Dr. Lester K. Spence

Adrienne Brown is hot like fire.

- We need ongoing supported focus on police brutality and accountability, even as we develop our own peace zones. It’s no longer sufficient to get furious when a civilian is killed by police, and maintain that fury until the officers are acquitted or resign. For the past 10 years it has been nearly impossible to get sustained support for this kind of work from the foundation world, so as organizers we have to sustain this work in other more community-based ways. I definitely want to shout out The Gathering, who have picked up this unpopular issue as it relates to juvenile justice, with the commitment of Harry Belafonte – they are joining the Oakland community for actions next week. I have also heard that Uhuru will be hosting a meeting tomorrow evening to discuss accountability and healing.

- we need to express our gratitude to groups like Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY), who identified the gaping hole that exists in the non-profit and organizing community of Oakland in terms of police accountability work. CJNY stepped up in a major way for today’s nonviolent action, but they can’t maintain this effort on their own. Bay Area groups who focus their work on young people of color, this political moment needs you.

- And I know I am biased by the perspective of working at The Ruckus Society, but we need to engage in the deep training and skill development around pulling off large scale strategic direct actions. There are ways to pull together mass actions in a short time period that gain media, build the power of our positions, and help the community to see and understand the situation and how they can get involved.

More here. And here.

Over at ta-nahesi’s spot a group of folks have been questioning why black people don’t rail against black on black crime as much as they do against police crime. 

Maybe a year and some months ago, the then-outgoing Philadelphia Chief of Police asked that the organization 100 Black Men begin to police Philly streets, after a particularly vicious crime streak that left dozens of black youth murdered. The men were not to be paid, not to be armed, and only trained moderately. Some men jumped at the chance–black anti-crime rallies are the norm in black neighborhoods. This was my response. In a nutshell why should we put our lives on the line to do a job we pay taxes for, a service that we implicitly sign the social contract for?

I’ve got it–because in our case, the rights we have are not rights at all, but privileges that are given to us when we act right.

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Important tidbits in a growing story:

•  College endowments drop like a rock.
• In earlier news, NPR decides to drop News and Notes.
• Newspapers like the Detroit Free Press go virtual, while other newspapers won’t survive 2009.
• Book publishers have slashed their budgets. 

Now this may sound like a doom and gloom story. But it isn’t…necessarily. I choose these stories because they point to the growing reality that “cultural creatives” (writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, journalists) like the institutions that sponsor them may need to rethink the way they work. With colleges and universities losing their endowments more and more graduate students will need to go outside of the academy for work. People on the tenure track will be placed in a much more tenuous position–assuming that tenure continues to exist. If the days of big advances are gone, then writers are going to have to figure out some other way to make ends meet.

And unlike the New Deal, when FDR created programs for artists…I’m not sure Obama has anything like this coming.

There are a whole set of conversations about the future of publishing, the future of the academy, the future of the music business. Black intellectuals haven’t been significant voices here.

We should be…because our futures are on the line as well, even as our future IS online. For me what I’ve had to realize over the past year is that the model with which we train graduate students, the model we pursue as assistant, associate, full professors, no longer works. And will NOT work. We need to be much more supple, much more entrepreneurial, and much more fluid in the types of questions we ask, the types of projects we undertake, the types of venues we pursue them in.

As an aside by the time you read this I should be on the road to Detroit, for a combination of pleasure (family), and business (collecting data for my next book project).

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Historians (rightly) rap Obama, arguing his stimulus package is weak.

As students of American history, we are heartened by your commitment to a jobs stimulus program inspired by the New Deal and aimed at helping “Main Street.” We firmly believe that such a strategy not only helps the greatest number in our communities but goes a long way toward correcting longstanding national problems.

For all our admiration of FDR’s reform efforts, we must also point out that the New Deal’s jobs initiative was overwhelmingly directed toward skilled male and mainly white workers. This was a mistake in the 1930s, and it would be a far greater mistake in the 21st century economy, when so many families depend on women’s wages and when our nation is even more racially diverse.

We all know that our country’s infrastructure is literally rusting away. But our social infrastructure is equally important to a vibrant economy and livable society, and it too is crumbling. Investment in education and jobs in health and care work shore up our national welfare as well as our current and future productivity. Revitalizing the economy will require better and more widespread access to education to foster creative approaches and popular participation in responding to the many challenges we face. 

More here. I haven’t chimed in on the Rick Warren deal, but taken in sum I’m reminded of something I first heard from my wife. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. But instead of sitting on the sidelines, do something. 

Again, thanks go to Buster.

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Check out the following press release from Good Jobs First:

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Detroit is the modern city. What we think of when we think of the modern urban condition (from relying on automobiles and freeways to drive, from using cities to house labor for factories, to stereotypes of crime and urban dysfunction) all happened in Detroit first. So goes Detroit, so goes urban America (and arguably the urban West/North). 

With that said, two stories of interest.

Detroit as a city was built for over 2 million people. Now less than 900,000 live within her borders. Over 30% of her land is unused. No wonder coyotes have been spotted roaming the city. Take a look at how Detroit compares to other major cities. Manhattan has 1.6 times as many residents in less than half of the space. Now we can look at this through the neoliberal lens and talk about waste and inefficiency…in fact this is the normal urban narrative right? Detroit is empty because it is dangerous, corrupt even. And with the economy the way it is, Detroiters able to actually sell their house at a profit, or at least at a mild loss, would do best to actually pick up stakes and leave.

I understand this viewpoint, but don’t take it myself. In fact I think it represents an opportunity to think about the city, and about cities in new and vibrant ways.

If you potentially had 89 square miles of empty land to use to serve the needs of the Detroit population, what would you use it for? What could you use it for?

…….

The second story?

The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News have decided to go virtual. They will publish everyday but only deliver to homes on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Further they will devote much more of their resources to delivering news through their webpages. Hits on their webpage hover around 4 million per day, while their newspaper readership has declined. Their profits are still decent, but the costs of printing are becoming prohibitive. 

This is another cost-cutting measure that hamstrings a whole set of workers. Not only are paperboys/girls out of luck, but also out of luck are the distributors they work for. And then there are the craftsmen and women who work the printing machines. 

On the other hand though this theoretically leads to more innovative ways to deliver news. I shot some video over the holidays in Detroit with the thought of making a mini-documentary of sorts, and was approached about possibly letting the Free Press use some of it. 

Detroit as we know it is dead. But rather than performing an autopsy, we should await the new birth. What does the spirit of the twentieth century come back as?

The spirit of the twenty-first.

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GM doesn’t have enough money to go through the year. Chrysler is for all intents and purposes a dead man walking. Ford has enough, but if the other two go out, then who knows?

In following the talk about the bailout I hear a lot more resentment in this case than I did with the financiers. Even though they’re asking for far less money. Now part of this is because folks are rightly feeling they got fleeced with the financier bailout. So perhaps if GM got to Congress first we’d be talking about financier failure.

But I don’t think so.

People “know” much more about making cars than they do about making financial “products” (placed in quotes because this is a linguistic wave of hands…exotic mortgages aren’t “products” they are SERVICES). So when Paulson says he wants money without strings and without oversight, on some level people think that there is a level of knowledge required to handle the financial industry that they (and most they know) simply do not have. 

The auto industry on the other hand? Everyone “knows” how cars are made and how the line works.

And with this “knowledge” comes resentment of unionized blue-collar workers who are protected from competition even though they are lazy and shiftless. Working 1 real hour for every 8 they put in. And making more money because of the union than the market can carry. When the GOP seizes this opportunity to in effect gut the UAW, people are with it.

Let the market work.

Make the workers compete for their value.

Bring their salaries down.

This knowledge is intimate. Everyone knows someone who works for the auto industry. And we’ve all pretty much had the assembly line ethos poured into our heads for the last fifty years. But this knowledge is deeply tainted. Looking at the current situation salaries have already been cut. Union workers are taking buyouts and are then replaced by workers who are paid less and don’t have benefits. The foreign automakers have significant state subsidies that pad their profits significantly. Now this last component is important, because the automotive companies could’ve had the same deal had they pushed for national health insurance. In fact if they pushed for it NOW they wouldn’t be in the straits they are.

(On top of that, speaking as someone with blue-collar experience, those jobs are some of the hardest in the country.)

Our intimate “knowledge” here leads us to a set of naturally regressive conclusions. In effect GM is being treated like welfare recipients are treated. And I have to admit I was happy that the auto execs were raked over the coals for flying (in separate jets no less) into D.C. But just like folks “knowledge” about welfare and poverty, our “knowledge” about the auto industry is tainted. The end result is that our attitudes about the automotive industry are driven by some of the same regressive forces that drive our attitudes about welfare.

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DETROIT — The Sunday service at Greater Grace Temple began with the Clark Sisters song “I’m Looking for a Miracle” and included a reading of this verse from the Book of Romans: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Pentecostal Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, who shared the sanctuary’s wide altar with three gleaming sport utility vehicles, closed his sermon by leading the choir and congregants in a boisterous rendition of the gospel singer Myrna Summers’s “We’re Gonna Make It” as hundreds of worshipers who work in the automotive industry — union assemblers, executives, car salesmen — gathered six deep around the altar to have their foreheads anointed with consecrated oil.

While Congress debated aid to the foundering Detroit automakers Sunday, many here whose future hinges on the decision turned to prayer.

When those of us on the left talk about capital as if it were one entity we miss the fact that corporate interests differ, as does their access to the government. The fact that Congress first thought about not bailing out the auto industry, only to (apparently) decided to bailout GM and Chrysler (as well as Ford to a lesser extent) with significant strings should put that idea to rest. The financial industry and the auto industry are two very different beasts, as exhibited by the pleas of the Detroit faithful.

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In discussing whether the auto industry deserves a bailout, we talked about the role of the auto industry in creating the middle class. The work protections that we have, the work week that we have, the benefits we have, all come from the “massification” of work and labor organizing. 

As one of my commenters noted “As GM goes, so goes America.”

But what we didn’t talk about the relationship between the automobile and our very conception of the city itself. The conception of urban and suburban space, the development of the freeways we use to drive to work and back, all come from our affair with the car. The ideas we have about whiteness and non-whiteness and the modern mode of segregation that most afflicts blacks are not possible without the widespread use of the automobile. 

The discussions about the Big Three have revolved around whether to save them or not. If we do save them, how will we force them to restructure. But what is perhaps as important is what we want our cities to do in the wake of the change. Key to this discussion is the question of sustainability. 

Even the articles that recognize that the automobile industry has to become greener miss the point. Today for example the New York Times reports that William Clay Ford jr. has been a trailblazer in this area for Ford. But the writers totally ignored his work to make one of the oldest and largest manufacturing plants sustainable. 

David Harvey is one of the world’s foremost geographers. He participated in an interview with Sustainable Cities in August, before the bottom fell out. For him there were six aspects of city life that needed to be reconfigured. 

4. The organization of production systems relates to the organization of social and technical divisions of labour as well as to technologies.This system is driven by a political economic system in which the coercive laws of competition and market valuations hold priority of place. The production of space and the built environment, as well as decisions regarding which goods and services should be produced under which labour processes are fundamental to the transformation of nature into urban life. Experiments with new production and reproduction systems are vital in the search for more sustainable forms of urbanization.

The other five can be found here.

I linked to Subrealism the other day in talking about American illiteracy, or aliteracy. As Craig Nulan wrote in the comments we have the technology, perhaps for the first time, to begin to address this question. And here I’m talking more about the types of discursive networks that both enable you and I to converse with each other in real time, and to amplify our thoughts in a way that leads to policy shifts.

How do we begin to take these tools and make them work for a new project?

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The last few cabinets have been remarkably diverse compared to the ones preceding them. Clinton had the most diverse administration in history, and I believe that Bush followed that up. We’re now getting some sense about Obama’s leaks and already some are asking whether what he’s doing is enough. 

I understand this concern. When government changes hands there are literally thousands of jobs up for grabs. As blacks were the demographic that put him over the top it only makes sense that blacks (and other non-whites given the implicit promise of the campaign) get an equitable portion of those jobs.

But while I appreciate the fact that some Obama supporters are thinking of putting his feet to the fire, at least a little, I am also cognizant of the class biases here. What SHOULD be first and foremost is “stuff.” You don’t elect the candidate of your choice solely because you like him. But that stuff should revolve at some level around policy, and we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that a more diverse staff will lead to a more progressive set of policy arrangements. Because it’s very possible to have a diverse staff and a rightward leaning policy apparatus.

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