Crime problems

This week, Vice President JD Vance visited a manufacturing plant in Howell, MI to promote the “big, beautiful” budget passed by the Trump administration. It is unusual to promote a budget once it has become law. But the need to do so reflects the degree to which the current drive to consolidate power is bumping up against growing discontent as the economy falters.

Nowhere is that faltering clearer than in Michigan. On the same day as the Vance speech, the Detroit News published an editorial documenting the “slide” in our economy. The Detroit News is not a liberal beacon, and its publication of the economic conditions of our state was intended to cast doubt on Democratic leaders. But even the republican friendly News cannot hide the turmoil created by the combined spending, tax cuts, and tariffs, fueling chaos in the auto industry.

The News reported that the overall poverty rate in Michigan has increased over the past year. In 2024, Detroit had the highest poverty rate of any city with a population of more than 500,000 people. Meanwhile, Michigan’s unemployment rate is the second highest in the nation, and our workforce declined by about 5000 people.

The day before the Vice President spoke, Governor Gretchen Whitmer warned that there are “undeniable signs of an ailing economy.” She explained that the tariff chaos is keeping companies that would otherwise invest in Michigan “on the sidelines.”

This economic uncertainty is flowing across the country. Lagging job growth, tax cuts, tariffs, and a burgeoning militarized budget are combining to intensify pressures on everyday people. Not only are manufacturing jobs down, but farmers are feeling the effects of anti-immigration policies, and hospitality, service, universities and tourist industries are all suffering.

This economic chaos is the background for the drive to militarize our cities and create a national police force.  It is the consolidation of force to control people who are becoming increasingly aware that the goal of the current administration is to put in place a new form of government that will protect the lives and fortunes of a small elite group. 

Increasingly, the generation of wealth in this country requires the intensification of anti-human policies. Money is made from the production of weapons, pushing us toward an economy dependent on wars abroad and militarization at home. Our growth industries are those dedicated to selling weapons, rounding up people, their imprisonment, and deportation. This is all supported by a vast surveillance apparatus to control those of us who resist.

There are alternative visions of our future, however. Throughout our history, people have organized to create cooperative economies, emphasizing local production for local needs, centering the care and protection of children, elders, and our most vulnerable. Such economies place the needs of people and the planet above the profits of a few. Across the country, as people now develop new forms of mutual aid and protection, these seeds are being nurtured.

Here in Detroit, the drive to create new ways of being rooted in cultures that nurture life is strong. It is the power of these possibilities to speak to different ways of living that prompts Vice President Vance to offer to bring the National Guard into Detroit. It is not our crime problem he fears. He and his masters know that it is in cities across the country where the crimes of a fascist drive will be most resisted. It is in our cities where we see the creation of human connections to protect one another. Vance is afraid it is his own crimes that will ultimately come to light.