Begin from the Beginning....
If WE'RE gonna "study" a subject,
WE might as well begin from the beginning. hmm(?)
This subject is EXTREMELY touchy for ME, therefore I
don't mind getting YOU started, but I won't be 'round
here for long, due to the Blatant Racism surrounding "Africantown".
Note:
To date, the Michigan Citizen is by Far, one of the most
reliable sources for "accurate" information regarding the
Black Community in Michigan....or anywhere for that matter.
Yet subject to white supremacy scrutiny in "media protocol,"
the Michigan Citizen is Still 'bout the best WE can hope for in
accuracy IMO. So, start there.
Check this out:
This article was written 30sept04....
vote Michigan Citizen • 2669 Bagley • Detroit • MI • 48216 • Phone: 313-963-8282
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Major media, businesses attack plan as ‘racist’
Dorian Harvey
By Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen
DETROIT — A plan to remedy the economic plight of Detroit’s majority African-American community, originated by young local entrepreneurs as “African Town” and elaborated on by “Powernomics” author Dr. Claud Anderson, has evidently created panic in white-dominated corporate boardrooms and angered some of the city’s ethnic minorities.
Crying “racial separation” and “reverse racism,” the local daily newspapers are assailing the plan and the Detroit City Council’s support for it.
Meanwhile, Arab-, Asian and Mexican-Americans held a rally Sept. 29 protesting the council’s support for the measure, which would create a loan fund only for Blacks.
In July, the city council passed resolutions supporting two linchpins of Anderson’s proposal: the creation of a capital development corporation to benefit Blacks, and the formal designation of Black people as the city’s majority population.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick later met with Anderson to discuss the plan, titled “A Powernomics Economic Development Plan for Detroit’s Under-Served Majority Population.”
Kilpatrick appeared ready to endorse the endeavor, but abruptly backed off in the face of a firestorm of complaints, including Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s comparison of the plan to his advocating a “Honky Town.”
“This controversy did not arise when the city gave Mike Ilitch $40 million to build a baseball park, where the only Black person in the mix is a peanut vendor,” said Dorian Harvey, who plans to build an African-centered retail and entertainment complex. “What we’re trying to do is build enterprises where Blacks can be the owners and executive directors. We never thought about it being discriminatory, but I expect that any time Blacks talk about building wealth and becoming self-sufficient, as Marcus Garvey did with the Black Star ocean line, we can expect to be attacked.”
Harvey and his partners in African Town World-Wide, LLC, Terence Willis and Anthony Simmons, have worked since 1997 to make their dream a reality. Stories on their plans for the complex, which would include kiosks for small vendors, have been featured in The Michigan Citizen, Crain’s Detroit Business and The Detroit News.
“We also want to take advantage of Detroit’s status as a global port,” Harvey went on, “and create a supply chain for businesses around the world, to give them access to an inner-city urban market and [to] create economic opportunities for Detroit’s citizens. And we don’t plan to stop in Detroit; this is an issue everywhere in the country.”
Harvey said he and his partners, who have copyrighted the “African Town” name, invited Anderson to speak at one of their meetings in 1997.
Later, they talked with government agencies, community alliances, investors and developers. They located several prospective parcels of land for the complex. Thirty businesses, with a total of 300 business owners, signed letters of intent to participate.
Councilwoman Joann Watson said she took up the call for an African town last year, as part of her campaign platform.
“All of us should be very supportive of a plan designed to provide ownership and employment for the largest segment of Detroit’s citizens, who have been mired in poverty and exploitation for a long time, against a historical backdrop which included thriving Black Bottom and Paradise Valley businesses, hospitals, pharmacies, restaurants and even hotels,” she said.
Watson said a Detroit daily recently featured an article on the devastation President George W. Bush’s policies have brought on the working poor, but on its editorial page, the daily denounced economic self-determination for poor Black Detroiters in the form of an African town.
“This attack should not be accepted by any conscious members of the community,” she said. “It in is our collective best interest to have the majority community offered more than foreclosures and games of chance. As far as calling it ‘African town,’ what could be more appropriate, since all of human life emerged in Africa?”
The city council commissioned Anderson’s report last November, at a cost of $112,000. The report includes the idea of having a Black business district as a central component, and it uses no-holds-barred language.
The report reasons that Blacks, who constitute 86 percent of Detroit’s population, should have proportionate economic dominance in the city, instead of “Euro-white” and ethnic minorities controlling the $11 billion Blacks spend each year.
Anderson says Blacks have been systematically deprived of this dominance by white flight and corporate disinvestment, by Arab-, Asian- and Mexican-American business owners’ ensuing control of retail and other parts of the economy, and by the profits large corporations make in the city.
“Part of the major problem the city is experiencing is revenue flow,” Anderson said in an interview. “Capital is hemorrhaging across Eight Mile Road. Money should circulate within Detroit eight to twelve times. If it did, you would have $100 billion in resources to improve the quality of life in the city, coming from of the $11 billion Detroiters spend.”
Anderson decried corporate policies of privatization and regionalization, and says such concepts as “Cool Cities” are aimed at aimed at returning Detroit’s African-Americans to a “minority” status, encouraging an incursion of suburbanites back into Detroit, rather than benefiting the “native Black” population.
He said the impoverishment of Detroit’s majority population has created an emergency situation, and he recommended that the city declare a formal emergency and spend funds generated by revenue from the casinos to implement the Powernomics Plan as a remedy.
Councilwoman Sharon McPhail’s office is compiling statistics on the funds the city has already spent to aid business ventures that have benefited ethnic minorities, according to McPhail’s staff assistant, Calvin Hughes. That includes $4 million in federal empowerment zone funds now being used to help build a welcome center in Mexican Town.
After establishing the Detroit Capital Development Corporation, Anderson recommends creating 35 Black-owned, vertically-integrated industries, as well as retail and service businesses in fields where Blacks dominate spending, such as seafood and soul food enterprises and hair care, beauty supply and clothing outlets.
In his report, he said that 18 of the 35 enterprises are “already spoken for,” but Watson said the plan would be open for participation by all African-American Detroiters.
African Town Worldwide LLC can be reached at 313.522.0722 or through its Web site:
www.africantown.net africantown.net>. Copies of Dr. Claud Anderson’s report are available at City Planning Commission offices, located on the second floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
E-mail:
dbukowski@michigancitizen.com
AMANI
ROARIN......