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| Bagdad |
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| Detroit |
Recently
I viewed two different stories. One was
an article in the Washington Post by Saif Al-Azzawi titled I despised Saddam’s police state, but the Islamic state would not exist
under his rule. The other story was
Anthony Bourdain’s hour long program on the city of Detroit. Both these stories reported how once
relatively thriving cities have been nearly destroyed. Understanding the history of these two
cities, we can see a certain similarity as to the cause of their demise.
Bagdad
Saif
Al-Azzawi reported that up until he was aged ten, he lived an uneventful
childhood. His parents were middle
class. Iraq was a largely secular state. His mother wore western clothes and never
covered her hair. People from Arab
countries came to Iraq for its university and its health care system. Then, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the United
States went to war.
The
U.S. military deliberately bombed the infrastructure of Iraq. This meant that Al-Azzawi’s family no longer
had access to water. A water tank was
placed on the roof of their home, and this was the family’s new source of
water.
The
Iraqi weather can be swelteringly hot.
Without electricity there was no air-conditioning. Yet at night windows were closed to keep out the
mosquitoes.
In
1990 before the war a flat of eggs cost two Iraqi dinars. By 2003 these same eggs cost thousands of
dinars. Al-Azzawi’s job as a pharmacist
paid him 50,000 dinars per month.
Al-Azzawi’s
conclusion from his experiences was that “All these people–both Americans and
Iraqis who have died since 2003–died for nothing.”
Certainly
Al-Azzawi considered Saddam Hussein to be a tyrant. However, the United States government has a
routine policy of supporting ruthless dictatorships. In fact, the U.S. government supported
Hussein for about thirty years.
The
standard of living improved in both Iraq and Iran when those nations
nationalized their oil reserves. The
United States used the C.I.A. in both these nations to overthrow the
governments that nationalized the oil.
In Iran the Shah came to power, and in Iraq Saddam Hussein became the
dictator.
When
a popular revolution overthrew the Shah, the U.S. government gave support to
Saddam Hussein in his war against the revolutionary Iranian government. I’ve read estimates that as many as one
million people died as a result of that war.
After
the United States armed forces defeated Saddam Hussein the soldiers in the
armed forces of Iraq lost their jobs.
Today the United States is waging war against the organization
ISIS. This organization is made up
largely of former Iraqi solders who lost their jobs when the United States took
over Iraq.
Detroit
The
story of Detroit is different. In order
to begin to understand what happened to this city we need to look at a bit of
labor history.
We
might say that the labor movement started in this country in the year
1877. This year marked the end of the
relatively democratic reconstruction governments in the former confederate
states. This date also marked the defeat
of the Native American nation known as the Nez Perce. This defeat marked the near end of about 100
years of genocidal warfare against Native Americans.
1877
also saw the great rail strike that erupted in that year. For almost sixty years the labor movement
waged numerous strikes against employers.
The large majority of these strikes ended in a defeat for the
workers. Then, in 1934, during the
middle of the depression, three strikes won union recognition. These victories paved the way for millions of
workers to be organized in unions.
During
the Second World War, the United States government demanded that workers forget
their labor demands and join the war effort.
This meant that corporations would reap windfall profits while the wages
of workers were frozen.
During
the war years the United Mine Workers Union violated the governments no-strike
laws. Also, Black workers continued the
fight against the institutionalized discrimination they faced.
After
the war, working people continued their fight against our real enemy. The largest strike wave in the history of the
United States erupted all across the nation.
Outside
of Detroit in Dearborn, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company built their River
Rouge plant. Henry Ford pioneered the
idea of an assembly line to manufacture automobiles. Before the assembly line the production of
autos was highly skilled requiring blueprints for each vehicle.
Many
workers in Michigan didn’t want to do the monotonous, dangerous, and stressful
work on the assembly line. Black
workers, who had escaped the Jim Crow segregation in the South were looking for
any work they could find. This is why
Henry Ford began a deliberate policy of hiring Black workers.
Under
these conditions, the United Auto Workers Union needed to fight against
discrimination in this country. By doing
this they demonstrated to Black workers that the union supported their
interests. Eventually the United Auto Workers
Union became one of the largest in the nation.
The union as well as auto production was centered in the Detroit area.
U.S. government assistance to auto corporations
The
original method of mass transportation in the United States was rail. Rail transport is much more fuel-efficient
than automotive. Rail can also run on electricity
that doesn’t need to be powered by oil.
Oil reserves in the world will begin to run out in the next fifty
years. Ever since 1945 there have been
over 30,000 deaths due to auto accidents every year.
With
this kind of record, one would think that the government would have made it a
central priority to promote rail transport.
This would have especially been effective in cities where the entire
population could be supported on rail transport.
However,
this did not happen. Politicians in this
country took money from all the corporations associated with the manufacture of
autos. In turn, the government promoted
the idea of building highways, roads, tunnels, and bridges for auto transport. The money spent on these efforts must have
amounted to trillions of dollars in
government spending.
Without
these roads, automobiles have little value.
In other words, the automotive corporations may have had some of the
biggest government handouts in the history of the world.
The results
Because
of these government handouts and the labor of workers in the auto industry, the
auto corporations became the largest in the world. Because of the union, workers began to have
benefits they never had before. Workers
won the eight-hour day, and many could afford a home, a car, and even college
education for their children.
Then,
with no vision of the future, the auto companies manufactured eight cylinder
gas gulling cars en mass. This appeared
to be all right while the price of gas was about thirty cents per gallon. During these years the quality of new cars
was not a major concern. When I grew up,
they used to call a FORD a, “Fix Or Repair Daily,” or a “Found On the Road
Dead”
The
Japanese auto manufacturers saw how they could take advantage of these
problems. Japanese workers began to
produce quality cars that were fuel-efficient.
The result was that the Japanese auto companies took about twenty-five
percent of the auto market away from the big three U.S. auto corporations. Today, Toyota is the largest auto manufacturer
in the world.
Detroit today
The
population of Detroit has declined from nearly two million in 1950, to about
seven-hundred-thousand today. All social
services have been cut, including the fire department. Abandoned homes have been used for selling
drugs. The speculation is that neighbors
dealt with this problem by burning abandoned houses down. These fires keep the fire department
extremely busy.
The
auto corporations not only shut down entire facilities, they didn’t have the
decency to properly demolish the buildings where these corporations reaped
super-profits. Anthony Bourdain likened
the auto factory ruins to the ruins of ancient cities in Europe. These ruins are also monuments to the effects
of massive government support to the auto-manufacturing corporations.
Yes,
this is the story of two cities. One
city was nearly destroyed by war. The
other was nearly destroyed by development.
The United States government needs to be held accountable for the
destruction of these two cities.
Havana, Cuba
After
the Cuban Revolution, the new Cuban government made a decision not to
prioritize the modernization of the city of Havana. The priority was to develop the rest of the
island that had been neglected due to imperialist exploitation.
The
development of Cuba has been hampered by the fact that the government only had
a single crop economy to work with when they came to power. Another problem has been the embargo by the
United States government.
However,
with all these problems, today every Cuban has a lifetime right to health care
and education. With its extreme
limitations Cuba has made the needs of the people its top priority. Recently, Cuba has sent 165 health care
workers to Africa to aid in the fight against the Ebola virus.
As a
result, today Cuba has an infant mortality rate that is equivalent to some of
the most developed nations in the world.
This infant mortality rate is much lower than that same rate in the
urban centers of the United States.
The
reality of Cuba today demonstrates how the tale of two cities doesn’t need to
be the future of humanity.
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