William Livingstone House
If there is any wonder why
Detroit often resembles an Eastern Bloc municipality, consider that for 19 years the mayor who ran the city
economically and socially was a closet Marxist.
Originally posted 01.13.13
By Spyridon Mitsotakis
Sometimes it’s better to tell a story backwards, from end to
beginning. This story ends on December 10, 2012, when President Obama
traveled to Michigan—a state with unemployment over 9 percent. He made a
stop in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, which is bankrupt. There,
Obama made the ironic boast: “You only have to look to Michigan where
workers were instrumental in reviving the auto industry to see how unions have helped build not just a stronger middle class but a stronger America.”
Of course, the auto industry, like much of the rest of Detroit, is in
ruins. This is the state of the city and its main industry … at the end
of the story.
Flashback some 20-plus years, to 1988, when Howard Johnson—who had
been one of the leading communists in Harlem during the Great
Depression—told interviewer Kay Takora about his return home from World
War II: “I came back into activity in the Communist Party…. I at first
became county educational director. New York county was the biggest
county organization. From ’46 to ’49. And during that same period, I was
assigned to help build a national Negro veterans organization which was
called the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America [UNAVA]. And
that had the backing of the party and I was assigned by the party to
work in that along with my duties as educational director of the county
organization.”
Interior of the beautiful, but dilapidated Michigan Station
Howard Johnson continued, eventually bringing the conversation to
Detroit, and to Detroit’s mayor, Coleman Young: “When UNAVA was formed, I
was elected national vice-commander in charge of education, which fit
my training, and the other national vice-commander was Coleman Young,
who was national vice-commander in charge of labor.
Because at that time he was a steward in the auto workers union and
[a] very prominent trade unionist in Detroit. Coleman and I were very
good friends…. I never anticipated he would be a bourgeois mayor of
Detroit. But Coleman’s a great guy, nevertheless. But I
think that it was his party training that (helped) him to move forward
as he did.”
Coleman Young, the mayor of Detroit from 1974 to 1993, was able to
“move forward as he did” thanks in part to training he got from the
“party”—that is, the Communist Party. Young was, in fact, a secret
member of Communist Party USA, as shown by several sources, including Cold War historians Ron Radosh, John Earl Haynes, and Harvey Klehr.
Young had a woeful impact on Detroit.
United Artists Theater
If there is any wonder why
Detroit often resembles an Eastern Bloc municipality (minus the police
state, since Mayor Young made it a routine to attack and neglect the
city’s police forces, ensuring that the 1967 riots picked up where they
left off), consider that for 19 years the mayor who ran the city
economically and socially was a closet Marxist. Carl Levin, senator from
Michigan, was Young’s right-hand man as Detroit City Council president
during the most destructive years of Young’s reign.
The auto industry had been fully unionized ever since Walter Reuther
(then a member of the Communist Party) led the 1936-‘37 GM Flint strike,
thanks to the Wagner Act prohibiting firing of striking workers. On the
other hand, Japanese auto companies such as Nissan, which outmaneuvered
an attempted union takeover in 1953, were able to adapt quickly to
demand. The UAW stubbornly held on to the practices of a bygone era,
where World War II had reduced their international competitors to rubble
and American auto manufacturing stood largely unopposed.
Packard automobile plant
There were remedies. In February 1979, President Jimmy Carter
actually offered some good advice. He told a group of governors at a
White House state dinner: “Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make
here what they sell here.” Lamar Alexander, then governor of Tennessee,
did just that. He explained to Nissan executives who were deciding
where to put their first U.S. manufacturing plant what was unique about
Tennessee: it had a right-to-work law. As Alexander wrote in the Wall
Street Journal: “In 1980 Nissan chose Tennessee, a state with almost no
auto jobs. Today auto assembly plants and suppliers provide one-third of
our state’s manufacturing jobs. Tennessee is the home for production of
the Leaf, Nissan’s all-electric vehicle, and the batteries that power
it. Recently Nissan announced that 85 percent of the cars and trucks it
sells in the U.S. will be made in the U.S.— making it one of the largest
‘American’ auto companies and nearly fulfilling Mr. Carter’s request of
30 years ago.”
This is the very same right-to-work law that Carl Levin and the rest of Michigan’s radical-left ruling class oppose.
The choice between ruin and prosperity would, in a sane world, not be
difficult to make. There was a time in the 1920s when people from all
over the world came to Detroit to marvel at and study the magnificence
of Henry Ford’s industrial heartland. That is where the story began. The
end need not be so sad. The greatness of Detroit can forever be a
fading memory, or there can be a new beginning.
Spyridon Mitsotakis is a history student at New York University specializing in the Cold War.
1945
2012
Michigan Central Station
Telephone Switch Board, Fort Shelby Hotel
Dentist Cabinet Broderick Tower
Public Schools Book Depository
Remains of blood samples, Highland Park Poilice Station
Laboratory-Cass Technical High School
Lobby Broderick Tower
Old Lobby Michigan Theater
The photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are absolutely haunting and beautiful. Their book, The Ruins of Detroit, is a must have.
http://tinyurl.com/bset4kd
1 comment:
Wow wow wow. Great stuff. It blows my mind to see all this amazing architecture just left to rot. These are particularly great images of the Detroit crisis. I really enjoy those old photos too. Don't see many like that on the net.
Thanks for posting them.
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