Michigan and Media

DETROIT: “The New Chrysler” was everywhere. 4 pages of coverage in the Detroit Free Press. It was all sell, sell, sell with the private equity firm headed by former Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow pictured as a savior.

The press outlined the $7.4 BILLION dollar deal that gives Cerberus an 80% stake. The company seems to have romanced the town and the unions with promises of no more job cuts. Daimler will keep 20% of the new entity.

There was a front page corrective summed up in a headline: “Here’s What We Know: Anything Goes.”

“Now we know who will be calling the shots,” writes Tom Walsh. “We don’t know much about WHAT shots the new bosses will be calling.” He notes that Cerberus is in the business of generating 22% annual returns which means some sell off of assets is likely. The company is known for buying undervalued companies, the paper reports, slashing costs and selling for a profit.

Meanwhile, The DaimlerChrysler signs are still up at the vast Jefferson North plant. To get there you drive through the wasteland of Detroit, a city which never recovered from the riots of l967. You drive down Mack Avenue and count the churches-I saw 17 in a row—and the liquor stores and block after block of collapsing housing and empty lots. It looks worse that Sarajevo after the war. The only bright spot is on a street called Heidelburg where a local artists has created a n outdoor art exhibit among the ruins. Iw as happy to see that my old digs at 186 East Grand Blvd–see yesterday’s blog–is still standing amid the rubble.

My salvation came from the two hours I spent with Grace Boggs, now 93, who with her late husband James Boggs, an auto worker and theorist, was an intellectual standard bearer of activism and ideology since the 1960’s when they moved into the home she still lives in on the East Side. When I arrived she was counseling youth activists who are working with youth and organizing The Allied media conference June 22-14 for community media. See www.amc2007.org for more details.

Grace gave me a copy of the Michigab Citizen, a black newspaper with a front page story about foreclosures, that’s the issue I am working on with my film IN DEBT WE TRUST. Detroit has the unhappy distinction of being the capital of foreclosures, just one part of the economic misery.

Grace and I had a long ranging discussion about building community and resisting the city’s destruction with many projects of hope and renewal. I will discuss this more since its late and I want to at least share some of the highlights of my trip. To me Grace is legendary. like Rosa Parks, a venerable movement intellectual with grace and spirit. She told me that Bill Moyers had just been in her house which can pass for a movement museum for an interview that will air June 1st. Don’t miss it.

Another woman I admire was in town too, Amy Goodman. Actually she and I are part of conference in Windsor, Ontario in Canada across the river, marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Noam Chomky and Edward Herman’s classic “Manufacturing Consent.” Amy gave an eloquent keynote which was well received by one and all. I will be reporting in more detail but my eyes are closing and and its getting late.

I closed out the night at the Tunnel BarBQ with the great Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star who is probably the only mainstream columnist covering this event. She is a fount of knowledge about the Canadian media scene and one of the few serious media analysts writing in the popular press. We will be on a panel tomorrow.

We had a great night cap of conversation, cold beer and in my case apple pie.

Its now past the witching hour so I bid you adieu. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow with more.

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