered. People started throwing rocks, snipers began shooting with rifles, and the riot was on.
The Black Panthers had nothing to do with the start of the riot. As for its historical origins, part of the trouble in Detroit went back many years to the problems of blacks and whites being unable to find decent housing. As well, I75 was built right through a large black neighbourhood, displacing many Black families.
The pproblems since then are political: lousy city government, the inability of detroit to form some sort of regional or metropolitian municipality, leaving downtown Detroit on the hook for services while having no tax base, and the suburbs not contributing to the roads, sewers and policing that suburban white workers used when they were in Detroit during the workday.
The mayors of Detroit, starting with Coleman Young, have been corrupt, adding to the misery, and helping kill off any chance of a real revival.
Please read with comprehension: I said the panther “militancy” which spawned the riots….in other words, the radical underclass repressed minority must rise in violence against the oppressor mumbo jumbo….it was a mindset typified by Panther ideology which started the riots and a revelling in the ensuing lawlessness that sustained them.
I didn’t say the panthers started it
the photos that blazingcatfur links to are astonishing and deeply depressing. The old Ford factories from 1904 and 1910 are still standing, abandoned, as are hundreds and hundreds of other buildings. It’s an amazing photo essay. Will Toronto look like this a century from now?
Damn “black ex-servicemen just returned from Viet Nam” and “suburban white workers”!
They killed Detroit!
Thanks Mark!
Toronto and Detroit are as different as night and day.
Detroit really is the worst of the worst. Shrinking population etc. The comment about the tax base was important, as important as the corrupt govt.
The problem is with no tax base even an honest govt cant fix things. You need to run services and run a city. There is nothing that says Detroit will bloom again and there is nothing that says Detroit cant be what it was in the 50’s again…get the overall environment right and things will start to change (govt, taxes, infrastructure, education)
Without it, it will slowly wither, which it has been doing for 40 to 50 years, depopulate and become a small city.
I lived in the Windsor area from 79 to 81, & loved going to Joe Muirs, The Soup Kitchen, The Rhino, & Gallaghans, but “never without friends”.
Even then the downtown had a siege mentality, and classic century homes along Woodward were abandoned.What a sad state of affairs, but we cannot be smug or complacent, when right across the river is one of the highest unemplyment rates in Canada.
“Toronto and Detroit are as different as night and day.”
In so far as Toronto will follow Detroit, as day follows night.
I grew up in Detroit. Was a preteen during the riots. Saw the city DE-volve into a sewer. Thank you Coleman Young–Corrupt dictator. Chavez has a room in his mansion for you–so does Satan.
Between Detroit and New Orleans alone….you’d think Americans would realize that the really heavy work that they needed to perform was within their own borders.
But when a brave man such as Bill Cosby steps forward to point out some core problems inherent in many black inner-cities and suggest some solutions,the country’s talking heads take a collective sh*t on his head,and even play the racist card to shut him up.
F*ck millions of fellow Americans caught in a cycle of poverty,drugs and welfare,we’re gonna spend trillions to save the environment!
And after all….they’re only black.
Disgraceful.
…the next few years are going to be interesting years.
I went to Detroit in the mid ’80s for a training course with 2 guys I worked with. The course was in the old AMC/Chrysler Engineering buildings, and the area was dotted with burned out homes & stores, bars on the windows, etc etc. We drove around goggle-eyed, and always kept a liberal distance to the car ahead of us at stoplights just in case we had to zip around him & go.
Our hotel was in the north end of the city, and there was a huge mall about 300-400 yards across the parking lot. When we left to walk to the mall the concierge looked at us in horror, when we said we were walking. He asked, “Are you guys NUTS? Let me order you a cab”. We drove the 400 yards with windows up, doors locked, hunched down in our seats a’ watchin’ for ‘hoods in the ‘hood .
It wasn’t a total loss, though. As a result of our shopping trip, all 3 of us waltzed into the training course next day sporting our sweatshirts that proclaimed “DETROIT: Where the weak are killed and eaten”
The Americans at the course thought the sweats were a blast…
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
PS – caught a Tigers game at Comerica Park earlier this month; it’s a beautiful place & the city’s trying to remake the surrounding area
Black day in July. I was there when it started. We were stopped on East Jefferson and told to get back to Windsor because the coloureds were going crazy,this was by a cop. That night we sat in the safety of Windsor and watched the fires on 12th street,now Rosa Parks ave. Detroit is a great city,lots of good times,but what a f#$cked up place.
Anyone remember Hamtramack and a bar called “lily’s” or maybe “bookies” on 6 mile road.Great times.BTW,and off topic,Enimen is a weenie that grew up in Mt.Clemens,basically a gated community within Detroit.
Hey, where’d Adam go?
“Will Toronto look like this a century from now?
Posted by: BillBC at July 27, 2007 10:43 AM”
“Toronto and Detroit are as different as night”
Posted by: Stephen at July 27, 2007 10:59 AM
“In so far as Toronto will follow Detroit, as day follows night.”
Posted by: richfisher at July 27, 2007 12:07 PM
Mix the following ingredients “liberally”:
-a growing infusion of third world values;
-liberal welfare benefits and other nanny state ingredients;
-a failed justice system;
Top with Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; but make sure all personal responsbility requirements are vacuumed out.
Voila, you have Det-oronto, probably within a generation.
Oh, just testing a theory, Kathy…
wallyj:
Mt. Clemens is a city unto itself about 40 minutes north of Detroit. Just drive straight up Gratiot Ave. and you will arrive there.
Eminem is a weenie, but he grew across the street from 8 Mile Rd. in Warren, where the police WILL bust your head if you are a gangsta wannabe like M&M candy ass.
Ever been to Strohshein’s in Eastpointe (used to be East Detroit)?
It really is ashame because Detriot does have some outstanding landmarks and history. I was a student at Wayne State Univeristy and would spend my spare time at the DIA–Detroit Institute of Arts–a major international collection of fine art. Belle Isle (I know, it’s a hell hole now) was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead the father of NORTH American urban planning, inlcuding Central Park in New York and Montreal’s Mount Royal Park. Belle Isle had the nation’s FIRST public aquarium. Orchestra Hall in Detroit on Woodward Ave. is a gem of international stature. It’s history of performers is as rich as its stellar acoustics. It’s now the home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, still considered among the top 10 of orchestras in the U.S. I culd go on and on, but that would only prove Schlussel’s point, that Detroit was ONCE great and has now become a shell of a great city.
As I’ve said before, Marxism infiltrated our culture through the education system and filled leaders heads with crazy liberal ideas, ruiing places like Detroit. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, Castro and the like are rubbing their hands in glee–little consolation for their enternal damnation.
As a point of order, pursuant to the request shown in cyan in the Post a Comment section at the bottom of this page, perhaps you could enlighten us, Kathy, as to how the question of where A’dam is in any way on topic or otherwise relevant to this discussion?
I could be wrong,but I thought Mt.Clemens was up Woodward. I do believe that Enimen grew up there but it sounds better that he was an inner-city boy.C’mon his real name is something like marshall mathers the third. When I lived down there eight mile was the unofficial boundary betwen black and white. Never been to strohsein but have drank plenty of stroh’s,and mad dog 20\20.
Kathy,
I learned the mantra “Do not feed the trolls’ from this site about 2 yrs ago.
A philosophy I believe in and have adhered to.
Now on my return,I find a single leftoid dominating(and thus ruining)the quality of the discussion on many of these threads.
Now when I find a thread such as this which has not been hijacked by partisan square-dancing,you are actually ‘asking’ for it to be sidetracked.IMO,you give weight to his otherwise tired and predictable talking points by responding to his ‘lures’ in the first place.
A’hole and others like him are social misfits.
Think about it….anyone with normal social skills does not hang out with their political enemies,talking in endless circles that NEVER accomplish a damn thing.(Except ruin the thread.)
If ‘Do not feed the trolls’ no longer exists as a fundamental rule here,please let me know.
I can flame social misfits as well as the nexr social misfit.
You are thinking Highland Park.
MD 20/20 LOL! in a brown paper bag!
I could tell you so many stories about riding the Detroit buses.
Once I was–naturally–the only white guy on the Woodward South bus got on around the Cultural Center and some broad yells out loud at me for the benefit of all to hear (there’s a HONKY on the bus) “hey, you an undercover cop or sumthin’?” I said, “No, I’m an undercover fireman.” and she shut up.
You have no idea how it pains my heart to take that photo tour.
DAMN ALL LIBERALS!
Perhaps you could enlighten us, Vit, as to why YOU insist upon imitating the prissy, pretentious prose stylings of a Regency baronet?
Don’t you ever give yourself the creeps, luv?
good comeback Kathy.
No, that would be off topic.
I grew up in Windsor remember the riots.I thought it started because the police tried to break up a bootlegger operation,and it was a really hot summer that year.So not much of a spark was needed in the hood to set everyone off.
Went for a vist in july and their really improving the waterfront I found it was very impressive.
sidebar (Bob Segar selling out Cobo Hall 10 nights straight,McCarthys party Irish Bar and Stroh’s beer mmmmmm )
Yeah, I grew up south of Windsor. The riots were before my time, but I did my graduate degree at Wayne State University. Commuted every day from Windsor.
The biggest fear was to have your car breakdown on the freeway. Guaranteed hijacking and rape, especially at night. When I did my training at the hospital, I was always escorted to my car; the males training with me would always wait in the parking lot to ensure the car started and that I left the lot safe. Guards with guns and metal detectors at Detroit Receiving, the county hospital. That’s where all the indigent went.
I loved my time there….learned a lot, especially about crime, poverty and drug abuse. But none of the blacks or whites I worked with lived downtown.
Those 2 years sure woke up this starry-eyed ex-liberal.
I’m sorry, folks, but the comparisons – and preemptive gloating – between Toronto and Detroit really are stretching things quite a bit. The cities resemble each other little to not at all. There’s no bipolar conflict between races, no massive single industry that dominates the town’s politics and business, and as far as I can tell, quite the opposite of white flight going on – the downtown is filling up every month, with a condo boom and rising real estate values in practically every neighbourhood. All this western spite might be comforting for you guys, but it comes off as pure fantasy, and kind of ruins your credibility, to be honest.
It’s sort of like what has happened to Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Seriously, we have a lot in common on this site, but the Toronto bashing is sad.
As a resident of Toronto, I occasionally used to worry that Toronto will turn into one of those destroyed inner cities in the US, but I realize now it probably won’t, and the risk of it happening is much less now than it was 10 years ago. Here’s why
1) $300-500,000 is entry level for even a condo south of Eglinton, higher in the real downtown south of Bloor.
2) The downtown core is actually being improved – Yonge street used to be full of flea markets, massage parlors and strip joints. MOst are gone, replaced by high end clothing stores, and a very decent open air mall. Yonge and Dundas is totally transformed, and when one last corner gets done, it will truly be the heart of the city.
3) Demand for living space downtown or nearby from retiring boomers is high, so a lot of run down buildings empty lots, etc, have been cleared out and turned into nice new buildings, shops, etc. Properly values are increasing and increasing.
The major threat to Toronto is congestion – all these new living units mean way more people in the city core.
While they are not gone, I actually see significantly less panhandlers now than 5 years ago. They have largely been chased off not by the cops, but because they don’t do well in front of large condo towers and bank buildings.
My impression is that the overwhelming majority of very immigrants to Toronto do not live in the city core – they simply cannot afford it. They are living in Scarborough, Brampton, spreading gradually into parts of North York and Etobicoke.
The worst parts of the city have nothing to do with new immigrants, but with the waves that we got from Jamaica and similar areas etc in the 1970’s and 1980’s. They are bad, but no worse now than they were 10 or 20 years ago.
If things go wrong in Toronto, it will be along the Paris model. City centre is excellent and thriving, but the suburbs are a center of discontent.
Sorry to burst the bubble of all the Toronto haters. Seriously, what’s with you people? Frankly, I think Calgary may end up with a bigger Muslim problem than Toronto. Even in the 2001 census they had 3% muslims, and you can be sure it is much higher now. There is much more room for them to move into the city proper, and until very recently it was more affordable than Toronto. Let’s see what the census says this coming year. I bet you no one here will find it conforting, regardless of where we live. The whole country is at risk, not just Toronto or Calgary.
I hate liberals as much as most people here, and what happened to Detroit is truly tragic, but its pretty hard to blame it all on liberals.
The US used to be the industrial power of the world, and that was centered around Detroit and what is now the rust belt. My uncle used to work for the United States Steal Corporation in Pittsburgh. US Steel used to employ at least 100,000 people,and it doesn’t even exist any more.
Detroit basically went through the same thing that rural areas went through when the industrial revolution happened. People moved from their farms, where they weren’t needed anymore because of tractors, to Detroit to build cars. The number of people required to build a car is way less than it was in 1950 than it is today. Cars are built by robots now.
I did some work as an electrical contractor at the Chrysler plant in Brampton. When that plant was built 5,000 people worked there, now its about 1,000. Even the fork lifts are driven by robots.
Will what happened to Detroit happen to Toronto? I doubt it, most of the heavy industry has already left Toronto and its main industry is probably banking and financial services. But what happened to Detroit could happen to other towns in southern Ontario when we start importing cars from China that are half the price of the ones that are built here.
It could happen to Hamilton when the environazis force all the steel mills to close down, and Sarnia, when they force all the chemical industry out of the country, and Oshawa, when are cars come from China.
I find the best Detroit blog by far is detroitblog.org. Lot’s of photos and in-depth articles of the abandoned buildings, urban prairie and surviving neighbourhoods in Detroit to be found there.
I find it amazing that anyone can say that it can’t happen here or there. It is happening here or there. Detroit is the social engineered utopia … it’s naive to think, given enough money, the new breed of social engineers couldn’t get the same results here.
Anything CAN, in theory, happen.
But is there a trend that we are headed in that direction? Or is this just fearmongering?
While Detroit has turned into a toilet (no doubt about that) most American cities have actually revived compared to a couple of decades ago.
I remember all the articles at the time about the death of the American city, suburban flight, etc etc. Why do you think movies like Escape from New York were released at the time? Well….? Is this how it has panned out?
Don’t get me wrong, there is always a threat that idiot utopians, rampant socialists, Liberal vote buyers, and anarchists will get a hold of our political institutions and turn our cities into piles of crap. And yes, there are things that should be done (like getting rid of our idiot Mayor) but I think voters are aware of the danger, especially thanks to examples like what has happened in Detroit, and the future is actually not as bleak as it was 20 years ago.
$0.02 from one who has lived in Toronto for 30+ years, in multiple neighbourhoods, seen waves of immigrants come and go, seen entire neighbourhoods change over the period of a few years, who lives fairly close to downtown, and who works in downtown Toronto.
One thing about Toronto that differs from Detroit, is that in Detroit, everyone moved to the suburbs. I’m not sure there is the same opportunity for people to move out of Toronto, there is only so much land. Also the demographic is entirely different. There isn’t one large population of any one ethnicity, which is what created the tipping point for Detroit. There are however a number of questionable people in control of the government there.