“If you could do so, how would you Kill a City?”
(and then Rebuild It)
By Glenn Peppers 3-28-14
(Ah, the evil that men do! Evaluate if you will that dark place that is in one’s heart. Ask and/or put yourself in the mindset of another, if you could. If given the chance, who would you omit? Who would you approve, and who would you deny, and worser still, whose heart would you break in order to first destroy the essence of, and then rebuild a city? The pain in my heart aches at the very thought, yet I wrote this as if i were someone else with this desire. Someone outside myself.)
How do you kill a city, and then revive it? Nothing violent or malevolent, I assure you! I’m not talking about any kind of Violent Act at all! No crime so to speak. In this short senerio, no one gets harmed in any way. I’m just speaking on the mindset of, what if you were totally in charge of running the city (or any city), and you wanted to drag that city down to it to its knees, politically. How would you do so?
Here is my own paraphrased quote that was sparked by dialogue that Han, the ruthless villain in Enter the Dragon uttered to John Saxon in the movie!
“You’ll find that its not easy to be totally ruthless. Even though this story is just hypothetical. It takes more strength to be totally ruthless than you might believe!”
How would I do such a thing? Well first off you’d have to have friends high up in order to help and/or construct the perfect plan of destruction for a major metropolis like say, Detroit. For a city this size, this would have to be a plan that in effect, could quite possibly take years. Decades even! So how would I start? Well lets see, first I’d start by capping off any visible and viable means of employment for mainly males. Preferably, hard working black and hispanic males, first! Then I’d start in on hard working middle class white men. I’d keep a great many males all periodically laid off, and would only hire their wives, mothers, girlfriends, and sisters and aunties, grandmothers and cousins, or anyone of the female persuasion. These women’s education will let them work office and clerical jobs. Holding down the home front, keeping taxes flowing and their homes from completely failing! You don’t want to totally wipe them out, yet!
This will in some cases emasculate and frustrate the males, taking away their prowess and manhood, as they would no longer be the confident bread winners in their own family and household. Remember, southeastern Michigan, is (or was) a strong labor region. And labor is key. Also remember, factory workers don’t alway go to collage. Most Michigan men work or worked somewhere involving labor or the auto industry in Detroit. Retraining would be slow, and frustrating, as they would be financially ruined in the process! In taking away their jobs, they’ll be basically untrained, and unmarketable for employment in most other work environments, except for minimum wage or manual labor jobs like janitorial and construction, etc. Ongoing, I’d limit their unemployment benefits, and keep them in limbo as to how their future as factory laborers will play out!
To make sure industry and production jobs (as they were) do not re-set up shop in Detroit to any real effective degree, throughout lower Michigan, I’d make sure that my friends in high places gave significant tax breaks to big business, and industry if they moved their entire business and home office operations overseas, or anywhere away from the state of Michigan. I’d look the other way at all the drugs and weapons slowly flowing into town as now destitute people begin to find alternative ways to support themselves and their families, mainly byway of illegal ventures! Besides, who cares about those people using drugs in the city, anyway? What’s one news report of a murdered child on the news, and then one small article on that same child in section “D” of the newspaper? They are all but forgotten the day afterwards anyway!
After I’d set all those perimeters in motion, I’d start in on civic matters. I’d then work to deprive Detroit of its most basic services, such as transportation, street lights, police availability, fire and rescue services, etc. I’d make it where chain supermarkets were no longer a mainstay in Detroit! Food markets would be spaced miles apart, making it hard to commute on public transit with shopping bags!
I’d frustrate and vex dedicated police officers by cutting their pay, and making patrolmen work 12 hour shifts, while denying their families healthcare benefits! I’d ignore broken down police cruisers, and unsafe, broken down EMS truck units. I’d make sure to have HR departments hire staff ill equipped to properly handle 911 calls effectively, and professionally. I’d conveniently declare that there was no money in the budget to safely operate even the hook and ladder device on certain fire trucks in Detroit. Denying a vital piece of equipment that would save lives in the city, if you were trapped in a burning building on the second floor, of any structure in Detroit! Of course, new fire trucks would be out of the question! As a result of police cuts, crime would be so rampant that a local burglar alarm company would announce that they will refuse to service the Detroit area! My solution for the many street lights that are out would be that I’d turn the street lights off in areas where they actually work in high crime areas. Areas where you may possibly live. Even if you are one of a few people in that area of abandoned homes, I’d force you move, one way or the other, or you’d live in darkness at night!
I’d wreck and destroy Detroit’s public school system, by crying broke! I’d scream teacher and administration incompetency, theft, and neglect. I’d then further demonize ALL public school teachers in the public school realm, making you, The Public, Hate ALL public school Teachers by spewing lies and inaccuracies about them; that you in fact will begin to believe, just simply because me and my cohorts say that its true! Even though these same teachers (a great lot of them) have and are giving their all to teach our ill mannered children. I’ll even go as far as posting (only certain) teacher’s salaries in the local newspaper, to further make my point that ALL teachers are over paid! Then afterwards, I’d minus ALL teacher salaries at will! To add further insult to injury, I’ll make it where I’ll forcefully barrow $10,000 from every public school teacher and loan it to the Detroit board of education, despite what the law says about borrowing money from school teachers! And then on top of that, I’ll cut your salaries yet again, by 10%. I will slowly and surly minus the Detroit public school teacher down to the most barest of salaries, regardless of their educational or professional status, just because I can!
I’d do this confidently knowing that You the public at large doesn’t have a clue that very often times these same teachers, teach your children without decent (or any) school supplies available to them. And that these teachers most times buy and supply their students with pencils, pens, paper, notebooks, and even food from their own lunch bags! A lot of the time these same kids they teach (depending on the kids financial setting) can barely afford a decent lunch; and those very same teachers that I prompted you to hate and revere, find it in their hearts to give their own money a great deal of the time to a hand full of those students in order for them to buy lunches when they don’t have money for those substandard, often starchy lunches. A dollar here, and a dollar there. Yes even a dollar for a simple bottle water. I won’t tell you that these teachers give as much as they do because in order for my plan to work, you have to hate them! As much as I lie and slander their names, these teachers will still share their lunches with these children who come to school without. Even if its just a plum or a package of cheese crackers, right out of a hungry teachers lunch bag!
I’ll make sure (until your school is transformed into a Charter School) that these student’s study materials and a curriculum has practically nothing to do with any real pertinent learning material as much as possible; or have barely anything to do with the many confusing and convoluted test being thrown down at them. All the while, I’ll continue to tell you that ALL teachers are grossly over paid, and ALL Detroit public school teachers are lazy. My friends in high places even made a Hollywood movie called “Bad Teacher” to solidify the image of the typified bad teacher in your minds, so that you’d further hate your children’s teacher’s guts!... ALL of them! Yet all the while I’d place a gag order on ALL public school teachers, preventing them form ever rebutting any slander or untruthful comments made about them on the news and in the media! And if they ever dared to utter one mumbling word to the media in their defense, I’d terminate them as fast as you can say, “Union?... What Union!”
Yes, whether you know it or not, destroying a public school system is just one component of Killing a City! Killing its educational backbone is definitely key! I would do this in order to crush education and learning down to a fritter. Com’on now! You can’t kill a city full of smart people! And I’ll do this, all the while, making it look like I really care! As you may have heard many times on the news when teacher salaries are being cut. “Its all being done for the children!” Then right when I think I’ve got ya, I’d usher in a Czar, or should I say, an Education Emergency Manager, designed just for the Detroit public school systems. Then Bingo Bango!...
From there I’d raise up Charter Schools, right under the noses of Detroit’s distracted parents’ who just basically want their kids out of the house during the day, most not caring where they actually go to school. Just so long as they are in fact in school, somewhere!... or anywhere but at home!
With help from my many colleagues, we all will continue to make that outcry that Detroit’s public schools are broke, despite how much money Washington sends to Detroit’s impoverished and depleted public school system! It would be no matter! When the funds come, I would divert those funds elsewhere!
On a civic level, I would take total advantage of -- and would solely scape goat a crooked and arrogantly-foolish former mayor! I’ll blame everything mainly on this individual and his friends for virtually any and every financial woe and internal crime element wrong within city government, and BAM!... After I’d finally had this mayor safely put away, I’d plead bankruptcy for the city of Detroit, and then put in place a City Emergency Manager; therefore, at the same time, and in effect, taking away the voters ability to fully make choices on anything civic that really matters within the city.
Killing a city? Oh yes, I’d start with the afore mentioned. I’d put this city under a political and financial siege such as was never seen in any major city in America before! With help from my friends, I’d trample and tax the poor, and people who’ve lived here for decades, and start rebuilding Detroit from its center core -- OUTWARD! And those who lived in this Center Core would get expert services. 24/7! I’d call it Central City, or something like that! In time, Detroit would be fit for only those who could afford it, and in the long run, it would be molded for only those same people and their children for quite sometime to come.
New Detroit resident’s of Central City will reap the benefits of a water department, and now state parks, and waterways, and old world architecture that I so long waited to own and control! Undesirables in outlying areas who once lived here would envy us! I’d profile and checkpoint specific areas of the city where I’d think outlanders would be. Coming down into the city would prove to be a nightmare for people of color and anyone poor who inhabit the outlying areas around Detroit! I’d have to keep it that way!
Years after Killing Detroit as it was, there’d be no more blighted abandoned burned out buildings left over from crack houses, and no long standing abandoned shacks and structures from a forgotten riot over 40 years prior! For a start, I’d see to it that property taxes would plummet, as would auto insurance rates! I’d make it where I would test only people in certain sectors of Michigan for drugs, in order to qualify for welfare and food stamps, leaving other counties and areas in Michigan completely test free! For we all know that, people in those exempt drug test counties don’t use drugs!... Right?
For the most part, I would care nothing about the outlying areas of Detroit and its people, or their legacy there of! In 15 to 20 years time, my plan would have proven to be, the perfect Urban Renewal Execution Plan at its most classic best! I may even get clearance to run a freeway or two through certain undesirable neighborhoods and certain other areas, just to make sure diversity and all its leniency never happens again, in Detroit! Now tell me; How would you Kill a City, my friend?
By Glenn Peppers
(May God save those who really do love Detroit. Each and everyone!)
This story was written this day at 11:30am 3-28-14
