The New American Dream - Detroit

Maybe it’s the smell of natural gas in the street, or the possibilities of flat tires with so much broken glass around. Or maybe it’s the defiance, going to places where I am not welcomed. Or maybe it’s the desire to show it like it is. I don’t know, but I have returned to the streets of Detroit (on a very limited basis) for photos. I’m working on a project and I need to be there. I’ve tried other styles but it’s the streets of Detroit, my comfort zone. Funny, since this is such a potentially dangerous venue for me. With added responsibilities in my life, I’m making an extra effort not to get myself killed in the city. That point has kept me from trolling Detroit for many months now. That and a need to flap my wings and try something different. Unfortunately some of ‘different’ included letting my cameras accumulate a thin layer of dust. I like different things but the people at Flickr don’t like it as much when I’m exploring different things, so I keep my different things to myself mostly and do the same old thing for Flickr.

Life is so hard in the city. I see why after just short periods of activity that I need a break. I understand why the people who feel trapped in the city (who may well BE trapped in the city) resent me driving around documenting their lives, their hoods. It’s very painful inside to see what I see, and painful all the more because of the system that created this economic disaster, the global economy, corporatism, the new oligarchy. Detroit and Gary today, and slowly, the rest of the country will follow. Detroit is not the exception but rather the harbinger.

Wall Street and the bankers have picked us clean, and continue to do so. It’s amazing they can find anymore meat on our bones at which to pick, but they want it all, they want to own not just Boardwalk, but the whole board. It doesn’t take a huge brain to see that if you ship our jobs overseas (47,000 factories have been closed here in the past ten or so years) that we’re going to suffer. Slowly, the American way of life is fading, the American Dream but a mere wisp of a forgotten thought. Today, the New American Dream isn’t to work hard and self-create a future but it’s to slap a few bucks on the counter of a party store, but a few lotto tickets, and hope you win.

The IMF is saying the American economy will slide out of the top slot by 2015. Is it any surprise? It started thirty one years ago with a president who said ‘charge it’ for all our debts, a man who taxed the crap out of the middle class while giving the rich very liberal tax breaks. And these wars we carry on our backs, draining the country of desperately needed funds for our own welfare. Wars for what? Oil… Natural gas…a presence in the Middle East.

Now we have an American nightmare. If we crash, the noise will be huge.

So I better get pictures of Detroit while I can, before these pictures become Every City, USA.