Detroit: An American Story

Detroit. It was, for many years, the strongest city in America. Home to General Motors, Ford, Packard, Chrysler and many other of America's biggest automakers for years, Detroit was an economic powerhouse in the world. In World War 2, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself would refer to Detroit as the "arsenal of democracy" in one of his regular fireside chats over the radio. For much of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, almost anyone in Michigan could expect, at a minimum, to get a job either in Detroit or anywhere else in the state within the automotive industry right after graduating from high school. The wages were high, and the work itself was a guaranteed 40 hour a week job. The workers with Ford and General Motors in particular stood out. Flush with cash from one of the best jobs someone could have in the country, Detroit would see an explosion in it's population. It would be seen, for a time, as the gem of America. A beautiful city with a happy, industrious and hard working population.

While I only lived within Detroit's actual city boundaries for a brief time in my life, one couldn't go anywhere in Michigan without feeling it's influence, or at least seeing the influence it had over much of the state for countless decades. In the Upper Peninsula, you would find in the western portions plenty of iron mines, which provided the backbone for many of the plants constructed to serve the automotive industry in Detroit. In the thumb region, untold amounts of automotive suppliers would be open all day and all night, producing center console pieces for Ford and General Motors along with a host of other products that went into building some of the most legendary vehicles ever made by both companies. In towns like Lansing, Grand Rapids, Romeo, Flint, Dearborn, Wayne and Livonia, one could not go more than a few blocks without seeing a Ford, GM or Chrysler plant on every other block in the industrial areas of town. If it wasn't one of the Big Three's plants, then it was another company that helped to forge the components of cars and trucks the Big Three pumped out without ceasing.

With all of the money being produced in Michigan because of the Big Three's influence in and around Detroit, incredible monuments and structures would be built all over Michigan. In Dearborn, it was the Henry Ford Village and Museum. Just up the road from Dearborn, it was the River Rouge plant, a structure easily seen on clear days for miles around. On Woodrow Avenue running through Highland Park, the mighty building responsible for the very first Model T cars was built by Henry Ford himself. Throughout downtown Detroit itself, dozens of art sculptures can be found that honor the mighty industrial center that was Detroit. In the northern suburbs of Detroit, one of the world's finest medical institutions exists in the form of the Henry Ford Hospital, a world renowned hospital which has existed for nearly a century to help treat society's most ill patients, and coupled with an expansive medical research center. In Wayne County alone, Henry Ford Community College exists, along with the Henry Ford Library. In Pontiac, there existed the once mighty Silverdome, which sadly is to be torn down within a matter of time. Michigan truly was an economic powerhouse because of the automotive industry, and it's natural beauty outside of the industrial centers within the state are still a wonder to behold in my eyes. But, along the way, something happened.

I don't know where to pinpoint it. I don't know if Detroit began it's downward fall with the closing of the Packard Automotive plant in the 1950s. I don't know if it began with the administration of Coleman A. Young, a divisive political figure who heavily factored into Detroit politics for the better part of two decades. But either way, something happened. For those of you old enough to remember, we had something happen in the 1970s: a gas crisis of unbelievable proportions. I remember hearing the stories from the old timers in my fair share of small towns over the years throughout Michigan: endless lines of consumers lined up at gas stations throughout the country, struggling to get just a little bit of fuel for an extremely high price as OPEC held the United States at bay, the end result of a disastrous Middle Eastern policy that had involved Israel, a state which has earned the virtual enmity of the entire Middle Eastern world for nearly 70 years. President Jimmy Carter, as I was told, ended up paying dearly for events beyond his control. He paid for events that took root during Gerald R. Ford's presidency, and in the aftermath we would see the elevation of a B rate movie actor to the role of President. In the aftermath of this mess, Detroit would begin to suffer as consumers nationwide began to see American automobiles as unreliable and gas guzzlers, a side effect of the dramatic spike in oil prices throughout the 1970s.

Japenese automakers such as Toyota and Honda would first begin to see a true spike in popularity with consumers in the early 1980s. American cars were seen at the time as antiquated and behind the times. For that, Michigan, and Detroit in particular, would pay dearly. Coupled with this was the beginning of a long, uninterrupted war against the very unions that had worked hard for years to ensure American factory workers got a fair wage, fair working hours, fair benefits and safe working conditions. This I suppose could be blamed on the blowback from a new generation of CEOs who began to see the hoarding of money as their ultimate goal in life. They almost seemed to take offense to the idea of having to pay more money they wanted to keep out to American workers. And of all the cities to first feel the pain was Flint.

Flint was the city that gave us Michael Moore, a filmmaker who even now is a divisive figure within the political world. As GM's financial problems began to manifest in the early 1980s, one of the first major plants that would close up shop and relocate to another country was a General Motors plant in Flint. It began in 1985 with the announcement that all of the employees in this particular plant would be let go, with their jobs in turn being sent off to Mexico along with all of the plant's operations. Flint never recovered from the blow - GM was the single largest employer in the area, and soon to follow GM's exit was Ford and several other secondary auto suppliers in the area. Even today, the city is dotted with the rotting remains of formerly active automotive plants. The residents there have suffered greatly as well, as whatever is left of the area's economy is now heavily based on the notoriously low wage service industry - fast food, hotels and retail. The crime rate in Flint also skyrocketed during this period, and for a time Flint was the second most violent city in America. But that's not what this is about, although it does play into a small part of the story of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, and how they pertain to Detroit as a city.

At the same time Flint was beginning to recede into the throes of chaos, Detroit too would see similar events unfold. The story was the same no matter where you went throughout the city. Initially, the Big Three automakers, along with dozens of automotive suppliers, relocated most of their jobs to the suburbs of Detroit. This did not sit well with the residents of Detroit, many of whom had seen their wages declining throughout the 1980s. Coleman Young and the Detroit City Council, for their part, elected to almost ignore the alarming increases in poverty and in crime within the city of Detroit, focusing instead on crooked deals with city contractors, lavish bonuses for themselves, and a pension plan for legions of city workers that was never adjusted to keep on pace with the slowing decline in Detroit's population. On Detroit's south side, the once might Chrysler plant would be closed down before the end of the 1980s, only to end up with one section a deteriorating hulk (which currently is owned by the Moroun family), and the other ending up as a shipping container storage yard. In other parts of the city, several smaller Ford and GM plants would close up as well, only to open back up in Mexico. Those who could afford to do so fled the city, leaving their homes and businesses to stand vacant throughout the city. Those who were left behind were left with a nightmare no one had ever imagined would hit the city.

Having lost much of it's manufacturing base, the people living within Detroit took up other means of survival. Many were lost to a crack epidemic which would rage throughout Detroit until the mid-1990s. Others would turn to criminal activity as a means of survival - robbery rapidly became the new norm of Detroit, as did gang violence throughout much of the city. The police department, despite some truly valiant efforts, could not put a stop to the epidemic of violence and drug use that infested Detroit after the abrupt departure of so many thousands of manufacturing jobs throughout the city. Looking back through newspaper articles and television news reports at the time, it is easy to see why Detroit ended up the way it did - when people have nothing to lose, they will do anything to get by, even if it means harming one another in the process.

By the late 1990s, Detroit was known nationwide as a dark and violent city. Dennis Archer had taken over as mayor earlier in the decade, and had attempted to make reforms to the city. Many of the holdovers from Coleman A. Young's administration proved to be obstinate, however. Bribery and racketeering was almost a fact of life in City Hall, and beyond it's borders lay a city struggling to survive. Few jobs could be found throughout Detroit, and as a result of NAFTA's passage at the federal level, the rest of Michigan began to feel the economic pain of the Big Three's uprooting of untold amounts of manufacturing jobs. The same would happen with the hundreds of automotive suppliers dotting the state, with one especially egregious case unfolding in nearby Port Huron by 2007, as Collins & Aikman, one of the strongest automotive supply companies within the state, abruptly folded operations and ceased to exist after years of what some have described as a great depression repeatedly swept across the entire state. In Detroit, few automotive companies remained. Ford, GM and Chrysler still had plants in the suburbs: Ford in Sterling Heights, Romeo, Wayne, Dearborn and Livonia, while GM had small plants in Port Huron, Westland and a few other smaller communities. Chrysler, for it's part, still retained plants up near Port Huron and out in the western suburbs of Detroit, but as a whole, the disastrous effects of NAFTA had left a wake of destruction throughout Detroit and Michigan. It even spread to other states in the region: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and even Minnesota. Everyone in the region felt the pain as the Big Three continued to struggle to compete with Toyota, Kia, Hyundai and Honda.

By 2001, Detroit was the archetype of what many perceived to be a failed city. Untold thousands of abandoned buildings took up large plots of land throughout the city. The violent crime rate was still the highest in the entire nation. Everywhere you went in and around Detroit, you could find direct evidence of the decline of the manufacturing sector. Inkster, a city once known for a relatively vibrant culture in the 1960s, and even more known worldwide as being the birthplace of the genre of music that later came to be known as Motown, was one of the top ten most violent communities in Michigan, with epic amounts of corruption and accusations of endless incidents of abuses thrown towards the police department. Westland had suffered a similar fate: entire neighborhoods that at one point were the most beautiful in western Wayne County had became a haven for drug activity, with scores upon scores of streets lined with run down homes. Wayne was no better, and Livonia, Romulus, Southgate and Troy all were in no better condition. No matter where you went, violent crime and drugs were rampant everywhere, and the lack of a stable job environment was all too evident from the numerous numbers of boarded up buildings: schools closed because of budgetary constraints (made possible by out-of-work citizens with little money to their names), entire hospitals closed down due to a lack of money, numerous homes and housing projects boarded up - the latter of which was once considered to be the hallmark of a society that took care of it's poorest citizens in the 1960s, numerous small businesses that had failed from the inability of local auto workers being unable to patronize these establishments...it was one of the most heartbreaking sights I can ever recall seeing. In downtown Detroit, numerous abandoned skyscrapers were seemingly everywhere you went. And then, something close to what everyone thought was a change happened.

At the federal level in 2001, there was much anguish over the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and even more anguish over the mass election of a Republican dominated Congress. In Michigan, John Engler remained as the governor. Much criticism had been directed towards him, as he and several of his predecessors ignored the plight of Detroit and many of the outlying communities that had relied so much upon the automotive industry for work. Trade agreement after trade agreement was passed in the state legislature. With each new agreement came the loss of even more manufacturing jobs to nations such as the Philippines, Mexico, China, Vietnam, India, South Korea, Taiwan and dozens of third world countries, where local laws allowed for wages to be paid in mere pennies per day. The state, thus, held it's collective breath as the race for mayor in Detroit raged on. The two primary candidates were Kwame Kilpatrick, considered at the time to be a rising star in the Democratic Party from his service in the House of Representatives for Michigan, and Gil Hill, the President of City Council at the time. Kilpatrick came out on top, and many in the state celebrated his victory, bolstered by his promises to restore a city that many still thought of as Michigan's crown jewel. Those hopes would be dashed within a matter of years.

One of Kilpatrick's first actions was to close down the Belle Isle Zoo and Aquarium, a once fine institution that had been left to rot since the early 1970s. Luckily, in that instance, City Council came to it's senses and overrode his veto to deny all funding to Belle Isle and budgeted around $700,000 for it to remain open. It would also become public knowledge late in his first term that Kilpatrick had used $210,000 from a city-owned credit card on lavish dinners, spas and fine wines. Kilpatrick in the end only paid $9,000 back towards that debt, and he would also draw fire for using city funds to lease a personal vehicle for his family. Rumors would begin to circulate during his campaign for a second term as mayor that a party at Manoogian Mansion, the traditional home of almost all of Detroit's mayors for several decades, had involved the cover-up of the death of an exotic dancer. Despite those matters coming to light, Kilpatrick still managed to win a second term to office.

In 2008, all of the allegations towards Kilpatrick would come full circle, as investigators determined that the death of this exotic dancer, Tamara Greene, was likely the result of a hit carried out by unidentified members of the Detroit Police Department. Piling onto this were dozens of other crimes of which Kilpatrick would ultimately be found guilty of: pension funds influence peddling, 10 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, five counts of filing a false tax return, one count of tax evasion and bribery - all stemming from redirecting city contracts to favor companies ran by family and friends. He additionally would get charged with perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice as a result of an extramarital affair carried out with an aide of his - an extramarital affair where city resources were used to propagate this affair. Throughout his entire time in office, Kilpatrick would also earn enemies in the form of the Detroit Fire Department, who for years had been stuck using outdated and unsafe equipment and additionally were stuck in buildings not even safe for habitation. After repeated requests for more funding, Kilpatrick finally blew them off, stating at an event these words: "Let them eat steak."

Detroit would go through several temporary mayors in the aftermath of Kilpatrick's subsequent indictment for all of the above listed charges. Kenneth Cockrel, Jr., a long serving member of City Council and President at the time of Kilpatrick's indictment and ultimate resignation, would take the reigns of power until the fall of 2008, ultimately losing the next election to Dave Bing, who in turn would be delegated to the sidelines as the governor intervened: Detroit was billions of dollars in debt, and was placed under the auspices of an emergency finance manager. Under that finance manager, Kevyn Orr, Detroit would file for bankruptcy, officially becoming the largest city in the country to do such an act. In the end, the total amount that Detroit was behind on? $18.5 billion in debt. Succeeding Dave Bing was Mike Duggan, the first white mayor since Roman Gibbs in the early 1970s. Throughout the past several years, several other individuals were also convicted of bribery, with one of the most prominent of them being Monica Conyers. She served over 3 years in prison for conspiring to commit bribery as part of Kwame Kilpatrick's corrupt dealings, and even today is still being investigated by federal officials for her exact role in the political corruption that had seeped into Detroit and eventually turned into a cancer of sorts...a cancer that plagued the city during the downfall of the manufacturing industry in Detroit. A cancer that, by every definition, helped push it's very vulnerable population to the brink of destruction through sheer neglect and defunding of valuable city services such as police, fire, transportation, education, healthcare, water, sewage and trash disposal.

Today, Detroit stands as one of the most epic stories in modern American history. It is a proud city, despite all of the past pains it has endured. A program, begun under Dave Bing, is still underway. That program's overall goal? To get rid of as many decrepit and abandoned structures as possible. Recent articles in area media have mentioned the possibility of putting all of that cleared land to use by erecting greenhouses to be used for farming purposes. In a way, this may not be a bad idea if the community is allowed to participate in the effort: it is a perfect way to mix together the urban landscape with one that leans towards nature. Only time will tell if this idea ever comes to fruition. Elsewhere in the city, a number of billionaires have been making efforts to rehabilitate some of Detroit's abandoned structures in hotels, civic centers, arenas, businesses and new housing areas. It is a commendable effort, although critics point out that these efforts are resulting in the destruction of historic structures that could have been saved for future generations to admire and reflect upon. The venerable Detroit Institute of Arts, after narrowly having seen it's assets sold off to pay off Detroit's creditors during the bankruptcy process, is growing in size and stature thanks to the help of some of Detroit's most affluent citizens who remain. Belle Isle, for it's part, is slowly undergoing a renovation after years of neglect, and there is an ongoing effort to build an outdoor park stretching along much of the Detroit River directly north of the downtown area. The Detroit Zoo also is beginning to see a second renaissance, as the region has pulled together to pour money into saving what many see as a valuable educational institution throughout southeastern Michigan.

Detroit's population declined to around 700,000 inhabitants from what the 2010 census found. However, a bright light can be found in that gloomy news. In the last few years, new census data has indicated that a good amount of younger individuals have chosen to make Detroit their new home. Among these people are aspiring artists, singers, young business professionals and a host of other progressive minded individuals who see the possibility of Detroit having a second Golden Era, just as it did in the 1950s and the 1960s. On the other end of this positive development, Detroit's pension system has since been changed to match the current population of the city to help ease the financial pains the city has endured as a result of decades of corrupt politicians being in charge of the city. On the job front, there appears to be some good news, as Ford and General Motors recently opened up plants within Detroit for the first time in nearly two decades. This came after the loss of American Axle, which had closed it's last remaining Detroit based plant down several years ago to relocate this plant's operations to another location in Mexico. Bolstering the job outlook in Detroit are Google's future plans to open up a large campus in Detroit, along with possible plans from Microsoft and several other major technology companies to follow suit. As for the city's police and fire services? Suffice it to say that Detroit no longer is the most violent city in America. One could almost say that between the new mayor, the actions taken by Kevyn Orr, the efforts led by the Justice Department, and James Craig, the new chief of police, a change for the better is floating through the air.

Detroit. A beautiful city, even with all of her scars. Detroit, an inspiration for change. Detroit: a city I am proud to have called my home. Detroit: an American story.

(Afterword: My latest post was not written with the intent to attack anyone living there. I wanted to highlight some of Detroit's history and the current outlook for Detroit. I, like anyone else who has close ties to Detroit and Michigan, felt immense pain in seeing the city suffer for years. Detroit, to me, was one of the largest factors in all of the state of Michigan. The people living there are truly among the most hardworking, dedicated, honest, loving, caring and wonderful people I know, and I am proud to call some of the people I personally know there my friends. Despite what anyone could or ever would say to me, I love Detroit. I miss seeing the sunrise over the city every day, and the sunset there every night. I miss the food, the sounds, the smells of that city...no matter if they were good or bad. I hope that you, dear reader, have learned something from this writing. My love for that place will never die no matter where I live at on this world for the rest of my life. While I do live in Colorado Springs at the moment, a place over a thousand miles from the place I know to be home, I will eventually move back. It's one of the most resilient cities on the planet, and it has seen it's fair share of great moments and dark moments throughout the years. It has made it over 300 years, and I hope Detroit will soldier on for another 300 years. If you have any thoughts, comments or questions, please feel free to write them below and I will respond as soon as I get the chance to. All I ask is that you please be civil and polite with your writing. Thank you again for reading this, and I'll see you all again on my next post.)