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Our concern,” Jimmy wrote in the DU brochure, is with how our city has been disintegrating socially, economically, politically, morally and ethically. We are convinced that we cannot depend upon one industry or any large corporation to provide us with jobs. It is now up to us—the citizens of Detroit—to put our hearts, our imaginations, our minds, and our hands together to create a vision and project concrete programs for developing the kinds of local enterprises that will provide meaningful jobs and income for all citizens. To engage Detroiters in the creation of this vision, DU embarked on a campaign for open government in the city, issuing a series of leaflets calling on citizens to examine the whole chain of developer-driven megaprojects with which Young had tried and failed to revive the city (including Poletown and the People Mover) and to assume responsibility for envisioning and implementing alternative roads of development based on restoring neighborhoods and communities. During the debate over casino gambling Young had challenged his opponents to come up with an alternative, accusing us of being naysayers without any solutions of our own. Jimmy welcomed the challenge. There was nothing he liked better than using crisis and breakdown as an opportunity for renewal and transformation. His forte was devising solutions that were visionary and at the same time so down-to-earth that people could almost taste them. For more than fifteen years he had been writing and talking about the crisis developing in our cities and the need to redefine work, especially for the sake of our young people. In October 1986, at a meeting in Oakland, California, which the Bay Area NOAR sponsored to present “a vision of 21st century neighborhoods and communities,” Jimmy had declared that it was now “idealistic” to expect the government or corporations to do the work that is needed to keep up our communities and to provide for our elementary safety and security. Multinational corporations and rapid technological development have turned our cities into graveyards. “Efficiency in production,” he argued, “can no longer be our guiding principle because it comes at the price of eliminating human creativity and skills and making millions of people expendable.” He continued: “The residue of the last 100 years of rapid technological development is alienation, hopelessness, self-hate and hate for one another, and the violence which has created a reign of terror in our inner cities.
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