Detroit Water Crisis vs Ukraine: Guess Who’s Getting Doused?

Take a few moments – if you can spare it – to jump from one major news channel to the next and you’d be as lucky to find news on Detroit’s water crisis as you are at finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It just doesn’t exist. MSNBC gives you some solid outrage footage (depending on the show and host agenda, hence you’re more likely to find it on Rev. Al Sharpton’s Politics Nation than Chris Matthews Hardball), but it’s not like MSNBC is doing anything in the ratings race at the moment.  News about nearly 20,000 Detroit residents having their water shut off (of the 46,000 shut off notices that have went out) isn’t bubbling to the top of our collective consciousness at the moment, and try all that it might, MSNBC can’t help the situation with low viewership (see Nielsen below)

FOX News is reporting on it, perhaps more so online than through visual means.  But, political strings are always attached. Anything to make the Democrats who’ve run the city for eons look bad in contrast to their super-star nerd Republican Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) is worthy enough of FOX News.  So, it’s not like FOX cares about the low income residents suffering through long, endless days of summers with no water to drink or bathe in. It’s all partisan gain in the end and seeing just how many pounds in flesh you can extract from Democratic politicians and labor union chiefs who’ve succeeded in running the Motor City into the ground.

To the larger point: Detroit is lucky to get a slice of the coverage Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 gets or even a decimal point of the coverage on revived hostilities between Israel and Hamas.  Ukraine and the Middle East dominate headlines, although polls clearly show very low U.S. public appetite for anything foreign policy.  In some respects it speaks to the ongoing disparity between the editorial decisions of network producers – who are like pop radio deejays and program directors addicted to rotating the same song each hour of the day – and the realities of a public exhausted from too much global intervention.

Look no farther than the most recent POLITICO poll on the topic.   Only 17% of Americans want direct involvement in Ukraine – although that could tick slightly upward since the poll was taken right before Flight 17 was shot down.  Still, only 17% want some sort of confrontation with Russian along with 31% who are just fine with the Obama administration’s work on it and 34% who really want to stay out of it.

Let the POLITICO poll tell it and President Obama’s keep-it-steady, stay out of it approach largely aligns with the public’s own attitude towards Ukraine.  Even as more people disagree with his specific strategy:

More want to stay out of it, according to Pew here:

Ultimately, most Americans rank foreign policy or any focus on it at the very bottom of problems they face.  When YouGov asked what’s the most important issue in the news at the moment, only 1% identified foreign policy as just that.  And a May Gallup poll of the 13 Most Important Problems shows foreign affairs at 4%:

That prompts many of us to wonder why networks like CNN seem so immersed in Ukraine and Gaza Strip coverage since its viewers want more on what’s happening at home (you can’t even find anything on Detroit’s recent troubles in a CNN.com search).  Not that we don’t care about what happens overseas.  And of course foreign policy is significant – but, not at the expense of front yard issues like Detroit. As bad is when the public either turns a blind eye to it or allows little local or mainstream news coverage of that trend.  Networks and other media outlets can’t lean on the excuse that they just don’t have the resources to spread themselves thin into covering every major local story or small town election since we know they have the resources to send reporters into war zones.

There’s real concern that water shut offs in Detroit could serve as a familiar template elsewhere in other major urban centers and how that disproportionately impacts low income residents already being squeezed and displaced by hyper-gentrification.  Detroit’s handling of the situation smells fishy and it’s suspiciously parallel to the slow resurgence of the bankrupt city’s downtown core which The Atlantic CityLab characterized as a comeback in 2013 with an attempt at quantifying it.  So, as the city’s low income residents suffer water shut-offs, an influx of college-educated professionals (mostly White) is quietly moving in:

That can’t be an accident, even if it feels like one.  All of this happens at a time when Michigan’s governor, in conjunction with his appointed emergency manager, look to sell off city assets to wealthy buyers looking for a cheap buy – MyFDL blogger “masaccio” contends that we’re seeing the beginnings of a trend in which “Private Capital is Eating Public Capital:”

Detroit is the poster child for the future. The rich and their minions on Wall Street are circling the city, planning to buy up the assets that belong to the community at fire sale prices.  What else is there? The Financial Times points to Belle Island, a logical site for development by the rich as a playground carefully isolated from the misery of the city; the water and sewage system; 22 square miles of Detroit, mostly blighted; nine parking garages, two parking lots and a bunch of parking meters; and half of an aging cross-border tunnel to Windsor, Ontario. More generally, the private sector is looking for roads, bridges, airports, utilities and hospitals. So what could go wrong with private ownership?

Keep that up and it begins reading like a Judge Dredd script (you should check the remake out, just don’t watch it after lunch or dinner): miles of fortress-like and cordoned off urban oases that push all the “undesirables” out into the suburbs with their bad credit, delinquent water bills, unpaid rent and unextended unemployment insurance.

Bankole Thompson in a March Michigan Chronicle piece warns Detroit about relying on “Hipsterification” to save it:

Everyone seems to have an answer about the problem with Detroit and for the most part, the response to decades of strategic urban segregation, mass unemployment, extreme poverty and violent crime has been to get more “hipsters” into selected areas of the city and make it a cool place to live and play. If we do so, according to some self-described urban thinkers, the city will come back without explaining what will, in fact, trigger the comeback.

There is a very disturbing national context to the Detroit water issue. Reasons why we should pay attention to it are laid out nicely by Grist writer Heather Smith, especially when you consider Detroit Water and Sewage District (DWSD) moving post-haste to disconnect low-income residents for $150 bills but claims it doesn’t have the technical muscle to do the same to a golf club like Vargo Golf which owes nearly $600,000 in water expenses:

Water is getting more expensive everywhere. This is true both internationally and in the U.S., where the cost of water has been rising faster than the rate of inflation. There’s no federal policy to help people deal with the cost of water.

Brett Walton offers striking back-up with a 2013 analysis in Circle of Blue.  It’s not just happening in Detroit – just the news of it is much more pronounced because of Motown’s dramatic fiscal death spiral along with its fast eroding population. Once you see it, there’s fear of a sequel at a major city near you (if it’s not already happening):

What this also shows us is a model of urban redevelopment and forced economic hub design antics being utilized quite heavily all over.  Cities are the new playgrounds. There’s nothing really wrong with that.  Personally, as a native Philadelphian transplanted to D.C., I’m all for resetting urban centers But, there’s something wrong and morally contemptible about actively ruining large populations in the process of doing it. Not just that: it also lacks common sense. Those leading the gentrifying charge need to step back for a moment and think about the long-term consequences and impact – not only to those affected, but to themselves.  This is not a sustainable or healthy social improvement formula; not only will you eventually lose money on the investment, but you’ll end up stirring a pot of social resentment and upheaval. Ultimately, it will do the exact opposite of what you want it to do since it could end up creating a proletariat backlash of Rome-like proportions.

CHARLES D. ELLISON is a veteran political strategist and Chief Political Correspondent for UPTOWN Magazine.  He’s also Washington Correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune and a frequent contributor for The Root.  You can catch him hosting #Uptownhall or via Twitter @charlesdellison.