Abandoned building in downtown Detroit.
My late father was a World War II veteran, and as a child I remember him talking about the promise of America. "If you work hard enough, you can be anything you want to be," he would say. My dad was a Teamster who drove a milk truck for a living. While not the most glamorous job, it fulfilled my father's dreams. He was able to buy a home, support a family and have a little bit left over for an RV and retirement.
Almost certainly, many of the people who lived in Detroit, Michigan, have the same fond childhood memories: a union parent working hard to ensure that their children would have a better future.
Two of my favorite live albums were performed in Cobo Hall, home to this year Netroots Nation—Bob Seger's Live Bullet and Nine Tonight. As a teenager listening to those albums, I imagined Detroit as this mystical place where Bob Seger could draw huge crowds, and a place where all of our cars came from. It was Motown, Motor City and Detroit Rock City, all rolled into one.
To get to Netroots Nation, I drove to Detroit from Madison, Wisconsin. On my way through the I-94 corridor into Detroit I saw countless houses—or to put it more plainly, people's homes—boarded up. Generations of families were raised in these homes on the promise of America, a promise that has not been kept.
As I walked through downtown Detroit I see what once was, and the promise of what can be; however, I'm not sure I can comprehend what I have seen in Detroit. In my journey through downtown Detroit I felt like I was walking through Batman's Gotham or Robocop's (the original) Detroit. The abandoned buildings and Gothic architecture, sometimes being one in the same, against the backdrop of modern buildings that are thriving speak of two different cities. Two different Americas.
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In one America I see finely dressed people dining out in exclusive restaurants. In the other America I see an African-American man sleeping the doorway of an abandoned building. It is July now, what will happen to him when winter comes? Will he survive?
Detroit, during the 1950s reached its peak population, 1.8 million people. today, just a little over 700,000 live here. Over one million people left this thriving community with some of the most beautiful architecture you will ever see. The unemployment rate today in Detroit is over 23.1 percent. The poverty rate stands at 36.3 percent for individuals, 31.3 percent for families.
I have seen a lot in my life. I have served on the East/West German border at Observation Post Alpha. I saw the wall in Berlin. I have seen homeless people sleep in the parks of San Jose, California. I have seen them sleep on the park benches of Madison, Wisconsin. Detroit was the first time in my life I have seen a man pull a Burger King bag out of the trash and eat the remains of someone's dinner.
My heart aches writing this diary. There are good people here. I have met them. The young woman working in valet parking here at the hotel I am staying who broke down in tears when I tipped her for parking my car. The bartender at a small establishment who treated me and a fellow blogger as regulars even though she had never seen us before. The owner of the Cuban restaurant who happily gave us directions to get us on to our next venue. But the Detroit that I imagined in my youth, the one where my favorite live albums were recorded no longer exists, and it likely never did exist. Those idealistic pictures in my head shattered by harsh reality.
While John Edwards is a failed politician and a seriously flawed human being—he did have one thing right. There are two Americas—one for the affluent, and one for the rest of us. Many of us are one or two paychecks away from being that young man sleeping in the doorway of an abandoned building, or eating the remains of someone's combo meal from Burger King. It doesn't have to be that way. We live in the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. No one should go hungry, no one should have to sleep in the doorway of an abandoned building.
Maybe instead of pissing away millions of dollars on an airplane that does everything but fly, maybe, we should make sure that all Americans have clean water to drink, have safe food to eat, and have a decent place to sleep. Those on the right would call this a redistribution of wealth, communism, or socialism. I call it basic fucking human decency.
As a 19-year-old soldier stationed in Germany I once missed the last train from Frankfurt back to post. It was a Saturday so I was not worried about getting back to post on time. But I was worried about where I was going to sleep that night. Several of my platoon mates and I could not put enough money together to buy a beer, let alone a hotel room for the night. We ended up in sleeping in the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt that evening. At one point in the early morning a homeless man gave me his blanket. In broken English he told me that I needed it more than he did—he was used to the early morning cold. I was not. This man, who had nothing, was willing to give up his only possession to see to it that I was warm. I politely refused his offer and did my best to keep warm in the frigid October morning. When daybreak came a train arrived to take us back to post and our warm bunks.
I have not thought of that morning for years. Writing about what I have seen in Detroit brought it all back. We, as Americans, need to be more like that guy. Instead of the constant quest for more money, for more possessions, we should be looking to our neighbors and seeing if there is anything we can do for them. I am looking at Detroit right now, and I am thinking that there is a lot we could do to help this city—we just need to find the will to do it, and if we work hard enough we can find the promise of America right here in Detroit.