Who fathered/mothered Detroit's leadership culture?

[Irvine Laird]

The root of our misery in Detroit is leadership. The ruins of Detroit are monuments to ruinous leadership at every level in the corporate, government, and religious communities.

Federal policies, the global economy, poor urban planning, and the disintegration of our social fabric are certainly important factors, but I believe leadership is the big one.

So here is the two-part question:

1) What is the "family tree" of Detroit's leadership culture. Know that when I say "Detroit" I mean all of us across the region. When we look at who is "in charge" around here, can we trace their path to power back to certain institutions or people?

2) What has to happen to plant a new leadership "family tree" in this region? How do we chop down the old tree or at least prune away that bad branches? How do start a new forward momentum with the right people? What is missing from the leadership equation?

[Crumbled_pavement]

You wouldn't like my answers to these questions.

[Blueidone]

In my younger years, I never really involved or aware of Detroit politics. I grew up in the 'burbs and really didn't pay much attention. During the CAY years, I worked downtown part of the time, and learned about some things. However, during the KK scandals and such, and through finding this forum, I became much more aware of things.

I have heard various opinions about where it came from, but I don't know if anyone can really say. how do we fix it? The only way I see is to first change the City Charter and second elect individuals who will do what it takes to bring the City back.

But who are those people? How do you know? You think someone is honorable, thoughtful, upstanding, caring and all those other adjectives we are looking for in a candidate. But somehow once they get elected, they become something else.

In my mind, it's like the chicken and the egg thing...did the corrupt politician come first, or did politics corrupt the person? It's way too philosphical for me.

[Detroit500]

The problem facing Detroit right now also is a culture of isolationism and of anger and distrust. The reality is the region's success hinges on the success of Detroit. Unfortunately, so much of our time is spent trying to pick up each other's pieces of what is left, than working together to make something truly great together. Also, the truly low-life people who run for city council for the mere purpose of collecting an $80,000 salary, instead of feeling they can honestly make a difference don't help. Looking at the people running for council, I can think of only a few [[Jai-Lee Dearing to a degree, and certainlyD. Etta Wilcoxon come to mind) that seem to have presented logical, cohesive, suggestions for how to help change our city.

When you consider the assets Detroit has -- second largest theatre district in the country, largest municipal park in the country, international riverfront, etc. there is no reason why we should not have a population of at least over a million people in the city.

[Buy American]

You wouldn't like my answers to these questions.

You wouldn't like my answers either. I can say one thing though.... there is too much blame on the WRONG people for the problems Detroit faces today.

[Detroitnerd]

The big guys created our political culture. The auto fever hit Detroit hard in 1915, and all that money overwhelmed our local institutions. Where ward politics and ethnic identities had been able to broker deals with the ancien regime, in the new Detroit, deals were made by powerful political bosses for their industrial baron friends. And the power brokers cared little for the individuals or communities anymore. Got a problem with the ward that has Hastings Street in it? Let's get off the ward system. Oakman wants to build up a whole neighborhood where he owns the rights to the subway? Let's look the other way. Want to plop down factories in the middle of neighborhoods on green space? Do it, baby!

After years of dealing with only the powerful, city leaders didn't much care because the little people started to leave when they were allowed the freedom to, thanks to the GI bill and the Interstate Highway Act. And there the leadership mentality still exists, dreaming of big projects, huge parking garages, superblocks, justice campuses, pedestrian tubeways, amusement park "transit" systems and multimillion-dollar unveilings, all for a city that can't support its neighborhoods ...

[EastsideAl]

Start with scarce and declining resources, little idea or clue how to plan or build for resource growth, and vested interests that mitigate against change. Combine that with a particularly nasty and seemingly endless blood war over the scraps we do have, fueled by historical resentment, isolation, fear, [[often willful) mutual incomprehension, and the ways in which appeals to these things have been a ticket to electoral success throughout the area. Add in a long history of corrupt, inept, self-interested and self-aggrandizing public officials, and you have a lovely little recipe for the seemingly intractable and inescapable mess we're in today.

[gnome]

Irving, if you're asking for some modern family tree, ...for Detroit, today's central power-base grew from Albert Cleage at the church of the Black Madonna, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cleage

From the shrine we get Sheriff Warren Evans, Cleage's nephew; Bernard Kilpatrick who met his future wife, Caroline Cheeks, at the Shrine. Charles Diggs whose family was a pals with Albert's father through Detroit's first black hospital and the development of the funeral business. Other powerbrokers with links to The Shrine include Judge Ruth Carter, former head of the city's law department and ex-girlfriend of Bernard Kilpatrick; former State Representative, Marsha Cheeks; former Supreme Court Justice Conrad Mallet: Judge Ronald Giles plus more than I can list.

[Detroitnerd]

What about the House of McNamara?

[4real]

I would say that "the root of misery in Detroit" is the number of kids growing up with unmarried parents and the number of people tied into the governments welfare programs. This leads to poverty and many issues that plaque cities all over the country.

[Homer]

Quit smoking, eat healthy, exercise more. These will decrease the issue of plaque in our cities.

[jams]

An argument can be made that corruption of the leadership in Detroit extends as far back as Cadillac and his assignment of land and control of brandy, warehouses, and mill.

[jtf1972]

Detroit has always had its own political ways. John Lodge put it very well when he said that [[I'm paraphrasing, due to being too lazy to look it up) Detroit politicians talk a lot with their hands in their pockets.

[Retroit]

The only plausible explanation that I can come up with is that there is a secret society of white supremacists that are dressed up as black politicians attempting to completely destroy the city.

[jackie5275]

Also, the truly low-life people who run for city council for the mere purpose of collecting an $80,000 salary, instead of feeling they can honestly make a difference don't help..

Amen to that!!

[jackie5275]

What about the House of McNamara?

McNamara's group really isn't/wasn't in the city proper. They were more so interested in taking over all around it-Wayne County gov't, and a number of downriver & western Wayne communities. McNamara had a number of appointees in local community leadership, plus backing from the Wayne Co Commission. It seemed to me they had their best shot at going beyond Wayne County when Mike Duggan was Wayne County Prosecutor. I think if he had gone on to something like Atty Gen or Gov, this regime would've done better on a broader scale. When Duggan when to the DMC, McNamara's group started to fall apart. Duggan was the lynch pin for that group. Yes, one can argue that Granholm has taken that group to statewide success as gov, but it's not a strong argument. If she was as successful, you would have now on a statewide level what McNamara had on a countywide level in the 1990s. Granholm hasn't been able to do that among a number of things she hasn't been able to do.

[DetroitDad]

The current political climate of Detroit seems to be the result of what often happens after an economic collapse, disaster, or the like. We will be seeing this being a regular theme in Detroit's suburbs over the coming years, right along with the rest of America's suburbs and big cities, who have grown much to big to be sustainable. My own theory is that a post economic collapsed community basically is overrun by corruption and other problems after a triggering collapse event. Once that happens, the community effectively has a cycle of attracting corruption along with an immune deficiency to smaller problems, in that those smaller problems end up feeling like major disasters with no one tending to them. Eventually, the community can only come back if there is a strong reason for the start of a movement to do so from outside, and the corrupt government has been weakened "enough" by a final large disaster, economic or otherwise.

In my opinion, it is reasonable to think that peak oil and the economic woes in the suburbs and the rest of the country could not only convince a movement to return to our old city and town centers, but also weaken the strong hold corruption has on those cities.

[MIRepublic]

Jackie, the originally poster specified that he wasn't just talking about the city proper.

I think Detroitnerd nailed it up near the top. The different players and ethnic cultures may have come and gone and evolved, and such, but you can trace all of this back to just before the 20's, really. It was in the teens of the last century that the entire political culture of the city changed, literally and figuratively. During this time, wards were dismantled and the city was pretty much ran turned over to be governed by the manufacturers.

The only difference is the changing economic circumstances. This system [[seemed to) worked when Detroit was booming, but it's flaws became horribly apparent as early as the late 40's really. To be sure, if the folks who were running the city in say the 30's were running it today, Detroit would be no better off as very little has changed philosophically in the minds of city leaders.

[DetroitDad]

Jackie, the originally poster specified that he wasn't just talking about the city proper.

I missed that too. Really, Detroiters will return to old Detroit eventually, and the suburbs will return to countryside after mirroring Detroit's downfall. This period was actually a long collapse or emergency on a microscopic scale, and isn't over yet. We are at the part where the people ran until they had to fight.

Look at modern day Detroit as a microcosm similar to what happened during the Dark Ages.

[MIRepublic]

It's bad, but that is quite an exaggeration which is something rather hard to do given how truly politically dysfunctional the region is. lol

[DetroitDad]

It's bad, but that is quite an exaggeration which is something rather hard to do given how truly politically dysfunctional the region is. lol

Well, yeah. I'm not comparing scale, just general method. I'm just saying their is a natural reaction and progression to a collapse. Detroit's corruption was not created by a person or persons, rather Detroit's situation made and makes it a natural attractor of corrupt individuals and parties. And Detroit's problems will only be quelled when there are enough people that have a interest in it being a desirable city to live and work in again, and less people able to benefit from it's corruption.

[mjs]

I don't know if I agree that McNamara's group wasn't in the city proper or didn't have a major influence on it. The Kilpatrick family wouldn't be here if it weren't for McNamara and Kilpatrick involves a former Mayor, a Congressperson, and a non-elected major political mover. The family is closely tied to the Govenor. Wayne County government, putting alot of its resources into Detroit, having alot of its voters in Detroit, being located in Detroit, and attending all the major Detroit events, tends to keep these guys seeing each other day to day. The WC Exec's office is just a few hundred feet from CAYMC where County civil business functions shares a building with the city heads. They even share bars and a parking garage.

McNamara won his first County wide election with money from Livonia developers. He was the Mayor of Livonia for crying out loud. Was it really that hard to see that would create the risk of a pay-to-play attitude?

[MIRepublic]

Well, yeah. I'm not comparing scale, just general method. I'm just saying their is a natural reaction and progression to a collapse. Detroit's corruption was not created by a person or persons, rather Detroit's situation made and makes it a natural attractor of corrupt individuals and parties. And Detroit's problems will only be quelled when there are enough people that have a interest in it being a desirable city to live and work in again, and less people able to benefit from it's corruption.

Just one small nitpick, you're still talking about the city proper. The entire region is dysfunctional. It simply manifests itself in widespread corruption in the city proper, and let's be clear, the city proper politicians aren't the only regional politicians that benefit from this corruption.

[kraig]

How does the saying go, "When you point a finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you"?

We're the ones to blame because we keep putting the same type of candidates in office. Two Cockrel's, one Conyers, one Reeves. Nearly half of our City Council was put in due to pure name recognition. Two of the five left would go so far as to blame a solar eclipse on white people from the suburbs. The most respected Council Member helps shake down Muslim and Chaldean business owners every chance he gets and the remaining two actually treat people decently, and of course, receive the least amount of attention. We're probably going to end up re-electing around 5 of the 6 incumbents running.

We're the ones that complain that we need council by districts, while voting in the worst school board, county commission, state reps and legislatures through a district system.

We're the ones that keep voting in Congressman and U.S. Senators that are old enough to refer to 75 year olds as youngsters.

We're the ones that keep on voting for drunk ass County execs and the Sherrifs that won't arrest or ticket them.

We're the ones that re-elected a governor after she led the state into economic conditions that were worse than the State of Louisiana after the Levees broke.

Every one of us needs to do a better job in picking candidates. Until we do, we're going to end up with the same type of lousy candidates that we've been choosing.

[DetroitDad]

Just one small nitpick, you're still talking about the city proper. The entire region is dysfunctional. It simply manifests itself in widespread corruption in the city proper, and let's be clear, the city proper politicians aren't the only regional politicians that benefit from this corruption.

Agreed, and it's because of the collapse. Detroit and it's suburbs are really one in the same, one ecosystem. Like the individual fortified states that everyone ran to during the European Dark Ages, in the Detroit Dark Ages, people ran to their suburbs. By their very nature, the suburbs work on a model of self preservation and growth over all else, that often means keeping out undesirables and spending a lot of time stealing companies or resources from neighboring suburbs. It also is not good enough to just work together to get a company, resident, or resource into the region. The suburbs by nature will work against regionalism, putting the greed of the individual suburb above the region, since everyone does not share the same benefits. Likewise, some suburbanites see ways to capitalize or benefit from the old cities easy corruptibility, and are attracted to it.

Then you also have to realize that some politicians are going to prove to be wolfs in sheep's clothing. By creating suburbs, we created a bunch of additional political systems and roles that redundantly have to do the same tasks. So you increase the number of politicians who must be watched and kept in check by the various news and larger government groups, groups who have not grown in size, and then recognize that a certain percent of politicians will always "go bad". The suburban system is extremely inefficient, unsustainable, and even self-destructive, which is one reason I joined the rebuild and repopulate the city movement.