Chains of steel and rubber and plastic a...

Chains of steel and rubber and plastic and glass bind hundreds of thousands of black families to the city of Detroit. Detroit makes cars. meaning. in large part. that the black people of Detroit make cars„ Detroit also makes revolutionaries. meaning that more and more black people in Detroit know they've had enough.

The city fathers of Detroit--meaning the men at the top of the auto industry--have big plans for the city. It's no secret they'd like to see the next Olympic games held on their own turf, and their long-range blueprint for the future sketches a Detroit supreme among all commercial centers of the world. at the heart of Amerika's industrial mid-west. Their projections are awesome and brilliant on paper.

But paper isn't really where it's at. They kill people every day in their factories. drive others mad with endless repetition. and nobody cares what they've got written out on paper. There are too many black Vets who made it through two years in Vietnam only to lose their arms in a Chrysler factory back home.

Detroit's League of Revolutionary Black Workers is getting ready for battle. Its specialty is slow. careful, quiet work--building a RUM (Revolutionary Union Movement) in each of Detroit's plants. and fighting to return control of institutions in Detroit's black community to the people who live there. In a few years they '11 be ready to up the ante.

But Detroit is a desperate place. A couple of hundred thousand people are out of work. The BIG THREE--animated only by the understanding that the automobile is Amerika's biggest profit maker-mess up heads and bodies, families, neighborhoods. and communities to suit their needs. So quite often someone jumps the gun.

This story is about someone who jumped the gun.