Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Now is the Chance October 30, 2008

By GLEN FORD

The demise or ill health of U.S. investment banks has deprived finance capital of its headquarters sector, the evil geniuses who hatch long range schemes for ethnic cleansing of the nation's cities. Now, more than ever, progressives must become city planners, and in the process of devising these plans forge unity among the various contesting communities that comprise the city. Community empowerment begins with community planning. The void left by finance capital's catastrophe demands that the Left - most particularly, the Black, urban left - make sense of the chaos and stench left by wounded and dying corporate elephants.

The breathtaking statistics on paper wealth suddenly extinguished and once mighty bastions of capital laid low, do not begin to describe the economic meltdown's effect on finance capital's ability to rule the rest of us. It is not merely that giants such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others have been swept into the historical dustbin, as if by a righteous, wrathful storm. The demise of investment banking as a central tool of capitalist planning means the rich have at least temporarily lost the ability to remake the cities as they see fit. While some gentrification projects are on hold, due to the death or ill health of the investment bankers at the heart of most "Black removal" schemes, tenant and community forces must seize the time to devise their own plans for rational ways of living in post-meltdown urban America.
--full article: counterpunch.org, 10/30/08