http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF16Aa03.html
The spirit of Detroit
Pepe Escobar - Asia Times Online
DETROIT - Forget about Bush vs Kerry - at least for the moment.
The real deal is Motown against Tinseltown - or The Temptations
against the Terminator. Most Americans thought the National
Basketball Association (NBA) finals would be a slam-dunk for
the Los Angeles Lakers. But then the Detroit Pistons - deep,
tough, gritty, resilient, the antithesis of superstardom - got
into the groove. Now Motown is in a trance - or deep house -
mixed by legendary DJ Jeff Mills. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick even
ordered his staff to cut through mountains of red tape and
logistics and drape a Pistons jersey over the drab Spirit of
Detroit downtown statue. Meteor Inc of Troy, which does graphic
work for the Palace of Auburn Hills, where the Pistons may
clinch their NBA title this Tuesday, will oblige.
Detroit Industry, the Diego Rivera mural, celebrates the auto
workers who built Detroit's wheels. The Spirit of Detroit, the
Meteor Inc version, will celebrate basketball workers. As for
the kryptonite - as the banners at Auburn Hills say it - it's
been supplied by the two Wallaces, Ben and Rasheed, and by
Richard Hamilton and Chauncey Billups, who have seriously
annoyed Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, the Man of Steel, and
kept torturing them with their defense of ... steel. The 1960s
Motown generation is now saying this is as good as the
Temptations doing "Get Ready".
As with most things musical, Detroit hit the groove much ahead
of the rest of the nation. Of the 15,000-plus who answered a
pistons.com poll, 65% thought the Pistons would beat the Lakers
- now derided as the LA Fakers. But only 2% bet it could come
down to Pistons in five. Lakers.com didn't run a similar poll.
"Cool," says Jerry at American Coney Island in downtown Detroit.
"Look what happened the last time they let Californians vote."
Wheel of fortune
Good news in Motown usually rides on wheels. Like the Detroit
Free Press ("On Guard for 173 Years") gleefully announcing that
even with gasoline at more than US$2 a gallon, Americans are far
from ditching their pickups, sport-utility vehicles and vans:
sales of light trucks were up by 4.7% in May, while car sales
were up by only 1.9%. The secret: cash-back rebates and very
low-interest financing.
But make no mistake: since 2000 Michigan has been living in a
Danteesque ninth circle of economic hell. It remains a key swing
state in the November presidential election. Detroit is a
succession of spectacular urban debris dotting no-man's-land
streets. What to do with all those decrepit buildings? Mayor
Kilpatrick wants to set up a plan by autumn designed to help
people buy abandoned property for restoration. But for the
moment his main problem is the falling demolition budget - and
environmental concerns that demolition en masse would release
asbestos into whole Detroit neighborhoods.
The city is in dire straits - having to deal with a structural
deficit that may lead to 2,000 more jobs being lost. The backup
plan is to approve the construction of three permanent hotel-
casinos.
More than 30% of young adults roaming around Detroit's no-man's
lands are school dropouts. Almost 20% of unemployed teenagers
aged 16-19 are not in school. On the bright side, the rate of
teen deaths by accident, homicide or suicide dropped by 22% from
1996 to 2001, according to the Kids Count 2004 organization. No
wonder Marine Corps recruiters approaching teenagers outside
malls to enlist them have their hands full.
Corporate Motown loves it, but popular Motown harbors extreme
mixed feelings about outsourcing. Anthony Bradley of the Acton
Institute in Grand Rapids says that according to Forrester
Research Inc, of more than 2.7 million jobs lost in the United
States in the past three years, only 300,000 can be attributed
to outsourcing. Today General Motors is using more than 25,000
robots in its factories. Bradley says that "blaming foreign
workers as scapegoats for the fallout from technological change
sabotages America's preparedness for such change". He adds that
"outsourcing outmoded jobs opens the door for Americans to land
better jobs and improve their well-being". That's not exactly
the view of the hordes of down-and-out in downtown Detroit.
Sonic revolution
Berry Gordy once got a small house on West Grand Boulevard that
he baptized Hitsville USA and an $800 loan to produce his first
hit record. Still today, when we enter the legendary Motown
Studio A, kept exactly as it was in the mid-1960s, it's possible
to hear The Temptations do their dance routine on "My Girl" and
The Supremes lay down those heavenly harmonies in "You Can't
Hurry Love". Where would we find the contemporary Detroit
symmetry to this fabulous combination of vision, talent,
creativity, enterprise and extreme hard work?
Motown was based on 2468 West Grand Boulevard, in the two-story
Hitsville. Underground Resistance is based on 3000 East Grand
Boulevard, its headquarters at the three-story Laundry Workers
Local 129. Michael Anthony Banks, or Mad Mike, is the
contemporary equivalent of Berry Gordy. Underground Resistance
(UR) describes itself as "a label for a movement which wants to
create change by a sonic revolution". UR spins techno, "the
music of the future of the universe". Not just any techno, but
the Detroit Pistons of techno: deep, tough, gritty and
resilient. Its key message is to "transmit these tones and wreak
havoc on the programmers".
UR has "allies" in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland,
Australia and Japan. Its techno genius is Jeff Mills ("The Man
from Tomorrow"). "Soldiers" include Agent Chaos, The Suburban
Knight, Abdul Qadim Haqq and The Aztec Mystic. This is music as
guerrilla warfare, rebels with a cause - unlike the myriad
corporations making easy money off the yurban - young and urban
- African-American demographic.
Bryan Mattox at Burrell Communications Group - the largest
black-owned advertising agency in the US - may be milking the
cow. But as far as good jobs for black people are concerned, at
least he is consulting instead of consuming, exploring marketing
opportunities for hip-hop culture, or "young black folks", in
his own words. Brian Bullock, manager of business operations of
the National Basketball Development League, the minor-league
NBA, and Gregory Reed, writer, playwright and even producer of a
TV documentary on The Temptations, and the first black lawyer to
be awarded Michigan's highest honor for entertainment lawyers,
also managed to position themselves in the midst of a sea of
downsizing and outsourcing. But they are islands, not
continents.
When Detroit needs to escape from stress, it can always seek
refuge in the Tara ("star") - the key female deity in Buddhism
(Tara in India, Dolma in Tibet, Kwan Yin in China, Kannon in
Japan). Tara protects us from the eight fears that cause
suffering: pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, delusion,
stinginess, desire and doubt. Gehlek Rimpoche, a Tibetan monk
who became a US citizen after the Chinese killed his mother in
Tibet and today directs a Buddhist center in Ann Arbor, half an
hour away from Detroit, says: "There's a special need for Tara
now. America is dominated by feelings of fear, from the war in
Iraq to crime in the streets and violence in the media. Tara is
a metaphor, a way for us to find the joy within ourselves so
that we can end the suffering of others around us."
Without ever having heard of Tara, Mr E ("call me E, for
energy"), officiating in front of Motown's Hitsville on West
Grand, couldn't be more connected to the joy within ourselves.
He describes his job as "guardian to the gates of Mecca" - that
is, Motown. A long conversation unfolds like a Buddhist mandala
- from Detroit urban violence to Iraq, from racism to courtyard
fountains, from soul music to eastern wisdom. Mr E says he's a
nomad: he may not even be there next week. Now you see him, now
you don't. Call it a satori in front of the house that Gordy
built. Or call it the power of the spirit of Detroit.
No superstars. No special effects. Just underground resistance.
The spirit of Detroit. Somehow the Pistons beating the Lakers
fits a larger cosmic pattern, and may embody poetic justice
after all.
