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<font size=3>From: Grace Boggs <glbg@sbcglobal.net><br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times, Times" size=3>LIVING FOR CHANGE <br>
Detroit 1967: Riot or Rebellion? <br>
By Grace Lee Boggs <br>
Michigan Citizen, April 8-14, 2007 <br><br>
What should we call those tumultuous days in the summer of 1967
which began on July 20 with a raid by Detroit police on a
“blind pig” at Clairmont and 12th St. (now Rosa Parks Blvd.) and
ended a week later, with more than 1,000 buildings burned to the ground,
7000 arrests, 43 people killed and 1189 wounded, mostly
shot by police and National Guardsmen for alleged looting, sniping, and
curfew violations?</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times, Times" size=3>As we approach the 40th
anniversary of that watershed week, everyone who cares about the
future of Detroit and other American cities needs to wrestle with this
question. <br>
<br>
It is not only a matter of terminology. What we call that week in
July reflects how willing we are to accept the challenge to build a
Detroit which is safe and sustainable because it is founded on the
conviction that human values of justice and community are more important
than material and economic growth. <br><br>
When hundreds of Detroiters on that steamy Saturday night
confronted the police with violence rather than
compliance, the police, understandably, viewed them as lawbreakers,
rioters. <br><br>
On the other hand, for most black Detroiters, and for everyone caring
about justice, there was something righteous in the response
of the crowd. It was a protest against the
overwhelmingly white police force that, like an occupation army, had been
routinely stopping blacks just walking down the street. It was a
standing up against the injustice that few if any black faces were among
those running the city, although blacks were becoming a majority as
whites fled to the suburbs. It was a plea by black youth not
to be turned into outsiders by HiTech, to be recognized, not
criminalized. So, for most Detroiters, it was an uprising, a
“rebellion.” <br><br>
But the media didn’t ask the people what they thought. Getting its
views from the police, it labeled the confrontation a “riot”
- and has continued to do so, despite the fact that the Kerner
Commission, created by President Johnson to analyze the roots of
urban unrest, criticized the media for its failure “to report adequately
on the causes and consequences of civil disorders and the underlying
problems of race relations.” <br>
</font><font face="Times, Times" size=3 color="#0000DD"><x-tab>
</x-tab><br>
</font><font face="Times, Times" size=3>The rebellion in Detroit was one
of more than a hundred urban explosions, beginning with the 1965
Watts uprising, in which inner city youth not only
demonstrated their anger against racism but demanded that society
stop viewing them only as cogs, to be used and disused, employed and
unemployed according to the needs of the economic system. <br><br>
The rebellions brought blacks to political power in many cities and state
legislatures because they warned the Establishment that white political
power could no longer maintain law and order. <br><br>
However, for the last 40 years, these blacks, enjoying political power
and upward mobility, have been unwilling or unable to address
the fears of inner city youth that an increasingly technological and
global economy has made them expendable. <br><br>
Hence school dropouts, a drug economy, crime and incarceration have
escalated, driving millions, including blacks, to the suburbs – but also
challenging everyone who cares about the city and these young people to
create another Detroit that includes a productive role for them.
<br><br>
To meet this challenge, as Jimmy and I pointed out in Revolution and
Evolution in the 20th Century (Monthly Review Press, 1974) requires going
beyond Rebellion (or protest) to Revolution or accepting our
responsibility for creating a more just and more caring society.
<br><br>
Although we didn’t know it at the time, Martin Luther King Jr.,
having taken seriously the cries of black ghetto youth, had reached
a similar conclusion. We need a radical revolution of values,
he said, not only against racism but against materialism and militarism.
Instead of pursuing economic growth which robs people of participation,
we need to expand our uniquely human capacity to care for one
another. In “our dying cities” we need direct action projects
that enable our young people to transform themselves and their
environment at the same time. <br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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