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BLOGS
Links: local area political directory
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NOTES
ON THE "COMMUNITY FORUM"
AT WHITTIER MANOR by Robert Wicke Last Spring, the Bing administration came up with a plan to consolidate Detroit neighborhoods, in the context of cutting back city services The rationalization for this centered around some 40 square miles said to be vacant land. Thus any comparison of the population density of Detroit with either the suburbs or other American cities was simply tossed aside, despite Detroit's density actually being higher in some cases and not far off in others.. The plan was aptly characterized by many citizens as being "people removal," or "displacement" and met with considerable resistance. This past August, it was replaced by a "new" plan, at first called the "Detroit Strategic Framework Plan", later re- named the "Detroit Works Project." The first stage of that was a series of what were at first referred to as "City-wide meetings", and finally "community forums". Five of them were scheduled. I attended the third at Whittier Manor. This is about my experience at that meeting, which occurred Saturday morning, Sept. 18. We seem to make just enough noise to inspire more attention to public relations on the part of the Bing administration. The first few minutes of today's meeting didn't disappoint on that score. They did everything they could think of to get the audience in a "positive frame of mind" before the question period. From a little light humor about people being out late the night before and how 10:30 AM was kind of early, a few chants "Detroit works!" No, louder and louder yet. (associate no manner how fleetingly opposition to the Bing administration with opposition to Detroit) This was followed by a brief performance to make people think of themselves as a (passive) audience, followed by a standing ovation for Bing, if you please. Splitting up the audience into two breakout groups, to cut into any unity that might develop. An MC that talked at least half again as fast as normal speech. Usually that rate is around 130 words/minute; she was doing 200 most of the time. I guess that was supposed to make sure nobody had much of a chance to think about anything she said, even afterwards, as who could write that fast anyway? Back up a moment to Bing's speech, one of the main points being denial that there already is a plan, said to justify the charade of these forums, which they hope will have the appearance of democratization. Of course, there already is a plan. It's the same plan that was brought forth last spring, but this time with window dressing of a "democratic" process and persuasion of people to move, rather than forcing them to do so. This is evident from the FAQ they put out. The answer to question 9 assures the reader than nobody will be forced to relocate, but it is followed by question 10, the answer to which says that it is unknown at this point what will happen to the neighborhood the reader lives in. I guess if the other neighbors are persuaded to move, it might not be contradictory. It certainly seems pretty contradictory, though. Detroit is one of the last, if not the last, of major American cities to make major steps to complete the gentrification process. The plan in both of its supposedly different versions is still displacement, only with persuasion (a firmer PR basis) in the current version. At the meeting, there was talk of enticing people from the "burbs" back into Detroit and an examination of the type of infrastructure, housing, etc. that the new residents would need to find here in order to decide to do that. I don't recall them talking about ramping up the strip malls along the main thoroughfares directly, but that seemed to me to be at least inferred. In fact, I'm not sure what was different, other than more consciousness of Public Relations. If they had the same plan six months ago, does it take 12-18 months to come up with an apparently gentler version of it? It does, if you need to sugar coat it with a democratic charade. I had a chance at several minutes of speech. I just said that actually this "vacant" land is an opportunity to move towards a solution of the important problem of food security, together with making nutritious and safe food more available. The woman holding the mic kept bobbing her head up and down so much I forgot to include more than half of what I intended to say. :-) Given another opportunity, I will make sure to bring out the passage of a food security policy by the Detroit city council more than two and a half years ago, on 3/18/08, and that we now have an enlarged opportunity to move towards making that a reality. |