The glaring disparity in wealth - the Suberbowl in Detroit

[shugah]

Super Bowl City on the Brink

"A celebration of concentrated wealth." That's what Washington Post sportswriter Tony Kornheiser called the National Football League's two-week long pre-Super Bowl party binge. Every Super Bowl Sunday, corporate executives and politicians exchange besotted, sodden backslaps, amidst an atmosphere that would shame Jack Abramoff. Only this year the bacchanalia -- complete with ice sculptures peeing Grey Goose vodka and two tons of frozen lobster flown directly to the stadium -- is happening in the United States' most impoverished, ravaged city: Detroit.

Detroit's power elites in government and the auto industry are rolling out the red carpet while many of its people shiver in fraying rags. This contrast between the party atmosphere and abject urban suffering has been so stark, so shocking and so utterly revealing that news coverage on the city's plight has appeared in the sports pages of the New York Times and Detroit Free Press, among others.

~snip~

But these days Detroit is dealing with more than normal tough times. While the Super Bowl is played at Ford Field, the Ford family announced last week that it would eliminate up to 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants in the next six years. The cuts mean it's the unemployment line, and maybe Albom's shelter, for about a third of the 87,000 Ford workers who are members of the United Auto Workers (UAW).

For a city that built a stable "middle class" out of union struggle and the auto plants, this is injury added to insult. But have no fear. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, will be flying sorties over Ford Field to protect everyone from terrorist missile attacks. There is no NORAD however on the streets of Detroit to protect people from Operation Enduring Class War otherwise known as the Super Bowl.

http://www.alternet.org/story/31635/

good article!

the oblivious partying of the wealthy amidst the decay of a once fine city ... appalling, really.

[Genki]

1. Two things come to mind

"Let them eat cake"

and

"Heads Will Roll"

[tanyev]

2. I saw a news report about all the elaborate security measures

they have in place for the Super Bowl. Fine. But I couldn't stop wondering how hard it would have been to get a few pallets of food and water and a whole lot of busses into the Superdome.

[kenny blankenship]

3. Frozen lobster? What will the rich people eat?

Who's looking out for their needs? They can't eat frozen lobster!

[RB TexLa]

8. They ship lobster on dry ice

And it's usually not frozen solid, which helps.

It's certianly not the same as fresh out of the water, the best is fresh out of the ocean or off the ship actually, but it's not bad.

[kenny blankenship]

9. I am not sure we're communicating...

I want to see the ugly little insect scuttling in fear and waving its claws around pleading for its life before I say, "That one there" and they take him away to be boiled alive.
There's much more to "fine dining" that simple quality, considered as a bare sensory experience...
What quality can there be without cruelty?

[ellenfl]

10. you should have used the sarcasm emotie . . .

that went right over someone's head.

ellen fl

[RB TexLa]

12. I was just commenting on frozen lobster

I understood the person was being sarcastic.

However, lobster is hardly the most expensive meal in the world. I don't think it is thought of in that manner any more. More like a decent steak dinner in terms of "fancyness"

[ellenfl]

14. i still think of lobster as fancy . . . and i have eaten them

straight out of the ocean. sorry, your post just seemed like a subject changer. :hi:

ellen fl

[meganmonkey]

4. Here's a really good article regarding the homeless during the Bowl

http://www.wdetfm.org/article.php?id=945&cat=9

“Well the attention that it’s bringing about is what a nuisance they are. And that they are something to get rid of. I mean it’s being portrayed like we got some dirt…let’s clean it up. We got some sick human beings that need help. I think we’re gonna be status quo right after…y’know. Things begin to die and fade away.”

Yet the man in charge of the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries – Chad Audi – says the Super Bowl provides a platform to showcase the plight of the roughly 13-thousand homeless’ people in the city – even if they remain far from the crowds and national spotlight.
Audi hatched the idea of throwing a Super Bowl party for the homeless during the three days most football fans are in town.
He says he isn’t interested in hiding the homeless…but instead wants to introduce them to counselors they might be fearful of encountering on the street.

“The goal is to bring people to a place …attract them to it. Get ‘em to agree to stay and not to to the next day to the street. See if we just provide ‘em with a meal and a roof…we’re not doing them what they deserve.”

The Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries operates with a budget of about 15 million dollars – much of it donations.
Audi says typically he’s hard-pressed to afford filling the roughly three thousand bowls of stew the Mission provides each day.
But with the sheen of the Super Bowl over Detroit…Audi says the city has made vans available – staffed with mental and substance abuse counselors – to pick-up any homeless people near the football festivities and transport them to shelters or treatment centers.
About a dozen agencies that previously staked-out their own small territories to help homeless people are now banding together…Audi says…including a facility two-blocks from the Rescue Mission he says he never knew dealt with homeless clientele.

more at link

[Genki]

5. Series about Detriot murder rate

It's not uncommon to see a scene with multiple gunshots. The violence in Detroit has morphed into something new, something truly evil. The code of the street has changed. Ten or 20 years ago, there was a morality to street violence. There were unspoken rules: Never kill children. Never kill family members. Take one person at a time. But now, the killers shoot at anyone. They empty a clip into a crowd. They shoot in any direction.

The situation is getting worse, not better. Criminologists, community leaders and police say that the recent spike in violence stems from a mix of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, drug use, hopelessness and a gangsta rap culture. It forms a violent cycle that has spun out of control for generations.




http://www.dartcenter.org/dartaward/2005/winner_story_01.html

[Bozita]

6. Mitch Albom's column on Detroit hiding its homeless for the Super Bowl

This is the article referred to in the AlterNet piece:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060127/NEWS0101/601270448/1082/COL01

MITCH ALBOM: Let's get serious amid fun, games

BY MITCH ALBOM
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

January 27, 2006

For most of my life, charity meant writing a check.

But a few years ago, a former professor of mine scolded me for not doing more. He told me if you're in the public eye, you can rouse people to action.

So today, with your kindness, I'm going to try and do that, because I heard a story a few weeks ago and I couldn't get it out of my head.

The story, in essence, was that, with the city's encouragement, a local homeless shelter was going to offer a three-day "party" over Super Bowl weekend that would provide food and a big-screen TV -- and would also cut the visibility of our most downtrodden citizens.

more...

[ZapaPaine]

7. Kicking the homeless out...

For years the city hosting the Super Bowl has cleansed its streets of the homeless, usually packing them up in busses, giving them a little money and sending them to another large city. It's all about image and poor homeless folk need not be present. Let's call it the Super Bowl Purge.

[shugah]

16. it seems he changed his tune a couple of days later

Your expectations are so low, we are bound to exceed them.

Our winter? Not as bad as you think. Our storied poverty? Not as bad as you think. Our buildings that are less than gleaming? Not as bad as you think.

from an article in the free press on 30 january:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006601300371

detroit's 'storied poverty' is actually worse than people think. far worse.

[Unformatted]

11. The only difference here

is that some of the "Players" will be touting social reform.

http://www.instyle.com/instyle/OscarsCalc.dyn

[newyawker99]

15. Hi Unformatted!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[zippy890]

13. kick

says a lot about america today.

the super-haves at the superbowl

'Operation Enduring Class War'

[daleo]

17. The Superbowl and the Soupkitchen Bowl. n/t