For other posts in the series:
A short history (1)
A short history (2)
The Ruin Porn Post
The Consequences of Ruin Porn
On the other side: Hope Porn
reImagining Work
Dealing with Poverty while being a Michigander
More Welfare Woes
So another consequence of believing that Detroit (i.e. the Rust Belt) is dying is that it then makes sense to assume that there is no vibrant groundbreaking culture that is alive and well and creating a new way of thinking, a new *theory* if you will, about life in a post-industrial world. If the Rust Belt is given any credit at all for having a culture, it almost entirely centers on Joe the Plumber–a six pack drinking dude that is (ahem) “hard working” so he doesn’t have to think too hard. When you envision him, you envision that bald white guy who has flag tattoos and gets a boner every time “Boot in Your Ass” comes on the radio.
But the thing is, this idea that Joe the Plumber encapsulates the entirety of the Rust Belt experience (because the rest of us are dead, dying, or will be dying shortly) is hard to keep a lid on. Somehow, the dying land and people of the Rust Belt always seeps into mainstream consciousness, without that consciousness ever being fully aware of it.
Whether it’s post-apocolyptic Robo Cop or the Crow or Detroit 187 or white boy “King of Hip/Hop” Eminem, or Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh bleating endlessly, or political candidates expressing their ever ongoing opinions, the Rust Belt generally and Detroit specifically, are everywhere, literally the foundation that everything from music to science fiction to politics to sports to industry builds it’s home on.
But the part of Rust Belt culture (or maybe it’s Detroit Theory…hm) that I’m most interested in and have explored the most is the idea of “movement.”
VIDEO: Sweet Honey in the Rock singing “Are My Hands Clean?” Lyrics here (pdf file).
VIDEO: Bruce Springsteen singing “Thunder Road” Lyrics here.
When I asked about the attachment that so many on the left have to “Capitalism,” I asked for a specific reason. At the foundation of “Capaitalism” is movement. Or, more specifically, the *control* of movement. Whether it’s the control of how resources move from one geographical location to another or the control of where labor is allowed to move, or how money flows in one constant direction, movement in a “Capitalist” world (or, *this* world) is strictly monitored and harnessed towards economic means. You move to lose weight (and not be a burden on our economic system). You move to get to work. You move to destress from work. You move find a better job. You move to buy that shirt that leaves so many of us with dirty hands.
And yet, as the Bruce Springsteen song shows (and there’s a reason I chose Thunder Road over Born to Run), the ultimate question of economic systems controlling movement doesn’t end with our own culpability. Because even as “our hands” are not clean–our hands are also broken and achy from being utilized by corporations as well. Our ability to move freely and of our own volition hasn’t been something we’ve controlled in a very long time. Which is why so many of us are beginning to wonder if “economic growth” as we’ve been taught to understand it is really much of an answer. As renowned Detroit thinker, Grace Lee Boggs notes:
“With the industrial revolution Work itself was revolutionized. It moved from farm to city, from making clothes and growing food to buying clothes and buying food. Humans changed from producers to consumers. Our models and ideals of work became factory oriented; the worker became an assistant to a machine.
“This idea was reinforced by the prevailing cosmology of Newton, namely, that our universe is a machine. Descartes reinforced his idea by teaching that our bodies and machines are machines as well.
In the Newtonian era, real labor meant making things by machine or fixing them by machine. In the twentieth century, this symbol was domesticated in the automobile… War became the ultimate machine in motion, and machinery became the engine that ran our economic systems and political rhetoric…
“Today this paradigm is undergoing radical re-evaluation. The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions. the workmachine is running out of steam, coming to an end, even in the so-called First World. The basics of human living, including work, health care, politics, education, and religion, are increasingly beyond our grasp. And so a new era is upon us.
“We are being challenged today— in light of the wounded Earth, the one billion unemployed adults, the billions of despairing young people, who see no guarantees of either work or jobs, and the needs of other species around us—- to redefine Work. Our times need what the Bible calls metamoia, a change of heart, a change of ways….
What Bruce Springsteen is giving voice to is that paradigm shift. There is a way to have that change of heart, that change of ways. That there is a way to move that operates independently of economic systems–that stems from love and human needs.
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays…
I live on the border between Michigan and Canada. Even on bad weather days, you can see Canada from Detroit–a moderately strong swimmer could easily swim from Detroit to Windsor. Most of us prefer to watch Canadian hockey coverage, because even if the announcers aren’t from Detroit, they *know* Detroit. And although I have no idea what type of music it is called, I am kinda infamous for crying in the car while listening to French songs that remind me of that girl I once knew…
But it’s getting harder and harder for average people to cross that border. I don’t know what Canadians need to cross over, but at the very least, USians need the money to buy the enhanced drivers licence, and for most people you also need the time to hunt down all the different documents, the time to go and wait at your secretary of state (and this is no small joke, waits have been known to be up to two-three hours where I’m from), not to mention the ability to mentally withstand getting through customs itself (which is like going through security at the airport, only having your entire car, family, and body subjected to interrogation). Even as we share a culture and a history and an industry with the people who are literally right next door to us, visiting and getting to know each other is just not much of an option these days.
And yet, I recently attended the Environmental Protection Agency conference in Detroit where I sat in on a panel of environmental justice advocates from different areas on the I-75 corridor. One person was there representing the neighborhood in Detroit that sits around the bridge to Canada. She talked about how every single day, over 10,000 semi-trucks pass through her neighborhood and over the bridge.
Ten *thousand*.
And it doesn’t end there. One of the most hotly contested issues in the area at the moment is the proposal to add another bridge crossing into Canada. Which, as the speaker noted, would double the amount of semi-trucks in her neighborhood.
If you set the idea of the bridge (or the idea of high speed rail) in the middle of the ruin porn narrative or in the “detroit is dying” narrative, this bridge looks amazing. Spectacular. It will bring business! It will keep Detroit alive! Savior Bridge will resurrect our once great city!
But if you set that same bridge in the Grace Lee Boggs, Rust Belt, Detroit Theory narrative…you get an entirely different picture. You get ten THOUSAND semi-trucks going through neighborhoods that children live in. You get broken bodies and dirty hands. You get air you can’t breath, water you can’t swim in, and rotten polluted fish nobody can eat. You get human bodies that are desperate to move in their own way for their own reasons. You get a girl dancing on the porch for an artist that helps her believe anything is possible. A dance for a dream lived. A new economic proposal.
Can the movement of resources (or, ten THOUSAND trucks) be what saves us? Is it what we *want* to save us?
At that same conference, a mother, a *mami*, stood up and spoke to the panel. She talked about how she needed the panelists’ help. She was from another Rust Belt area that was burdened with heavy industry. And her son was sick. Dying from one of the many different cancers that a body gets when breathing in exhaust from ten THOUSAND trucks a day. She gave up a bit of her precious time with him so that she could come to this conference and learn how to organize. As she talked, her voice shook–but she knew exactly what she needed. How to do what the people on the panel were doing. When she finished, she collapsed in the arms of the woman behind her. Who understands better than a Detroit mami what she is going through?
When people say “Detroit is dying…” what they really mean is that “Capitalism” is killing us. But because “Capitalism” uses white supremacist heteropatriarchal nationalism to enforce itself–to make itself make sense–the people it kills first are the people nobody else cares about.
Which is why we organize and sing, and write, and think, and dance, and rethink walking and learn how to cook.
Because we care about each other, and we know that The Savior Bridge doesn’t answer the real question; if all the resources are moving–and we’re NOT–who is really going to be saved? The people left behind? Or the people the resources are moving towards?
Or are their bodies and hands and spirits as hurt and as achy as ours are?
These are not easy questions to answer. And in the Rust Belt, it takes a special kind of person to organize–because most times it’s near impossible to imagine much less believe that things could get better. That they *must* get better.
But we do it. Because we have to. And because we have our artists, our thinkers, our dreamers, that make it ok to believe. That make it ok to love and nurture and care for even those who are dying. That make it ok to move for each other. For ourselves.
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays…
The world is shifting. The paradigm was never stable to begin with, we only believed it was.
What are we going to do now?