Ensuring Urban Liberty by Killing YIMBYism: Using Radical Urban Planning & the Metropolitan Parliament to Shape the Future of Government

When looking at history, there are an incalculable number of "collective inventions" (things that no one person could plausibly take credit for, such as the wrench) that've changed the course of Humanity since they were brought into our World. The concept of the "City" or a "Metropolis" is a perfect example of the pinnacle of our accumulated resources being put to work for something good.

Ever since the Agricultural Revolution happened, Cities became the context in which we've come to exist as an ever-improving entity that has been changing along with our ancestors. 6,000 years ago, the first Urban dwellers left behind precarious sources of food such as wild animal herds as well as what few edible fruits, nuts, and vegetation that naturally existed in favor of stable, yet simplified, sources of food.

This isn't to say that the first Cities were "perfect", or, just as advanced as the Cities of today, however, as has been discussed with Radical historians such as Murray Bookchin and David Graeber, the political evolution of Humanity goes hand in hand with the historically recognized eras of urbanization.

Yet, despite the stunning milestone that we've finally reached where just over half of every single Man, Woman, and Child on Earth lives in/near a city, for the first time in the story of our species even, it seems as if Humanity's political advancement has stopped dead in it's tracks.

In the World's most powerful nations, the inherent Rights of cities and their residents are so profoundly restricted by obsolete, backwards, and arbitrary laws asserting the supremacy of their state, provincial, or federal governments that it seems as if the collective heads of the World's governments are all in the business of strangling any and all political movements that seek to liberate the potential of any new forms of government.

When looking at the "Developing World", however, nations such as Brazil, South Africa, India, and America's neighbor Mexico all have the common sense to enshrine the powers of Cities within their constitutions since they are inherently different in form and function from state/provincial and national governments.

The World's Cities in Crisis

Regardless of these examples of administrative intelligence, in major cities like Mexico City, New Delhi, and Johannesburg these centers of administrative power are paradoxically divided and blemished by completely arbitrary administrative borders which ignore the obvious geographical edges of their vast metropolitan areas. These are only a few examples of ways in which other nations have repeated and duplicated the mistakes of Cities and certain principals of Urbanism that've haunted locales within the heart of the World's Financial Empires for generations. 

It is hoped that these small insights have illuminated the fact that there exists no City on Earth where Radicals are not only in power, but also control the investments and public policy that'd affect wide numerous geographic areas from the urban core all the way to the rural edge. We also want to point out that this type of municipal fragmentation prevents the governments of those cities from taking the poor out of vast slums and putting them into adequate housing, building infrastructure and services, as well as tackling the Black Market economy that exists over various municipal boundaries.

Some who are uninformed of the conditions that the poorer half of our Planet somehow endures with on a day-to-day basis might assume that the urban struggles that exists within the Intentionally Undeveloped World are completely unrelated to the urban issues that plague a region in the World's Financial Empires such as Metro Detroit. That point of view couldn't be further from the truth however.

American Urbanism: Inefficiency and Civic Failures

We all know that American metropolitan areas have slums, in fact, here in Metro Detroit, what people consider "the ghetto" even is, has been transforming over the last few decades. Now, the "idyllic" picture of suburbia with it's sterile environments in favor of McMansions is getting more and more geographically isolated as the decades have gone on and the suburban sprawl continues.

In fact, even looking at the urban character of cities in poorer nations, or "middle income" nations, American style urban infrastructure dominates across the World just as it's dominated American metropolitan areas such as Metro Detroit. The collective invention we know as the automobile is the main reason why not just American Cities, but also the World's Cities, look the way that they do.

But, instead of American style car-dependent infrastructure creating a type of City that represents the peak of innovation, there's currently more conversations going on than ever before regarding the problems of urban geography. There's growing dissatisfaction with the policies that've created isolated environments as well as urban areas that've become playgrounds for the rich. These aren't just occurrences within American Cities, countless millions across the World are suffering from geographic inequality, disinvestment, and hollowed out government services due to privatization.

The problems of 21st Century Urbanism presents both a clear-cut opportunity and an existential threat to us Radicals, either we revive the public's faith in government by transforming municipal, county, and metropolitan/regional areas into efficient, effective, well resourced instruments of the public's desire, or, we allow the so-called "higher" forms of government to turn those governments into a mirror of their ineptitude, waste, and cruel institutions.

It might seem as if this publication is suggesting that Radicals need to move into uncharted territory, but, that's not at all accurate. During the late 2010s era rise of the Sanders campaigns and Corbynism within Britain, it seemed as if national level Radical Populism was poised to take over the English speaking political heart of the World, however, by 2021 the legacy of both of those political projects were swept into the dustbin of history by the establishment after successfully crushing their political insurgencies. These failures have forced Radicals to go back to the drawing board, and, it seems as if the consensus is to approach politics from the local level for the time being.

The only problem standing in our way is the fact that, everywhere we look, branches of the Capitacracy is well on it's way of capturing the spectrum of "acceptable ideas" on the local level.

Capital's Attempted Course Correction: YIMBYism

If there's any doubt among this publication's critics that aspects of the Capitacracy are so dominant within local politics that they're even affecting how Radicals think about urban Governance, look no further than New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's policy team regarding housing. Much to our disappointment, Mamdani has taken progressively more and more YIMBY positions that are aligned with real estate Capital instead of proposing a housing approach that'd be more in line with his Radical roots.

Unfortunately for all of us, YIMBYism is getting to the point where it is mainstream enough in urban politics, that it warrants some analysis for those not in the loop to understand just what the hell that acronym actually means.

The term YIMBY is an acronym that means "Yes In My Back Yard", and, it is, supposedly, a grassroots "movement" of individuals who wish to solve the Worldwide housing crisis by allowing real estate Capital to build as many units of housing that they possibly can, which they suggest would end urban issues such a as unaffordable real estate and gentrification. With this definition in mind, we will, from this point forward, use "YIMBY" and "Market Urbanist" interchangeably.

If that acronym sounds about as clear as a Spring fog, it's intentional, because the "movement" is being bankrolled by the same political and economic forces that currently control mayorships and city councils all over the World. YIMBYism, as described by it's supporters, aims to be a "wide tent" that, in the American political context, aims to include both Democrats and Republicans, thus, attempting to turn their policy program into something that appears to be "common sense" or completely apolitical.

If there are any concerns that this publication is being "unfair" to the Market Urbanist point of view, we'd encourage you to ask any online YIMBY "activist" or any of the pressure group's various CEOs how they feel about about implementing rent control, putting land under public ownership, or, following the Vienna Model of housing where over half of the Citizens of the city live in high quality Social Housing. They particularly like to shit on any idea that may cause the slightest inconvenience to housing production, and, they label anyone and everyone who has the slightest disagreement with their Worldview as a "NIMBY" (standing for "Not In My Back Yard", which is meant to be a political slur to be thrown at anyone who Market Urbanists characterize as self interested, or "against change").

As many have observed, self described YIMBYs have a particular disdain for Radical politics as they've weaponized another political slur they call "Left-NIMBYism", to attempt to shut down Radical critiques of the current mode of Capitalist urban development as "unprincipled", "economically illiterate", or otherwise as "unserious" as the racist critiques of development Capital that you'd hear from suburban Conservatives. This is undoubtedly the Capitacracy's reflexes kicking in to claim domination of the political debate around cities, seeing as 62% of Americans aged 18-29 have a favorable view of Socialism and 34% have a favorable view of Communism.

Radical Urbanism: A Critique of Cities from a Civically Minded Counter-Culture

It would be a grave mistake for Radicals to adopt Market Urbanist policies in our platforms, since, the "boom and bust" economic cycle means that the YIMBY vision of having real estate Capital solve the housing crisis by overproducing an asset that they have an economic interest in reaping the maximum amount of profits from is a pure ideological fantasy.

So, what can we do to oppose it? We first need to educate ourselves on the topic by reading the works of the thinkers who came before us and use their critiques in our analysis. Not only that, we must use the Radical Urbanist lens to cut through the bullshit talking points that Market Urbanists like to produce when it comes to "critiquing" Radical Urbanism. So, we will go over the most popular talking points they like to present against Radicals:

Talking Point #1: The State Can't do Anything/Provide Housing as Efficiently as the Market Can.

This argument forms the very core of the Market Urbanist supposed rebuttals, they may suggest that governments suffer from the "principal agent problem", which, is basically a pro-Market Urbanist way of saying that the priorities of voters and policy makers are different, thus, whatever government policy makers do, they'll be biased in favor of their own preferred solutions. This is quite literally an elementary-level argument, seeing as even in areas where public resources are privatized, the principal agent problem is still an issue, if not a more serious one.

There are a multitude of other claims that Market Urbanists will bring up in order to attempt to "substantiate" their assertions about local government, such as the fact that they believe that local governments face no competition unlike Capitalist firms do in the "free market". This is yet another simplistic, easily disprovable argument as research from an Urban economist named Charles Tiebout (who created the "Tiebout theory" that was later named after himself) found out that Citizens often "vote with their feet" and move to other jurisdictions if they're unhappy with the services that they receive from one place or another in a way that replicates the "free market". In Metro Detroit, we've literally seen this process in action as millions of Citizens and multiple generations of people have emptied out of Detroit into the ever-growing suburbs in search of better living standards, which has incentivized Detroit's ruling class to change the status quo and tackle the city's long history of decline.

It's after debunking these grander claims that YIMBYs usually retreat into even more empirically precarious positions like: "governments concentrate benefits and disperse costs", raise issues around "tyranny of the majority", or play to "generational conflict" when it comes to government funding methods such as debt financing. And, we must reiterate for the sake of clarity here, giving up government powers to let the "free market" does not create efficiency, often times it actually does the opposite. These less sure-footed critiques of government responsibilities are simply just unsophisticated, bad faith arguments in favor of the private sector. Each and every single one of these arguments can be used for economies dominated by market activity. Since it would be too voluminous to include a direct rebuttal to each of these claims, we will move on:

Talking Point #2: I'd Rather See Incremental Change Now than Grand "Revolutions" at Some Point in the Future

Yet another textbook definition of a bad faith argument, but, this "critique" is necessary to debunk because it's the distilled essence of American Liberal ideology which says "moderation" is key when it comes to ideology and those who have strong feelings one way or another aren't fit for power. Seeing as self-described "Moderates" make up the second biggest political group in America, our rebuttal must address the fundamentals of this point of view.

We live within a period of Human history where our continued survival is reliant upon our governments acting swiftly to counter the forces that seem poised to upend our way of life and lead to a future of certain destruction. In recent years, this pluralistic sense of urgency (dubbed the "Omnicrisis") has been linked to the global housing crisis, linking Humanity's plight with not just climate change but also, obesity, fertility decline, and economic productivity.

It's within this context that we see that the American Liberal urge for "moderation" is a suicidal position to take. Yet, some of this publication's critics will urge us to call for restraint from the state. They'll suggest that swift, calculated, and complete government policy doesn't actually exist despite the mountains of evidence that prove the contrary, from the New Deal, to mass suburbanization, to the war economy of WWII, and so on.

The only other thing that we'll mention is the fact that the attempted discrediting of "Revolution" as an idea, is, objectively speaking, an illustration of the complete moral bankruptcy of the default American mindset. In this publication's very first report, we covered the "end of history" prediction that came from Conservative writer Francis Fukuyama, and comprehensively broke down why his prediction was completely wrong. 

The long and short of it is because Fukuyama's predictions were nothing more than what the late Radical philosopher Mark Fisher would call "Capitalist Realism", a term he created in order to describe the ideological stagnation of the "developed" nations that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union. His book on the subject will forever be known by the quip he included in his first chapter where Fisher suggested that:

 "It's easier to imagine the end of the World than imagine the end of Capitalism"

This single quote gets to the heart at the misunderstanding that many Americans have with the concept of Revolution. This political jadedness more than likely comes from the flawed way that history is taught within our schools, which, incorrectly sees Revolutions as something random, one-off, and led by uniquely genius "Great Men". Instead, as has been pointed out by history nerds such as the podcaster Mike Duncan in the Revolutions Podcast, the cause of Revolutions are often "slow burns" where the rulers of governments incrementally lose control over opposing factions within the government, and, once those factions as well as the public at large understand that the ruling government is at a weak point, then, the conditions for Revolutions turn into the cause of any particular regime change.

Within Fisher's quote, is the idea that we are unable to imagine a Revolution even emerging because of the ideological "common sense" which living within Capitalism instills a certain passiveness within our behavior that makes it hard to see a way out of the society we already live within. So, we exist within a society-wide Catch 22: Now more than ever, our society needs to act swiftly to come up with a way to escape the doom of our species, yet, there's an ideological cloud hanging over a vast section of the public, causing brain fog and mystifying the path forward which forces the people to rest on the comfortable lies that they've already know and heard before, rather than going back on what we've been taught since we were children and examining it in a critical manner.

Within the context of this publication's advocacy to establish a Metropolitan Parliament within Metro Detroit and install a Radical led government is, in our opinion, a prospect that challenges both the American understanding of what constitutes a "Revolution" as well as opens up an ideological gap within Capitalist Realism that allows the Citizens of this region to dare to dream of a City that puts the needs of it's inhabitants first rather than the needs of our failing Capitacratic overlords. We have no other choice left but to take up this struggle or continue to stagnate into annihilation.

Talking Point #3: YIMBYism and "Everything Bagel Urbanism"

We've recuperated this term from Ezra Klein, who is one of the more notable Liberal commentators within establishment media. He coined the term "everything bagel Liberalism" to describe the faults of supposedly "progressive" governments such as California which have backwards and/or inefficient regulations that make it hard for the market within those places to build anything from infrastructure to housing and transit. Basically, he suggests that regulating development for every possible impact means that it's difficult to produce anything.

Yet, for those of us interested in the concept of Radical Urbanism, when we bring up the issue to Market Urbanists the fact that the "free market" is structurally and financially incentivized not to do things such as deliver deeply affordable units to the public, so, the approach that is truly needed is to restrict the profit motive in favor of a mass build out of Social Housing, then, the more intellectually dishonest among the YIMBYs will claim that it's perfectly fine to encourage private sector profits among developers while pushing for the government to build Social Housing.

Hence our use of the term "everything bagel Urbanism", seeing as there's no City on the planet that has an even 50/50 split between Social Housing and for profit luxury developments. There is, however, the Vienna example that we mentioned earlier within this report which has the vast majority of the city's population living within safe, affordable, high quality Social Housing and implements strict rent control on the remaining for profit market rate housing.

Market Urbanists are likely to counter this suggestion by stating that Tokyo is the perfect example of the free market providing affordability while having some Social Housing, even worse, they'll likely insist that the Tokyo model is perfectly replicable around the World. 

Here's the Radical Urbanist critique to that Idea:

There are multiple reasons why the relatively "affordable" Japanese housing market (even though prices in desirable cities are rising despite Japan's overall population currently shrinking) is the way it currently is, is due to it's interesting recent economic history. During the 1980s, Japan was on the path of economically eclipsing America by the new millennium, and it's government was experimenting with financial deregulation. The market dominance of Japanese firms as well as it's fast and loose monetary policy created such an overzealous asset bubble that it was often said the land underneath the imperial palace situated at the center of Tokyo was worth more than the entire real estate market within California. However, just like all speculative bubbles, reality sank in and plunged the entire country into such a cataclysmic economic shock that the economy more or less never recovered. The fallout of this bubble has been called "The Lost Decades".

The bursting of the asset bubble is an extremely relevant reason as to why Japanese housing is cheaper than other places around the World, Japanese people are essentially psychologically scarred from the bubble, so, unlike literally every other society on Earth, they refuse to see housing as a speculative asset, the price of housing in Japan diminishes over time, which has caused the Japanese real estate market to destroy all residential properties that're around 30 years old. This is why the talking point that YIMBYs bring up suggesting that every other city in the World can simply build it's way into affordability "just like Tokyo" is so dishonest, it utterly refuses to take a material analysis of the Japanese economy and it's social effects on it's people.

So, long story short, Market Urbanists advocate for the Japanese approach to housing, yet, ignore all of the Socioecopolitical impacts that chasing economic growth has had on the country.

Talking Point #4: Philosophical Arguments vs. Policy Arguments

Now, we come to our final, and arguably, most intellectually dishonest position taken by YIMBYs, the idea that Radical anti-Capitalist Urbanism are only founded on philosophical arguments and are difficult to implement in practice while Market Urbanist approaches are based upon "science" and empirical data.

If you were to ask any YIMBY exactly what "science" their economic views are founded on, more often than not, they'll all tell you "economics". There in itself is the problem, because, economics isn't a hard science like astronomy is, for example. Economics is more like art, subjective, ever-changing, and rightfully subject to outside scrutiny. Despite this fact, Market Urbanists will always reference the economic theorem of "supply and demand" whenever YIMBY "success story cities" publicize marginal drops in the price of rent due to adopting their preferred policies of zoning deregulation.

We'll talk about the Radical Urbanist rebuttal to the supply and demand theorem in our next segment, but, for right now, we'll talk about the Radical Urbanist policy proposals versus the Market Urbanist policy proposals. If the tension between the two policy approaches could be simplified, we assume that even the Market Urbanist critics of this publication would agree that the main tension is between Democratization on the Radical Urbanist side vs. Deregulation on the side of the Market Urbanists.

Radical Urbanists want to give the average Joe greater economic empowerment and political agency within their lives, within the workplace, and within their government, mainly by expanding the aspects of our World that are answerable to the democratic process as opposed to the Market Urbanists, who have the worldview that allowing markets to flourish provides for the needs of the average Citizen, to do this, they believe in dismantling all of the "obstacles" within government that makes it hard for the market to produce goods (for example, they believe in either reducing or completely eliminating public hearings on zoning proposals). In order to explain why the Market Urbanists are wrong, we must go past simple critiques of talking points as we have done and get into the ideological bedrock of Radical Urbanism, we'll start that analysis now:

Three Concrete Radical Critiques of YIMBYism 

Critique #1: Markets Enforce Scarcity Instead of Delivering Abundance

We've seen how Market actors within Metro Detroit approach land when there's an overabundance of it, they close off as much of it as they can in order to artificially raise the price of land. Ever since Detroit's bankruptcy occurred, the national establishment media drew the lazy, superfluous, and completely arbitrary conclusion that Detroit was supposedly "too big" since it could fit Manhattan, Boston, and San Francisco within it's boundaries with square miles to spare (mind you, Detroit is ranked 64th nationally in terms of total square mileage). Yet, other cities around the nation do just fine with their large sizes, not only that, but, Metro Detroit's sheer size is an undeniable asset to it's future success. 

For example, the World famous City of London, UK, it's 9 million people as well as all of it's 607 square miles could fit within Metro Detroit (which we define as Detroit, Windsor, as well as the counties of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and Essex) almost five times, which, if London's population density was replicated in all of Metro Detroit's 2,848 square miles, we'd have a total of 42.6 million people living here. Which is utterly astonishing as the city isn't made up of endless miles of high rises, sleepy residential areas and lively business districts coexist together. 

Getting back to our critique, enforcing artificial scarcity has been the de-facto policy of Detroit's political establishment ever since the city exited bankruptcy in 2014 as the Duggan administration has either destroyed or sold 46,000 properties from then up until writing this report, it even borrowed nearly half a Billion dollars from the public in order to complete it's overly aggressive demolition targets. This is the context that is crucially needed to scrutinize the many press releases from the City suggesting that mostly Black home owning residents are benefiting from the imposition of this scarcity in the housing stock. What the spin doctors in the City's comms department won't tell you is that nearly half of the City's residents are renters because of the foreclosure crisis that swept through the city due to the very same faulty metrics of wealth being used by assessors in Wayne county.

It's extremely likely that this policy of artificial scarcity will come back to bite Detroit's future administrations in the ass seeing as there's more scrutiny of the demolition program than ever before since news has recently broken that the city has been doing business with demo contractors that've been using contaminated dirt to fill demolition sites. In conclusion, we can see the obvious effects of enforced scarcity on a city like Detroit, market activity has not provided affordability, it has instead done the complete opposite, seeing as 60% of renters within the city report being cost burdened. In a region like Metro Detroit where we have an overabundance of land, the Radical Urbanist approach is to house all of our Citizens in clean, affordable, safe, and well connected areas, and abolish the distinction between "good" and "bad" neighborhoods.

How do we accomplish those goals? the simplest course of action is to put all land under public ownership so that a Radical-led Metropolitan Parliament can build the Social Housing that the unified City would need while building a comprehensive rail-based transit network so that no corner of Metro Detroit is left isolated as a result of our current wrongheaded approach to urban planning.

Critique #2: The Market Urbanist Approach of Chasing Equilibrium Within the "Supply and Demand" Theorem is Impossible for Cities to Achieve in Practice

Now here is where we pick up where we left off when we were talking about philosophical arguments versus policy arguments. As we mentioned before, the field of economics isn't a hard science, so, replicating economic models is completely impossible to achieve in the real World. Yet YIMBYs suggest that in every single issue within urban housing markets would be solved if policy makers simply allowed the market to produce enough supply to meet demand.

Their thinking goes like this: Housing is expensive because there's too many people chasing too few houses and apartments, because there's a large amount of potential buyers, the price of all housing within a given city will rise, and, according to the "supply and demand" theorem, the only thing that will bring down prices and demand is to produce enough housing to either achieve a "market equilibrium", or, over-produce to the point where the price of housing corrects to a lower sale price.

Yet, despite Market Urbanists claiming victory for the dozens of cities around the World that've deregulated their zoning codes and saw momentary reductions in median rent, from cities such as Austin to Auckland, what YIMBYs would like for the public to ignore is the fact that those cities have universally seen residential building permits decrease after initial waves of development being brought to the market.

This shows how the YIMBY policy approach fails to work in the real World, there has never been any proof of a City with deregulated zoning codes reaching an "equilibrium". However, some Market Urbanists will suggest that this publication is economically illiterate, after all, they'll say that the "equilibrium price" is just what we'd call the sale price, which will float freely with market demand. Within this potential critique of our report is a lie by omission, Market Urbanists should know from the same econ 101 courses that they berate Radicals for "not understanding" is the fact that the theorem of "equilibrium" is just another way of saying that the free market established a "market clearing price". The definition of a "market clearing price" literally being a price that indicates that there's neither a shortage nor surplus of a specific good. 

Hopefully it becomes blindingly obvious how unworkable establishing a "market clearing price" is for a field as complicated as a housing market which ignores municipal borders and covers entire metropolitan areas. How do cities with high population growth establish equilibrium with artificially constrained public resources? Why is there no universal standard for an indication of a "healthy" residential vacancy rate? Is a market clearing price even worth chasing if the urban poor can't afford to rent the median apartment or purchase the median priced home? How can highly desirable cities ever hope to become affordable when housing markets cross over administrative boundaries?

The last question will be the subject of our final critique of Market Urbanism:

Critique #3: Individual Cities Undertaking Rezoning Efforts Will Always Fail, A Metropolitan-Wide Response is the Only Real Solution

 We are coming into an age of urban history here issues such as transportation, job opportunities, housing, etc. are all being looked at through the lens of the metropolitan area rather than just looking at individual cities. This common sense approach to modern Urbanism, however, is being blocked by the arbitrary jurisdictional frameworks of state and federal governments, who divide metropolitan areas into inefficient fiefdoms rather than seeing cities as they truly are: man-made organisms that thrive when they're allowed to pool their collective resources together.

There's no more perfect an issue that would benefit from a metropolitan-wide approach than housing, because housing markets are better understood at the regional level. It's this inconvenient truth that represents a great opportunity for Radicals within Metro Detroit and further afield to actively shape future conversations surrounding cities, or, get left behind by the ever-expanding economic astrology that YIMBYism is perpetrating against the general public by suggesting that building housing exclusively for the wealthy will make everyone else become better off.

The field of Urban Socioecopolitical analysis is truly one of the last ideological holdouts of establishment economics, and, the "thought leaders" who exist within the space would like to keep it that way. After all, as we've mentioned in previous reports, the Capitacratic class that exists within America's metropolitan areas are also coming around to lending support to establishing Metropolitan Governments, but, instead of using Metropolitan Governments as a means of Liberation to the common people, they instead want to ensure that their political domination of our cities is complete and irreversible. 

We'll now get to the part where Black Label Detroit's advocacy for a Metropolitan Parliament fits into the fight for equitable Urbanism:

Answering the Biggest Questions about the Metropolitan Parliament 

This month will mark an important milestone for this publication, It'll be the one year anniversary of our initial call for establishing a Metropolitan Parliament here within Metro Detroit. Over the course of our reports that have followed, we've left a multitude of questions "up in the air" as we chose to disclose aspects of policy, both pragmatic, and radical, up for debate at a later time at some point in the future.

Now is the time to get back to those questions so that our readers/listeners have a deep understanding of the type of government that we're calling for so that Radicals can reassert the Public's will over or government instead of the other way around as has been the case for all of modern history.

It's doubly necessary to plug these rhetorical holes in our theory of a Metropolitan Parliament because it's not enough for our supporters to be equipped with a coherent alternative point of view against Market Urbanists and engaging them in heated debates, that does nothing to make our cities more affordable, it won't house the homeless, nor will it kill car dependency. Radical Urbanism will only be successful if, we as a collective, get out in our neighborhoods and create grassroots efforts to change the status quo street by street. There's an incalculable number of ways that this could be done, by far the best tactic is to spread our advocacy by word of mouth. Once enough people are talking and undertaking direct action themselves, we'll have the numbers needed to truly combine grassroots energy to a political project that will bring Humanity into a totally different World than which exists today.

So, let's elaborate on the issues that stand as "elephants in the room" when it comes to advocating for a Metropolitan Parliament:

Issue #1: What Does a "Top-Down"/Capitacratic Metropolitan Parliament Proposal Look Like? 

Luckily for Radicals here within Metro Detroit (and unfortunately for Radicals within the St Louis metro area) we have an obvious and clear-cut example of just what a top down, pro-Capitacratic and incrementalist vision of what a complete opposite of a Metropolitan Parliament would look like, since the failed "St Louis Better Together" campaign ticks all of those boxes and makes for an interesting case study to analyze to see everything that shouldn't be done to unite Metro Detroit.

Some basic history needs to be covered first before we elaborate just how much of a disaster the Better Together campaign was. To keep it as short as possible because outlets from the area have covered the topic extensively, originally, the City Of St Louis and St Louis county were combined together, yet, at the time, the City of St Louis had more economic resources than the county did. They would end up separating because of the fact that the courts within St Louis county were perceived as corrupt, yet, a contested vote was held and despite obvious signs of ballot tampering, the City and County would part ways in 1876 which has been known ever since as "the Great Divorce".

Ever since the vote was approved for the Great Divorce, there has been a multitude of different plans that sought to reunite the City and County together again, long story short, the Better Together campaign was launched by the local "Business Elite" class within Metro St. Louis, and, as is typical with Reformist proposals that come from Capitalists, the proposal was both too overly ambitious and too conservative to properly work in the long run.

We suggest that it was "overly ambitious" because the specific mechanism that the Better Together campaign wanted to use in order to get this merger approved was through a statewide vote rather than only letting locals within the City and County determine the issue for themselves. The proposal was also "too conservative" to properly work as a real solution because the framers of the Better Together campaign deliberately left out creating a single, unified public school district, opted not to consolidate the region's debts into one giant pool which would've directly assisted St. Louis as well as the poor cities in the county, though, the final icing on the cake was the fact that the proposed new "Metro Council" would only have 33 members on it to represent 1,266,754 people, while, if the framers of the proposal advocated for following the cube root law, just as we have been advocating for to establish the Metropolitan Parliament here within Metro Detroit. the Metro Council would be vastly more representative at 108 councilors.

There are many takeaways from the failed Better Together campaign when it comes to figuring out how to spot a merger proposal crafted by the Capitacracy. Mainly, they'll opt to leave out crucial services and financial mechanisms from a merger because they'd rather "play it safe" instead of proposing anything that dares to be controversial and promote heated debate among the public (Almighty Creator forbid that people hold debates within a Democracy). The only other obvious sign is the fact that the number of proposed representatives will usually be drastically fewer than what is needed to ensure that all citizens have a reliable connection to the new government, this is intentional as fewer "inconvenient voices" will be able to get their grievances addressed through government because it'd be easier to ignore them in a setup with fewer representatives.

Okay, since we've highlighted what to look out for when it comes to intentionally flawed proposals to create a Metropolitan Government, we need to fully elaborate upon the shape of the Metropolitan Parliament that we've been proposing so that there's no answers regarding what it'll look like, what it can and can't do, and how comprehensive is the scope of change we see happening to the region.

Issue #2: What Powers Will the Metropolitan Parliament Have?

An analysis of the powers that urban governments have within American states is informed by two legal precedents: The first one being "Dillon's Rule" and the other (interestingly enough it originated in the state of Michigan) being called "the Cooley Doctrine". 

Dillon's Rule is the idea that cities and other municipalities only have the powers that states explicitly give to them, otherwise, they have no inherent powers. This ruling has been reaffirmed in the supreme court multiple times and Dillon's rule has legal authority in the vast majority of states.

On the complete opposite of the inherent powers spectrum however, is the Cooley Doctrine which has been upheld within Michigan's supreme court, the basic idea behind it is the fact that municipal governments have existed before state governments, so, any reductions in the "powers" of municipal governments represent infringement upon their Rights, which, the Cooley Doctrine explicitly asserts that the powers of local governments are a matter of "absolute right".

There's a fundamental tension between the goal of setting up the Metropolitan Parliament by giving Metro Detroit's residents a say as to what powers they want to invest in the political project and the legal means to achieve that goal. That's because state law only allows the legislature to designate certain areas as Metropolitan Governments and states that the legislature will give it powers "as the legislature shall provide", which is essentially saying "as they see fit". This represents a fundamental contradiction within the legal structure of municipalities within Michigan because the laws regarding Metropolitan Governments is closely aligned with the principals of Dillon's Rule, yet, case law within Michigan and even laws regarding the ability of counties to merge together to form a larger government lend to the principals of the Cooley Doctrine.

So, this state of play sets the stage for a truly gargantuan legal showdown between those of us who advocate for the Metropolitan Parliament and the regressive forces within local government and the Capitacracy who want a regional government that empowers them rather than the public at large.

If we want the project of a Metropolitan Parliament to be successful, power has to be invested within the people of the region, which means there needs to be an unmistakable legal triumph for the principals within the Cooley Doctrine. The main pathway that we envision for the establishment of the Metropolitan Parliament is to go through the county consolidation route, but pressure Radicals within elected government to introduce bills to enable consolidated counties to form Metropolitan Parliaments. Another way that the same goal can be realized (and an option that is more aligned with the grassroots approach that we favor) is to launch a regional/statewide ballot initiative that will circumvent the entranced Capitacratic interests within elected government in Lansing, or, both approaches could be implemented simultaneously.

The political foundations of the project cannot be ignored if the campaign we are advocating for is to be successful, once the ability to hold a vote is secured, there needs to be a common understanding among the public of what exactly we're asking them to support replacing the failed status quo with. This brings us to the next portion of our proposal:

Issue #3: What Will the Government Look Like Within the Metropolitan Parliament and How Will Elections Work?

This is undoubtedly the most crucial portion of our elaboration on the proposal of the Metropolitan Parliament to date because even within the narrow and ceremonial ritual of American elections, the loss of faith in a fair outcome among voters within both the Democratic and Republican parties are growing by the year. 

If both parties within a two party system are growing ever more eager to suggest that their opponents cheated their way into office rather than admitting that they lost fair and square, every single election going forward could be the kindling for a cataclysmic armed conflict if one side or another completely divests from what exists as the only pressure-release valve for the American public.

We say all of that, not to suggest that we simply "need to wait until cooler heads prevail" or ignore politics "once the adults come back to the room", but instead to assert that our preferred solution of the Metropolitan Government remains as the only way that the American experiment in democratic government perseveres. We don't just see establishing a Metropolitan Parliament as the solution for Metro Detroit, we see this form of government being a replicable model for communities like Grand Rapids, to the entire Upper Peninsula, to communities all over the country. It is designed to save American Democracy by killing the two party system and giving birth to a healthy, stable multi-party system.

For those who might suggest that the two party system will only die slowly and in a time span that is far longer than our proposed establishment of a Metropolitan Parliament, we'd counter with the fact that another Anglophone nation, the United Kingdom, is currently undergoing the rapid disintegration of their two party system as the far-right anti-establishment Reform UK party currently enjoys an utterly dominating lead in the polls because the public are abandoning the legacy center-left Labour party and the right wing Conservatives en masse. It should be noted that the United Kingdom has the same voting system as we do in America and even within nations that have different voting systems than we do, ruling political parties have either been substantially weakened or outright overthrown by their voters because they utterly failed to address the widespread decline in living standards, Our proposal is to ensure that bad governments are permanently punished by the electoral system, so, let's finally get to the part where we illustrate our proposed system:

The Government's Day to Day Operations

The administrative setup of the Metropolitan Parliament will be similar to that of New York City, administrative subsections called "Boroughs", made up of populations of no less than 100K to no more than 299K people and consolidated from the 148 municipalities that currently exist within Metro Detroit. The Boroughs will handle public services within their boundaries and will govern along with publicly elected Borough Mayors as well as a publicly elected Metro Mayor. The number of representatives that each Borough receives will be based on population, and, any Borough over 100K population  will be legally guarded from administrative subdivision/disincorporation.

Unlike New York City, however, the rest of the representatives that the people elect (as well as the Citizen's chosen to stand within the Citizen's Assembly, but, we'll get to that within this section later) will have dual responsibilities, the first is to represent their Borough within the wider Metropolitan Parliament while collaborating with Councilors from other Boroughs to work on legislation for the entire Metro Government in a joint session, and the second being representing their districts within their Borough Councils and doing the same task within those bodies, only, within the context of legislation that affects their home Borough.

The Metro Mayor as well as the Borough Mayors will be forced by law to assemble their cabinets from the elected members of the chamber, as will the Metro and Borough "Shadow Cabinets", and, no Metro Mayor, Borough Mayor, nor their cabinet nor anyone within Metro/Borough Shadow Cabinets would be allowed to hold more than one position at a time.

As for the Citizen's Assembly, during election season as well as throughout the 8 year term of the Metropolitan Parliament, any Citizen of the consolidated City would be able to serve upon the Assembly by a randomized lottery system (Sortition). Terms will last for one month and a Citizen would not be allowed back on the Citizen's Assembly to serve a term until a 3 month waiting period is completed, this way, not only do the vast majority Citizens get the chance to serve on the Assembly multiple times, but also, the entirety of the populace has the chance to get their voices heard within government in a context that exists outside of election season, something that is entirely impossible under Metro Detroit's current political organization. There will be no official titles, positions of office, etc. within the Citizen's Assembly so, all Citizens chosen to sit on the Assembly will be present for joint sessions in both Borough Parliaments and the Metropolitan Parliament.

The Citizen's Assembly's role will be to propose legislation, amend bills coming from the Borough and Metropolitan Parliaments, analyzing government policy, scrutinizing the government as well as other politicians, and calling for snap elections within Borough Parliaments or the Metropolitan Parliament  if political gridlock ensues, all of which will be determined by a simple majority vote. They will be joined by the Metro Mayor as well as Borough Mayors who will have non-voting positions and instead will be present to offer expertise and assist the Assembly in crafting it's bills.

Elections

Instead of relying upon just one voting system to cram all of the philosophical and ideological differences of the public into one form and somehow expecting it to work out well or be mechanically efficient, the Metropolitan Parliament will use three systems: Performance-based MMP to choose the 164 person Metropolitan Council, Ranked Choice Voting to decide the Metro Mayor and all the Borough Mayors, and finally, the Sortition system we proposed for the Citizen's Assembly that we mentioned in the last section. Since the Sortition model was already discussed within the previous section, and our support for performance-based MMP was already elaborated upon in our initial report on the Metropolitan Parliament (which is citation number 39 indexed within this report), we'll explain our rationale behind our support of using Ranked Choice Voting for the Metro and Borough Mayors:

There may be some Radicals out there who might feel as if any truly revolutionarily democratic government would do away with political "Leaders" altogether, however, within the context of the inner workings of the Metropolitan Government, the role that the Metro Mayor and Borough Mayors will play is entirely separated from the near-absolute power that they have under our current system. The Metro Mayor and Borough Mayors will have no power to issue "mayoral directives" (executive orders from mayors), if the Parliament does not support their policies or bills, then, they don't get passed. Because of this idea, there may be critics out there who see this as a recipe for even stronger political gridlock, yet, these worries are unfounded because of the inclusion of Ranked Choice Voting.

Within our current voting system, if there are 6 or 7 strong candidates for a single office, it's entirely likely that a candidate wins the race with only 40% or 30% of the vote as different candidates actively steal support from their opponents who have similar policies as they do. What Ranked Choice Voting does is eliminate this "spoiler effect", so regardless of who runs for the top jobs, the public will be satisfied with the outcome since any winning candidate would need to achieve 50% of the vote. When this system is combined with the Proportional Representation that comes from our proposed performance-based MMP implementation, whatever Metro/Borough Mayors get into power, will almost always get elected with a mandate to govern as they see fit.

Extra Info:

This portion will be a collection of certain ideas on how the Metropolitan Parliament's political system will operate that was too difficult/tangential to include in the previous sections:

[1] The Metropolitan and Borough Parliament's working days will be divided evenly within the months, so, they will start off in the joint sessions of the Metropolitan Parliament for 14 to 15 days, then, all the Metropolitan Parliamentarians as well as the Citizens who sit on the Assembly will go to their Borough Parliaments for the rest of the month.

[2] There will be two different means of scrutinizing the government as well as elected politicians, the first being "Questions to the Government" modeled after the Prime Minister's Questions period present within many parliamentary systems, the only difference being that not only will the Metro and Borough Mayors field questions from the Citizen's Assembly and opposition Parliamentarians, but also, there will be "Questions to the House" where all politicians could be subject to a series of questions from the Citizen's Assembly.

[3] The Metropolitan Parliament as well as the combined Citizen's Assembly will be made up of 164 individuals, which, follows the established "cube root law".

[4] Seeing as the voting system for electing members to the Metropolitan Parliament will be Peformance-based MMP, "overhang seats" will be taken care of by allocating the best performing candidates within districts who didn't win a seat outright to fill these vacancies, and, "underhang seats"  will be handled by  convening a "special caucus" of voters from the districts which their chosen party performed well in, but, did not produce any representation, and the party in question will be responsible for producing candidates that comes from those districts.

[5] At the conclusion of each election, the party with the largest share of the vote will have the first opportunity to form government first, if they fail, then, the opportunity shall officially move to the second largest party, and so on. If no party can form government, the Citizen's Assembly could either vote to hold another election, or, draft a budget that the house must abide by, they can either adopt a budget on a year-to-year basis, or, for the entirety of the 8 year term of Parliament. (All votes for a new election and votes for a budget will be passed by a simple majority vote within the Citizen's Assembly).(A party has no more than 7 days to form a government before another party is given the chance to form government, this is to prevent lengthy periods of time where the Metropolitan Parliament has no acting administration, unlike Dutch governments).

[6] The only way for an individual or political party to win a seat within the Metropolitan Parliament is by either getting the most votes within a single district, or, by being a part of a party that reaches 4% of the popular vote across the consolidated city. (The electoral threshold is put into place so that there are a wide array of parties for the voter to choose from, but, it does not lead to excessive political fragmentation as is the case with the Israeli Knesset).

[7] The Citizen's Assembly has the authority to support or oppose any instance of the following scenarios: A change within a party's parliamentary leadership (i.e. authorizing leadership challenges after a vote of no confidence within a party/bloc coming from the Parliamentary members of said party, but not in the case of a leadership challenge being initiated by a party's rank and file membership), a candidate switching political parties (or, they could vote for a special election to take place), fast-tracking legislation, and approving a government coalition. All of which will be considered approved or denied with a simple majority vote. The Citizen's Assembly may call for new elections if a simple majority of Borough Assemblies call for one, or, it is voted on by a simple majority of the Citizen's Assembly during a joint session of the Metropolitan Parliament.

[8] The selection of who gets to stand in the Citizen's Assembly will be handled by an algorithm that will be legally required to produce a demographically representative body, controlling for employment, race, income, marital status, education attainment, etc. This will be so that Borough Parliaments within a place like rural Macomb County will look different than the Borough Parliament for Detroit, yet, the joint session of the Metropolitan Parliament must represent Metro Detroit as a whole. Political party support will also be a factor and will be gauged beforehand via a survey (this is so that the composition of the Citizen's Assembly can shift overtime if a government becomes unpopular).

[9] To candidates for the Metropolitan Parliament and Borough/Metro Mayor, they must either attend or send a representative for every single scheduled debate or candidate forum. Candidates who fail to do so will be removed from the ballot and become ineligible to be considered as a write-in candidate.

[10] For communities that are too small to be represented by a proper Borough, they shall be governed by Citizen's Assemblies (proportional to their population) covering land no less than 140 square miles/362 square kilometers. The individuals on these Citizen's Assemblies shall participate within the Metropolitan Parliament.

Issue #4: How Do You Form a Municipal Government Between Two Nations?

This is the part of this report where our recommendations become highly controversial, while the citizens of Metro Detroit on the American side of the river have a pretty obvious and relatively straightforward plan of action (the vote to consolidate the counties, then pressuring the government of Michigan to allow consolidated counties to form Metropolitan Parliaments), for our neighbors over on the Canadian side, however, have a problem: if we see evidence that Cities here in America have few Rights, Canadian Cities literally have none.

The Canadian Constitution doesn't even recognize what we in America would identify as the principal of "home rule", so, Canada's largest cities such as Toronto or Montreal could essentially be dissolved by their provincial governments. There is, however, a seemingly simple way out of this conundrum that would highlight the Rights of the Citizens of Metro Detroit who live in Windsor/Essex County and the surrounding communities that're also a part of the wider Metro Detroit area within Canada (and, this is where we get controversial), start a constitutional crisis.

What this publication is calling for isn't secession of Canadian communities to American control, instead, we're advocating that these communities trigger a constitutional crisis by leaning on a movement that has slowly been gaining popularity within Canada (in Ontario particularly because of what happened to Toronto when it was forcefully amalgamated into it's current form in 1998), which is by unilaterally becoming "Charter Cities" and daring the supreme court of Canada to undo it. There's a couple of ways that supporters of a Metropolitan Parliament within Canada might be able to successfully argue for the unilateral adoption of a Charter City without getting utterly embarrassed by the court:

The issue that may save this idea from almost certain failure? greater individual representation by the Metropolitan Parliament than by all of the Canadian institutions, the math is clear as day. The least populated federal provincial riding (Canadian term for district) in Canada (Labrador) just fewer than 20K people. It's no better for Ontario provincial ridings as the least populated one of those has more than 17K people within it. Yet, if you were to see how many people would represent Windsor under the "cube root law" that we mentioned earlier, the city would have 62 representatives (representing 3.8K people each) rather than the pathetic 10 they currently have on Windsor city council.

"Okay.", some might say, "That may, or may not work, but, practically, how do you combine the laws from two completely different nations?" The answer to that is, you learn best practices from both nations, you synthesize the best laws from each country and allow the Metropolitan Government to determine what laws it'll follow. This is basically a reversal of the failed "one nation, two systems" policy that is steadily being eroded by China in it's dealings with the former British colony of Hong Kong.  A "two nations, one system" approach would do well by analyzing the failures of the Hong Kong model, like never adding a "sunset clause" to the structure of a parallel political/legal system and actually having legal recourse for a Canadian prime minister or an American president/Canadian premier or American governor for interfering directly or indirectly with any of Metro Detroit's joint governmental actions or day-to-day operations. That deserves further analysis, but, we will offer all of our readers/listeners to do extensive research on the subject and come up with your own conclusions.

Issue #5: How Will a Unified Metro Detroit Challenge "Global Cities" Such as Chicago or Toronto?

If what we're proposing in this report actually happens in reality (and we're desperately hoping that it comes to fruition), there will be many ways in which Metro Detroit dominates it's closest rival cities: Population wise, a consolidated metro Detroit would be home to 4.3 Million people, far surpassing both Chicago and Toronto. The biggest thing that will set the new city apart, however, will be it's geographic size. Within the boundaries that we've outlined within this report, the consolidated city of Metro Detroit could fit the city of Toronto inside of it just over 11 times.

We live in a World where geography is an essential aspect of what makes locales successful, or, prone to failure. Metro Detroit's Destiny is to return to the World stage as an important and unavoidable place to learn lessons from, we already occupied that position when everything was going to hell as we became lumped together with all the other failing cities as a part of the "Rust Belt", our coming resurgence is just another aspect of our story that the World could learn from.

Key Principals of a Democratically Planned City:

Now, since we have the gameplan thoroughly explained and all thought out, the only thing left to do is to guide our readers/listeners to some principals that will be at the forefront of of this drastically egalitarian collective invention that we call the Metropolitan Parliament: 

Principal #1: Urban Cartographic Planning

Within the Urban Planning field, there has long been a "blindspot" (or intentional disconnectedness) that has been plaguing it for centuries. We'd call this intentional disconnect "modelism", what we mean by this is the fact that Cities are often meticulously planned from "on high" instead of at the ground level, just like something you'd see in a hobbyist's train set. There's always been examples from history of Modelism in action, whether it be Haussmann's destruction of Paris, the creation of Washington DC, or Augustus Woodward's plan to replicate those Cities' designs to guide Detroit's expansion.

While these practices may create aesthetically pleasing cities when they're looked upon from afar, but, on the ground level, they suffer from too much conformity, sameness, and ultimately feel artificial. This isn't to say that Cities shouldn't engage in master planning, but, what we're suggesting for municipalities to do instead, is to incorporate Cartography into our Urban Planning practices. Some might suggest that cartography is no longer needed with the advent of technologies such as GIS (geographic information systems), however, we'd suggest that GIS's often replicate the wrongs of Modelism. 

Take Google Earth for example, yes, it allows anyone with internet access to not only look at the World's Cities from unique vantage points but it allows you to get on the street level as well and crudely imagine what it'd be like to walk or ride through thousands on Cities and suburbs. Yet, the YIMBY lens of ideology looks at quiet neighborhoods in places like Vancouver, Los Angeles, etc. and come to the conclusion that "more high-rises are needed" without taking to account for what type of infrastructure is needed such as sewers, rapid transit, or energy production. Yet, these same individuals get cross with Radicals when we suggest that they'd rather support "skyscraper sprawl" instead of actually coming up with ways to make cities denser while making sure that suburban sprawl doesn't get out of control. Cities across the World have shown that it's entirely possible to create charming, pleasant and interesting Cities without throwing up skyscrapers haphazardly, to develop areas of Metro Detroit such as Essex County necessitates a cartographic plan to create a city that isn't laid out on the same stale grids that we see in other North American Cities.

Principal #2: Empowering the "Anonymous Citizen"

The way that our Cities are shaped, and, who they want to attract, has, sadly, become yet another front in the all-consuming Culture War. While we think that people within a region like Metro Detroit would be better off if we all lived in neighborhoods that were walkable and had ample transit access, simply ignoring the detractors for ideas such as the "15 minute city" unnecessarily cedes ground to bad actors who see all forms of Urbanism as a Trojan horse for totalitarian control. So, we have to engage these arguments directly and comprehensively.

So, what are detractors pointing to in their advocacy against walkable cities? The biggest thing that is undeniably a valid point are schemes like the "congestion pricing" experimentation that's been recently implemented in New York City. It was originally marketed as a way to reduce traffic (which it has), raise much needed funds for public transit, and improve the air quality within the cities that've adopted the program. The scheme has raised ~$550 Million dollars within it's first year.

Yet, a closer analysis of the effects of congestion pricing denotes the public's legitimate grievances with Market Urbanist oriented "solutions" that're marketed to them as doing one thing while quietly doing another. How far will $550 Million dollars go in a City where it nearly cost $4 Billion to construct just under two miles of subway for not much of a ridership increase to look forward to? There's also the issue that it exacerbates income inequality, because the rich, who can actually afford to live in Lower Manhattan, can easily skip the charge, but, your average Long Islander who doesn't live near a train station, has to pay just to get to, and from, work every day or be forced to use transit infrastructure that is desperately need of the types of investment that it's impossible to raise from the congestion charge alone.

There also exists the very real issue of privacy concerns, seeing as New York City's transit service, the MTA decided to get rid of the iconic Metrocard system in favor of a bank-based contactless fare payment system much to the frustration of the city's public transit users. Some may consider the prospect of this threat asinine or trivial, but, since we're living in a nation where Silicon Valley corporations are being contracted with the government to weaponize mass data collection (who suggest that their platforms were tailor-made to "kill Communists", and if you sincerely think that they wouldn't consider you to be a "Communist" for opposing ethnic cleansing by forcefully deporting migrants and de-naturalizing Citizens, I guess we'll see you at the for-profit prison) to know when and where to arrest you for utilizing the 1st Amendment is a very real and present danger that Radicals must relentlessly struggle against under this administration, and individual privacy rights should be at the forefront of our minds.

This means that, there needs to be ways that we intentionally build our Cities which ensures the maximum amount of privacy while also living in a digitally connected environment. Metro Detroit's bus system may be an example of inefficient and lack-luster transit, but, giving riders the option to change their physical dollars and coins into bus fare cards that can be used on any line within any transit jurisdiction is a quiet marvel that awakens a sense of potential for more advanced forms of transit coming to this region. I'm sure that if we build our urban environments in a way that the critics are more comfortable with the benefits of mass transit, they'd undoubtedly see anonymous fare cards as a simple way to retain their civil liberties, and they'd be right.

Principal #3: Maintaining Unconquerable Cities

This section is not to be taken lightly, the thoughts that inform this portion of the report were put into text in the wake of the American government's illegal kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, the brazen assassination of a woman at the hands of a federal agent in Minneapolis and the political fallout that our profoundly wicked government's actions have created domestically, as well as on the World stage. 

These recent happenings have illuminated what Radical thinkers have philosophized about for decades now: the theory of the "Imperial Boomerang", which is the idea that tactics and technologies used to "pacify" and coerce the people and their governments around the financially colonized World will eventually be used to repress the Citizens of the World's economic Empires. The thing that must be emphasized by this publication as well as other Radicals who understand the concept is that this isn't just something that happens when "ultra-Conservatives" like Reagan, Bush, or Trump are in power. The Imperial Boomerang comes back home to oppress Civilians under "lovable" and "relatable" politicians such as Barack Obama's infringements upon Posse Comitatus, the legal restriction of federal troops from doing local policing. Citizens in the imperial heart of the World must understand that they are never too far removed from falling victim to the hands of the ever-growing authoritarian observation state, the suspicious deaths of Black Lives Matter and Ferguson activists are only one example of this silent systemic violence we're referring to.

If you were to look back at the earlier reports published by Black Label Detroit, you'd see that in almost all of those earlier works that we theorized about the worst case scenario of the current events which were occurring at that time before we suggested a possible workable alternative, so, in the spirit of those older reports, we'll suggest something highly controversial by looking at the evidence presented to us by current events before elaborating upon just what an "unconquerable city" really means in practice:

If no action is taken by us as Citizens or anyone within elected government to codify Posse Comitatus legislation on the state and local level, force congress to repeal the 1807 insurrection act (which is the legislation that enables martial law and allows the president to take control of the states' National Guard, a policy which Fox News and the Republican party are urging Trump to use in the wake of Minnesota governor Tim Walz deploying his National Guard to frustrate ICE operations within the state), and strip the role of the president as the "commander and chief" of the military, we'll see the increasingly authoritarian federal government go far past blatantly illegal mass surveillance schemes with technologies such as Webloc or simple "digital ID" legislation and proceed to preside over a general crackdown on use of the 1st amendment by those the government suggests are "fomenting rebellion" or some other made up bullshit until they ultimately preemptively invoke the "Disqualification Clause" of the 14th Amendment to depose the growing number of elected officials who stand in the way of outright federal control of state and local policing. 

Then, we fear, if nothing else is done, a declaration of martial law will ignite a very long, extremely protracted, and increasingly bloody insurgency that will steadily intensify and result in further restrictions on civil liberties until either the insurgents are eliminated, or, the government collapses via coup or, outside pressure.

This prediction may seem incredibly grim, but, in the spirit of our earlier works, we have reason for hope. If further crisis is averted by the changes we outlined above, the next crop of congressmen and the next president have a mandate to actually codify legal protections for Cities and their people. Simple executive orders doing the same thing will be overturned and relegated to legal purgatory if they are undertaken by a president who looks for quick victories and positive headlines, these policies must come from congress if they are to have any lasting effect.

"So, you're the only supposed "Radical" not advocating for armed militias to confront ICE operations? Why would any Radical take your Liberal hope porn seriously?" This critique from my more militant comrades will undoubtedly crop up at the idea that our true saviors, politicians, will implement the correct legislation that'll make Fascism disappear into thin air. We have to say that this obviously isn't the case.

We at Black Label Detroit, come at this crisis with a Historical Materialist perspective, meaning, we don't accept the common ways history is often illustrated with supposedly "great men" and their superior thoughts that they came up with all by themselves. Instead, we believe that concrete Socioecopolitical conditions shape and create the World that we live in and developments are constantly happening, so, rather than suggesting that the concept of history is somehow "over" (as we covered in our very first report), we see history unfolding in front of our screens and in our neighborhoods every single day. 

So, what is a Historical Materialist perspective on the prospect of an armed civilian uprising happening in America? Simply put: the American people are nowhere near physically, mentally, materially, or economically prepared for sustained guerrilla warfare on a large scale against the American military. And the vast majority of gun owners are Conservatives, a group of people who are overwhelmingly supportive of the policies of the current administration. If an armed conflict were to break out, do our "Radical critics" think that these people would just stay home and let independents and Liberals topple the government? Or that the Trump administration wouldn't deputize the few remaining right-wing militias that are still outside of federal "law enforcement"? We at Black Label Detroit hope that those of you who disagree with us aren't so naive.

However, let's say that the ever-growing protests against ICE's extrajudicial assassination of a Minnesota woman keeps on growing to the point where martial law is declared and a sustained guerrilla conflict ensues, where are the Rebels going stage their operations? We ask this in good faith because there are hundreds of Cities that are built like Metro Detroit and very few that are built like a Guerrilla Fighter's dream turf of New York, or, Chicago for example. We suggest that those Cities would be extremely hard for the federal government to properly occupy and hold for an extended period of time because of their built environments and transportation links. In the suburbs, it's extremely easy to simply supply enough men to execute operations where every single home is under observation for hostile activity while the government's forces do their business. In cities, however, the intricacies of Urban Warfare, occupations that would've otherwise been solidified in a matter of hours could struggle to maintain an urban area for years on end. There's endless sniper positions within towers, numerous ambush spots for armored vehicles around every corner or with every movement because of alleys, subways, sewers, and side streets, and, the more you destroy homes, businesses, and take lives, the more you urge the average Citizen to convert their indifference into fanatical support for the Guerrillas.

This is to say that there are very few Cities within America which are physically unconquerable, especially not here in North America. The project of any Radical movement within Metro Detroit would not to just attain power through elections which would build enough housing and jobs to allow for rapid population growth, it would also be to secure the physical and political means to create an unconquerable urban environment. We are not of the mistaken idea that we need to allow establishment politicians to pave the way for this to happen and occasionally throwing us a bone by using vulgarities to decry the modern-day Gestapo. Instead, we encourage all Radicals to stage occupations, disrupt townhalls, and confront elected individuals who remain silent to outlaw and prosecute the Fascists so that those who wish of some fictitious "ethnically pure" nation know very well the cost of their crimes against decency and willfully desert/answer for their actions. 

Taking the American Democratic Experiment into the Distant Future:

Now, we have elaborated upon everything of importance when it comes to our call to establish a Metropolitan Parliament, with the major points of friction taken care of, we at Black Label Detroit would like to encourage all of our readers/listeners to, as soon as possible, find any way within your personal means to advance the Radical Urbanist cause. Talk to your family and friends about the prospect of a merger,  find ways to organize within your workplace and raise Hell against the establishment "unions" who refuse to radically rethink cooperative ownership of the workplace, or, pick up a side hustle that could be used to advance the cause of Radical Urbanism and the Metropolitan Parliament among the general public.

This publication is encouraging the crucial work of creating a bottom-up strategy for these goals, because, as we will reiterate for a final time: THE REGIONAL POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT WILL STAY IN POWER IF THEY"RE ABLE TO CREATE A PLAN BEFORE RADICALS DO. If this report didn't sufficiently show this already, then, again, it must be emphasized that a Radical-led Metropolitan and Regional Parliaments are the only tools that can create space for true Liberty for all in the 21st Century. 

The arbitrary logic of the Capitacracy and it's emphasis on borders for people instead of Capital have restricting us for too long and imposes ever-growing infringements on essential Civil Rights, such as the Right of privacy. The answer to the issues of Urbanism around the World that we face in our era isn't to erect a new layer of government just so the Capitacracy can be kept in charge, the true solution is the achieve a type of Democracy that will be the inheritance of the many generations who'll surely grow uninterested, yawn, and roll their eyes in their history classes way in the distant future when their teacher recounts, yet again, the lessons of the Mass Movements in the "primitive" 21st Century that shaped their World, to be stable, egalitarian, and sustainably dynamic in ways that we only theorized of during our time of struggle.

We either achieve that goal, or be cursed by those same generations who'll be forced to struggle, cope, and disassociate from the daily tribulations they have to overcome just to live on an exhausted, dying planet with no environment to pass down to their youth due to a political order that had successfully killed any and all prospects of achieving a True Democracy.

Links & Sources:

1. Wrench -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrench#History

2. The History of Cities -https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/history-cities/

3. Urbanization Without Cities: The Rise and Decline of Citizenship -https://files.libcom.org/files/Urbanization_Without_Cities_-_Ebook.pdf

4. Cities Made Differently -https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cities-made-differently

5. 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, says UN -https://www.un.org/uk/desa/68-world-population-projected-live-urban-areas-2050-says-un

6. Are Cities Constituent Units in Brazil’s Federalism? -https://50shadesoffederalism.com/case-studies/cities-constituent-units-brazils-federalism/

7. South African Constitution Chapter 7 -https://www.justice.gov.za/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-07.pdf

8. Decoding Indian Cities Classifications In Tier I, II, III, IV -https://invest.up.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/decoding_270623.pdf

9. INNOVATION AND HOPE: THE RIGHT TO THE CITY IN MEXICO CITY’S NEW GOVERNMENT (2018–2024) -https://www.cidob.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/65-74_JAIME%20MORALES_ANG_0.pdf

10. DOES CONSOLIDATING LOCAL GOVERNMENTS WORK? -https://gfoa-craftcms.files.svdcdn.com/production/general/LocalGovernmentFragmentation-DoesConsolidationWork_Nov2020.pdf?dm=1759231577 (pro municipal fragmentation, but, still informative)

11. Metro Detroit is growing – but its suburbs are telling a more complicated story -https://theconversation.com/metro-detroit-is-growing-but-its-suburbs-are-telling-a-more-complicated-story-257875

12. McMansions 101 Special Edition: Mansion vs McMansion (Part 1) -https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149284377161/mansionvsmcmansion

13. Who invented the automobile? -https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/motor-vehicles-aeronautics-astronautics/item/who-invented-the-automobile/

14. /r/fuckcars -https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/

15. Corbynism Lost, Sandersism is Losing: Why Working Within Capitalist Parties Fails -https://www.leftvoice.org/corbynism-lost-sandersism-is-losing-why-working-within-capitalist-parties-fails/

16. Zohran Mamdani Is Surrounding Himself With YIMBYs -https://inpractice.yimbyaction.org/p/zohran-mamdani-is-surrounding-himself?r=9jmln&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

17. YIMBYism Just Might Be a Political Juggernaut -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSwkXbjaE0&pp=ygUIeWltYnlpc20%3D

18. Exclusive: Tech Execs and Venture Capitalists Spend Big to Help California YIMBY Kill Tenant Protections -https://www.housingisahumanright.org/exclusive-tech-execs-and-venture-capitalists-spend-big-to-help-california-yimby-kill-tenant-protections/

19. Rent Control - Good or Bad? -https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/1oda8rv/rent_control_good_or_bad/

20. Vienna-Style Social Housing Will Happen In The US. Here's Why. -https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/1log83n/viennastyle_social_housing_will_happen_in_the_us/

21. Could this city be the model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change? -https://www.npr.org/2025/06/15/nx-s1-5400642/affordable-housing-environment-vienna-climate-change

22. Category:Political pejoratives for people -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_pejoratives_for_people

23. The Problem With Left-Wing NIMBYism -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvTa-GXKxak&t=602s&pp=ygUNbGVmdCBuaW1ieWlzbQ%3D%3D

24. NIMBYism Through a Racial Lens -https://flhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NIMBYism-Through-a-Racial-Lens.pdf

25. Young Americans Like Socialism Too Much—That’s a Problem Libertarians Must Fix -https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much-thats-problem-libertarians-must-fix

26. Left Urbanist Reading List -https://www.reddit.com/r/left_urbanism/comments/bzgg11/left_urbanist_reading_list/

27. Principal-Agent Problem Causes, Solutions, and Examples Explained -https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal-agent-problem.asp

28. Privatization as an agency problem: Auctions versus ... -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037842660700057X

29. What Prevents Local Governments From Managing Their Finances More Effectively? -https://www.promarket.org/2024/06/03/what-prevents-local-governments-from-managing-their-finances-more-effectively/

30. A PURE THEORY OF LOCAL EXPENDITURES -https://fbaum.unc.edu/teaching/PLSC541_Fall08/tiebout_1956.pdf

31. Trump’s DOGE campaign accelerates 50-year trend of government privatization -https://theconversation.com/trumps-doge-campaign-accelerates-50-year-trend-of-government-privatization-249439

32. Bad Faith -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith

33. 'Liberal', 'left,' 'conservative,' and 'right': Americans identify their ideology -https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51283-liberal-left-conservative-and-right-americans-identify-their-ideology

34. The omnicrisis -https://theecologist.org/2023/jan/11/omnicrisis

35. The housing theory of everything -https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/

36. The Return of History? -https://blacklabeldetroit.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-return-of-history.html

37. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? PDF -https://files.libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf

38. Revolutions Podcast -https://player.fm/series/revolutions-22751

39. A Megacity Mindset: The case for a Metropolitan Parliament in Metro Detroit -https://blacklabeldetroit.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-megacity-mindset-case-for.html

40. Recuperation (politics) -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

41. The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism -https://archive.ph/vD3u1

42. Opinion: The case for social housing in Detroit -https://www.metrotimes.com/news/opinion-the-case-for-social-housing-in-detroit-38958063/

43. Tokyo rents soar past 30% of household income, squeezing families -https://archive.ph/Bwrjt

44. Japan’s Grim Demographic Reality -https://thediplomat.com/2025/12/japans-grim-demographic-reality/

45. Bank of Japan’s Monetary Policy in the 1980s: A View Perceived from Archived and Other Materials -https://www.imes.boj.or.jp/research/papers/english/me33-5.pdf

46. The asset price bubble in Japan in the 1980s: lessons for financial and macroeconomic stability -https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap21e.pdf

47. Japan had a vibrant economy. Then it fell into a slump for 30 years. -https://www.npr.org/2024/04/03/1197958583/japan-lost-decade

48. https://housingjapan.com/blog/does-japanese-real-estate-depreciate-in-value/

49. Don’t let the Nobel prize fool you. Economics is not a science -https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/11/nobel-prize-economics-not-science-hubris-disaster

50. Building more housing is a top priority in these 10 YIMBY cities, Pacaso says -https://finance.yahoo.com/news/building-more-housing-top-priority-090700951.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAELa3ejMw5AnEDK6Fi69tNvdZlhPmxkTO0QkOx0vFtg9Jo0gy2hWcboH35zhXlzFIp1mLSHdIn-0LnE8QvQPDwHIxlhoggx7YUHIkVKsnGKG9_YQEOOBcMpvgTYkD7saLEfXN6_kTol0evwnSkwP4xDmTnETO0QG-Ua745BIV-qy

51. Leveling the Field: Recommended Changes to Public Participation Processes -https://cayimby.org/news-events/leveling-the-field-recommended-changes-to-public-participation-processes/

52. Detroit: A Tale of Two… Farms? -https://civileats.com/2012/07/16/detroit-a-tale-of-two-farms/

53. Detroit is Not That Big -https://www.jeanettepierce.com/blog/detroit-is-not-that-big

54. Detroit demolished 27,000 abandoned homes under Duggan as Land Bank inventory dwindles -https://www.metrotimes.com/news/metro-detroit-news/detroit-demolished-27000-abandoned-homes-under-duggan-as-land-bank-inventory-dwindles/#:~:text=Detroit%20has%20demolished%20roughly%2027000%20abandoned%20houses,officials%20said%20this%20week.Nearly%2012%20years%20ago%2C

55. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan seeking residential blight removal with $420M price tag -https://www.freep.com/story/news/investigations/2019/09/16/duggan-seeking-250-m-bond-eliminate-residential-blight/2341118001/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=false&gca-epti=z111001u112201d00----v111001&gca-ft=255&gca-ds=sophi

56. UM study: Detroit homeowners’ $700M wealth gains in ‘23 bring total to $4.6B in past decade -https://detroitmi.gov/news/um-study-detroit-homeowners-700m-wealth-gains-23-bring-total-46b-past-decade

57. Why Detroit’s majority-homeowner status isn’t as hopeful as it seems -https://outliermedia.org/detroit-census-majority-owner-occupied-city/

58. The lost homes of Detroit -https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-lost-homes-of-detroit/

59. Criminal probe targets toxic dirt; Detroit could face $8M cleanup -https://www.bridgedetroit.com/gayanga-probe-demolition-dirt-duggan-detroit/

60. Luxury Apartments Are Bringing Rent Down in Some Big Cities -https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-23/luxury-apartments-are-bringing-rent-down-in-austin-denver?embedded-checkout=true

61. Austin apartment permits have plummeted since the pandemic -https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2025/06/04/apartment-building-permits-plummet-austin

62. New Zealand Building Permits Sink 5.3% In August -https://www.rttnews.com/3478454/new-zealand-building-permits-sink-5-3-in-august.aspx

63. Equilibrium Price: Definition, Types, Example, and How to Calculate -https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/equilibrium.asp

64. Market Clearing -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_clearing

65. What is a vacancy rate and how is it calculated? -https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/vacancy-rate

66. Planning for Housing in a Regional Context -https://www.urban.org/research/publication/planning-housing-regional-context

67. How ‘Filtering’ Opens Up Affordable Housing -https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/03/127936-how-filtering-opens-affordable-housing

68. Welcome to Super City, USA -https://www.businessinsider.com/lower-home-prices-build-houses-america-regional-government-super-cities-2025-8?utm_source=reddit.com

69. Why is Better Together pulling its proposal for a St. Louis City-County merger?  -https://www.stlmag.com/news/why-is-better-together-pulling-its-petition-for-a-proposed-c/

70. St. Louis’ Great Divorce: A complete history of the city and county separation and attempts to get back together -https://www.stlmag.com/news/politics/st-louis-great-divorce-history-city-county-split-attempt-to-get-back-together/

71. Cube Root Law -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_root_law

72. Dillon's rule -https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/dillon%27s_rule

73. JUDGE COOLEY'S DOCTRINE EXPLAINED - Localism Shorts -https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HoRrs18YWdA

74. STATE CONSTITUTION (EXCERPT)
CONSTITUTION OF MICHIGAN OF 1963 § 27 Metropolitan governments and authorities. -https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-Article-VII-27

75. Michigan Constitution § 13 Consolidation of counties, approval by electors. -https://law.justia.com/constitution/michigan/article-vii/section-13/

76. Election denialism emerges on the left after Trump’s win -https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/election-denialism-emerges-left-trumps-win-rcna179797

77. Take the Final Nail Out of the Coffin: Election Denial Isn’t Dead -https://blog.ucs.org/liza-gordon-rogers/take-the-final-nail-out-of-the-coffin-election-denial-isnt-dead/

78. Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion polls -https://www.markpack.org.uk/155623/voting-intention-opinion-poll-scorecard/

79. 2024: The year incumbent governments lost power -https://www.visionofhumanity.org/2024-the-year-incumbent-governments-lost-power/

80. Shadow cabinet -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_cabinet

81. Sortition -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

82. Snap Election -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_election

83. What is the Spoiler Effect -https://electionscience.org/education/spoiler-effect

84. Prime Minister's Questions and the role of the Speaker -https://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/the-speaker/speaker-and-the-chamber/prime-ministers-questions-and-the-role-of-the-speaker/

85. Overhang Seat -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhang_seat

86. Underhang Seat -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underhang_seat

87. The Longest Formation in Dutch history. Why did it take so long? What did it result in? And will that last? -https://whogoverns.eu/the-longest-formation-in-dutch-history-why-did-it-take-so-long-what-did-it-result-in-and-will-that-last/

88. Knesset -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knesset

89. Dissolution: the Canadian experience -https://blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org/allin/2016/01/30/dissolution-the-canadian-experience/

90. MUNICIPALITIES, THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE CANADIAN FEDERAL SYSTEM-https://publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp276-e.htm#D.%20Charter%20Cities(txt)

91. Labrador -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labrador_(electoral_district)

92. Mushkegowuk—James Bay -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushkegowuk%E2%80%94James_Bay 

93. Hong Kong: The Rise and Fall of “One Country, Two Systems”-https://ash.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/overholt_hong_kong_paper_final.pdf

94. When They Say ‘Haussmann’s Paris’, What Do They Mean? -https://www.messynessychic.com/2022/09/20/when-they-say-haussmanns-paris-what-do-they-mean/

95. The Story Behind the Design of Washington, D.C. -https://designindc.com/blog/the-story-behind-the-design-of-washington-d-c/

96. The Woodward Plan Part I: Origins -https://detroiturbanism.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-woodward-plan-part-i-origins.html

97. What is Cartography? A Beginners Guide to Making Maps -https://muir-way.com/blogs/articles/what-is-cartography?srsltid=AfmBOoqz0pT7QvKfI1wQEV--h-DaYdG2Aac6LfF4ypl6VpGIah9N9Jk_

98. What is a geographic information system (GIS)? -https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-a-geographic-information-system-gis

99. The false promise of verticalization: How skyscrapers fail to stop urban sprawl -https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/false-promise-verticalization-how-skyscrapers-fail-stop-diego-j-o-nzlhc#:~:text=The%20Reality%20of%20Vertical%20Sprawl,the%20city's%20fringes%2C%20increasing%20sprawl

100. I Investigated Why People Are Afraid Of 15 Minute Cities -https://youtu.be/CedGY0NgId4?t=548

101. Doubling down on congestion pricing to free New York from gridlock -https://www.sidewalkchorus.com/p/doubling-down-on-congestion-pricing

102. NYC congestion pricing by the numbers: 27 million fewer cars, $550 million in new revenue -https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/01/05/nyc-congestion-pricing-by-the-numbers-27-million-fewer-cars-550-million-in-new-revenue/

103. Why it costs $4 billion per mile of subway track -https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/why-it-costs-4-billion-per-mile-of-subway-track

104. As MetroCard Phases Out, Riders Gripe About Its Replacement -https://archive.ph/JoQ1d

105. ICE to Use ImmigrationOS by Palantir, a New AI System, to Track Immigrants’ Movements -https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-immigrationos-palantir-ai-track-immigrants/

106. Palantir was created to kill communists, its co-founder says -https://x.com/jrivanob/status/2008407583892312463

107. Protest organizer arrested mid-interview in Grand Rapids at rally calling for Maduro’s release -https://michiganadvance.com/briefs/protest-organizer-arrested-mid-interview-in-grand-rapids-at-rally-calling-for-maduros-release/

108. Maduro says he’s a ‘prisoner of war’: Why that matters -https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/6/maduro-says-hes-a-prisoner-of-war-why-that-matters

109. Woman fatally shot by ICE officer in Minneapolis identified; Gov. Walz demands investigation -https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/minneapolis-federal-agents-protesters-clash-portland-avenue/

110. Césaire and Fanon on Fascism: The “Boomerang Effect” Beyond the Metropole -https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8675.12809

111. Obama administration backs bill authorizing indefinite military detention of US citizens -https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/12/mili-d15.html

112. The Lives of Ferguson & Black Lives Matter Activists Cut Short -https://blurredbylines.com/blog/ferguson-protests-black-lives-matters-activists-deaths-darren-seals-amber-evans-edward-crawford/

113. GOP lawmakers call on Trump to arrest Walz after governor warns of National Guard move -https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-lawmakers-call-trump-arrest-walz-after-governor-warns-national-guard-move

114. Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods -https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

115. Digital Driver’s Licenses Threaten to Create a “Great Internet Lockdown” -https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-internet-lockdown

116. Grand Rapids mayor and police chief respond to on-camera arrest of protest organizer -https://www.wzzm13.com/article/news/local/grand-rapids-mayor-and-police-chief-respond-arrest-of-protest-organizer/69-49fac327-dfed-4420-9d69-e3ec9051b3a9

117. Disqualification from Public Office Under the 14th Amendment -https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment14/annotation15.html

118. Fundamentals of Marx: Historical Materialism -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvvqDk-hME

119. The Return of History? -https://blacklabeldetroit.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-return-of-history.html

120. Gun Ownership Rates Have Spiked Among Republican Women -https://news.gallup.com/poll/653621/gun-ownership-rates-spiked-among-republican-women.aspx

121. Trump's Approval Rating Drops to 36%, New Second-Term Low -https://news.gallup.com/poll/699221/trump-approval-rating-drops-new-second-term-low.aspx

122. Second night of US protests over ICE shooting of woman in Minneapolis -https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99knmrx71go

123. Urban Warfare -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_warfare

124. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/10/jacob-frey-minneapolis-mayor-f-bomb/88107108007/ -https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/10/jacob-frey-minneapolis-mayor-f-bomb/88107108007/