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.
Thanks for the pictures. What a national disaster.
Bulldoze it, plant trees and give it back to the Indians!
Offer the city to the USMC for training. Hell it’s in the future anyways!!
Offer the city to the USMC for training. Hell it’s in the future anyways!!
Then, of course, there is the classic South Park episode that takes place in Hell.
Saddam Hussein shows up is surprized to see his old "lover", Satan.
Satan says, "What was I going to do with you? Send you to Detroit?"
The Tigers are a better overall team this year in my opinion.
Dallas schools need really tough love
They should make them rename city as Starnesville. No renaming, no aid.
Out of 2,008,000 people in Wayne County (Detroit is about half of that number), 868,000 voted in 2004 (70% for John Kerry). That has got to be nearly every available adult.
Very civic minded folks...
I have had that same experience in Detroit, and it is very weird indeed. In the middle of a 'business day' on a main street in downtown outside the City offices, and no traffic --- few people on the streets and beautiful old office buildings, completely vacant.
Aside from welfare and official political graft/extortion, there ain't no there - there.
great music.....Port Huron Statement style radicals
lord knows I listened to and ate up all that shite
Volunteers of America!
LOL
They should elect Matt Millen mayor-he’s done a great job with the Lions turning the city of Detroit around would be a piece of cake. (sarcasm)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_Street_Riot
I edited / wrote a good chunk of the Wikipedia account (above).
Very, very sad.
Also, check out the Malice Green Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malice_Green. My fingerprints are all over that one too.
Not so much anymore. These days it is predominately Hispanic. Things are also a bit different if you count the suburban areas (starts getting more Anglo the further North you go, with the exceptional weirdness that is the Richardson melting pot's combination of Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Arab, Pakistani, and just about every other nationality you can think of ).
The suburban areas are different cities (different elections), which is why Blacks in Dallas had the narrow window of political clout (which they probably never will get back, since Hispanic birth rates are vastly superior. I've heard it said that well over half of the kids born at Parkland are anchor babies). Over the long term, this might be a good thing if it results in removing the stain on Texas that is the congresswoman from the 30th district.
I'm certainly not a fan of the Dallas city government (a wretched hive of scum and villainy), but Ron Kirk was probably the best mayor Dallas has had in recent history (which sounds more impressive than it is).
Because there is only a very small group of people who make ALL of the decisions --- and they are a well educated group of political hanger-ons who maintain an address in Detroit (they sure as hell don't live there) and who all make large amounts of money (mostly under the table) by stealing government dollars at every opportunity.
Corruption is the soft underbelly of any political system and Detroit is by far the most politically corrupt system in this nation. It passed the tipping point when Colman Young became mayor and hasn't a prayer of recovering. New Orleans isn't even close to the corruption of Detroit, but no one will say so because it wouldn't be PC to do so.
The thieves there have a free pass.
It’s axiomatic that the Left never admits its mistakes. Hillary was probably a cheerleader for the rioters.
The link is dead, at least on my machine. Must have FReeped the server...
These days the Lions thanksgiving game is over before it begins.
If you want to see rotting away take a drive through Buffalo sometime. But Detroit does indeed need help.
The Democrats are not only lying, they’re crooked.
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