Andrea Egypt of MECAWI at the No War on Iran demonstration in downtown Detroit on Aug. 1, 2008. The action coincided with protests in 87 cities throughout the United States. (Photo: Alan Pollock).
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
HE NEEDS MORE SEASONING THAN JUST SALT
by Andrea Egypt of Detroit
I take issue with Mr. Sam Logan, the publisher of the Michigan Chronicle, in his commentary entitled: "Time For New Leaders, New Thinking," which was reprinted in the Sunday Free Press on August 3, 2008. His misguided analysis of the economic and political destruction that is facing the City of Detroit is lacking some key ingredients.
His comments are geared towards naming and blaming the supposed ignorance and the inability of the African American community. According to Logan, this is the key ingredient for the economic and political disaster facing Detroit.
Logan claims that Detroiters are scraping the bottom of the barrel as it releates to quality elected officials on the School Board, City Council and the Mayor's office. He also points his finger at Governor Granholm for being in a state of paralysis in regard to saving Detroit. However, these are not the only ingredients in this recipe for disaster.
He forgets to add some key ingredients - that if left out - would not describe accurately the real reasons for the City’s decline. He forgot to add in the following key ingredients:
-The billions spent to date on targeting Iraq, Iran and Afganistan in the so-called war on terror. This military spending has stripped federal funding from the City of Detroit along with money for many social programs since Septmeber 11, 2001;
-then add in the trickle down economic seasonings of the Bush, Cheney administration and a Congress that continues to appropriate more war funding until we win, whatever that really means;
-then Logan must add in the criminal banking sub-prime lending crisis that has caused massive foreclosures in Detroit and throughout the metropolitan region, putting working families and property tax payers out of their homes, which gives them no choice but to leave the City and further erode the tax base;
-then add in huge tax breaks for multi-national corporations who provide very few or no jobs at all. This is done despite the initial claims that job creation is the reason why corporate tax breaks are given out in the first place;
-then add in a credit freeze to paralyze consumer spending for Detroiters;
-then don’t forget to add the continual rise in food and fuel prices that rob the people of Detroit to the point that they can’t even get to work-even if they had a job- nor can they get enough nutrition to function properly on the job;
-then mix in a big helping of layoffs and wage cuts from the Big Three and others that have displaced blue collar workers for years. These are workers who depend on their jobs to be productive tax paying citizens in Detroit;
-then add in a common ingredient from all cities known as crime.
Then, once this dish is well done, top it off with his suggestion to impose a gentrification program to replace all the "non-productive" African Americans in Detroit with a so- called more intelligent white population, putting them into the homes and jobs once held by African Americans in Detroit.
When this is all done, you will get the real recipe for disaster which Logan sees as the final solution for the City of Detroit. This will come about through his desired strategic and systemic gentrification program that will inevitably bring about a real genocidal plan to eliminate the African American population in the City of Detroit.
This is the underlying goal that many African Americans have suspected since the Coleman Young administration took political power in Detroit in 1974. Therefore, anyone who loves Detroit and its people must reject Logan's recipe for disaster because it is not his plan but the same plan that has been advocated by certain elite elements for many years.
Sincerely,
Andrea Egypt (MECAWI)
Detroit, Michigan
Free Press Opinion by Sam Logan
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20080731/OPINION05/80731071/1068/opinion
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