Poisoning Black Cities: The Corporate Campaign to Ethnically Cleanse U.S. Cities Knows No Bounds

They emptied New Orleans. Now they have poisoned Flint, Michigan. The corporate campaign to ethnically cleanse U.S. cities knows no bounds. Michigan’s emergency financial manager law is “part of Wall Street’s tool kit to starve, bulldoze, redline, over-price, oppressively police, and even poison Black people out of the urban centers.”

By Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor

“Michigan’s emergency financial manager system is the lead-tipped point of the spear that is gutting urban Black America.” 


It has taken the poisoning of an entire city of 100,000 people – 52 percent of them Black – to draw national attention to the human effects of systematic corporatization of the public sphere under neoliberal U.S. capitalism. Republican Governor Rick Synder promises to “fix” the ruined water infrastructure of Flint, Michigan, now hopelessly corroded and saturated with lead – a repair that could cost as much as $1.5 billion. But, even if Snyder is forced to resign, as demonstrators demand, or is jailed, as filmmaker Michael Moore would prefer, it won’t fix the irreparably damaged brains of the city’s children or prevent a cascade of Flint-like catastrophes from unfolding across the country.

We are experiencing another Katrina moment, a dreadful epiphany in which the nature of the beast that is preying upon us becomes horrifically clear. Michigan’s emergency financial manager system – a weapon of corporate dictatorship imposed selectively on heavily Black and brown cities and school systems – is the lead-tipped point of the spear that is gutting urban Black America. It is not a unique instrument – and certainly not a Republican invention – but part of Wall Street’s tool kit to starve, bulldoze, redline, over-price, oppressively police, and even poison Black people out of the urban centers.

“A Katrina moment.”

Katrina should have been the wake-up call, a decade ago, but the hegemonic influence of the bankster-infested Democratic Party in Black America muted the warning, that the Lords of Capital were determined to eject Blacks from valuable real estate by any means necessary. After their success in expelling 100,000 Black people from New Orleans under cover of a hurricane, the corporate designers of the New American City stepped up the pace of gentrification, deploying every soft and hard tool available to them. The Black-removal machine was revved up to maximum, erasing Black urban majorities and pluralities with dizzying speed.

Having met little organized resistance, the corporate ethnic cleansers grew bolder. Republicans like Rick Synder get elected by trashing Black people; they hardly need an economic motivation for race-baiting. Corporate Democrats are more subtle. Rick Snyder wasn’t the first governor to disenfranchise Black urbanites in Michigan; his Democratic predecessor, Jennifer Granholm, a reputed “liberal,” appointed emergency managers to lord it over mostly Black Benton Harbor, Highland Park, Pontiac, and the Detroit Public Schools (where teachers have been on a sick-out to protest the ghastly conditions wrought by that bipartisan legacy of plantation-like governance).

“The Black-removal machine is erasing Black urban majorities and pluralities with dizzying speed.”

The Obama administration was a full partner in the deal that finalized the bankrupting of Detroit, providing federal funds to protect prime city assets necessary for future “revitalization” (to benefit anticipated new residents) but uttering not a word in protest of the disenfranchisement of the current, 83 percent Black population. The U.S. Justice Department failed to file a brief in support of the local NAACP’s appeal to the federal courts, that Michigan’s emergency financial manager law is racially selective, sparing financially troubled “municipalities with majority-white populations” from financial oversight while negating the votes of more than half of the state’s Black citizenry. "You do not throw out the right to vote on the basis of economic distress," said Detroit NAACP president Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony.

On the contrary, that’s exactly what corporations do when they set an economic or political goal that cannot be achieved at the local ballot box: they disenfranchise the uncooperative voters. In the United States, Black votes are the easiest to nullify, because huge numbers of whites don’t think Blacks are worthy of full citizenship. They take pleasure in bringing Detroit low, and in the enforced shrinking of Black New Orleans, never considering that the weakening of democratic norms will ultimately expose whites to the whims of Capital, as well. It is the oldest story in the United States.

“Corporate tentacles encroach upon the traditional powers of ‘too-Black’ cities until there is little left for the local government to tax or administer.”

White racism thus shapes the corporate model for direct rule by moneyed interests. Typically, the urban disenfranchisement process begins with the public schools, which become overwhelmingly Black and brown ahead of the general population. Locally elected inner city school boards are swept away in favor of state or direct mayoral control, while suburbanites retain the old, hands-on democratic model. (The Michigan legislature took over Detroit’s schools in 1999.) Corporate tentacles encroach upon the traditional powers of “too-Black” cities in ways not visible to ordinary citizens – through regional agencies, special industrial and development zones, targeted tax abatements, etc. – until there is little left for the local Black government to tax or administer except its largely impoverished constituents. Black governance is discredited – even though, in the last stages of urban distress, there are few resources with which to govern. The city writhes in protracted pain until “rescued” by the state for the purpose of corporate makeover (“renaissance”) and repopulation.

The corporate rulers and their minions must be held responsible for all of the pain that is inflicted on the people of intentionally distressed cities, whose residents are stripped of the means to defend themselves against the tortures, humiliations and various poisons of the state.

________________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Gentrification of US Cities and the Death of Black Communities

Gentrification – the displacement of Black and brown urban residents by more affluent whites – is a function of the same forces that emptied the cities of much of their white populations, generations ago: the movement of capital. Capital wants the cities back, and clears spaces for whites. “The system is stacked in favor of moneyed interests and white people.”






By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
There is no city in this country where black people are safe from the current method of displacement known as gentrification. Washington, DC, once had a majority black population and was known as Chocolate City. Perhaps it is now the Café au Lait city as the black population has fallen below 50%. That dynamic gathers steam in New York and other cities and continues to push people out of their homes, deprive them of needed services and erode their quality of life.

The situation in New York City is illustrative of this phenomenon. According to census data the city’s black population dropped by 5% between 2000 and 2010. Brooklyn alone lost 50,000 black residents during that time while the white population grew by 37,000 people. The impact of money is the explanation for this reversal of fortune. The same sources of capital that took money out of the cities in decades past are now changing course. These market manipulations determine where black people can and cannot live and create a cascade of negative impacts.

East New York was always one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods with a median income of only $32,000. Its majority black population and location in far eastern Brooklyn near the border of Queens had deemed it undesirable. That designation is now forgotten as big money sets its sights on new places to conquer. Now an area once thought to be too far from Manhattan is touted as being a 30 minute commute via public transportation. This formerly sneered upon and forgotten part of town is now “hot” and its residents have been identified as displaceable.

The phrase “prime real estate” can mean anything the market manipulators want it to mean. As the many headed hydra keeps sprouting heads, any place can suddenly be declared “hot” or “hip.” The inhabitants are pushed aside to make way for transplants who may come from the suburbs, another state or even from another country.

Gentrification is inherently racist, and Brooklyn shows the rest of the country how the dirty deeds are done. A recent article in New York Magazine included an interview with Ephraim, a pseudonym for a Brooklyn landlord and developer. He candidly described how black people facing foreclosure give him deeds to their homes or how renters are enticed to move out of rent regulated apartments in exchange for small sums of money.

“If there’s a black tenant in the house—in every building we have, I put in white tenants. They want to know if black people are going to be living there. So sometimes we have ten apartments and everything is white, and then all of the sudden one tenant comes in with one black roommate, and they don’t like it.”

Much has been made about this story but the outrage misses some important points. The emphasis for advocates should not just be that illegal practices should be stopped. The most important thing to remember is that black people have little stake in a system that will always find a way to disadvantage them. There can be no use for tired nostrums about black people making bad choices or not using their paltry “buying power” to better effect. The system is stacked in favor of moneyed interests and white people, no matter how well black people strive to behave in ways they are told will protect them.

The lack of assets means that even when black people own real estate they often do so precariously. Job loss or any other setback can mean financial crisis and foreclosure. That is where Ephraim comes in and gets these distressed home owners to give him their deeds.

Individual effort is no match for the rule of money. Black people who had money to buy and develop properties were prevented from doing so by redlining which prevented mortgages, bank loans and even insurance from being utilized in black neighborhoods across the country. Urban areas had large black populations because white people fled. White people left to get away from black people and capital paved the road to the suburbs. The tide is now turning because there is once again money to be made in the cities. Perhaps in the future the 1% will make different choices and make new determinations about where black people will live.

The nexus of corruption is vast. Real estate developers call the shots and politicians follow. That is how rent regulations in New York were eviscerated beginning in the 1990s. Now a vacant apartment can be decontrolled and no longer subject to regulated pricing if the rent rises above $2,500. A welfare program for developers, known as 421a, provides tax abatements meant to incentivize construction of low and moderate income housing. Instead, a developer recently received a 95% tax abatement on a $100 million condominium in Manhattan.

The demographic change generated by manipulations from the rich mean losses other than housing. Neighborhoods already considered “food deserts” are losing the few supermarkets they have if a developer buys those properties. Even defendants and plaintiffs in court cases pay a price. Juries in Brooklyn now have more white people with higher incomes which means they are more likely to decide in favor of the police or against plaintiffs in civil cases. One attorney explained it this way. “There’s an influx of money, and when everything gets gentrified, these jurors aren’t pro-plaintiff anymore.”

So black Brooklynites have fewer affordable places to live, to buy food or even to get the little bit of justice they once had. Gentrification is a destroyer and just one of the ways black people in this country are kept at the bottom. The fight against it must be fought on many fronts. The racism which gives white people a perceived right to be free of black people must be called out. The laws which give the wealthy advantages over everyone else must end. Politicians have to be called to account. If they aren’t, cities will become theme parks for the upper classes and everyone else will be pushed to the outskirts and to jail, the ultimate form of displacement.

Gentrification is just one of the ways in which capitalism manifests itself and it must be thought of in that way. If it isn’t, black people will be fooled into short sighted thinking and ineffective tactics. We can start with a new adage. As long as money wins, black people will lose.

________________
Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Republicans Call for Imposing ALEC Zones on Poorest Neighborhoods of Milwaukee

Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. Dale Kooyenga.

By Brendan Fischer
Two suburban Wisconsin lawmakers have unveiled an economic development plan for the lowest-income neighborhoods of Milwaukee, and their "solutions" for the Wisconsin communities hit hardest by deindustrialization come directly from a national right-wing playbook.

Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) represent two of the wealthiest districts in Wisconsin and have no background in economic development, yet have proposed at 23-page plan targeting the majority-minority communities with the highest unemployment rates in the state -- and have done so without consulting any of the elected officials who actually represent the area.

"I don't understand how two suburban legislators can tell Milwaukee what they need without talking to Milwaukee legislators," said Sen. Nikiya Harris Dodd, a Democrat who represents Milwaukee. "It's really hurtful."

The plan promotes anti-union "right to work" zones, zero-corporate tax zones, and measures to turn public schools into for-profit charters, ideas promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The proposals come against the backdrop of four years of failed economic policies. The harsh prescription of tax breaks for the rich and cuts in services for the poor that Governor Walker promised would revitalize Wisconsin's economy and balance the budget have failed to do either. Wisconsin remains 32nd in the nation in new job growth and the state faces a $2.2 billion dollar deficit. In January 2014, Rep. Kooyenga promised the Wisconsin State Journal that Wisconsin's structural deficit would be gone by 2015.

These policies have contributed to record inequality in the state, according to the Wisconsin Budget Project. As members of the Joint Finance Committee, Sen. Darling and Rep. Kooyenga have been key architects of this agenda.

"It's Breathtaking to Hear the Double Talk from Sen. Darling"

The "New Opportunities for Milwaukee" plan isn't the first time that Sen. Darling has felt comfortable deciding what's best for the state's largest and most diverse city, without regard for what its residents think.

In 2011, after Scott Walker became governor and Republicans took control of the legislature, Darling was one of the principal sponsors of a bill to ban local governments from guaranteeing workers paid sick days in the name of "uniformity." The law was aimed squarely at Milwaukee, where voters had overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure allowing workers to earn paid sick days to take care of themselves or a family member who is ill. (The law was then shared at an ALEC meeting and similar bills subsequently spread across the country.)

"It's breathtaking to hear the double talk from Sen. Darling," said Ellen Bravo, Executive Director of Family Values @ Work, a coalition of groups advocating paid sick days and other family-friendly policies. "A local policy of paid sick days in Milwaukee, democratically enacted by 70% of the voters, was not OK because the state allegedly needs a uniform standard. Yet a local policy of so-called right-to-work in Milwaukee, undemocratically imposed by the state, is just fine," Bravo said.

"Seems contradictory," Bravo added, "until you realize both positions undermine local control, hurt workers and serve the interests of corporate lobbyists."

Local Anti-Labor Zones Likely to Prompt Costly Lawsuits

The proposal for targeted right to work legislation that applies only in Milwaukee is part of a new national push that is spearheaded by groups like the Heritage Foundation and a new ALEC offshoot, the American City County Exchange (ACCE).

So-called "right to work" laws allow non-union members to free-ride on union representation, reaping the benefits of negotiated wages and benefits but without paying the costs. According to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, statewide right to work laws are associated with lower wages for both union and non-union workers and undermine the middle class.

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have long supported a statewide anti-union right to work law, and GOP leadership is debating whether to take up the measure this year. But the push for local right to work is part of a controversial multi-state effort that began just months ago.

In September of last year, the Washington Examiner reported that "Conservatives are starting to push the idea that city and county governments can pass union-restricting right-to-work laws, even though it may not be legal and has been tried only a handful of times in the last 70 years."

Although the federal National Labor Relations Act allows statewide laws, it prohibits local efforts, labor law experts say.

Nonetheless, in August of last year the Heritage Foundation issued a report making the case for local right to work laws, and hosted a panel discussion on the issue featuring representatives of ACCE, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and the National Right to Work Legal Foundation.

Then, in December, the ACCE meeting in Washington, D.C. featured a workshop on local right to work, according to the New York Times, which reported that supporters of the effort would first try to pass the legislation in Kentucky, and then try their luck in Republican-controlled states that don't have a statewide right to work law--specifically naming Wisconsin as a target.

Indeed, that is precisely what has happened. Several Kentucky counties enacted local right to work laws throughout December and January. And with the Darling/Kooyenga proposal, Wisconsin could be next.

If such a provision is enacted for Milwaukee, it will almost certainly result in costly federal lawsuits challenging the laws as illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. Hardin County, Kentucky has already been sued over its law. (A nonprofit group called "Protect My Check" is offering to pay for the Kentucky counties' legal defense, but it is unclear whether a similar arrangement has been organized in Wisconsin.)

Jennifer Epps-Addison, Executive Director of Wisconsin Jobs Now, said that "not a single Milwaukee resident that I've heard from [in the areas targeted by the proposal] has asked for a right to work law. In fact, the only jobs in those zones that pay family-supporting wages are unionized," she said.

"If [Darling and Kooyenga] really wanted to address poverty, they would make it easier to unionize in places like McDonalds and Walmart, in the jobs that are already present in those areas," Epps-Addison said. Or, she said, they could support a $15/hour minimum wage, "which is the loudest call that I've heard from people here in Wisconsin and nationally."

Wisconsin Jobs Now has a petition asking Darling and Kooyenga to visit Milwaukee neighborhoods and actually talk to residents and get their opinions on how to reduce poverty, rather than imposing a national right-wing agenda on them.

"To impose these policies without consulting people in Milwaukee is disrespectful and disingenuous," Epps-Addison said.

Other Policies Lifted from Right-Wing Playbook

Another item in their proposal would accelerate the spread of charter schools in the targeted area, using proposals that track the ALEC education agenda. It calls for a "turnaround school model" that would convert public schools deemed "failing" into charters, which are often operated by for-profit providers. It would allow high-performing charter schools to create new charters without getting approval from charter school authorizers, injecting even less accountability into an already unaccountable system.

The legislators propose eliminating what they call "barriers to work" in the form of occupational licensing requirements--a solution drawn directly from the Koch-founded and -funded Institute for Justice. ALEC has adopted bills calling for an end to occupational licensing, and has also long pushed the notion that urban zones should serve as corporate tax havens. The ALEC Enterprise Zone Act establishes “zones in depressed areas that have reduced taxes” and no “government barriers to … profit.” That bill came out of the ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force, of which Darling is a member.

Notably, Sen. Darling is one of the state's most vocal proponents of ALEC-inspired voter ID laws, and both she and Kooyenga sponsored the state's 2011 law requiring an ID to vote. But strikingly, only half of eligible voters in the zip codes targeted by Darling and Kooyenga have valid driver's licenses. (In one of the zip codes, the number is closer to twenty percent). This means the pair have been actively working to disenfranchise the same people they now claim to be trying to help, advocates say.

No Train Manufacturers?

Ironically, the Darling/Kooyenga proposal says the fact that Milwaukee doesn't have an automobile or train manufacturing industry justifies their plan for a zero percent corporate tax. It specifically notes that good manufacturing employers like "A.O. Smith, later sold to Tower Automotive" are no longer providing family-supporting jobs in the area.

But in fact, until recently Milwaukee did have a burgeoning train manufacturing plant, in the old Tower Automotive facility--but it was killed by Governor Walker and legislative Republicans, including Sen. Darling and Rep. Kooyenga. Dave Cieslewicz tells the tale:

In 2009, then Gov. Jim Doyle joined forces with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to convince train manufacturer Talgo to locate in Milwaukee. The city of Milwaukee invested $10 million for site improvements at the old Tower Automotive plant in a neighborhood that needed the jobs and the reinvestment. Wisconsin ordered two trains for the state-sponsored Milwaukee to Chicago Hiawatha service. In addition, Talgo had an order for two trains for use in Oregon and Washington that would also be built in Milwaukee.

Then Doyle famously secured $810 million in federal stimulus money to build higher-speed rail from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison with the promise of eventually connecting the line to the Twin Cities. And, of course, those train sets would have been built in Milwaukee too.

But in 2010, Scott Walker was elected governor and rejected the high-speed rail funds. Republicans in the legislature--Darling and Kooyenga included--cancelled the contract with Talgo, despite having already paid the company $52 million for the trains. The state could be on the hook for another $70 million in damages if Talgo's lawsuit against the state is successful.

Meanwhile, the Talgo factory is vacant. And the rail system that would have carried Milwaukee residents to jobs in the suburbs doesn't exist.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Arrogance of the Geeks: Tech Workers From DropBox Try Take a Playground From Community Kids — They Lose (Video)

Neighborhood park user tries to explain to the newcomer geeks that having money
doesn't mean they own the world. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Peter Z. Scheer
When a group of tech workers from Dropbox tried to evict a group of youngsters from a community soccer field in San Francisco’s Mission district, they probably weren’t expecting to trigger a mini Occupy movement.

The Dropboxers, who have since apologized for the incident, reserved the field using a new permitting system.

"If you want to play pickup, you play pickup like the rest of us.
Just because you got money... It ain't your fucking field!"

The locals, who have for years shared the field using a different set of rules, resisted, refusing to leave the pitch. Eventually, they offered to share the field and that seems to be what ultimately happened, but not before a lot of whining from the mostly white, presumably well-paid, tech workers.

There’s a lot of tension in the Bay Area between tech companies and longtime residents. Rents and eviction rates are skyrocketing as upwardly mobile professionals compete for housing with the general population.

Read More

A War of Black Urban Removal: The Siege of Detroit

 The “pause” in the draconian Detroit water shut-off is just a lull in “an escalating trajectory of systematically inflicted mass punishment and pain designed to make life in the city unbearable for a huge proportion of the population.” Wall Street has declared war against America’s “Chocolate Cities,” demanding “the shrinkage of Black urban populations as a prerequisite for full-scale investment.”




By Glen Ford, BAR

“This is a war against a Black city, and a blueprint for future aggressions aimed at shrinking ‘chocolate cities’ across the nation.”

Like the rapist who insists his victim “wanted it,” Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr claims city retirees were expressing “strong support for the city’s plan to adjust its debts” when they voted to accept a 4.5 percent cut in their meager pensions. Corporate media echoed the state appointee’s interpretation of the court-ordered ballot, in which about half the 32,000 eligible workers and retirees participated. In reality, Detroit’s pensioners were violated in broad daylight, stripped of retirement protections and forced to choose whether to die in poverty or an even more extreme destitution.

Earlier this year, as part of the Shock and Awe of state-imposed bankruptcy, Orr threatened to cut pensions by 26 percent, in defiance of Michigan state constitutional protections. He was backed by federal bankruptcy court judge Steven Rhodes, who has brushed aside every objection from lesser, non-corporate beings. Rather than risk the loss of one-quarter of an already meager $20,000 a year pension, 73 percent of retirees and workers accepted the lesser cut, plus an end to cost-of-living increases. This was not an election, but the cruelest coercion – a rape of the elderly, who were forced not only to acquiesce to their own further impoverishment, but to give up the right to challenge the process in court.

“The media are liars, pure and simple; co-conspirators in the corporate crime.”

Corporate media routinely ascribe such obscene assaults to “the city,” as in “the city’s plan to adjust its debts.” But the City of Detroit has no such plans; it has no power, and its citizens have no meaningful vote – except, of course, when given an ultimatum to endorse cuts to their own pensions. Detroit’s elected officials cannot pass laws, and collect a salary at the pleasure of dictator Kevyn Orr, who is answerable only to the ruling class, as directly represented by the Fortune 500 clients of the law firm that spawned him, Jones Day. (Orr’s nominal boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, answers to the same people.) The state-imposed emergency manager is authorized to usurp the powers of the city – to act as a dictator – but he is not the city in any but the most technical, legalistic sense. For Orr to refer to himself as “the city” is a sick hubris – a hustler lawyer invoking the royal “We”. However, when the media describe Orr’s decrees as actions by “the city” – knowing full well how Orr is despised in Detroit government and the city at large – they are liars, pure and simple; co-conspirators in the corporate crime.

The people of Detroit have no rights that corporations and their servants in government are bound to respect. Indeed, the emergency manager laws have been used to disenfranchise the residents of every largely Black city and school district in the state, encompassing more than half the Black population of Michigan. (The people of Michigan rejected the legislation in a referendum, but Republican lawmakers simply passed a near-identical measure, as if nothing had happened.)

The 82 percent Black metropolis is under siege, in the Medieval sense of the term. Just as ancient armies deprived towns under siege of food and water, to starve and thirst them into submission, so Kevin Orr has caused the Detroit Water and Sewage Department to cut off tens of thousands of residents, in an escalating trajectory of systematically inflicted mass punishment and pain designed to make life in the city unbearable for a huge proportion of the population.

This is a war against a Black city, and a blueprint for future aggressions aimed at shrinking “chocolate cities” across the nation. What Katrina accomplished through the sudden advent of flood, the corporate strategists in Michigan intend to achieve by emergency dictatorship, privatization and blatantly racist official barbarism.

“The 82 percent Black metropolis is under siege, in the Medieval sense of the term.”

Orr announced a 15-day “pause” in water cut-offs – similar to a temporary “truce” in siege warfare – as much to give cover to bankruptcy judge Rhodes who, while no less bestial than the managing dictator, seems more sensitive to public perceptions. United Nations experts condemned the shut-offs as constituting "a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights." Thousands demonstrated against the cut-offs in downtown Detroit, and others carried out direct actions, blocking the vehicles of disconnect crews. Two lawsuits have been filed to halt the water-torture. One, by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the Peoples Water Board, the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network, Moratorium Now, and a host of individuals, challenges Orr’s actions as a violation of residents’ constitutional and contractual rights. A class action suit, launched by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, says the cut-offs are racially motivated. The private companies that have been empowered to act for Detroit’s Water and Sewage Department “are basically Caucasian companies," said attorney Alice Jennings. "The folks who are being cut off are almost one hundred percent African-American."

And that is, of course, the whole point. The finance capitalists that run this country would like to disenfranchise the entire population so that money could exercise its exclusive “freedom of political speech” and action, unimpeded. In order to generate the least resistance, the model for urban corporate rule must be created in Black America, just as privatization of public education was modeled in the inner cities. White folks won’t care, and Black folks don’t matter – certainly, it doesn't matter to President Obama, who has signed off on the every element of the siege of Detroit (and has been far more effective than George Bush in privatizing the public schools, as well).

Most importantly, finance capital – Wall Street, the people who employ Kevyn Orr and his Jones Day law firm – demands the shrinkage of Black urban populations as a prerequisite for full-scale investment in the cities. Urban assets are devalued by the mere presence of large numbers of Black people, for the simple reason that most white people continue to refuse to share space with African Americans. Therefore, the “chocolate cities” must go, as a condition for urban “renaissance.” (See Black Agenda Radio, July 21, “Banksters Demand Black Removal as a Condition of Investment.”)

This is a fight against urban Black expulsion and deportation. If there is more than a whiff of the Third Reich in the connotation, it is absolutely appropriate.

___________________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Austerity in Detroit - Pt 4: “Operation Afro-Dilution” — Michigan’s Plan to Flood Detroit with Upscale Immigrants

Detroit Seal (Photo by AllieKF)

It is the general consensus among white people that Detroit’s problem is, too many Blacks. Michigan’s governor has a solution: flood the city with upscale green card holders. “An infusion of global migrants would enable Detroit’s corporate masters to market the metropolis as a ‘cosmopolitan’ urban cocktail, as opposed to the nation’s largest ‘Chocolate City.’”

By Glen Ford, BAR
An infusion of global migrants would enable Detroit’s corporate masters to market the metropolis as a “cosmopolitan” urban cocktail, as opposed to the nation’s largest “Chocolate City.” In the language of White-Speak, that’s definitely an upgrade, a boost in marketable assets, all around – which is what late-stage, finance-dominated capitalism is all about.

“The current Black concentration is far too thick to attract sufficient white families to effect a profound racial transformation in the near term.”

But, Gov. Synder is going to have to compete for his share of immigrant “pioneers” (as white American settlers in ghetto locales once described themselves). Other too-Black Midwestern cities, including Chicago, St. Louis and Dayton, Ohio, have the same idea, attaching a premium to immigrants of a certain type (educated, relatively affluent).

Back in the post-Civil War era of breakneck U.S. industrialization, European immigrants didn’t even have to speak English to rate a sign-on bonus, free transportation across the Atlantic and company-built housing near their new jobs in American cities. For others, there was free land, confiscated from newly dead Indians. English-speaking African Americans, many of whom had been artisans and industrial workers under slavery, were turned away from factory and homestead. Black folks’ assigned “place” was at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, wherever that happened to be at the time. Nothing has changed, in that regard – except that modern white society determinedly denies that segregation is its favored way of life. Where that not true, of course, Detroit would not be 82 percent Black.

Black folks know full well that Snyder’s immigration scheme is designed to dilute Black numbers and, eventually, make Detroit a more attractive place for native white habitation. But, in mixed company, politically conscious Blacks are careful not to appear jingoistic, like the other Ugly Americans. Rev. Charles Williams II of the National Action Network told the New York Times that “he believed Detroit, as well as other Midwestern states, should be pro-immigration. ‘However,’ he said, ‘I will say, on the other end of this, I think it’s a little ambitious for Governor Snyder to put together a plan to induce more population when still we have to work on double-digit unemployment and high poverty that’s already in our city right now.” That’s putting it mildly. Thirty-eight percent of Detroiters live below the poverty line, the vast majority of them Black.

“Other too-Black Midwestern cities, including Chicago, St. Louis and Dayton, Ohio, have the same idea.”

Changing U.S. population patterns dictate that Blacks strive for solidarity – or, at least, healthy political relations – with immigrant groups, especially Latinos. African Americans must resist being goaded into ethnic confrontations that profit only powerful corporations. However, Snyder and his ilk are attempting to use EB-2 immigrants – the bulk of whom are relatively privileged people from India, China, Mexico and the Philippines – as demographic weapons to break up African American population concentrations. In the process, they are implicitly defaming Blacks as the negative side of the human ledger – The Problem – and non-Blacks as The Solution. This is an assault that must be answered with full throated roar.

Snyder isn’t just preaching to white Americans, who are fully conversant in racially coded language; he is propagandizing the targeted immigrant populations, as well, telling them they are a better class of people than the current residents of Detroit. Snyder and his cohorts are essentially assigning the newcomers a racial mission: to bring their supposedly “superior” cultural attributes to uplift (and ultimately replace) an “inferior” Black social environment.

Now that western Europeans no longer view the U.S. as a Promised Land, the American mythologists must tailor the Founding Lies to a darker audience. Gov. Snyder updates the old Ellis Island story to fit the current influx from the global East and South. “Isn’t that how we made our country great, through immigrants?” said Mr. Snyder, hawking his plan for Detroit. No, that’s not how it happened. The United States was made rich by Black slaves, whose pre-Civil War value exceeded all other national “assets” except the land, itself – which was, of course, stolen from the Native Americans. The descendants of European immigrants, from the Mayflower to the 20th century’s vaunted Melting Pot, somehow imagine they are God’s gift to the continent – to the planet! – but their most important contributions to the enrichment of the New World were smallpox-infected blankets and chains.

“Snyder and his ilk are attempting to use EB-2 immigrants as demographic weapons to break up African American population concentrations.”

Corporate ethnic manipulators like Snyder want to indoctrinate a new crop of immigrants to the inherent inferiority of Black Americans, whose cities must be saved by culturally superior foreigners. This is how U.S. rulers prepare for the year 2043, when the U.S. is projected to become a majority-minority country – by inculcating the newcomers with the same racist worldview as the previous white overlords.

Gov. Snyder bragged that he could achieve ethnic cleansing on the cheap. "Here's a non-cash way to significantly accelerate the comeback of Detroit” – meaning, he has no intention of spending any money on the existing Detroit population. However, the week before, Snyder announced that he was asking the state legislature to provide $350 million to shore up the city’s retiree pension plan and save the art collection. Snyder and Republican lawmakers have long waged a starvation campaign against Detroit, depriving the city of revenue sharing and other funds in order to accelerate its fiscal collapse. Now that the local electorate has been disenfranchised (as has a majority of the state’s Black population), and total corporate dominion appears imminent, Snyder turns the money faucet back on. Should corporate plans sour (see Tom Stephens, “Judge Rhodes to Detroit: Don't Pay the Banksters,” in this issue of BAR), then the screws will be tightened.

If, by dint of sheer human will, or just the fact of not having anywhere to else go, Black folks can maintain a super-majority in Detroit, that will be a great victory. When someone is trying to kill you, to live is to triumph.

RELATED STORIES:

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 1: Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 2: Detroit and Iraq — Both Are Plundered by the Same Bandits
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 3: Detroit Residents Seek U.N. Intervention as City Shuts Off Water to Thousands

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 5: The Revolution Will Be Privatized — They're Bulldozing a Fifth of Detroit

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 6: The Bankruptcy "Setup" — It Didn't Have To Happen, It Was Rigged by a Cabal of Legislators, Bankers and Politicians

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

_______________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Google Lawyer Evicted Teachers From Their San Francisco Apartments — Protests Erupt

Screen capture from YouTube video.

By Karyne Levy and Kyle Russell
On Friday, Eviction Free San Francisco, tenant rights activists and other concerned citizens gathered in the Mission District in San Francisco to protest the recent evictions of several teachers from homes in the area.

Click here to go straight to photos of the protest

The protesters were directly targeting Jack Halprin, who is a part of Google's legal team. Eviction Free San Francisco says that he is evicting tenants from a building he moved into, including several so-called "Ellis Act evictions." The Ellis Act is a provision in California that enables landlords to evict tenants in order to "go out of business."

Earlier in the day, many of the same protesters blocked a Google bus in the Mission District.

Read More

NOW It's Personal: San Francisco Protesters Are Targeting Tech Execs Individually, By Name

Protesters in San Francisco target Google. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Jim Edwards
Jack Halprin. Kevin Rose. Greg Gopman. Peter Shih.

These names all have one thing in common. Protesters in San Francisco have picked them out personally, blaming them for the gentrification that is driving non-tech workers into less desirable neighborhoods.

They are all tech execs.

On Friday, Jack Halprin, a lawyer for Google, discovered a bunch of people waving banners outside an apartment building he owns, claiming he had evicted six tenants from the building under the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to kick people out if they want to sell or renovate the building.

Dozens of activists invaded his neighborhood [photos].

The week before, protesters showed up outside the house of Digg founder Kevin Rose, singling him out as "a meta-leech funding and profiting off the gentrification of San Francisco, [so] we chose to bring the class war to his doorstep on our own terms."

Read More

Rio's Favela Residents Fight Mega-Event Eviction

Gleaming plans for urban revitalization ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics include the not-so-shiny removal of thousands of families in lower-class communities.

By Flavie Halais
Thousands of favela residents are fighting eviction orders in Rio de Janeiro and other major Brazilian cities as the country prepares for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 summer Olympics. The Popular Committee for the World Cup and Olympics, a network of local advocacy groups, estimates that 170,000 Brazilians will have been affected by removals by the time the 2016 Olympics kick off, 30,000 in Rio alone. Residents and activists deem these evictions abusive and unnecessary, and plans for relocations have been criticized as vastly inadequate.

Favelas are “informal” communities that were founded over the 20th century by squatters in response to the lack of formal and affordable housing in the city. Most have since grown into densely-built neighborhoods with a vibrant social life, yet still suffer from a lack of infrastructure and public services, and have been ruled by ruthless drug gangs. In recent years, Rio's municipality has entered a process of infrastructure upgrading (with the Favela Bairro, then Morar Carioca programs) and security improvement (with a pacification program).

(Click image to enlarge)
Map of areas of development in Rio. Felipe Menegaz.

This map shows the main areas of planned urban development surrounding the construction of World Cup and Olympic infrastructure. Construction of the Bus Rapid Transit lines on existing highways connecting these areas with each other have already led to the removal of several communities. Elsewhere, other evictions are being conducted to make way for construction of mega-events facilities and legacy projects.

(Photos by Flavie Halais unless stated.)

Vila Autódromo. Catalytic Communities.

Vila Autódromo, a peaceful community located on the shore of the Jacarepaguá lagoon in West Rio, is fighting plans that would see its 4,000 residents evicted and the land incorporated into the future Olympic park next door. Vila Autódromo is the only community officially targeted by the municipality for construction of mega-event facilities. Original development plans submitted to the city by British firm AECOM, in charge of the park's construction, clearly show the favela was initially intended to be spared – the decision to swipe it off the map is that of the municipality.

Vila Autódromo was established in the 1960s by a group a fishermen living off the lagoon. Since then, in spite of a lack of infrastructure (roads are unpaved, and sewers flow into the lagoon), the small favela has grown into a lower middle-class community. Residents have been joined in their fight against eviction by professors from the urban planning department of the Federal University of Rio, who have drafted a formal urbanization plan for the favela, which would integrate the neighbourhood into the city. Urbanization, they say, would cost less than relocating residents and destroying their homes.

The small Vila do Metrô is located in the vicinity of the legendary Maracanã stadium, which will be used for World Cup games and Olympic ceremonies and events. The stadium is currently undergoing renovations that include a new parking space slated to be built where the Vila do Metrô now stands. All residents have been asked to leave, under the pretense that living conditions are unsanitary.

Evictions hold a particular significance in Rio's favelas, where most residents have built their houses themselves over decades. Many families came to Rio from poorer parts of Brazil like the Northeast, in search of a better life. Their houses stand as the symbol of their achievements.

Many remember the brutal removal campaigns led by the city in the 1960's and 1970's, which saw entire communities being forcibly relocated to large housing projects like the infamous City of God, and left a deep scar on favela communities.

The writing on the wall:“Buildings in Mangueira [Metrô is part of the larger
Mangueira favela] weren't given as favors. They are conquests of our fight”.
Flavie Halais

Relocation options put into place by the city for all displaced communities include financial compensation, help to buy new property, or subsidized rents. Residents, however, have complained that the amounts offered are not sufficient to allow them to move nearby, as Rio is under the grip of a highly inflated real estate market.

Another option offered to residents, has been relocation into housing projects as part of the Minha Casa, Minha Vida housing program. Under the scheme, 107 families from Metrô have been moved to Cosmos, a neighborhood located 37 miles away in the city's periphery, and ruled by a violent militia. Indeed, many Minha Casa, Minha Vida projects have been criticized for being located far away, in dangerous areas, and having been poorly built.

Favela do Metrô 2. Flavie Halais

Not all residents in Metrô accepted the city's compensation package. Those who choose to stay are left facing the city's ruthless eviction tactics: city workers come and partially destroy empty houses, letting the rubble and litter accumulate. Living conditions become quickly unbearable as dirt attracts disease-carrying rats, dogs and insects.

Favela do Metrô 3. Flavie Halais

The letters SMH, spray-painted on houses slated for demolition all over Rio, stand for Secretaria Municipal da Habitação, the department of housing in charge of all eviction programs, including Morar Carioca and Minha Casa, Minha Vida. The acronym has been turned into a bitter joke by locals, who now refer to SMH as “Saia do Morro Hoje”, or “Leave the Hill Today”, as many favelas in Rio are located on hills.

Providência is Rio de Janeiro's oldest favela, at 115 years old. This hillside community is located in the old port area of the city. The neighborhood had fallen into disrepair after the port lost its spot as Rio's economic heart, but is now slated for massive redevelopment as part of the Olympic legacy.

Plans made by the city for Providência's 'infrastructure upgrade' include a new cable car line connecting the hill to Rio's central station and Samba City, where floats are stored ahead of Carnaval, and the eviction of 671 families (4889 residents). Many of these families have complained they haven't been consulted about the project or warned of upcoming evictions, which the city denies. The cable car line, residents say, was definitely not a priority for the community and will mostly serve tourists. The community has lost its only area of leisure, a centrally-located square, to construction work.

Estradinha 1. Flavie Halais

Other, lesser-known cases of evictions are being conducted elsewhere in the city. This is the neighborhood of Estradinha, located at the very far end of the Tabajaras favela, a short walk away from the famous Ipanema neighborhood. Like many hillside communities, Estradinha has suffered from landslides caused by torrential rainfalls that occur each summer in the region. In 2010, a particularly violent rainfall season caused the death of 256 people. While this event prompted city hall to act on infrastructure reinforcement, it also led to many cases of evictions in the name of environmental risk, some of them violent. All 355 families residing in Estradinha were told to leave after the municipality assessed the land as being at risk, and 255 have done so already.

In this photo, a resident stands in front of a local bar, which once served as a focal point for community activities. In the background, the favela gives a stunning view onto the trendy Botafogo neighbourhood. Estradinha's location on prime land leaves some residents to believe the site will be sold to developers once the community has left.

Estradinha 2. Flavie Halais

In Estradinha, the city-government deployed their usual persuasion tactics – partly destroying empty houses and letting the neighborhood slowly fall into disrepair. Here, destroyed houses have threatened others above to collapse, as the constructions support each other on the steep hill.

Residents hired the services of an independent geologist, whose report clearly denies that the land is at risk of landslides.

“No to evictions”. Flavie Halais

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Spike Lee Unleashes Fiery Rant On Gentrification In New York - Listen To The Entire Rant For Yourself

RELATED STORY: Rebellion Brewing Against Elitist Tech Corps in San Francisco—Guerrilla Protest Swells Into Revolt

Angry Billionaire Compares 'Occupy Wall Street' and Rebellion Against Income Equality and the 1% to the Rise of the Nazis

Tom Perkins (left) compares "Occupy Wall Street" with the Nazis: That's exactly the kind of "big lie"
propaganda Germany's murderous Nazis were known for. (Photo by TechCrunch)

By Caroline Bankoff
Does San Francisco's backlash against its wealthy tech workers bear any resemblance to Nazi Germany? Influential rich guy Tom Perkins thinks so! In a letter to The Wall Street Journal titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" published on Saturday, Perkins, a billionaire who founded venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, writes, "I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'"

After citing the Occupy movement, San Franciscans' anger over Google buses and rising real-estate prices, and the San Francisco Chronicle's "libelous and cruel attacks" on his his ex-wife, romance author Danielle Steel, as evidence of "a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent," Perkins (who once wrotes some sexy fiction of his own) concludes, "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"
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