Milwaukee "Detroit West"

Milwaukee is a city seemingly in decline. Little economic activity, under performing schools, generational poverty...often called "Detroit West".

On the road again...suing because highways to the suburbs (or anywhere really) are apparently caused by racism. Milwaukee liberals apparently believe people leaving the city for the suburbs is racist.

This has happened before...someone even wrote a book about the process. "Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit"

Quote

The city was completely segregated, and urban renewal, which was a feature of many big cities in the country at the time, urban renewal had the effect of crowding the black population into very small neighborhoods in the city, and the racial tension mounted. In 1967, it boiled over and the black population of Detroit rioted. They burned down and looted entire neighborhoods. This caused the white population of Detroit to flee the city. They got out of there so fast, according to this book, Devil's Night, they moved into unfinished houses in the suburbs. Some of the houses didn't even have electricity run to 'em yet. Some didn't have water lines and so forth, much less furniture and this kind of thing. But it didn't matter. The riots and the chaos were such that the white population just skedaddled.

This resulted in a depopulation of the city, which actually had started with the building of freeways in the fifties, making it easier to get out of the city. These riots accelerated the exodus and it became a full-fledged exodus from the city. So in 1973 the majority black population of Detroit elected Coleman Young. He was the first black mayor. And Coleman Young -- this was something I didn't know, I mean, I hadn't even thought about it, but Coleman Young did not come from the civil rights movement. He was not like an Andrew Young in Atlanta or any of the other newly elected black mayors in the seventies.

He didn't come out of the Martin Luther King movement. He didn't come out of Selma or any of that. He was a radical of a very, very leftist organization. He's a tough guy. He was charismatic. He was funny, but he did not turn the other cheek...he was at war with the white population, who he accused of abandoning the city. But he accused them not only of abandoning the city, but then he accused them of trying to run the city from outside the city.

They had fled to the burbs.

So he declared war on what he called the hostile suburbs of Detroit. There were calls after the riots for gun control. He said no way, we're not having any. I want my people fully armed in this city. So he nixed any gun control on the grounds that it would be dangerous to disarm his people in the face of this white KKK lurking beyond Eight Mile Road. So this ended up discouraging any type of investment in the city, and that investment which did happen had to go through his office. Any investment, growth, whatever, in the city did not happen unless it first went through his office. He turned the police force into his militia. And what he did was set out to create a black city state south of Eight Mile Road. And he called what he was doing the rebellion.

Anyway, this went on for 20 years. There were 20 years of municipal black nationalism and ideological separatism. And by the time he left, the city was in a shambles. And the book, I mean, this is just a surface report. I didn't have a chance to read the entire thing. I skimmed it, checked things that looked interesting to me and came up for you with this little book report here, but Detroit's just the first of many cities that are on this path. They do have things in common: liberalism, control of the city by unions, but the point that this book makes in analyzing what's wrong with Detroit is that you cannot leave race out of the equation, and in fact it may be the number one reason that Detroit is in the mess that it is in.

read more here - http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/24/america_discovers_zev_chafets_book_on_the_role_of_race_in_detroit_s_demise

Why not let these old cities just die? Be renewed naturally? What is left to save? I think there is something wrong in trying to re-inflate a flat, dry rotted tire. Cities empty and are forgotten. Other cities are built and thrive. I think that is just the natural way of life.