Part V of A Plan for the Cities to Save Themselves

We have arrived at an historic juncture in the racial-political-economic geography of the United States – and a critical moment in the African American saga. A convergence of circumstances has provided Blacks and their progressive allies a window of opportunity to seize the political initiative from the ruthless and profoundly racist dictatorship of corporate boardrooms.

If we allow this window to close without taking decisive action, the evolving corporate “model” will crush or swallow every practical social mechanism of resistance. The fatal blow will come when the Black and Latino populations of America’s cities – the only potential mass base of opposition to corporate rule – are dispersed from the urban centers. It is here, in the geography of the cities, that the line of resistance to the rule of the rich must be drawn. Therefore, we must take the offensive now, while Blacks and Latinos still represent urban majorities, and while the corporate schemes to co-opt and, ultimately, displace these populations are still fragmented and uncoordinated.

Time is of the essence, since corporations travel at the speed of money. But the key elements of resistance to the corporate “model” are already in place. There is much reason for optimism. Black America’s resources and effective allies are infinitely more abundant than they were two generations ago, when relatively small numbers of talented and committed activists transformed the national political landscape. They took on an apartheid nation and achieved many of their primary goals, despite the relative absence of super-concentrated Black population centers, in an environment in which African Americans were frozen out of entire sectors of social and professional life, and when half of Black America could not vote. These activists won because they had a Plan, and because they took the battle to the centers of Jim Crow power – with 10,000 anti-racist demonstrations in 1963, alone.

Objectively speaking, our chances for victory are much better, this time around. Our current enemy is made up of small groups of men in suits – men who are unpopular among most of the U.S. population, but who have Plans for the cities and the capital to back up their schemes. To defeat them, we must call forth and give shape and practicality to the aspirations of the current urban population: we must facilitate their dreams. In doing so, we will challenge the logic of capital – a logic that leads inexorably to the dispersal of existing non-white, urban populations – with the logic of Democratic Development, which demands a Plan that serves the needs of the inhabitants of the cities.

Our political strength will spring from people’s inherent desire to shape their own surroundings, and from the general awareness among city dwellers – particularly African Americans – that they are targeted for removal. Our most tangible assets are the human and material resources of the U.S. labor movement, now finally aware that it is fighting for its very existence. To our great advantage, the cutting edge elements of our Movement for Democratic Development are already serving on the line, fighting rapacious “developers” – including the role “model” for U.S. corporate behavior, Wal-Mart. These innovative, community-based organizations work closely with the most progressive sections of labor – an alliance that has matured and blossomed in Living Wage campaigns and in common resistance to Wal-Mart’s relentless outrages against the rights of workers and communities.

At the core of the movement that we will create, is Black labor, the critical interface between the labor bureaucracy, progressive grassroots activists, and established African American institutions. At least until recently, one of every five Blacks were part of union households. African Americans are disproportionately represented in the devastated manufacturing sector; in those service industries, such as retail foods, most directly affected by urban “development” schemes; and in the public sector – the whipping boy of corporate power. They know who the enemy is, and are not dazzled, as are so many Black institutions, by the trappings of corporate wealth.

Most importantly, the bulk of Black labor lives in the cities, or are intimately connected to the urban center. The new Movement for Democratic Development is conceived as much more than just another attempt to put breaks on the excesses of corporate power. It must be a movement that fights for real democracy in urban America – the kind of democracy that gives the people of the cities the right to determine who builds what, where, and for whose benefit. Our mission is to provide the resources and specialized expertise that will allow the people of the cities to create their own roadmap to development, with the full understanding that corporations are intent on shaping cities that serve only themselves. Black labor – men and women who are consciously Black, militantly labor, and overwhelmingly city dwellers – must play the central role in the new movement.

Black labor has another special responsibility: to transform union pension funds into resources of capital for wise investment in the cities, jurisdictions whose ever-increasing value must be preserved for the people who live there. Black city dwellers are the people on whom unions depend, politically, in their struggle to survive the current corporate offensive in America. If this population base is dispersed, organized labor will be crushed, as well. Black labor understands this, and must take the lead in creating new investment strategies based on rational, Democratic Development – investments that serve both the pensioner and his/her political base.

It won’t cost much money to launch and sustain this new Movement for Democratic Development. The most efficient elements of the civil rights movement, such as the bare-bones Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), didn’t require tens of millions of dollars to shake the nation. That’s because they struck at the heart of the enemy, armed with a Plan that tapped directly into the fountain of Black people’s dreams.

Take the initiative

We must disrupt and supersede corporate development schemes, by becoming city planners in the service of the people. We must take the initiative away from the corporations, who are currently in possession of all the data that make up the life of a city, and who use it selectively to present their self-serving brand of “development” as the only option available. We must redefine the term “development,” to mean change that benefits the people impacted by the project. Development that does not meet that definition, is unacceptable.

We must halt the corporate-imposed triaging of urban America, that accepts the incremental expulsion of populations based on corporate promises of a “greater good” in the future – for those who somehow manage to hang on to their addresses. We must act in the confidence that a “sellers market” exists in urban America, one in which the people of the cities can strike the best deal, if they know the true facts. We must redraw the routes of urban commerce and employment, and demand that investors seeking entrance to a rational economic setting conform to the principles of Democratic Development.

Relatively small teams of people, equipped with specialized knowledge of how cities function, and having gathered the widest possible specific information on targeted cities, can provide the basic outlines for comprehensive urban Plans that serve the inhabitants. These Plans, created in a process that intimately involves the people themselves – eliciting their dreams – will serve as the basis for democratic discussion, negotiations, and struggle over the development of the city.

In the process that we set in motion, we will inevitably illuminate the political lines that separate the real democrats among Black and Latino leadership, from the corporate collaborators and spoils-takers whose only vision is of self-enrichment. Democracy solves these kinds of problems. Our insistence on open and transparent Democratic Development will expose the professional charlatans in full view of the people, who will have themselves put forward their Plan for the development of their own neighborhoods and the city as a whole.

New leadership will emerge, just as occurred in the Sixties. Indeed, authentic leadership can only emerge in the context of struggle.

We will proceed in the knowledge that, in general, the long period of capital disinvestment of U.S. cities has ended. Gentrification of inner cities – once a “creeping” phenomenon, now in full swing – is just one manifestation of capital’s collective decision to return to the cities, and reshape them to its own purposes. In a capitalist market economy, this means cities have become more valuable.

In a perverse but very real sense, corporate designs on the cities can serve to empower the existing Black and Latino populations – but only if it can be demonstrated to city dwellers, in the greatest detail, that they 1) occupy spaces of great value, 2) have the right to determine how these spaces are used, and, 3) are competent to devise alternative Plans for the development of the entire jurisdiction for the betterment of their families and neighbors: to build the city of their dreams.

No activist worth her salt can doubt that people will fight for their own dreams, once they become aware that these dreams are possible. If we develop a process and practice that addresses the three items listed above, we will have launched a new movement, one that is replicable in cities across the nation – and will change the political complexion of urban America.

We must assemble and field a Team that will tackle the three foundational items.

The Audit

The Team’s first job is to perform an Audit of the targeted city’s comprehensive assets. This task directly addresses item 1), by clarifying in great detail the value of the city.

Most city dwellers already know that they face displacement because other people have uses for the spaces in which they live, or that outside forces are creating conditions that undermine their ability to remain in their homes. However, this general understanding – that they are not secure in their space– most often leads to fatalism and malaise, rather than action. Our mission is to show in the greatest possible detail where each neighborhood fits – or has been made not to fit – in the existing patterns of city life. This requires an Audit of the entire city.

We must present the fullest picture of the city’s demographic, physical, and economic layout and activity: where different populations live; how dollars move; where people work, and what types of work they do; where they shop; how they move around the city; what public or private institutions anchor which neighborhoods, and what activity do they create; what is the state of the housing stock, and where; how many businesses exist; who owns them, and who do they employ, and where do the employees live; what is the state of infrastructure (streets, water, sewage, phone and cable telecommunications, mass transit lines, etc.), and who does the infrastructure serve; what are the physically attractive (and, therefore, valuable) sites and vistas, and who owns/controls them; how are police deployed; where are the schools; what is the general pattern and history of growth and decline, and why?

Corporations routinely demand much of this type of data from local governments before investing in a city, and augment the public record with their own research. They gather information useful to their profit-making mission, to further their enterprise and protect their investment. (They then proceed to distort the data, to create the impression that the corporate project is not only the best course for the city to follow, but the only reasonable option available.) We must assemble an even wider range of data, because our mission is larger: to empower the population to recognize, seize control of, and deploy their collective municipal assets to enhance their own lives. We must give them the data and tools to both protect them from corporate power and allow them to engage in fair and productive negotiations with investors of good will.

We must make it possible for the people to see the city as it actually exists, so that they can rationally dream, plan and build the city as it should be. According to their Plan.

In order to strategically describe the real city, the Movement for Democratic Development’s Team must conduct an Audit that takes note of every significant public, quasi-public, and private asset (property and enterprises of all kinds) within the city boundaries. It must also do as thorough as possible an assessment of the revenue sources of the city – often a very difficult job, in the murky and corrupt world of tax abatements and other subsidies and giveaways. Fortunately, progressive activists are already honing these specialized, investigative skills.

The Audit will allow local residents – old activists and brand new ones – to see their own place in the scheme of the city. This is transformative in itself, but is only part of the utility of the Audit. The primary purpose of the Audit is to reveal to the Team and local residents the actual nature, value, and potential of the city – so that they know precisely the assets that are available to those who exercise political control over the jurisdiction.

What we will create at the end of this stage of the process, is a cadre of city planner-activists: local leaders with a clear vision of their surroundings, and a burning desire to put the people’s dreams to work, by every means possible.

But first, after completion of the Audit, it is the Team’s job to create and present a general framework in which Democratic Development can rationally occur in the city, based on the totality of the data collected – and presupposing the use of municipal powers of eminent domain, the tool used so routinely in the service of corporations.

The Team

The Team will be guided in its macro-planning work by the principles that we outlined in the first edition of ’s series, “A Plan for the Cities to Save Themselves,” August 14 of last year:

1 – No project can be viewed as “development” that does not on balance benefit the people who already live in the city. Cities are comprised of people. It is a contradiction in terms to pretend that cities are “improved” by projects that lure and serve future populations, to the general detriment of existing residents. This principle has particular relevance to gentrification, but also to the full range of commercial and industrial projects to be considered.

2 – City government must act as an engine for economic and social uplift, and an arbiter of who is, and who is not, a good corporate citizen of the city. These are the general aims of the Living Wage Movement: to “raise the floor” for all workers by barring from city contracts, subsidies and other favors those companies that fail to provide minimum terms of employment. Companies that benefit from the people’s poverty must be locked out of the public treasury. [We will now add, that such companies should be locked out of the jurisdiction, period.]