Field Report:

Saving Detroit from Itself

As the Motor City falls into greater collapse, a group of frustrated black nationalists are taking its protection into their own hands.

By Chris Lewis
February 5, 2010

Abandoned homes are an increasingly common sight in Detroit. (Flickr/bbcworldservice)

Once a booming metropolis, Detroit, Mich. is a particularly grim symbol of the struggling United States economy. Beleaguered by decades of deindustrialization and population decline, the city has been devastated by the recession. Unemployment in the city is now at an almost unbelievable 50 percent. And since 2005, 67,000 homes have been foreclosed on, two-thirds of which remain empty.

Not surprisingly, the steady economic collapse has been coupled with a marked rise in crime. In 2008, Detroit had 362 murders, more than any other American city of 500,000 or more people. Of those, only 30 percent were ever solved, which is less than half the national average. In part this is due to the fact that Detroit’s police force is about half of what it was in 1994, when it had 4,000 officers. Of the police officers still working, many citizens claim they’re callous and respond poorly to emergency calls. Some say police don’t even patrol their communities.

In times of need, help can often come from the most unlikely of places. Detroit is a city with exceptional challenges, many of which the government has been ineffective at combating. But controversial minister Malik Shabazz, the black nationalist who has nurtured and energized the New Black Panther Nation/New Marcus Garvey Movement for 15 years now, says he has exceptional solutions.

A jack-of-all-trades community activist, Shabazz organizes everything from youth empowerment workshops in schools to food and clothing drives to voter registration. But the revolutionary also does more dangerous jobs, jobs typically thought of as work for the city police department. Alongside other Marcus Garvey Movement members, Shabazz sniffs out and confronts drug dealers, inspects suspect business operations, provides security at public parks, and searches for suspected criminals.

According to Shabazz, one of his top orders of business is crusading against Detroit drug houses. “When you have a dope house come in, it’s the beginning of the end of your block,” he says. So when the Marcus Garvey Movement receives word that a house is pushing crack, heroin, or some other illicit substance, the group investigates. If it’s deemed to be a drug haven, Movement members confront the dealers with a boisterous rally outside the house. They then attempt to engage the owners in the simplest way possible: They knock on the door and attempt to initiate dialogue.

Other Movement strategies include peppering neighborhoods with fliers that expose the drug house and embarrassing call-outs on Shabazz’s public access TV show. “Sometimes we just patrol the street and ask people what’s going on, just to be out there,” says Mike, a member of the Marcus Garvey Movement who preferred to be identified by only his first name.

Marcus Garvey Movement member Robert Bruce believes that the group’s tactics are successful. “A lot of times when we march on drug houses, the drug dealers will just move,” he says.

However, there have been occasions when the action turns testy. “If you’re messing with someone’s money,” Shabazz says, “there are times when you’re going to be challenged.” According to Shabazz, angry drug dealers have sicced dogs on him and his men and threatened them with bats and guns.

“Usually we do call the police,” Mike says, adding, “but we do the job whether the police help us or not.” Mike claims past incidents of police corruption have led him to doubt the integrity of Detroit’s police.

The Detroit Police Department has mixed feelings about Shabazz’ work. “Anytime a citizen is helping to do something positive, we support that,” says Sergeant Erin Stephens, a public information officer with the police department.

Stephens added that while the department approves of private citizens providing information to the police, it doesn’t condone individuals actually confronting the criminals themselves. “For individuals who go and take the law into their own hands,” she says. “That’s a no-no. That’s why we’re here. We have qualified officers who are trained to go forth and raid the dope houses.”

Shabazz is “a good guy,” Stephens says, but she wouldn’t comment on the effectiveness of his specific efforts. Police officials with direct knowledge of the New Marcus Garvey Movement’s work couldn’t be reached for comment.

Segments of Detroit’s general population seem to feel differently from the police. In 2006, the municipality of Highland Park—a small city set in central Detroit, bordered by Detroit on all sides—actively enlisted the help of the New Marcus Garvey Movement in reclaiming the newly renovated Alvin Casey Park, which had been overtaken by drug dealers and addicts.

“The children and the elderly were basically relegated to a corner of the park,” Shabazz says. So during the tenure of Highland Park’s state-appointed emergency financial manager, Arthur Blackwell, Shabazz was tapped to help.

“We were brought in to clean out the riff-raff,” says Shabazz. Throughout the summer Shabazz and his group began confronting troublemakers, telling them that the park was the wrong place for their activities. The change was “night and day,” according to Blackwell, who was forced out of his job last year and currently faces embezzlement charges. (He retains a group of dedicated supporters, Shabazz among them.)

The New Marcus Garvey Movement may have outlasted Blackwell in Highland Park, but they still patrol Alvin Casey during the summer. “Now I can drive by and see kids enjoying the park,” says Blackwell, “whereas before, it was always people doing nefarious things.”

In the summer of 2009, the Marcus Garvey Movement became part of an effort to track down a serial rapist who was on the loose on the east side of Detroit. Police efforts had floundered, so along with a handful of other organizations, the Shabazz and his men set out on a manhunt. “We started patrolling the area, talking with the people,” movement member Bruce says. Soon, information began to trickle in about who the rapist may be and where he lived. The group relayed the information to city police, who made an arrest shortly after.

Bruce believes the participation of the New Marcus Garvey Movement was instrumental in the capture. “A lot of people that won’t talk to the police will talk to people from the neighborhood, or people who they respect, and Minister Malik and this group do have a lot of respect in the city,” he says.

Of course, not everyone respects Shabazz’ work. The Anti-Defamation League considers the minister to be “an anti-Semitic and racist leader,” due mostly to his links with the national New Black Panther Party. And the Southern Poverty Law Center has expressed concerns about the Marcus Garvey Movement’s connection to the late Khalid Muhammad, a former trusted assistant to infamous black firebrand Louis Farrakhan.

Controversy aside, the Marcus Garvey Movement says it’s had some incredible successes. New Marcus Garvey Movement actions against drug-peddlers and seedy businesses—those that sell expired food or cheat their customers—have become a fixture of Detroit. And Shabazz gives mammoth claims about the group’s achievements. According to him, the Movement’s efforts have stymied “well over 1000” drug houses and led to the closure of 25 unsavory businesses, as well as "straightened out" a couple hundred others.

But the New Marcus Garvey Movement may not always be able to buttress an anemic police department in a crime-plagued city. Shabazz says as long as America undergoes a systemic overhaul, though, he will help. He says his work will be done when “we have a government—a nation—that’s based on one-for-all and all-for-one, when you have a nation where I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.”

“It’s not my intention to do this work forever,” Shabazz says. “I plan on being free in my lifetime. I plan on my children living to be free.”

Chris Lewis is a junior at American University and a Campus Progress staff writer.

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