[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GM_kj4RD1_M" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]I was just asked to participate in a conference on the Baltimore riots of 68. Being more of a Detroit guy than a Baltimore specialist I was predisposed to pass. But this video deals with the national context and also opens the door for both comparisons and discussions about what is needed now. Thanks to Prometheus6.
Doc you bring unigue baggage to the table having lived in 3 metro’s ;as I listen to the tape you could subsitute Newark for Detroit.Detroit being auto capital sped the process, but it was not unigue.
Wasn’t the Urban League supposed to be on top of this? Aren’t they supposed to be the org that tells blackfolks how to read economic change? How long does it take to get the word out that plant closings are coming?
How was this situation different than that Michael Moore half-documented in his first film? IE How did the Rust Belt happen?
When I first interviewed for a gig here on the West coast for a company that was headquartered in Boston, my cab driver was an engineer who had been laid off from Eaton or DEC or Honeywell or one of those other military-industrial titans of the 70s, and it became apparent to me that much of the Northeast was tanking. By the time I moved to Boston three years later it was even more clear.
When I moved to Atlanta in 95, a couple years later, the New South as compared to the northeast was night and day. And the trend depopulating the Northeast and booming in the South and Southwest has continued for a decade.
This year in Arizona most of the blackfolks I met were African immigrants. So what are the mechanisms that help the working class to understand when sufficient capital is being divested from their choice of communities? Furthermore, how do unions assist or impede labor markets when they are unable to keep industries in place?
Wealth creation in America is not about redlining and real-estate games and white flight. Those are after effects and trailing indicators. The smart money knows where the smart money is going. Government policy has little to do with that.
Check out Joel Garreau’s Edge City. He explains things like how real-estate is priced and how development is done around new metros. If you focus on cities like Detroit and Newark, and old industrial rust-belt models, you will only understand decline and disinvestment but not where the smart money goes. And in the end, you’ll only be able to tell people how they got screwed 20 years ago, but not where to go tomorrow.
No. For the vast majority of middle class suburban white Americans the wealth they have comes from either real estate–which comes directly from this process, or from stocks–which indirectly comes from this process (the same government process that generated the suburbs generated the subsidies that allowed corporations to flourish).
Doc your on point,the first computer build was for the war effort(II)require technician using key punch cards, certification was not require(degree)that came later .The end of world war II saw the USA switch resources to civilian efforts i.e GI bill housing and education programs, the result of these programs was the creation of the middle class.
From the Archives: How Wealth was Created in America http://t.co/aGXT3jFG
From the Archives: How Wealth was Created in America http://t.co/aGXOvJww