Get it while you can: Scavenging the remains of Detroit

He strolled up the walkway carrying his hard-won take like it was a rare bounty, holding it up to the sky for everyone to see, his smile shining just like gold.

“I have to get something,” he said to Mom before sauntering off into the soot and smoke that second day of the 1967 riots. No one knew what to do or what to expect.
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But my dad had a plan. Everyone else was looting the shops smoldering on 12th Street. He decided to join in. Dressed in a dashiki, jeans, and thick strapped fisherman sandals, he looked as if he were dropped into the fray straight from Central Casting – an Angry Black Man who was more curious than furious.

Mom, who was roughly three weeks away from delivering me, their first child, tried in vain to talk him out of going. For what felt like the longest hour ever, she waited for him to return. When he did, he proudly displayed the fruits of his illicit labor: A quart of beer and a jar of Coffee Mate.

“That’s all you got?” my mom asked incredulously.

“Yeah,” he replied with a straight face. “You know, it’s some greedy people out… they took everything!”

Though my dad died in 1982, his well-intentioned but flawed logic still lives on.

It lives in the rhetoric surrounding this week’s announcement of a deal for the state to lease Belle Isle from Detroit for 30-60 years.  City leaders balked, claiming the state is taking a jewel from the city we can care for ourselves, despite years of neglect and mismanagement at their hands. They claim there’s some way for Detroiters to get something for it – perhaps private sources to manage the park – without state intervention, yet no one has offered up a viable plan. Our two mayoral candidates oppose the state lease, but have not offered up alternatives. The City Council has until October 8th to vote on the lease proposal. If they vote no, the state has said it will impose the lease on the city. Council President Saunteel Jenkins has said she has plans to work on an alternative proposal… after the council vote takes place. That’s all they’ve got.

It lives in a ruling made by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes permitting the city’s labor unions to continue pursuing efforts to restore bonus checks for the city’s employees and retirees. The controversial 13th checks had been paid out for at least 20 years, taking nearly $1.9 billion in investment value from and costing the pension system roughly $3.5 billion in unfunded liabilities during that time frame. The program was halted by the city in 2011, but union leaders contend that action was illegal. Each side is trying to get something from a pension system that, due to poor decisions and misuse by those in charge, is perilously close to having nothing to give to anyone any longer.

It lives in the pronouncement Kevyn Orr made during an address at the Detroit Economic Club that there has to be a way for the city to get something from leveraging assets at the DIA (without selling them, mind you) to help cover the city’s debts. While he said he had no choice… he also said he didn’t have a concrete plan in mind.

“There’s no plan to take the bricks out from (the Rivera mural),” Mr. Orr said. He also noted he didn’t want the city’s retirees to have to choose between “a can of tuna and a can of cat food” to survive.

It lived in the aisles of a neighborhood Dollar General on Fenkell on September 29th when a man in his 20’s walked in wearing jeans, a hoodie, and gym shoes, and carrying an AR-15 assault rifle. Looking as though he were dropped into the store straight from Central Casting – an Angry Black Man whose desperation to survive made him dangerous – his armed demand for something, anything, netted him an undisclosed amount of cash. He’s still at large with the fruit of his illicit labor. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

There’s no smoke or soot billowing into the air, but the city’s still being looted by desperate people. Some carry an assault rifle. Some eye what few resources the city has left. Some act without planning. Each is determined to bring home something and grouse about how there’s not much left to take because others, much greedier than themselves, have already taken everything.

  1967 riots, Bankruptcy, belle isle, city council, detroit, Judge, Labor, poverty, race, race relations, race riots, saunteel jenkins, State, Steven Rhodes, Tracey Morris

Tracey Morris

Tracey Morris is the author of, “You Said You Wanted to See Me Naked: An Autobiographical Poem Cycle.” Her work has recently been published by Rust Belt Chic Press, and she was a finalist in the 2013 Springfed Arts Writing Contest.

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