Beyond protections

In the chainsaw version of change brought to us by the forces of fascism, it is difficult to get beyond the noise of destruction. But the global shifts that are feeding this frenzy require careful consideration. The chaos and anxiety provoked by the Trump tariff follies obscure important questions for us to consider.  Especially as resistance to Trump grows, those of us committed to a better world need to think beyond protecting what is being destroyed. Much of it, like the institutions of the global economic order, are the source of the most difficult problems we face.

Trump is not only creating anxieties with his tariffs. He is justifying them by manipulating the smoldering devastation wrought by nearly half a century of deindustrialization. 

Deindustrialization is the shift from a manufacturing economy to a service-based economy.  As industries abandon communities, people were left to grapple with how to carry on life after the plants close. It is a phenomenon that we in Detroit know only too well. We understand that it means not only the loss of jobs for individuals, but ultimately the loss of community. It erodes the sense of individual identity, undermines trust in institutions, and fuels authoritarian impulses.  

Deindustrialization is not the product of unfair trade relationships. It is the consequence of an economic order that puts corporations before people and justifies actions in terms of the profit margin. The industrial base did not evaporate. It moved. In search of cheaper wages and fewer environmental constraints, corporations shifted production of cars, washing machines, clothing, drugs, hospital equipment, parts and gadgets of all kinds to other places. This capital mobility, along with advances in technology, left communities across the industrialized world in disarray. And it has created disruptions and devastation in the places where it is producing goods, often forcing people to work in inhuman conditions, despoiling the lands and waters necessary for production.  

In essence, industrial mass production is a major contributing force in the growing inequalities around our globe and in the ecological crisis that is threatening all life.

As we begin to think beyond the noise about tariffs, we can see that the deeper questions here are about what kind of economies do we need to create to live full, sustainable, joyful lives. Here too, Detroit and many of the communities that have been responding to the shifts in the global economic order, have much to offer.

For many years, many people in Detroit have been building local, living economies. We have been creating programs and practices that move us toward food sovereignty, local production and local consumption of goods and services. Such practices have the potential to offer new visions of how we might reorganize for full lives.

Recently Michael Shuman, an advocate of local economies, explained the best way to navigate the global disruptions caused by Trump. He said, “Inoculate your community from the increasing unpredictability of the global economy by becoming as local as possible, as fast as possible. The more you can produce your own goods and services from your own resource base, the less vulnerable you’ll be.”

Shuman offers clear strategies drawn from around the globe for developing local economies.

In addition, this moment is an opportunity to think differently about international relationships that center the well-being of people and the protection of land. Instead of emphasizing tariffs, we should be thinking about how to make a real global minimum wage policy. Instead of spending billions on restricting the flow of people across boarders, we should be restricting the flow of capital. 

We need to focus our organizing not only on resistance to what is happening, but on the creation of the futures we want. We are guided in the process by all those activists, writers, and artists who have been developing new people-centered economies in harmony with the earth.