Detroit, Michigan is a historic American city. From its humble roots as a French trading post in the eighteenth century, which grew to become one of the largest cities in the United States. It burned almost to the ground by fire in 1805 and was razed by the flames of racial unrest in 1863, 1943 and 1967. During the twentieth century, his fate has changed with the rise and fall of the U.S. auto industry. However, despite its hardships, the city has shown resilience and had witnessed a comeback of sorts in recent years with the renewal of its downtown and riverfront areas, at least before the financial crisis large 2008.

A cemetery is a place where the bodies are buried the dead physically. This is its literal meaning. However, the cemetery of the word also has a figurative meaning. It is a place where you store or obsolete equipment or objects worn. Its meaning can be expanded to include a think tank worn. In this latter sense, recent events have conspired to make a cemetery in Detroit. The city serves as a reminder of many ideas exhausted, defeated and discredited.

Among them are the idea that for African-Americans of the North represents an improvement in the conditions prevailing in the south, the idea that U.S. corporations are the engines of economic growth and prosperity for the masses of working people, the idea an inherent radical Islamic threat challenges the hegemony of a militarized state in America, and the idea that extremist Islamic violence can possibly ensure nothing good for Muslims and their causes.

The myth of the Promised Land

Many African Americans saw the North as a mythical promised land. Racist terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, the White League and similar groups, which was almost ubiquitous in the South, was absent from the big northern cities. In addition, working in a factory promised relatively high paying jobs, free from the vagaries of oppression in the South Farms, where work, in many cases amounted to legalized slavery. For many black people, Detroit summarizes the promise of the North. They found abundant labor in factories springing up around the growing automotive industry in the city. As a result, through the middle decades of the twentieth century, a growing black middle class gradually make an impact in the broader social, cultural and political development of the city.

Detroit's black middle class contribute intellectual giants like the Rev. CL Franklin to fight civil rights in America. People such as boxer Joe Louis, the daughter of Franklin, Aretha, and many recording artists of Motown Records Berry Gordy became American cultural icons. The prosperity of the black middle class Detroit in 1940 and 1950, was symbolized by Paradise Valley and its dozens of black-owned establishments like the elegant Hotel Gotham.

However, the vast majority of black people who migrated to Detroit has found heaven in the north. They found hell. They were housed in filthy slums, in ruins, as racial segregation as any other neighborhood in the south. Fluctuating economic cycles and the gradual exodus of manufacturing jobs led to high unemployment rates could exacerbate tensions between the newcomers and more established white workers. Tens of thousands of people never find meaningful employment or housing.

The harsh economic reality of life in the North were exacerbated by the harsh social reality. Crammed into ghettos degraded, isolated from the safety net of extended family in the south, denied access to higher education was available in schools and historically black college that was established in the South, Howard, Morehouse, Fisk , Tuskegee, etc .- many of them sought refuge in the available drugs such as heroin or cocaine and alcohol.

Roads built in the early 1950-the construction of the Interstate 75 led to the demolition of Paradise Valley, facilitated the mass exodus of whites between 1950 and 1960 from Detroit to the suburbs far away now accessible. Another flight, the black middle class areas of the downtown to the neighborhoods abandoned white, rendered in the city of Detroit's poorest neighborhoods and more dysfunctional.

These events, culminating in destructive riots of 1967 (more than 2. 500 structures were destroyed), Detroit provided a symbolic cemetery Promised Land, an idea that had attracted so many people in Northern black. Their graves are the building blocks and houses burned to the ground. Many of these areas have been abandoned and are parts of downtown Detroit's appearance in Berlin or Tokyo after the bombing of cities.

The obituary has been written that dream twice, both in Detroit, in July 1984 and a decade later, in August 1994. First, by the death of the Rev. CL Franklin, who had fallen into a coma after being shot during a robbery at his home five years ago. Second, when Rosa Parks, whose heroic challenge was even more on the heroic struggle of African civil rights, was robbed and beaten at her home in Detroit. The dream was deferred no longer represents. In Detroit, he was dead.

As GM goes, so goes the nation

Detroit's automotive industry represents a different type of sleep by another group of people the white middle class. Karl Marx posited that capitalism and the bourgeoisie that benefited disproportionately, would collapse in the face of a massive worker or proletarian revolution caused by the systematic expansion and impoverishment of the working class and the equally systematic reduction and enrichment of the ruling class.

The rise of the automobile industry in Detroit in the early twentieth century, catapulted by the management and production techniques introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford, would lead to skill levels and scales of production that facilitates the popularization of cars easily accessible and unimaginable benefits. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, more and more comprehensive benefits find their way into the pockets of workers, due in large part to the organizing efforts of the AFL-CIO (AFL-American Federation of Labor, and CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations) and her sister sometimes strange, the UAW (United Auto Workers).

The automotive industry is unionized, largely white electorate served, you never know the kind of revolutionary upheavals of Marx and others had predicted. The white middle class emerging in Detroit not only escaped the planned Marx collective misery for workers, but the automobile and the mobility of its partners, the lifestyle and the restructuring of urban and rural space, led to the creation of a totally different and attractive deceptive life in the suburbs.

Not coincidentally, the suburbs, and the highly fragmented, alienated lifestyle encouraged racially segregated would be more surprising is illustrated in the vicinity of Detroit, the birthplace of the auto industry driving the white flight across the country. Whitetopia, a mythical land where home ownership, having become the signal indicator to achieve the American dream, where poverty is threatening black people, and real or perceived crime, races, was a distant reality to left for others to cope, and where the passions consumerism, driven by wage workers endowed by decades of organizing, can be freely engaged for the first time in malls covering the suburban landscape, and the second in large self-contained mega-malls.

Unfortunately, the work would be short-lived victory. The automotive industry, in collusion with big oil companies, which pay little attention to fuel efficiency. When the world economic situation led to an exponential increase in fuel prices, large gas consumers in America could not compete with the fuel much more efficient and getting better foreign made cars, especially Japanese. The growing strength of Japanese car industry and European slices growing U.S. and global markets, they were able to beat their American rivals led to declining profits, and the numbers of the acceleration of layoffs and plant closures in the United States.

During the years 1980 and 1990, the unions were forced to return many of the hard-earned benefits he had obtained for workers. Workers still had jobs in the automotive industry were struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, automakers based in Detroit, lured by false infusion of wealth in the U.S. financial system during the 1990s and early twenty-first century, following the liberal policies of Bill Clinton, personified by his political gut the Glass-Steagall Act, opted for the popularity of energy inefficient, but highly profitable sport utility vehicles (SUV). However, due to fuel prices rising steadily since 2003 and the 2008 financial crisis, both the demand for SUVs, and an industry already hampered U.S. automaker, collapsed.

The collapse of two, automotive and financial, severely crippling the Whitetopia around Detroit. Thousands of homes fell running or were sold at a loss as to their owners packed up and headed south, ironically. Many of these properties were left to greedy banks encouraged to purchase through the levels of manipulation and deceit that have not been seen in this country since the era of the robber barons of the nineteenth century.

With the collapse of Detroit's auto industry, and the refusal of a government which has given billions of dollars to rescue the banking and financial sectors to save it, the idea that large companies would be pushing the engine of prosperity American region, mostly white, middle class is dead. Like the African American dream of the promised land, the cemetery is in Detroit. One of their graves is the oxidation in factories around the city, surrounded by acres of abandoned parking lots that resemble blacktopped lonely deserts. Another is the empty, dotted with puddles, unfinished concrete foundation and brush filled with a lot of distant suburban development began in the heyday of the housing bubble in 2005-2006, now presumed dead.

The threat of 'Islamic' Terrorism

Detroit is also the graveyard of the idea that the Islamic enemy threat. That there is a threat of a tiny percentage of alienated, angry Muslim suicide or simply participating in acts of senseless violence that threaten the life of an even smaller percentage of Americans is undeniable. However, the idea that there is a strategically important Islamic threat that has all the important resources that can translate into the kind of energy needed for a challenge militarized America or its global financial empire is a baseless fiction.

The murder of Imam Luqman Abdullah, a Muslim activist in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Detroit states that fiction. Imam Luqman was allegedly the leader of a radical, separatist-minded Muslim whose potential risk justifies the infiltration and surveillance of their mosque, trapping in an elaborate scheme in stolen property and, finally, the scene of the ambush and brutal slaughter Imam.

The entire operation exposes the emptiness of a fictional character and the Islamic threat. While it is true that Imam Luqman was known for engaging in fierce anti-American rhetoric, which did the actual capabilities that he and his followers have His mosque, one of the poorest of Detroit, is badly damaged and in danger of foreclosure. The state of the mosque only requires that one wonders, How could a group so poor he could barely afford to operate a small mosque in one of the poorest neighborhoods of America's overthrow of the U.S. government or to establish a independent state anywhere on American soil The answer is obvious exception of those whose minds are so poisoned by their narrow and selfish agenda that can not see reality as it is.

Therefore, when the Imam Luqman was killed by a hail of gunfire unleashed by officers against him, the true nature of the threat was exposed. Even if he possessed a single firearm, as supposed, threatening what they represent in the face of the array of high caliber fully automatic in the hands of the forces of bullets created, arranged numerically superior against you ! Little or nothing extrapolate from that situation to the global confrontation between the U.S. and radical Islam and who understands the true nature of Islamic threat.

With the brutal murder of Imam Luqman, Detroit is once again a symbolic cemetery. It buries the idea of ??the existential threat of Islam. Their graves are small mosque of Imam Luqman handcuffed once headed and cold stores near Dearborn, where he was shot to death and then left to die with less dignity than the government's dog shot was evacuated by helicopter the scene.

The Glorious Jihad

Finally, Detroit is a graveyard of the idea that Islamic terrorism can not guarantee any benefit to the Muslim people. That idea vanished as surely as the bomb that supposedly hidden in the underwear is Farouk Abdul Mutallab skies failed in a spectacular Detroit untapped, however, absolute disaster.

Following that event we are left to ask, What benefits have accrued to the Muslims who had bomb exploded, killing 300 innocent passengers, innocent in U.S. airspace on Christmas Day Nothing at all! In contrast, an exponentially larger number of poor Muslims, innocent of the experience already American-style justice would be bombs and rockets falling on their cities, villages and towns. A number of innocent Muslims exponentially greater than those already locked in cells all over the world would be dragged off to be tortured, beaten and humiliated.

Ordinary Muslims with no connection with problems abroad to work relentlessly in your name or with your permission, nor their lawyers are left to bear the consequences of his act of enlightened self-denial. The noble deeds of those people resisting occupation of their lands, the usurpation of their resources, and annoyed the murder and the humiliation of their countrymen and women would be cruelly dismissed as nonsense terrorism. In addition, patience Americans, even sympathetic, was insensitive to the action in cold blood of a clearly disturbed individual would have been seriously questioned.

There are more questions one can ask about the nature, objectives, timing and effectiveness of the violence of the so-called Jihad movement, but we will leave for another time. For now we will just say that the idea of ??a benefit accruing to Islam, as a result of Islamic terror died December 25, 2009 on board the flight to Detroit 253 Northwest. His tomb is in the Detroit area Farouk Abdul Mutallab jail has been released to.

Conclusion

So what is the connection between these disparate ideas buried in the Cemetery of Detroit Afro-Americans, most of whom are still waiting for the deposit of the funds to cover the evil Dr. comprobarRey refers in one of his speeches, the white middle class, whose houses, pension funds, employment and the sense of security have been stolen by the barons of the last days, and Muslims, along with others whose lives and land have been or will be soon wiped out by the U.S. war machine They should be made to see that they are being abused by the same forces globalized corporate. That being the case, they must find ways to unite if their resistance to the forces going to have some efficacy.

For example, African Americans, Latinos can not see that they are stealing all the jobs as the enemy. They must understand that the system that forces farmers off their land by unjust and inequitable agricultural policies and sends them to flow northward desperately is structurally the same system that marginalizes and criminalizes young African Americans and the profits of his imprisonment.

Deprived of their rights as whites must understand that Islam is neither the enemy nor a threat to their existence more than Vietnam in the 1960s, leftist organizations in Latin American in the late 1980 or coconut tomorrow, whoever he is. All our enemies of the Day are just desperate people trying to the extent of their understanding and ability to retain their land, culture and resources against the voracious appetite of a global empire. The white middle class understand that it is Muslims who have closed their factories, their jobs eliminated, stealing their retirement funds, devalued their homes and care for their children with a mountain of debts for the rescue of the banks, insurers and finance houses.

Moreover, the white middle class has to stop playing the silly game of political musical chairs, blaming the party in power, whether Democrats or Republicans, from the ravages of a morbid. The problem is not that Democrats or Republicans when both parties have sold out to corporate interests whose army of lobbyists flood Capital Hill shelling out money to the collaboration of both parties, who in turn sell to voters who so hypocritically seek to serve. The problem is a system that facilitates a pernicious sham.

The mounting frustration of white middle class against the failures and excesses of the political system will not resolve the protests of the Tea Party or group of hapless scapegoats like Muslims and Latino immigrants. Only united and focused policy of nonviolent action that works to destroy the oppressive structures that move as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the triplets evil of poverty, racism, militarism and lead to a change sustainable in this country. The white middle class, or its surviving traces, must be an integral part of the action.

For their part, Muslims must have the wisdom, insight and wisdom to realize that today's wars to be seen on the Muslims are not evidence of an American or Jewish crusade led against the faithful, like the Vietnam War , the first Iraq war or the invasion of Panama and Grenada are the Crusades, despite the existence of a rhetoric that conveys that impression. They are all powered by a geostrategic conflagrations outdated Machiavellian logic that ultimately transcends religion.

Muslims also must realize that in some cases poor people in America are treated brutally by the police, prison guards, ICE agents and other agents of the state in ways that make many of the slums of America microcosm the occupation of Muslim lands. The validity of this comparison is reinforced by the image of the Blackwater mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans to keep the refugees in check in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Muslims should also understand that there are many U.S. groups and individuals, including Jews, who are working tirelessly to reverse the policies that demonize Muslims and direct bombs and missiles to their land. On the other hand, Muslims must understand that only by forming bonds of solidarity with oppressed groups in the U.S. and elsewhere will gain the critical mass necessary to begin to address their grievances and alleviate their suffering.

There is a group, the only one who can undo the dangerous policies and politics of a global empire in many respects, it threatens the very existence of our planet. Oppose the oppressive force will require a global resistance that has the ability, as transnational corporations and their surrogates, which transcend national boundaries. That the resistance must have the idea of ??participating in a deep level of analysis that goes beyond superficial categories presented by companies sponsored experts and ideologues see the causes of our collective problems, the structures that unite the disparate groups suffering as a result of policies that facilitate corporate dominance of the world, and strategies that will be needed to move forward.

If Detroit Cemetery can teach us anything, it is the degree to which our lives have become intertwined. Whites, African Americans and a large number of Arabs, many of them Muslim Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians and others living around Detroit. The globalization of economic forces that brought them together, and despite periodic traumas and great tensions that threaten to separate them have been able to form a civic community, which had started before the 2008 financial crisis, come together to start rebuilding their city. If these communities are able to regroup and cross the lines that separate them, perhaps their example will inspire a world in desperate need of a new direction, and the cemetery of Detroit can become a symbol of rebirth.