Tells the Facts and Names the Names CounterPunch May 16-31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair VOL. 14, NO. 10 The Democrats A Day in the Life and Death of Motown Collapse Again BY GEORGE CORSETTI Whatever Happened to Detroit. Seems the police were chasing suspected woke up about 3 a.m. to the sound carjackers and crashed. The suspects’ the Anti-war Movement? of automatic weapons fire. Three or hijacked car, also smashed, sits near the I four bursts, maybe a couple of dozen median. The police found guns in the car BY ALEXANDER COCKBURN shots in all. It’s hard to tell where it came and believe the passengers were part of from – somewhere here, on the east side. a neighborhood gang. There must be 20 merica right now is “anti-war”, in We have a lot of pheasants, nesting where cop cars here, and you can see the police the sense that about two-thirds of houses once stood only a short distance are edgy as the crowd of onlookers gets the people think the war in Iraq from downtown. But this was probably larger. Ais a bad business and the troops should an irate homeowner chasing a would-be As I get back in my car and drive a come home. Anti-war sentiment was a burglar or a drug deal gone bad. The sound few blocks home, I pass a lot of “for sale” major factor in the success of the Demo- of gunfire is common in Detroit – a little signs – lots of sellers, not many takers. crats in last November’s elections, when worse on weekends perhaps – so I roll There are also quite a few boarded up they recaptured Congress. The irony is over and try to get back to sleep. houses and houses that have no signs and that this sharp disillusion of the voters Daylight comes, and I get on the look like they might be occupied. But with America’s occupation of Iraq owes computer trying to catch up with a world they have high weeds in front instead of almost nothing to any anti-war move- that’s already in progress. Seems De- grass and on second glance it’s apparent ment. To say the anti-war movement is troit bus drivers are on strike, stranding the people just walked away from these dead would be an overstatement. But in some 120,000 riders. The bus drivers are houses. Detroit has the highest foreclosure comparison to kindred movements in the complaining about the lack of security rate among metropolitan areas – five times 1960s and early 1970s, or to the struggles - too many assaults on the city’s rickety the national average. Sub prime lending against Reagan’s wars in Central America substitute for mass transit and they want was rampant here a few years ago, and a in the late 1980s, it is certainly inert. cops riding on the buses. If you don’t have lot of people were living off home equity Of course, back in the Vietnam era a car in this city, you’re screwed. You loans, not to mention high-interest credit America had the draft. The imminent can wait for hours for buses that never cards. Those days are mostly gone, but possibility that one might be compulso- come and when they do, they’re filled the economic devastation they wrought rily drafted into the Army or the Marines with angry people. Detroit has the highest is only now becoming apparent. and find oneself in the Mekong Delta in unemployment rate in Michigan, a state Back on the computer in late afternoon six months concentrated the minds of with the country’s highest unemployment I read about the Democrats caving in to middle-class 18-year-olds on the horrors rate. Summer is coming with kids out of Bush and how the appropriations bill of war with marvelous speed, just as it school and on the streets. There are no won’t include a withdrawal timeline. The concentrated the minds of their parents. jobs for adults, let alone kids. The police war goes on. I’m still pissed that my “lib- Today there is no draft. It’s true that many have taken to arresting parents who can’t eral” senator, Carl Levin, voted against of the soldiers deployed in Iraq have been or won’t rein in their delinquent children. setting a timeline in the last bill. But he compelled to serve double tours of duty; Police stage perp walks for the media, must be a little worried with the election that others have been people facing crimi- with handcuffed parents being led off coming up because I see puff pieces in nal conviction and offered the option of to court – a desperate attempt to send a the local papers talking about how he led prison or enlistment in the army; that oth- message to other parents. the fight against the war and how some ers again are illegal immigrants offered a Coming back from downtown, I see so-called Washington anti-war group still green card or U.S. citizenship in exchange the TV news helicopters circling like loves him, even while the Michigan chap- for service in Iraq. But every member of buzzards over my neighborhood. As I ter of Military Families Speak Out holds the U.S. military in Iraq or Afghanistan get closer, I see people out on the street another demonstration at Levin’s office. is a volunteer – at least in the technical heading for the intersection ahead where Makes me wonder about his leadership (Cockburn continued on page 2) a police car is smashed and partly burned. qualities and whether he took a dive in 2/COUNTERPUNCH (Cockburn continued from page 1) Party that challenged Truman from the left (Corsetti continued from page 1) sense. in l948. A slightly younger cohort learned Summer is coming In the near future no U.S. administra- its organizing in the years of the Ko- tion will take the political risk of trying to rean War and the rise of the Civil Rights with kids out of school bring back the draft, even though lack of Movement. Old labor organizers rubbed manpower is now a very serious problem shoulders with Quakers and Unitarians. and on the streets. for the Pentagon. By the same token, the Then there’s the Vietnam generation, There are no jobs for absence of the draft is certainly a major many of them in their mid-60s now. More factor in the weakness of the anti-war than once, in the South, I’ve found that adults, let alone kids. movement. But though there was no draft the still-active sparks are former Maoists who deployed to places like Birmingham, his “fight” against the war. Sometimes in the Reagan years, there was certainly I think he worries about Israel too much a very vital peace movement opposing Alabama, as their revolutionary duty and who took root as civil rights attorneys or and Michigan too little. Reagan’s efforts to destroy the Sandinista And as evening sets in after a scorch- revolution in Nicaragua and to crush the public defenders or labor organizers. There are hundreds of overlapping ingly hot day in Detroit, I’m sitting out on revolutionary insurgency in El Salvador. a friend’s back porch sipping red wine and I remember well criss-crossing Amer- “lefts” in America, mustered in their sepa- rate struggles – for immigrants’ rights, for talking about Middle East politics and the ica in those years, giving anti-intervention endless war in Iraq when my brain slips speeches on campuses, in churches and public control of energy, against military recruitment. There are the anarchists, the a gear. And I vividly remember driving labor halls in scores of towns in pretty around Detroit in 1967 and seeing the much every state in the union. Almost ev- Trotskyite groups. And when a war comes along, as it does with great regularity in 82nd airborne patrolling the streets of the ery American town in every decade has its city. Their fatigues were a faded green, dissident community. At any rally you can America, they coalesce into an anti-war movement. They certainly did in the late bleached from the sun in that other end- see the historical strata in human contour. less war in Vietnam. Detroit has a lot less Up until a decade ago there would be 1980s. The other day I found in a box of old papers in my garage a directory to population now than it did in 1967. We’ve the old Communists, maybe veterans of slipped to 11th, as capital and population the Lincoln Brigade that volunteered to “sister-cities” – towns in the U.S.A. that had “paired” with beleaguered cities in follows profits. And the city is about 85 per fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil cent African American with all executive, War. Into the late 1980s, these old fellows Nicaragua, exchanging regular delega- tions. The directory was as thick as a me- legislative and judicial posts overwhelm- were often the best organizers. Then there ingly black. But racism persists, and the would be anti-war activists like the late dium-sized telephone book. There were hundreds of such pairings. mostly white state legislature views the Dave Dellinger, who went to federal pris- problems of Detroit as self-inflicted. It on as a pacifist in World War Two. There There was just such a coalescing in the demonstrations against the WTO in doesn’t help that the state is on the verge were people who came of age politically of bankruptcy with state employees tak- with Henry Wallace and the Progressive the late 1990s, particularly in the actions in Seattle.