Stealing Symbols
I have been rereading one of my favorite political writers, Kenneth Burke, thanks to Mike Duggan’s recent State of the City address. Burke was a complicated, wide-ranging thinker who greatly advanced our understanding of the relationships between language and politics. Predicting the rise of fascism in Europe in the early 1930s, he continued to explore the meaning and manipulation of symbols into the late 20th Century. One of his key concepts is “the stealing back and forth of symbols.” It was this idea that caused me to revisit my much-used copy of Attitudes Toward History, written in 1937.
In the post-Vietnam era, Ronald Reagan was the master of stealing symbols. Reagan frequently quoted democratic icons, especially Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Reagan used FDR’s words while enacting policies that contradicted, undermined, and destroyed the essence of Roosevelt’s beliefs and legacy.
Detroit Mayor, Mike Duggan however, has taken this tactic to a new level. He is particularly adept at seeing the symbols that galvanize people for progressive change and then stealing them for his own purposes.
I first noticed this tactic by Duggan in the struggle for a Water Affordability Plan (WAP). Anchored in the idea that water is a human right and sacred trust, community groups have consistently advocated for water rates keyed to household income. The People’s Water Board and Michigan Welfare Rights put forward a plan reflecting these ideas in 2005. The WAP charged households a small percentage of income and demonstrated that this would provide sufficient funds to run the water department. The plan was approved by the city council but never implemented.
When first emergency managers and Mayor Duggan began an aggressive campaign to shut off nearly 1/3 of the city from water, calls for a new WAP intensified. In response, the administration began a series of Water Assistance Plans (WAP). These efforts failed to halt shut offs. Only the pandemic succeeded in creating a moratorium.
Now we have a new Lifeline plan that Mayor Duggan is calling a Water Affordability Plan, because it tiers rates to income. However, in spirit and function it fails to meet the needs of people. Instead, we once again see nearly 1/3 of people facing shut offs. Yet the Mayor has created much confusion, taking the symbol of a WAP, but denying its substance.
A similar process happened in the grass roots effort to create a community benefits agreement (CBA). The Mayor and Councilman Scott Benson worked to undermine the original agreement, ultimately proposing a counter CBA for a city-wide ballot initiative. Their counter proposal effectively limited the impact of agreements and restricted real citizen engagement with developments.
And now we have Shotstopper, unveiled as a new initiative in Duggan’s State of the City address. Under this plan the city will contract with agencies in “high crime zones” for interventions designed to reduce gun violence. On one level this is nothing more than the usual effort at the cooptation of community groups, offering money to tie them into city programs. But on the symbolic level, it is a clear ploy to confuse the growing opposition to technological solutions to our relationships. The anti-Shotspotter coalition educated thousands of people about the wasteful spending on Detroit Police and technologies of control.
Duggan’s stealing of terms from WAP to Shotstoppers, is deliberately designed to confuse people and blunt critical thinking about his tactics.
But reality has a way of overturning symbolic manipulation. No words hide the fact that no matter what name he uses, 1/3 of the city is still facing water shut offs. Words cannot hide the fact that no technology makes us safe. Only our expanded understanding of what we owe one another will create a city where everyone is valued, respected, and lives in safety.