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Today's
Stories
September 18
/ 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Septemeber
17, 2004
Ray McGovern
Gossing
Over the Record
Patrick Cockburn
The New Iraqi Economy: Baghdad's Thriving Kidnapping Industry
Lee Sustar
The State of Working America: an Autopsy of the American Dream
Mike Whitney
John Kerry: 195 Lbs. of Political Helium, Not an Ounce of Sincerity
Victor Kattan
Black September
Ray Hanania
Israel's Demographics
Greg Bates
Nader's Victories: a Mid-Campaign Assessment
Website of
the Day
The Road to Hell
September 16,
2004
Landau / Hassen
Meet
the New Villain: Syria
Joanne Mariner
Inside
Darfur: a Photo Essay
Patrick Cockburn
US
Offers Conflicting Accounts of Baghdad Bloodbath
Greg Moses
Four Million Children Might Be News
Joshua Frank
Nader in the Battleground States
Christopher Brauchli
The Bush Drug Lottery Flops
David Himmelstein
Folke Bernadotte: a Rosh Hashonah Remembrance
Website of the Day
The Abu Ghraib Index
September 15,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Hell
on Haifa Street
Ron Jacobs
Oppose War, Not Just Bush
David Lindorff
Blanking Out Dissent
Joanne Mariner
Talking About Darfur: Is Genocide Just a Word?
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
An Open Letter to Madonna: Please Don't Support Israeli Apartheid
Dave Zirin
Is the NFL Ready for Us?
Yigal Bronner
"They
Are Building Walls Around Us"
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 14,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Problem of Chechnya
Jennifer van
Bergen
What's
Wrong with Torture?
Stan Goff
Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot
Patrick Cockburn
The
Punishment of Fallujah: US Precision Strickes...on Ambulances
Anis Memon
Nader
in Michigan
Michael Donnelly
The Nuance Comes Off: Former Naderites Beg for Kerry Votes
Werther
Zell Miller: the Peckerwood Pericles
Website of
the Day
Osama Bin Forgotten?
September 13,
2004
Gabriel Kolko
Elections,
Alliances and the American Empire
Phillip Cryan
How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's
War
Patrick Cockburn
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm
Dying! I'm Dying"
Noah Leavitt
The War on Civil Liberties
Robert Jensen
Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
Mike Whitney
Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy
John Chuckman
Stop Talking About the "Election"
Mike Burke
Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine
Issues
CounterPunch
Wire
The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes
I Get"
Website of the Day
Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
Fred Gardner
Yet Another Prozac Scandal
Saul Landau
When Our Assassins Go Free
Jennifer Van Bergen
How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American
Roger Burbach
/ Jim Tarbell
The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire
Christopher Reed
9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to
Worldwide War Casualties
Francisc Catalin
An ABC of American Interventions
Carl Estabrook
Big Science and Government Terror
Bernard Chazelle
Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study
Sharon Smith
Third Party Blues
Dave Lindorff
Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority
Mike Whitney
Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan?
Frederick B.
Hudson
Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith
Mickey Z.
Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11
Ron Jacobs
Redneck Music for the New Century
Greg Moses
Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
Benjamin Dangl
/ Andrew Kennis
An Interview with Leslie Cagan
Poets Basement
Del Papa, Albert, Gelman
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
September 18 / 19, 2004
Finally, Some
Vindication
Poletown
Revisited
By
GEORGE CORSETTI
Editor's note: The destruction
of Poletown in Detroit in 1981, consequence of a deal between
General Motors and Mayor Coleman Young produced a ghastly tragedy
for the inhabitants, but also engendered a truly great radical
documentary by Detroit's George Corsetti and others. And now,
guess what, the Michigan Supreme Court has said it all shouldn't
have happened. Here's Corsetti, on capital's blunt instrument,
eminent domain, and what it meant in human terms. It also shows
Ralph Nader in a fine light. AC.
In 1981 the Michigan Supreme Court approved
the forced relocation of 3,500 people in Detroit so General Motors
could build a new Cadillac plant. In 2004 the same Court decided
they'd made a mistake and overturned the decision.
The Michigan Court reversed
its infamous "Poletown" decision and stopped local
governments from seizing land for private use, calling the law
unconstitutional. The Detroit News cheered the decision saying
the Court "overruled one of the worst judicial decisions
of modern times," and the Wall Street Journal hailed it
as hopefully putting an end to "gross violations of fundamental
Constitutional protections." Not likely.
The Michigan decision, County
of Wayne v. Hathcock, is the latest salvo in the war that
goes back to England before the American Revolution when the
local sovereign could take a subject's land at will. So with
the coming of the Revolutionary War, private property rights
became a central issue and got enshrined in a Fifth Amendment
prohibition against the taking of private property for public
use without just compensation.
An intense conflict soon developed
over the states' power of eminent domain that still rages in
the courts and editorial pages today. Should government be limited
to taking property for a public "use"--to carry out
the necessary function of government, like roads and bridges?
Or should it also be allowed
to take property for a public "purpose"--that includes
projects that may benefit the public, like industrial parks,
but that may result in taking land from one private party and
giving it to another - the Poletown situation? What about
modern day range wars that pit ranchers against government land
owners and result in not a little violence?
And as the Poletown situation
demonstrates, it is not just a war in an abstract sense. A July
1981 edition of New York's Village Voice pictures a neighborhood
resident armed with a carbine a with revolver tucked in her belt
next to a sign warning that thieves and looters would be "shot
dead." Americans do tend to take their property rights seriously
and Poletown was no exception.
I first went to Poletown in
the fall of 1980 to shoot a documentary film, "Poletown
Lives!" and ended up getting arrested along with protesters
holed up in a church slated for demolition. The film tells the
story of Poletown from the perspective of the residents who fought
the project. No pseudo "objectivity" here.
As a former legal services
lawyer I worked with grass roots groups which always seemed to
have to unlearn civics-class notions of how the government really
worked or got stuck in the write-a-letter-to-your-congressperson
stage. I wanted to document how a struggle evolves, what mistakes
are made and what people learn from their experience and hopefully
avoid having to reinvent the wheel with each new group or confrontation.
When I heard about the Poletown
project I knew there would be a struggle between the community
and the powers that be--in this case, the City of Detroit, General
Motors, the UAW and the Catholic Archdiocese. These long time
residents would not go quietly into the night. And, while it
did not look good for the community, it would probably make a
good documentary. Someone needed to record this travesty of justice.
The neighborhood, historically
Polish immigrants who worked in cigar factories and auto plants,
still had a lot of elderly, first and second generation Poles
as well as African-Americans, poor whites and recent immigrants.
It was an unusual Detroit neighborhood in that it was a tight-knit
and racially diverse in what was otherwise a highly segregated
city.
The economic setting for the
Poletown project was typical for America's rust-belt cities.
As capital moved away from the highly unionized, industrial north,
Detroit, like most of these cities experienced an economic decline.
Some would say a terrible recession from which it has yet to
recover. Joblessness and crime were rampant with abandoned factories
and houses an increasingly common sight. And adjacent to Poletown
was Dodge Main, an empty shell of an auto plant that once teemed
with thousands of well paid union workers.
And to make matters worse,
General Motors was about to close two auto plants in the city.
The Mayor of Detroit, Coleman
Young, decided to take advantage of recently passed legislation
that allowed local government to seize property for a public
purpose (that old conundrum) and give it to a private party--in
this case, one of the most powerful corporations in the world,
General Motors, for a new auto plant. It was called the "quick-take"
law.
It was a simple enough plan,
the City announced it would essentially clear-cut 465 acres of
land in the center of the city--some 1,500 homes, 144 businesses,
16 churches, a school and a hospital--some 3,500 were forced
out--and turn it over to GM who would build a new Cadillac factory
that would employ 6,500 workers.
And as the plan began to be
implemented there were minor skirmishes, mostly in the form of
meetings of irate neighborhood people, supportive demonstrations
by local left groups, letters to the editor, letters to the city
council, etc. But like a boulder rolling downhill, the plan kept
coming and the residents kept losing.
Then as the project started
getting national publicity, Ralph Nader decided to accept the
invitation of the Poletown Neighborhood Council and enter the
fray on the side of the residents. He sent in five organizers
including three lawyers. They stayed at a house in the neighborhood,
set up shop in the basement of the Immaculate Conception church
and installed three phone lines. They started putting in twelve
hour shifts, seven days a week, gathering information, writing
letters, stuffing envelopes, generating press releases, calling
press conferences and generally putting pressure on local officials
to respond to the community. They also brought in an architecture
consultant who determined that the neighborhood could be spared
the wrecking ball by eliminating a green area around a flat parking
lot and creating a parking structure for auto workers cars. The
plant and most of the community could co-exist, they said.
They also found a local attorney,
Ron Reosti, who started a lawsuit, Poletown Neighborhood Council
versus the City of Detroit and got the Michigan Supreme Court
to issue an injunction temporarily halting demolition. It looked
like the neighborhood, with the help of Ralph Nader and the team
of organizers, might win this fight after all.
The Nader lawyer said the law
was unconstitutional. But the City argued that destruction of
Poletown and the transfer of property to GM served a public purpose
because it would alleviate unemployment and revitalize the economy
and therefore the quick take was constitutionally acceptable.
The Supreme Court agreed and ruled against the Poletown residents
and lifted the injunction. The community was devastated.
Demolition resumed in earnest
with the city more determined than ever to crush the rebellion
of protesting homeowners. It took on the dimensions of psychological
warfare. Renters who were offered relocation money, took the
few thousand dollars offered and left. They had no incentive
to stay and continue the fight. The city move quickly in shutting
off the water at the now vacant rental houses and painted a large
blue "X" on the front of the house. This was a defacto
signal for looters to move in and strip a house - sinks,
doors, wiring, radiators, furnaces, aluminum siding--anything
of value was soon gone.
The coup de grace was the arson.
As it turned out, it was a lot easier to demolish a house that
had been burned than if it was a solid structure. So the stripped
down houses were often burned by arsonists before demolition.
The night air was always smoke- filled and people slept with
guns nearby. City services became almost non existent. There
was virtually no trash pickup, no police presence and before
long the once quiet neighborhood was a jumble of looters and
demolition crews during the day and arsonists and fire trucks
by night.
With no legal way to save the
neighborhood after the Supreme Court decision, Nader and his
team of organizers withdrew. With each passing day the people
fighting for the neighborhood had increasingly less neighborhood
to fight for and the focus shifted to trying to save the Immaculate
Conception church. The parish priest, Father Joseph Karasiewicz
had fought valiantly with the neighbors and parishioners but
the Catholic Archdiocese sold his church and told him to leave.
After Karasiewicz left, protesters began taking turns keeping
a round the clock vigil at the church.
On Bastille day, July 14 1981,
the police assembled an armada of forces and at daybreak began
to seal off the neighborhood preparing to evict those occupying
the church. Sympathetic police had alerted the protesters in
the church the night before and I got there in the early morning
hours just before the roads were closed off by police The cameraperson,
Richard Wieske, hadn't gotten through the police lines in time
so we couldn't videotape the police siege of the church. We were
later able to piece together the scene with audiotape from a
boom box and still photos supplied by Taro Yamasaki a Detroit
Free Press photographer who had also been called and made his
way to the church. With the doors bolted shut the protesters
rang the church bells but by this time there were few residents
left to awaken. The police pulled the church doors open with
a tow truck and ordered everyone to leave. No one left.
As the only lawyer in the group
I tried talking to the attorney from the City's law department
who had arrived with the police. Sitting across from him in a
pew I argued that since we had originally entered the church
legally we were not trespassers and could not be arrested or
evicted without a court order. But the police were in no mood
for this discussion.
The police commander stepped
into the middle of the legal conversation, lifted me out of the
pew and into the waiting arms of the dozen other police in the
basement who handcuffed me took me out to the paddy wagon. So
much for the niceties of property law. Soon I was joined by a
dozen other arrested protesters and taken to jail. Included in
the group were a half dozen little old Polish ladies who also
refused to leave the church. Later, at the police station, the
city attorneys told the older women that they were no longer
under arrest and that they could leave. But they refused to go
until everyone was freed and eventually everyone was released.
That very same day everything
was moved out of the church and it was totally demolished. A
few months later, Father Karasiewicz , the parish priest, who
had never been reassigned a new church, died of a heart attack.
A few months after that police evicted the last of the Poletown
holdouts, John Saber, a longtime resident who had built a wall
around his house from neighborhood rubble and brandished a rifle,
vowed never to leave
Ultimately, all 465 acres of
Poletown was cleared and GM built the plant. The auto plant opening
was delayed a year and employed less than half the promised 6,500
workers. By one account more jobs were lost from the destruction
of Poletown than were created by the factory. The city also believed
that the new plant would attract other, feeder plants, nearby.
They never materialized, and with tax abatements and other incentives,
it was a fiscal disaster for the city.
After Poletown the City of
Detroit built still another plant employing the same, now-unconstitutional,
quick-take law. This time it was a Jeep plant for Chrysler corporation.
This time they withdrew city services months before they even
announced the project. And when they did, most people were anxious
to leave. They forcibly evicted fewer residents and did not demolish
a Greek orthodox church within the project area when parishioners
objected..
The Supreme court's Poletown
decision, however, served as precedent for a number of state
and federal courts as well as state legislatures who approved
similar laws all over the country, broadening the concept of
eminent domain. Many of these new laws are no doubt well intentioned
as was the Poletown quick-take law whose purpose was to "alleviate
unemployment and revitalize the economy." These laws sound
good, but they invariably resulted in property being taken from
working class people to be given to large corporations or developers
rather than the other way around. The underlying problem is that
business interests control so much of our government that we
cannot rely on our representatives to protect our interests regardless
of how good the law sounds. Lawmakers respond to campaign donations
not to constituents.
And while the editors of the
Wall Street Journal hope that the new Poletown decision will
put an end the expansive view of eminent domain this doesn't
seem likely absent a US Supreme Court decision on the issue.
There is simply too much money to be made by politically connected
developers and too many corrupt, self-serving local politicians
and legislators.
With virtually no funding beyond
neighborhood people, the film, "Poletown Lives!,"took
another year or so to finish. It had its critics. The local Communist
Party panned it because of references to Poland. And the film
was viewed extensively by Michael Moore before he did his first
film, "Roger and Me". Michael found it "lacking
in humor." And so it is.
"Poletown Lives!"
went on to win more than a few awards at film festivals including
a blue ribbon at the American Film Festival in New York. It is
still used by most every major university in the country in courses
on property law, business ethics, anthropology, sociology, urban
planning and social work to name just a few. It succeeded beyond
our wildest dreams.
George Corsetti can be reached at: gcorsetti@ameritech.net
"Poletown Lives!"
was created by George Corsetti, Jeanie Wylie and Richard Wieske.
It is available in 16 mm and vhs, from Information Factory, 3512
Courville, Detroit MI 48224 313 885-4685
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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