Posted on 07/23/2007 4:21:37 PM PDT by goldstategop
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.
Scenes from the Detroit Race Riots of 1967 . . .
Detroit Black Panthers
Today, they have all those things. And they have nothing. They won the riots, they lost the war.
As my Dad says, when the riots began, Gentile, White Detroiters ran out to buy bullets. Jews ran out to buy guns (way too late). But eventually, they all ran out--and away--from Detroit. Today, more than nine out of ten Detroiters are Black. And even Blacks are leaving the Detroit morass faster than Roger Bannister. The city is losing population by the tens of thousands, every year. Black Americans, like White Americans, don't want to live in the crime, failed schools, and other living conditions brought to you by the Detroit riots. Crime under Detroit's Black police chiefs (the city has had several) is at an all-time high, and Detroit Public Schools, under its Black superintendents and school boards (there have been several of those, too), are at their worst, with record high drop-out rates and numbers of illiterate graduates.
When Black radicals started the riots, they achieved their goal of driving out White Detroiters, but their separatism only isolated them. Unlike every other inner city in America, Detroit is not a tourist destination. It's not a place where suburbanites generally clamor to go to nightclubs and restaurants. It's simply too dangerous.
The violence and destruction of the riots never really went away, just the press coverage of it. Such prominent figures as the son of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer and the daughter of Detroit Tigers/Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch have been mugged.
During the Superbowl, with thousands of FBI and Homeland Security agents roaming around, there were two murders in the vicinity of the temporary bars and restaurants dotting the main drag of Woodward Avenue. I say "temporary" because that's what they were. Despite all the moving around of cranes to make it look like something--anything!--positive was going on in the city, Detroit Superbowl Committee personnel had to lease out shops, restaurants, and bars on 7-day leases. Any more than that, and they couldn't convince anyone to do business on the normally abandoned streets.
Crime is rampant, the city can't attract a major business, and the banana republicans on the city council junta are busy passing resolutions to name a tunnel after John Conyers, declaring Dubai a sister city of Detroit, and maintaining Sanctuary City status for illegal aliens. Monica Conyers (wife of the radical Congressman) is symbolic of the city council. Drunk and in fist fights at bars, she's a mess. And so is her legislative body and the city it governs.
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.
Is it any surprise with "leadership" like this that the city is a ruin much used by Director Michael Bay as a set for movies. With the city a ghost town, even at lunchtime, he has a cornucopia of empty, decrepit, vandalized buildings--once grand palaces of business and industry--to choose from. And he doesn't have to deal with much traffic--by foot or car--interrupting his shoots.
Instead, Detroit is a burnt out shell. It is the only inner city in America that has not undergone a revival, a gentrification (even Cleveland--the former "Mistake on the Lake" was reborn). While some of that can be attributed to recent, never-ending downturns in the auto industry, this is a phenomenon that has metastasized throughout the city, even when Ford, GM, and Chrysler were at their height. Now, that they, too, are on the unreclaimable decline, it only helps solidiy Detroit's rigor mortis.
Drive down the Lodge Freeway, the main artery from Detroit's Northwest suburbs into the city, and you will see burnt out house after burnt out house dotting the freeway. All of them are in Detroit, and all of them--in their burnt out "splendor"--have sat vacant and ashen for years.
Ten years ago, when I was sworn in to practice before U.S. District Court, my father took me to lunch. We walked down the streets of downtown Detroit on a beautiful spring day, but there was hardly a soul as far as the eye could see. Ten years later, nothing has changed. It's only gotten worse.
Detroit is in the worst condition of any major city in America, except perhaps New Orleans, and that took a hurricane, an act of G-d. Three weeks ago, A&P-owned Farmer Jack--the last national supermarket in Detroit, the last large national retailer in the city--closed its doors and said Sayonara to the environs South of Eight Mile.
This is the legacy of the Detroit riots. And despite all the Detroit newspaper and media hype that those days are over, their legacy has only just begun.
To the last Black Panther leaving Detroit: Don't forget to turn out the lights. And start your usual fires, in their place.
Osama Bin Laden has a better chance of getting elected President than Detroit has of arising from the dead.
As Mark Twain might say, reports of its rebirth have been highly exaggerated.
Ninety-five posts, and no “New Fallujah” references?
As far as I can tell the casinos (approved to compete with Windsor, which advertises its casinos on the boards of the Red Wings’ rink) have brought competition to the native gangs in the form of Greek mafiosos. At least that’s what we joke about.
Detroit is in such bad shape it is economically threatened by a Canadian city!
Then the Kerner Report allowed LBJ to hand out more billions in political favors.
The lesson in Detroit was, "the worse we behave, the more money they give us."
Imagin, a politician like Otto Kerner discovering that all it took was more tax money to fix the problem.
Who'd have thunk it. ;~))
LOL...it seems that way, doesn’t it?
BTW, do they still have the Greek Festival on the river? Or is that gone?
Sounds like we need to add Debbie to the rules that go for Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley and Susan Estrich.
I’ve read 75% of the housing in Detroit is abandoned.
Move everyone into one chunk of the city, bulldoze the rest so the crack wards don’t have operating facilities.
“That’s because Daley Sr. (and Daley Jr.) practice(d) CONTAINMENT. In other words, keep the crime and vice on the west and south sides, and be hard as hell when the “element” steps outside of the line.”
That was the M.O. of New Orleans police pre Katrina, as I understand.
The main difference between Coleman Young and Kwame Kilpatrick is the Coleman was absolutely corrupt and was good at being absolutely corrupt. Kwame is absolutely corrupt and is not good at it.
Snake Plissken would be afraid to go to Detriot.
I hear Jeff Daniels talk about this all the time. Once there is a theatre on every corner everything will be all right.
Azzurri: I was born in Detroit (Southfield) and I live in the South Bay now, and these synthetic suburbs have nothing on the necklace going north on Telegraph and Woodward.
They are middle to upper class lodgings with real character. Ever count how many hot dog greasy spoons are in Oakland Cty? Mmmmmmm....
Very civic minded folks...
And 40% of those didn't vote until the polls were closed and the rest of the state was counted and they knew how many votes the Democrats needed.
Not only "civic minded" people, but very practical... why bother voting if it doesn't make a difference? ;~))
The Canadians may have to fortify the border in that area...
Yeah ... I hear you. As someone who has traveled to the so called "dark continent" I can assure you there are remarkable similarities between Detroit and many countries in Africa. Nothing the the PC crowd, even here at FR, want to know about.
And the Lions.
Heh heh heh heh.
Couple of years ago I took a wrong turn and ended up crossing the bridge into Camden from Philly. Camden was deserted at midday and this thread on Detroit reminded me also of that vision of terminal blight. If the socialists were in charge, Detroit and Camden would have high walls and barbed wire around them, for the same reason Berlin once did.
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