Joe Striplin was born and grew up in Detroit, and experienced firsthand the transformation of the city from the automotive capital of the world— with one of the finest public educational systems in the US, offering students a wide range of opportunities, including well-funded art and music programs— into the poorest major urban center in America, its schools, workplaces and neighborhoods ravaged by poverty and neglect.
Striplin explained, “Detroit was a first-class city at the time (when he was young in the 50s), a world-class city, the fifth largest in the country. My earliest recollections were of the old Detroit, the bustling, prosperous city that it was...
“I started classical music instruction rather late; in my last year of junior high.
At that time, not only every high school had its own orchestra, but every junior high school.“Then I went to Cass Technical High School, which was a fine institution in 1956. This was before the massive exodus from the city to the suburbs. You had all kinds of resources available in terms of people and money. Our orchestra was fantastic. Even before I became a member I heard concerts the orchestra played and I was very inspired by them....
"Cass Tech was integrated, it was about 30 percent black and 70 percent various ethnic groups and everyone got along. This was when the civil rights movement was just getting going. This pre-dated some of the things that divided the North later: busing, affirmative action, George Wallace.
“I felt I was very lucky to be in Detroit at that time. I came along when the public school system was excellent, when there was genuine racial and ethnic diversity and therefore more resources in school, intellectually, financially and in every way you can think of.
“Even as a teenager I could tell that the situation for me was right. The issue of blacks being denied entry into the professions was being discussed. If I had come along 20 years before I wouldn’t have had a shot at it. If I had come along some decades later, Cass Tech and the public schools wouldn’t have been what they had been and I wouldn’t have gotten the necessary boost...
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Joe spoke about the July 1967 Detroit riot, which lasted for five days and led to the National Guard and the army being called in to quell the violent upheaval.
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“My experience,” he said, “was that it was not a race riot— it was a property riot. There were some white looters too, even though most were black. But as you are aware it was a turning point in Detroit history and some really powerful people got mad at Detroit’s population and decided to punish it.
And it hasn’t stopped yet. Even the Detroit Symphony, even though we don’t look like most of the population ... we’re not poor, there are only three of us who are black ... it is still the same idea. ‘We are going to get Detroit.’”
On the strike:
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"It takes a certain amount of preparation time to get that season organized, executing it and there are some extra duties. And all this comes together to form your musical life.
“It sounds a lot like what they are asking for in this contract, but there are some big differences. We still play the full orchestral season and do these things, whereas what management wants to do is to take away some of the concerts we do and replace it with these activities. That is the big difference.
"It is based on a fraudulent assumption— the symphony orchestra is dead, long live the so-called community of musicians: the idea that the regular classical music concert for the public has to be reduced and replaced with non-orchestral performing aspects.
“There is a lack of love for classical music (on the part of management). And then there is a class war, anti-working class aspect, and in the present situation we have these two elements together...
“We see that it is a broader struggle, not just the symphony. It is yet another part of the offensive against the working class and middle class.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/stri-d14.shtml
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