Editor’s note: The original version of this column incorrectly identified the mayor of Detroit as Kwame Kilpatrick. This was an editing error, not the fault of the columnist.

“RoboCop,” the 1980’s Sci-Fi film, took place in Detroit, depicted as an industrial powerhouse in decline under the control of a corporation, “Omni Consumer Products (OCP),” intent on reinventing Detroit as “New Detroit.” RoboCop, a cyborg creation with the mind of a human being, becomes the savior of the people and destroys the fascist-corporation endangering them.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

The caricature of the Motor City in the film has become reality. Detroit is like many other cities, dying on the vine as the industry that once made them great undergoes massive changes to a smaller industry with far fewer workers. Taxes from the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler, GM) and the thousands of workers overflowing the coffers are now only an agonizing memory.

Emergency Financial Director Robert Bobb is running the public school system. He has complete power and the elected school board is powerless. Bobb recently announced that 44 schools will be closed and torn down, with the students moved to either new or renovated facilities. Alongside the public schools is a rapidly expanding private school system, funded by a group of philanthropic foundations filling the vacuum.

The folks with the money, the foundations, are the designers of the curriculum in the new charter schools. While they teaching “work ethic” and “excellence in academics,” what else is in the curriculum? Will there be room for things like African American history and culture, the labor history of the region and the other stories of the people?

Or will these charter schools be the 21st century version of the Indian Schools of the late 19th and 20th century? These were schools in which Native American children were dipped in the vat of whiteness to eliminate all vestiges of their heritage. The other part of this is the corporatization of a government function, K-12 education and the loss of input into the process by the citizens.

Mayor Dave Bing just announced the demolition of over 10,000 structures in Detroit. There are pluses and minuses to this. It will eliminate many unsightly homes and other buildings and replace them with green space; on the other hand, there are those who say it will destroy many homes savable for habitation in a town that needs good housing stock.

Another fear is that this vast green space will be turned over to corporations for industrial farming. Detroiters have already established cooperative community vegetable truck gardens on large stretches of open land created by earlier demolition in the city, which has empowered local residents to raise their own food in a city with no commercial food outlets, officially called a “food desert.”

Detroiters are also fighting the privatization of their water and sewer systems that are being offered up for sale to bring in additional revenues.

All these things are beneficial only for those at the top of the food chain. The rich will profit; the poor will struggle to buy water, food, shelter, education and the other necessities of life as prices skyrocket.

Why is this noteworthy? What is happening today in Detroit could become the future model for every other city in the United States facing financial crisis because of the deindustrialization of America. The foundations with corporate money will reinvent the American city and its schools in the image of a top-down fascist-style government with help of our state governments, where the people have no say — only a responsibility to serve.

We can only hope there will be a RoboCop to save the day for the people.

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