official, that is to say, not elected by the people so the rejection and repudiation of democracy on the one hand is aparents. let me tell you what, dr. anthony, i was having a conversation with a well-known detroiter, happens to be black. he told me look, this is the product of mismanagement over a city that we had extraordinary political power in, and as a result of that, we can t now cry foul. how do you respond to that? i m so glad that you raised that, dr. dyson. was a study done that went back 50 years, looked at coleman year, van edward, dennis archer, all mayors preceded this time period. what they found through the detroit free press and others, that coleman young, the first african-american mayor in the city of detroit, had the best record of fiscal responsibility of any of the mayors that preceded him. one cannot look at detroit in isolation and say somehow the
the other side of this. there s an old proverb that says until the lion tells his own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the punt hunter. we want to tell our own story. it s important to have business involved in the city of detroit but we don t need a downtown detroit and a neighborhood detroit. we need one detroit. so while we re glad that morning joe came in to talk about detroit and he talked to a number of individuals, absent the input of individuals like us from the neighborhood and from the community, it s important to have that other strategy. we want downtown development, ed. we want people to be employed. but after the bankruptcy, after kevin orr is no more, where do we go from here? where are the jobs? what about the pensions that the people have worked so hard for? where is the money coming in to build rebuild the and the neighborhoods? those questions are yet to be determined and to be asked. as we see the development of
just in detroit but in municipalities and states across the country as the folks that are putting local governments in dire straits. i would argue that we aren t the villains. i mean, we are unions representing collectively workers and working families who are trying to make ends meet, play by the rules. they are doing everything bit they can everything they can to serve the public. they re making very modest income with a modest retirement. $19,000 a year, again, in the city of detroit is not exorbitant. it s modest. i would say that we are not the villains. unions are not the villains. working families are not the villains. the real villains are the corporations and the banks and wall street who are trying to continue to rip off working families, trying to rip off people who are trying to play by the rules every single day. taking advantage, trying to gain more power and more wealth at the expense of working families. not only in detroit, across this
governance, but also to use it to talk about public sector unions as basically the villain in this tale and the villain not just in detroit but in municipalities and states across the country as the folks that are putting local governments in dire straits. i would argue that we aren t the villains. i mean, we are unions representing collectively workers and working families who are trying to make ends meet, play by the rules. they are doing everything bit they can everything they can to serve the public. they re making very modest income with a modest retirement. $19,000 a year, again, in the city of detroit is not exorbitant. it s modest. i would say that we are not the villains. wr unions are not the villains. working families are not the villains. the real villains are the corporations and the banks and wall street who are trying to continue to rip off working families, trying to rip off people who are trying to play by the rules every single day.
unions as basically the villain in this tale and the villain not just in detroit but in municipalities and states across the country as the folks that are putting local governments in dire straits. i would argue that we aren t the villains. i mean, we are unions representing collectively workers and working families who are trying to make ends meet, play by the rules. they are doing everything bit they can everything they can to serve the public. they re making very modest income with a modest retirement. $19,000 a year, again, in the city of detroit is not exorbitant. it s modest. i would say that we are not the villains. unions are not the villains. working families are not the villains. the real villains are the corporations and the banks and wall street who are trying to continue to rip off working families, trying to rip off people who are trying to play by the rules every single day.