DETROIT, MI, October 10 — Today, Wayne County, which includes the city of Detroit, announced it would initiate tax foreclosures on almost 80,000 homes in the city. This follows a racist massive water shut-off for tens of thousands of residents which began last summer and continues today as a judge has lifted a moratorium on the shut-offs despite international outcry from human rights organizations.
According to census and school enrolment data, Detroit’s population has dropped to about 600,000, down by more than 400,000 in the last 14 years. At an average of four people in each home, times 80,000 foreclosures, the math does not look good for the remaining residents who are 80 percent black but also Arab, Latin, and white. If this looks like a mass evacuation of the city, that’s because it is.
Detroit’s new capitalist rulers took over during the population exodus that was triggered by the collapse of the domestic auto industry and accelerated by the financial crisis that put GM and Chrysler in bankruptcy. They are on a privatization binge, and no longer want to provide city services to the remaining working-class residents. That’s why billionaire Dan Gilbert, the owner of Quicken Loans and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and his business cronies bought 100 police cars and ambulances to serve the mainly gentrifying downtown core. Meanwhile, workers in the outer neighbourhoods that make up 80 percent of the population, die waiting for ambulances and fire trucks to arrive. Ageing, unmaintained fire trucks break down regularly on the way to fires (arson is rampant), and ambulance wait times for severe trauma victims can be as high as an hour. Many of the streetlights don’t work, roads are blocked with debris and the entire city is overrun with 80,000 vacant, burnt out, graffiti-covered buildings.
Yet money will be siphoned out of the public schools to finance a new $650 million hockey stadium for the billionaire Ilitch family. The city is still run by the Governor’s appointed crony, Emergency Manager Kevin Orr, which is why many Detroiters boycott paying their property taxes. And with grinding mass poverty and unemployment, many cannot afford the taxes anyway.
Vacant houses and empty lots can be highly valuable capitalist investment opportunities. This is part of a long-range plan called the Detroit Future City Strategic Framework (DFCSF), a massive land-grabbing scheme being marketed as the “Detroit comeback.” While the DFCSF backers showcase urban gardens, charter schools, “experimental” small businesses and self-righteous hipsters, the real beneficiaries will be a handful of billionaires. The working class isn’t even in the picture. Detroit was once the center of world industry and class struggle. Its ruins reflect the decay and decline of U.S. imperialism. Among these ruins, we are rebuilding the revolutionary communist PLP.