For 15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan.  I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity.  I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards.  Trash everywhere!  Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it and ignored it. 

Tens of thousands and then, hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps!  With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10 and in once case, one woman birthed 24 kids as reported by the Detroit Free Press—all on American taxpayer dollars.  A new child meant a new car payment, new TV and whatever mom wanted.  I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” flourish in Detroit.  If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing.

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees.  He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence and arrogance.  As a black man, he said, “I am the MFIC.”  The IC meant ‘in charge’.  You can figure out the rest.  Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.

As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state.  Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today.  At the same time, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000.  Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit.  

As the Muslims moved in, the whites moved out.  As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled.  Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace.  You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife!  Detroit may be one our best examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike and total separation from America.

Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan, paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money.  High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June according to NBC’s Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America.  English?  Few speak it!  The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing.  Unemployment hit 28.9 percent in 2009 as the auto industry vacated the city.

In this week’s Time Magazine October 4, 2009, “The Tragedy of Detroit: How a great city fell and how it can rise again,” I choked on the writer’s description of what happened.

“If Detroit had been savaged by a hurricane and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it,” said Daniel Okrent. “If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night. Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it — if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice. 

But Detroit, once our fourth largest city, now 11th and slipping rapidly, has had no such luck. Its disaster has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country. Even the death rattle that in the past year emanated from its signature industry brought more attention to the auto executives than to the people of the city, who had for so long been victimized by their dreadful decision-making.”

As Coleman Young’s corruption brought the city to its knees, no amount of federal dollars could save the incredible payoffs, kick backs and illegality permeating his administration. I witnessed the city’s death from the seat of my 18-wheeler tractor trailer because I moved people out of every sector of decaying Detroit.

“By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services,” Okrent said. “The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.”

At the end of Okrent’s report, and he will write a dozen more about Detroit, he said, “That's because the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse. It's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about our future?”

As you read in my book review of Chris Steiner’s book, $20 Per Gallon, the auto industry won’t come back.  Immigration will keep pouring more and more uneducated third world immigrants from the Middle East into Detroit—thus creating a beachhead for Islamic hegemony in America. If 50 percent illiteracy continues, we will see more homegrown terrorists spawned out of the Muslim ghettos of Detroit. Illiteracy plus Islam equals walking human bombs.  You have already seen it in the Madrid, Spain, London, England and Paris, France  with train bombings, subway bombings and riots.  As their numbers grow, so will their power to enact their barbaric Sharia Law that negates republican forms of government, first amendment rights and subjugates women to the lowest rungs on the human ladder. We will see more honor killings by upset husbands, fathers and brothers that demand subjugation by their daughters, sisters and wives. Muslims prefer beheadings of women to scare the hell out of any other members of their sect from straying. 

Multiculturalism: what a perfect method to kill our language, culture, country and way of life.

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Two of hundreds of letter responses from Detroiters:

Mr. Wooldridge,

I couldn't have said it better myself. The city of Detroit was long on the way to ruin before the Arab's ever were in the picture. I used to work downtown on Woodward Avenue right after I was graduated from high school and got there by riding the bus from the north east side of the city. This was the early 60's and felt completely safe in doing so. My brother went to Cass Tech High School, one of the premier high schools in the nation which was located downtown and also took the bus to school. We'd never dream of doing that today. Mayor Young came to power and everything changed. He was very vocal in saying he wanted "whitey" out of Detroit (talk about your racist!). When the crime got so bad and nothing was being done to stop it the white population left along with their tax base and the city was on the fast track to destruction. If any one thing can be blamed on the ruin of Detroit (or at least the start of it) it was Mayor Young's hatred of the white folks who lived in the city he believed should be for blacks only. My mom lived for 53 years in the same house I grew up in until 2000. She was the last white person left on the block by then. She had many very nice black neighbors who watched out for her but when her garage was burned down that was the last straw. She'd been broken into, attacked in her own home but stayed until this last bit of vandalism drove her out. Everything that happened to my mom and the part of Detroit I grew up in had nothing to do with immigrants or foreigners. It breaks my heart when I see what has happened to my home town, especially when I go to Boston or Chicago on business and see how those cities have survived and thrived. I don't know the answer to Detroit's problems at this stage in the game but I can't see any future for what was a great city.

Kaaren

Pershing High School Graduate of 1960

Mr. Wooldridge,

My wife is from Detroit, and her mother and older brother still live in the area - Warren and Clinton Township, respectively. I've also visited there quite a bit over the years, as you can imagine.

I just read this piece, and while I agree that there has been an influx of foreigners into Detroit, possibly even illegals (I frankly don't know what those stats are), they are but a small part of what brought Detroit to the state it's in today.

You commented that, "...as the Muslims moved in, the whites moved out." I would suggest that the verse might actually be the case: as the whites moved out, the Muslims moved in.

As you mentioned in the article, twenty years of Coleman Young dishing out taxpayer-funded goodies to his buddies, along with steadily rising numbers of welfare parasites contributed to the mess. Add to that the unions driving manufacturing jobs out one after the other, and you have a clear path to the current situation.

Illegals may have played a part, but, at the risk of sounding "racist," it was trivial compared to the role played by the "minority" community.

Illegal aliens are, indeed, bringing our country down. But they're not always the main culprit in every area with a problem.

Hal

Houston, Texas

Molôn Labé!

Frosty Wooldridge, Michigan State University graduate, has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border.  In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece.  He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges.  He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com  He is the author of:  America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans.