It's no secret that America's onetime automotive capital, Detroit, has fallen on hard times. Over 60% of the Motor City's population has left since 1950, leaving behind some 677,000 inhabitants and between 20 and 40 square miles of vacant land.
Yes, somewhere between 20 and 40 square miles of vacant land. So what do you do with all that land where houses once stood and the remaining 677,000 suffer from what's euphemistically referred to as "food security"? Simple answer, you turn some of that empty space into farmland and you change the city's ordinances to allow livestock.
If upcoming code amendments pass the city's Planning Commission, Detroiters will be able to farm with livestock, including chickens, goats and rabbits. Imagine, you're driving down Gratiot and there's a goat, on the rubble of a collapsed crack house, next to a field of wheat.
Good idea, right? But there's a catch. You see, farming's racist. According to Kathryn Lynch Underwood, a member of Detroit's Planning Commission:
“You have people that may have come from the South and don’t necessarily have good memories of their experience in the South, so the whole agriculture, animal thing reminds them of something they wanted to get away from.”
The curiously named Lynch Underwood is black and so is around 80% of what's left of the Motor City's population. How many of these will be able to shake off their memories of being slaves on southern plantations and return to the land, is presently unknown.
Maybe hunger will help solve that dilemma.
Way to go, Detroit. You're obviously coming back, or not.
LSP
12 comments:
The "modern pioneer" movement (there's a glossy magazine with that name, BTW) might be mostly white folks, but that doesn't make it a country club. I think it's in our bones to grow snd harvest our own foods, not buying cans and bags and Styrofoam trays with it buried inside.
The commissionwoman might be shocked to see so many black folks riding horses around my end of town. What was once an economic necessity, is now a sign of wealth and leisure.
Did you read that piece on trees being a symbol of white oppression, hence people of color don't much use our national parks? Our friend from Detroit seems to be cut from the same cloth.
There's quite a few black horsepeople here too + cowboys, and the same in Dallas. As I understand it, they tend to be old families who just never stopped riding. I like that.
The victimhood that progressive negroes feel - including not wanting to see goats eat down all of the weeds in the detritus that used to be a thriving industrial city before her "brothers" took charge - mystifies me. I'd think that the concept of goats eating, breeding and providing sustenance for people of color would be welcomed to the slum city.
How many blacks in Detroit really have slave experiences to get away from?
Makes me think of when we first got to Louisiana in 2012, and they had a hurricane that they evacuated people for. Some of them got put up in the shelter at LSUA, where there happens to be a lot of farm land nearby. Some lady complained that she needed a different place because she didn't like waking up and seeing all that wheat or whatever it was that year.
Some people are never satisfied, and America seems to have 'grown by leaps and bounds' its quota of thankless people.
Here's a thought, how about turning Detroit into a giant marijuana farm? That wouldn't be racist since growing weed is progressive, and the taxes could be used to rebuild the infrastructure of the city where it would then become the Utopian paradise it was destined to be.
Detroit has no hope. It is a zombie city; it is dead, but just doesn't know that yet.
Many of those 700,000 remaining citizens have retirement checks showing up from the City of Detroit and although it is bankrupt, the checks keep coming. The matter is still in judicial limbo, but it is just a matter of time before those checks stop, or start to bounce.
When that happens, we'll see how a liberal experiment ends; will those who made a deal with the devil and worked for the City of Detroit for 25 years, retired at age 52 with 80% of their highest earning year as an annual benefit, will they go quietly into that good night?
Or, more likely, will they rampage across the landscape, killing everyone in sight and taking what is 'rightfully theirs.'?
I suspect it is the latter.
It is the Conservatives fault that the Detroit Utopian Experiment has failed. They moved out of Detroit because of their misguided beliefs that hard work and good living made a good life. They are therefore not there to be heavily taxed to pay for the Experiment. They are already being funded by the Michigan State Government and the Federal Government but how will they take the money from Texas to keep their Glorious Experiment alive.
You'd think so, LL. But maybe keeping goats involves some work, not much but some nonetheless. And victims shouldn't have to work because everyone else owes them money.
I can't think that many Detroiters have any memories at all of the south, Linda. But maybe farming's inherently racist?
That's a very good idea, Euripides. Get on the consultancy ticket and pitch it to the Mayor.
Fredd: The pension thing's a bit of an issue and my guess is that there'll be several bailouts, but what happens when the $$ runs out? Nothing nice.
I don't think Texas is too keen on paying for the experiment, Bill. But maybe Austin will levy an extra tax and sponsor the Motor City experiment?
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