Nation Topics - Detroit | The Nation

Presents profiles of various progressive city leaders around the U.S. Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, CA; Rocky Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah; Pegeen Hanrahan, Mayor of Gainesville, Florida; Elaine Fleming, Mayor of Cass Lake, Minnesota; Ross Mirkarimi, City Supervisor of San Francisco, CA; JoAnn Watson, Council member in Detroit; Bill Perkins, Council member in New York City; John Herrera: Alderman, Carrboro North Carolina.

The article discusses the failure of Attorney General John Ashcroft to convict even one out of 5,000 detained foreign nationals as alleged terrorists in the War on Terrorism. On September 2, 2004, a federal judge in Detroit threw out the only jury conviction the Justice Department has obtained on a terrorism charge since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In October 2001, shortly after the men were initially arrested, Ashcroft heralded the case in a national press conference as evidence of the success of his anti-terror campaign. It now turns out that the prosecution failed to disclose to the defense evidence that other government experts did not consider the sketches and videotape to be terrorist casing materials at all and that the government's key witness had admitted to lying. Meanwhile, despite widespread recognition that the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison has done untold damage worldwide to the legitimacy of the fight against terrorism, the military has still not charged any higher-ups in the Pentagon, and the President George W. Bush Administration has shown no inclination to appoint an independent commission to investigate. And in late July, resurrecting the ideological-exclusion practices so familiar from the cold war, the Department of Homeland Security revoked a work visa for a prominent Swiss Islamic scholar, Tariq Ramadan, who had been hired by Notre Dame University for an endowed chair in its International Peace Studies Institute. The barring of Ramadan reinforces the sense that the Bush Administration cannot or will not distinguish between moderates and extremists and is simply anti-Muslim.

Those who believe that civil liberties are a bedrock of a healthy and secure democracy are beginning to win support in cases stemming from the events of September 11. As shock has given way to a renewed appreciation for the rule of law, courts have stood up to Attorney General John Ashcroft and for civil liberties from Detroit, Michigan, to London, England. A lawyer for a terrorism suspect has sued Ashcroft over his new policy authorizing government officials to listen in on attorney-client conversations without probable cause or a judicial warrant.

It's election time in Teamsterland. This month, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters will hold its fourth nationwide vote in ten years, sending mail ballots to nearly 1.4 million workers so they can directly elect top leaders of their union. The incumbent president James Hoffa, no friend of real Teamsters reform, may win the balloting that begins October 9. Standing in Hoffa's way, as usual, is TDU, the Detroit-based network of Teamsters dissidents and its candidate, Tom Leedham, a feisty local officer from Portland, Oregon, who won 39 percent of the vote in a three-way race in 1998.

The article presents information on socio-political developments related to Detroit attorney James P. Hoffa. It was 1995 and Hoffa had just declared his candidacy for Teamsters president, a position then occupied by Ron Carey, who'd been elected in 1991 with help from Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). Nevertheless, endowed with his father's famous name and instant media attention, he was the ideal front for old guard Teamsters officials trying to regain control of the union. Hoffa was turned away by the Teamsters in attendance, but not before getting into a shouting match with several female strikers from Diamond Walnut.

In professional football, worlds collide. Brutality meets ballet. Swagger meets stealth. Wealth meets weakness. "We" meets "me." Pain meets pleasure. Violence meets virtue. Nowhere was this last better illustrated than on December 21, 1997, when the helmet of Detroit linebacker Reggie Brown slammed into a New York Jets lineman, Lamont Burns. The collision drove Brown's head into his shoulders. He slumped unconscious, stopped breathing, and players from both teams gathered to cry and pray for the motionless Brown. The Lions medical staff saved Brown from death.

The article presents information on Detroit newspaper strike. The decision on the strike was made in September 1995 by the six local presidents of the striking unions and their lawyers. That Labor Day weekend and the weekend after, thousands of unionists had converged on the papers' printing plant. They stayed up all night to block scab-driven trucks from exiting with the lucrative combined Sunday edition of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. But the management got an injunction that ordered picketers away from the gates, and the Local presidents submitted. The companies, which had planned to provoke this strike for years, never missed a day of publication.

From the A.F.L.-C.IO.'s freelance political commercials to the romance of Union Summer, organized labor seems to have achieved a visibility unthinkable only a few years ago. In Detroit, more than 2,000 union employees of the city's newspapers, the "Detroit News" and the "Detroit Free Press," have been on strike since July 1995. Owned by Gannett and Knight Ridder respectively-the country's two largest newspaper chains-the News and Free Press gave up decades of fierce competition in 1989 to become contented partners in a joint-operating agreement, a sort of federally licensed monopoly that allowed them to unite their publishing operations while remaining nominally distinct.

In sections of Chicago, Newark, Detroit and New York City where the murder rate has reached record highs, there are dozens of billboards designed solely to urge people to stop killing and to avoid getting killed. One popular sign admonishes, "Don't Let Your Child Be the Next Victim of Violent Crime" and urges people to get a booklet. Another, referred to as "the peace sign," proclaims, "It's Time for Peace, Stop the Killing," these words framed by the symbols of Chicago's major gangs. Graffiti are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the professionally designed billboards and signs sponsored by benevolent institutions.

Detroit, Michigan is a city whose economic power disappeared quickly, leaving it isolated, fragmented and nearly bankrupt. During the decade beginning in 1968, the city lost 2,08,000 jobs, one-third of its total employment. Once the largest factory town in the world, a mixed ethnic blue-collar city, Detroit is now an African-American metropolis that can no longer sustain itself. More than three-quarters of the residents are African Americans, with roots in the Southern states, particularly Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Mississippi. Large numbers of people congregate in only a few places: near the Detroit River, on a narrow strip about two blocks wide, and in Greektown, an enclave of ethnic restaurants and shops.