The Michigan Daily-Sunday, Nove Page 4-Sunday, November 12, 1978-The Michigan Daily 0 9 T: "It shall rise again from the ashes. 1 Old -time philosophy for modern Motor C ROM ANN ARBOR, Detroit is just a forty-five minute drive east on I-94. To someone who has never ventured east of Ypsi, just the word Detroit-meaning "city of straits"-can immediately bring to mind images of riots in the streets, gun duels on Woodward Avenue, and a wild west atmosphere of gang rule. Or one will remember Motown-Diana Ross and little Stevie Wonder. And Detroit, of course, means cars-complete with the soot and the grime of the assembly plants. Some people think of Detroit as the Renaissance Center, that massive concrete intrusion onto the skyline that has led more than one critic to suggest that Ren-Cen only adds to the impressions of Detroit as a city under seige. On the side of the Ren-Cen that faces the city across Jefferson, there are two large concrete barriers that house the heating system for the complex. If first impressions are lasting, Detroit may have reason to echo Rodney Dangerfield's cry of dismay: "I don't get no respect." But if all the economic, social and political indicators are correct, Detroit is on the rebound. A Market Opinion Research poll prepared for New Detroit,--a pro-Detroit business organization, shows that 71 per cent of Detroiters now have faith in their city's future, compared to half that number two years ago. "People (polled) were saying there is a spirit-a new electricity-that seems to be moving through the town," said New Detroit Vice-President Ed Hodges. "They were saying that Detroit is the most exciting place to be right now. From where I sit, I don't think I'm being too overly optimistic. From where I sit, Detroit is simply blossoming. You find a lot of people feeling good about Detroit. Just living in Detroit is an exciting experience." The statistics back up Hodges' upbeat outlook. The Michigan Employment Securities Commission says employment is up in the city, while the auto industry has reported its biggest sales year since the 1973 recession. White flight to the suburbs is continuing, even New Detroit will admit, but there is also a significant number of people moving back into the city. For an optimist anyway, that's a sign of resurgence. For a pessimist, it's a case of having been down so long bottom looks like up. But if whether or not Detroit is on the rebound depends on one's yardstick for comparison, then one thing is certain: Detroit is on the way up and Ren Cen is providing the impetus. Ren-Cen's financial contribution has been documented in a report from a New York analyzing firm. The report states that the office- hotel complex has pumped more than $1 billion into the city's sagging economy. Keith Richburg is a Daily night editor and a native of Detroit. Daily photos by A ndy Freeberg. By Keith Richburg But what that report couldn't measure is how much of Ren-Cen's impact is symbolic. The very size and intrusiveness of the structure is enough to strike awe, and convince even the hardest cynic that Detroit really does have a future. It's more style than substance, but that seems to be enough to create a new positive image about the city. "You can take numbers and add, subtract or divide them, but the most interesting thing we found was the absolutely fascinating changes in people's attitudes about Detroit as a place to live, work and invest," said Stuart Matlins, whose New York firm conducted the research. Now with Detroiters placing more faith in their own city, the problem is to convince everyone outside the city that Detroit isn't as bad as the negative publicity suggests. Or as one Detroit optimist put it, "As more people come and visit Detroit and see what it's like, we'll get more respect. Our image will improve." However, there are critics who argue that the optimism about Detroit is only superficial, since the problems like crime and the decaying state of the public schools are not solved by the downtown face-lift. "This talk of renovating downtown is great. but why can't we also build some low-income housing? " asks Marxist city councilman Kenneth Cockrel. He said the private money being used to rebuild downtown "should be channeled into creating better schools, better public health services.". This interest in downtown redevelopment is the master plan of the city's first black mayor, Coleman Young. Young's theory has been that with a revamped downtown and improved business climate, people will begin to feel good about the city, and social improvements will follow. R, PUT ANOTHER way, you can't improve the public schools and build low-income housing until you have a sta le economic base, and that requires solicit- ing the support of corporate barons and financiers and convincing them that saving Detroit is in everyone's best interest. "I think it's important to -business to have a good climate," said one Michigan Bell executive. "It helps our market where you have a stable community. People need a good climate, business organizations need a good climate. We- depend on each other." Coleman Young's 1977 landslide electoral victory-a whopping 59 per cent-was seen as a vote of confidence in his plan. After the election, Young sat down with the city's power- holders-business, labor, and politicians of both parties-and emerged with a pact Young himself calls "a mutuality of self-interests." Young's own self-interest in that coalition is power-power for himself and power for the city. Young is the representative of Detroit blacks, who are now a majority in the city, and he wants to use his reign to consoli'date black political power in city hall, and to make sure the city never slips back into control by the conservative white minority. As for his own personal power, Young would very much like to be Detroit's mayor Richard Daley. "I certainly would like to stabilize and build Detroit the way Daley stabilized and built Chicago," Young says candidly. "Chicago is outstanding among cities. It's an old industrial city like Detroit or Pittsburgh or Cleveland. But it's growing. It's thriving, because Chicago, in the first place, had a city government that was strong enough to resist being dismantled and horsed around by the suburbs. And that type of strength is essential for a city." So in his effort to rebuild Detroit, Young-the avowed socialist and former street radical-has enlisted the aid of the capitalists. Henry Ford II financed the $300 million Renaissance Center, and then ordered his Lincoln-Mercury division to move into one of the towers, despite protestations from suburbanites afraid to work in Detroit. Meanwhile, Max Fisher has planned a 2,100 downtown apartment complex and the Rockefeller family is spending $70 million to build two office tower additions to Ren-Cen. General Motors has announced plans to rebuild the New Center area near the Fisher building. "He really knows the game," Henry Ford II once said of his friend Coleman Young. "He plays the black side. He plays the white side. He plays the business side and the labor side. That's the game." Coleman Young did not make the mistake of alienating any faction that could eventually be useful to him-and Detroit. He cuddled up to the long-serving Republican governor William Milliken, and it paid off handsomely. When the mayor requested state troopers to patrol Detroit freeways-freeing the Detroit police to cover the rest of the city-he got them. And now Detroit is being considered as a possible site for the 1980 Republican convention, largely at Milliken's urging. Young also got on the good side of Jimmy Carter, early on when it was not politically popular. And that has paid off also. Detroit is receiving a healthy infusion of federal dollars that will, among other things, help construct three new parks east of downtown on Jefferson. Detroit's latin motto translates: "It shall rise again from the ashes." That slogan was chosen after the fire of 1805, but, ironically, it is perhaps more appropriate today. The modern "fire" was the riot of 1967. In the early sixties, Detroit was considered a "model city" for having avoided the urban violence that had erupted in Watts and other cities across the nation. Jerome Cavanaugh, the young 'liberal mayor, was credited with building a representative city that appeared to be escaping the black discontent that gutted other American urban centers. THEN, ON A sweltering Sunday morning in July, blue uniformed police officers raided a west side Detroit "blind pig," an after-hours gambling spot. A crowd gathered as police officers hustled the blind pig patrons, all of them black, into the waiting squad cars. Some witnesses remember police shoving black prostitutes down stairs. The crowd grew into a mob. A brick was thrown. Then a bottle. Within hours, the "model city" was under seige. When the riot was over four days later, 43 persons had been killed in the worst outbreak of urban violence in U.S. history. Interpretations varied as to whether Detroit's was a race riot or a class riot. But pointing fingers and extensive analysis did not stop the city's rapid slide downhill after July, 1967. Whites, fearful of another pending uprising, began to move out. Street crime skyrocketed. And Detroit was tagged as "Murder City, U.S.A." In January, 1971, conservative white police commissioner John Nichols instituted a decoy operation to combat street crime. Known by the acronym STRESS (Stop Safe Streets), the decoy officers impersonating p attacks. Police officers people, and derelicts, an upon by street thugs. In eight months, STR persons, nine of then department and the blac head-on over STRESS. B] and reactionary militia o whites saw STRESS as a in controlling runaway STRESS was no doubt a ra Hostility between bla already at a high point, whites migrating to the mass exodus. As,the whites left, prop( and the city's tax base er public school system de voters consistently to increases. Meanwhile, ti and became almost inde some suburbanites entE scare stories of murders, the expense of black Detrc One Grosse Pointer sug idea of blocking all th( Detroit into that suburt barriers. Then, in 1971, the safe white suburbs was mom( the spring of that year declared that the school Pontiac, Michigan were cross-district busing be i the situation. A few r federal judge, Stephen R( by the NAACP that Det also segregated, and hE would bus white suburba schools and send blac suburbia. See DETRO -9' .. ': ':.,' " .,, ' °' ; ;.. 3 . ' id a a t z >. ?: a 4