The Detroit bankruptcy and the assault on democratic rights

[Octafish]

9. On Vultures and Red Wings: Billionaire Gets New Sports Arena in Bankrupt Detroit

Dave Zirin
The Nation, July 29, 2013

The headline juxtaposition boggles the mind. You have, on one day, “Detroit Files Largest Municipal Bankruptcy in History.” Then on the next, you have “Detroit Plans to Pay For New Red Wings Hockey Arena Despite Bankruptcy.”

Yes, the very week Michigan Governor Rick Snyder granted a state-appointed emergency manager’s request to declare the Motor City bankrupt, the Tea Party governor gave a big thumbs-up to a plan for a new $650 million Detroit Red Wings hockey arena. Almost half of that $650 million will be paid with public funds.

This is actually happening. City services are being cut to the bone. Fighting fires, emergency medical care and trash collection are now precarious operations. Retired municipal workers will have their $19,000 in annual pensions dramatically slashed. Even the artwork in the city art museum will be sold off piece by piece. This will include a mural by the great radical artist Diego Rivera that’s a celebration of what the auto industry would look like in a socialist future. As Stephen Colbert said, the leading bidder will be “the museum of irony.”

They don’t have money to keep the art on the walls. [font color="red"]They do have $283 million to subsidize a new arena for Red Wings owner and founder of America’s worst pizza-pizza chain, Little Caesar’s, Mike Ilitch, whose family is worth $2.7 billion dollars. (“Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Lend me your pensions!”)[/font color]

SNIP...

There is a right-wing narrative about Detroit that the city is in peril because of some combination of the 1967 “race riots” and greedy unions. The reality is that black and brown residents of Detroit made Motown and those “greedy unions” built a stable working class that could realistically dream of a better life for their own children. The breaking of Detroit should be seen, in the words of David Sirota, as an indictment of right wing economic orthodoxy. Instead, the bankruptcy has been used as a warning to other cities that unions, pensions and a culture of resistance are roads to ruin.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/blog/175467/vultures-and-red-wings-billionaire-gets-new-sports-arena-bankrupt-detroit#axzz2avgCW0Gd

PS: Thanks for grokking, Catherina. I Why so few DUers, of all people, seem to give a damn is a real mystery to me.