"No Bridge Card, No Bridge"

[Lowell]

In a new low in the International Bridge issue, it seems that opponents of the bridge have '$leveraged$' reductions in Bridge card benefits into opposition to the new bridge causing a hearing on the new bridge to be adjourned today via State Senator Tupac Hunter of Detroit and a group called the New Marcus Garvey Movement.

During the hearing a number of Detroiters were there to oppose the new second bridge project. They were led by Minister Malik Shabazz of the New Marcus Garvey Movement. Many of them were chanting "No Bridge Card, No Bridge."

Shabazz told Action News reporter Kimberly Craig that his group has received financial assistance from Detroit Bridge Company owner Matty Maroun in their efforts to eliminate crack houses in the city of Detroit.

Read more: http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/...#ixzz1bGwXx7az

Geez how do I get my 'financial assistance' to eliminate threads supporting the new bridge on DetroitYES?

[animatedmartian]

So like, is Matty going to make Delray a desirable neighborhood so Michigan won't have any chance in building the bridge? I laughed watching the video but then I felt somewhat sad and frustrated afterwards.

[Scottathew]

frustrated

I feel frustrated too. Every time I hear Matty's sleazy commercials it makes me so angry that his little PR stunt might actually be working on the uninformed.

[SWMAP]

I could be wrong, but I think Tupac Hunter is admirably working on behalf of the communities that will be hosting the Bridge construction and are seeking to have negative impacts minimized and good investments made in the community in return for putting up with the construction etc. Community groups have been working for years on these plans. Shabazz, on the other hand, is a tool, with Horace Sheffield, of Maroun's. Plus he craves attention. I think they aren't on the same side - although it's true that the community groups would be willing to see the prospects of the new bridge in their neighborhood go down in flames if they don't get any investment in the neighborhoods in return for the huge inconveniences, property takings, etc.

[gnome]

I believe Mr. Hunter's district contains NW Detroit, Dearborn Heights and Inkster. No doubt he has an interest in the bridge, but it isn't because it will be in his district. Shabazz, Mongo, Sheffield are all for hire.

Snider and Co were clowned by the Malik and Tupac tag team. Toss in some chanting and Snider's guys were plowed under by some old fashion political gamesmanship.

[Dexlin]

Moroun goes out and pays one of the most colorful and bombastic characters in the city to make a fool of himself [[which he does fine all by himself) as a distraction and sideshow. Stay klassy, Matty. Blowing all your company's money, and for what? So you can buy yourself a few more years of competition-free revenues? Pig.

Funny that the troll who owns a bridge has burned every other bridge to society he's ever crossed. "I got mine now go get your own", indeed. Nice way to pay back the community that made you.

[Detroitnerd]

In a new low in the International Bridge issue, it seems that opponents of the bridge have '$leveraged$' reductions in Bridge card benefits into opposition to the new bridge causing a hearing on the new bridge to be adjourned today via State Senator Tupac Hunter of Detroit and a group called the New Marcus Garvey Movement.

Is it just me, or does anybody else think Moroun might be paying Shabazz to give DRIC a taste of the old mau-mau.

http://metrotimes.com/news/delray-foray-1.1189625

News Hits was surprised to see Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel "Matty" Moroun has some new allies in his effort to keep a publicly funded span from being built downriver: the Rev. Malik Shabazz and his New Black Panther Party.

Shabazz and a handful of his associates showed up at a Delray community center at midday Monday, holding professionally made protest signs and shouting, "We say no!" as a bus taking state legislators and community leaders on a fact-finding tour of the neighborhood where the new bridge would be built pulled in for lunch and a presentation.

We weren't along for the ride earlier in the day, when the bus stopped at Moroun's truck plaza and duty-free shop adjacent to the Ambassador. According to the Detroit News, the reclusive Moroun made an appearance, preaching the virtues of the free enterprise system.

The bus also ventured across the Detroit River and into Windsor, to hear from officials there and see two planned sites: one where the publicly owned New International Trade Crossing [[formerly known as the Detroit River International Crossing) would be placed and the other where Moroun wants to locate a privately owned second span adjacent to the Ambassador.

At the Delray community center, it was a different pitch being served up along with a lunch of sub sandwiches and chips. A broad cross-section of residents and business owners showed up to say they want a new bridge to be built in their southwest Detroit neighborhood — but only if it comes with legislative assurance that the project will bring agreed-upon "community benefits."
Outside, Shabazz and his group, with their chorus of "no," did their best to try to drown out interviews with people who actually live and work in the area. The good reverend struck us as the kind of guy who believes that you win an argument not with reason and facts, but by yelling the loudest.

Asked why he opposed the publicly funded bridge, Shabazz launched into a spiel about the strong financial state of Detroit Public Schools before it was first taken over by the state years ago. His point, if you want to call it that, was that Lansing can't be trusted, especially now that Republican Rick Snyder is sitting in the governor's office. Never mind that it was Snyder's predecessor, Democrat Jennifer Granholm, who originally supported a new bridge downriver.

"We're tired of Lansing helping us," explained Shabazz. He also expressed concern that the project — despite a guarantee from the Canadian government that it would foot the bill for the new bridge —would end up siphoning money from America's already depleted public coffers.

At which point News Hits felt as if we'd suddenly been transported to some sort of alternate universe. When Black Panthers start sounding like members of the Tea Party, you know truly strange territory has been entered.

Apparently, Delray itself was strange territory for a majority of the protesters.
"I've never seen any of them at any of the community meetings that have been held concerning this issue," said Linda Pierce, a luncheon attendee who runs a nearby homeless shelter. "If they have concerns, they should be sitting with us at the table." ...

[bartock]

Hey! There are quite a few white folks in SW Detroit. Maroun should hire the Aryan Nation to protest the bridge also...offer them sandwiches, $100 bucks and the promise of some press. Shabazz is a shill...if I were a member of the New Black Panther Party [[and for any number of reasons, I'm not) I'd be pissed at the sellout.

Then, I'd try to convince the other four members to quit and start our own new and radical movement.

[robtandersen]

This district is represented by Rashida Tlaib. And I'm sure she has a better sense of community sentiment than these carpetbaggers, Shabazz and Hunter.

[SWMAP]

Hunter is a member of the Committee, a Democrat and is Tlaib's friend in pushing for the community benefits that Tlaib's wanted for her district. Someone above conflates Hunter's advocacy with Shabazz. But that is a mischaracterization.

[kraig]

Hunter is a member of the Committee, a Democrat and is Tlaib's friend in pushing for the community benefits that Tlaib's wanted for her district. Someone above conflates Hunter's advocacy with Shabazz. But that is a mischaracterization.

A big mischaracterization. Hopefully at some point, Tlaib will clarify for the residents in her area that the benefit package was something that she was pushing for and that Hunter was acting on their behalf and not with Malik Shabazz. I noticed that she didn't really get into that in her statement. It would be a shame if she lets one of her allies get thrown under the bus on this.

[SWMAP]

I don't think that Tlaib knows that, on this Board, Lowell conflated the presence of Tupac Hunter and Malik Shabazz at the hearing into a single Pro-Moroun presence . She doesn't know that he misunderstood what happened there and then published it here [[" causing a hearing on the new bridge to be adjourned today via State Senator Tupac Hunter of Detroit and a group called the New Marcus Garvey Movement.").
I did know that Tupac Hunter was pushing her agenda on the Committee.

[kraig]

I don't think that Tlaib knows that, on this Board, Lowell conflated the presence of Tupac Hunter and Malik Shabazz at the hearing into a single Pro-Moroun presence . She doesn't know that he misunderstood what happened there and then published it here [[" causing a hearing on the new bridge to be adjourned today via State Senator Tupac Hunter of Detroit and a group called the New Marcus Garvey Movement.").
I did know that Tupac Hunter was pushing her agenda on the Committee.

Here's her statement.

October 20, 2011Statement from State Representative Rashida Tlaib [[D-Detroit) on the Senate Committee's Failure to Vote Out a Bill Authorizing the NITC

“I am disappointed that the Senate Committee on Economic Development failed today to approve comprehensive legislation authorizing the building of a new bridge between Detroit and Canada: the New International Trade Crossing [[NITC). Their failure potentially robs us of approximately 30,000 jobs for our residents and a process to protect the community where a new bridge would locate.
“The inability to vote out Senate Bill 410 casts a cloud over the Legislature and leads the people we are elected to serve to suspect that this debate over the bridge has been tainted by the actions of those fighting the NITC project, namely the owners of the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit International Bridge Company. The people of Detroit and all Michigan communities wanted a fair and honest debate, and they wanted protections for their families, children and homes. But the attacks by the Bridge Company have effectively prevented that fair and honest debate as evidenced by the failed vote on Senate Bill 410 today. By misconstruing the facts on the NITC and the facts surrounding community benefits they have attacked the families living near the bridge, the families of the people who would have benefitted from the construction jobs, and the businesses throughout Michigan that would have reaped the benefits of a new state of the art secure border crossing.
“I am disappointed that my legislative colleagues chose to believe a special interest—the Ambassador Bridge owners—over their own Republican-led Administration. I had hoped that the people’s Legislature would not be turned into the Ambassador Bridge Legislature but that is what happened in the Senate today with the failure to approve legislation that would have created jobs and protected families.”

It appears, to me at least, that she's not bothering to separate his actions and intentions from those of the rest of the Committee. Her coming out and saying something on his behalf would go a long way in clarifying his position. There's still time for her to do it.

[SWMAP]

I see your point.

[Gianni]

Seems like a no brainer: A bridge deal without community benefits specifically in the bill [[which would have passed had the 2 dems not abstained) is better than no bridge deal. They could still fight for community benefits later. I don't understand how the dems could fall for this. Don't they know how to count?

[Dexlin]

Gianni,

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the two Dems knew this thing had very little chance of making it through the Senate, let alone the House, so they used there votes as a statement. Honestly, the whole thing is a mess. I agree, though. They could have fought for community benefits later knowing how difficult it was going to be to get this through the legislature to begin with, but again, maybe that was part of the calculation to put all the cards on the table out front.

Between Republicans, in general, now at the ideological belief that the government shouldn't be involved in just about anything, and Moroun poisoning the public well while buying off politicians, I think the GOP has made the calculation that they have little to lose, politically, by opposing this. Really a shame. Snyder would have been smarter to paint a vote against the legislation as a vote against local roads and jobs sense we were going to use the money Canada was fronting us to get matching funds from the Feds to fix a sh%tload of local roads.

[Hypestyles]

shabazz should stick with the Detroit 300 patrols.. and for all his grandstanding against "the man/anonymous suburban conspirators/Lansing, he should know better than to collaborate with the likes of Maroun..

[SWMAP]

This Metro Times profile of Shabazz is a few years old. If nothing is substantially changed in his worldview since it was published readers can see what an opportunist he is to get mixed up with Maroun.

http://www2.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=7648

In a way, though, this community-building is akin to road construction. Certainly, Shabazz has an eye on improving the here and now, but this activism is also a means of getting to what he sees as the final destination. His is a grandiose vision involving what the self-described revolutionary calls “complete, total, cosmic change.”
What he wants, ultimately, are separate societies, segregated on the basis of skin color. Whites here, blacks there, brown-skinned, red-skinned and yellow-skinned people there, there and there, each in control of their own pieces of real estate.
To achieve that, he says, the white capitalist power structures of the West must be eliminated. And if this vision is ever realized, it won’t be through peaceful means. Forget about the nonviolent civil disobedience of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King.
“I love Dr. King,” Shabazz says, “but I’m not going to get beat up to share a toilet with anyone.”
The changes Shabazz wants, he says, will only come through armed insurrection. “Huey Newton said power flows through the barrel of a gun,” Shabazz says, invoking the name of one of the original Black Panthers. “We plan to make changes the same way George Washington did, the same way any oppressed people get power.”
He refuses to discuss or even acknowledge any specific plans for revolution, nor will he disclose what kind of weaponry his group has, though he does admit that they’re often armed and can shift from “Martin Luther King mode” to “Malcolm X mode” at any time.

My next-door neighbor was mixed up with Shabazz for a few years. She thought he would scare all her neighbors and she displayed the Black-power flag. He came to visit a lot, sat in court when she was suing her neighbors [[lost every time). His followers look to be wizened old men. I never saw intimidating young men with him, so I don't see much future for his armed insurrection. He's a big-talker.

[Nikki Pooh]

though he does admit that they’re often armed and can shift from “Martin Luther King mode” to “Malcolm X mode” at any time.

He's now shifted to "Matty Maroun mode"....

[gnome]

oh, by the way, Malik's given name was Jeffery Lewis, and his mom is in prison for murder. Next time you see him, ask him how is mom is doing.

He loves that.

[trstar]

I won't mention his name - Oblique Menopause - is a joke, that's now been completely exposed. His "value" - real or perceived - will always be diminished from this point further. I hope he was paid well.

[corktownyuppie]

oh, by the way, Malik's given name was Jeffery Lewis, and his mom is in prison for murder. Next time you see him, ask him how is mom is doing.

He loves that.

The man sounds like he's lived a profoundly painful existence.