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Welcome Home Students! Ann Arbor Is Your Community

Welcome Home Students! Ann Arbor Is Your Community image Welcome Home Students! Ann Arbor Is Your Community image
Parent Issue
Day
1
Month
September
Year
1972
OCR Text

WELCOME HOME STUDENTS!

ANN ARBOR IS YOUR COMMUNITY

Toward the end of the summer each year the city of Ann Arbor is seemingly invaded by hoards of students, and the personel necessary to take care of the likes of such, whose numbers raise the population of the community to half again as much.

We are annually intruded upon, and overrun by a bunch of young outsiders that have nothing to do with the actual function and operation of "our" community.

Or, so is the attitude of a large portion of the people that stick around Ann Arbor a little taste more than the nine months (¾ year) that the students do.

Let's stop a minute and check out this question: Is the University of Michigan an institution that influences our lives daily?

What part does the U. of M. control in our lives? Is the University part of our community?

Now, we can't dig right in to the heart of this matter in its entirety, but we can break down the answer a little bit.

We can start with the inital idea that economics is the basis of any community, it is the basis of our daily lives; politics are reflective and subordinate (because they are reflective) to economics; and culture is reflective of and subordinate to both politics and economics.

ECONOMICS

Economically, the University is the largest single monetary institution in Ann Arbor. It owns large portions of property, a great portion of the housing units, and apartments, research buildings, industry, buildings that house class rooms, auditoriums, labs, libraries, etc., etc. It employes a large number of people, receives large hunks of money for medical, defense, agricultural, cybernetic (computers), etc., research. In general it has an extremely large cash flow, and the University is the reason for the high cost of housing, food, clothing, etc. here in our community. This institution, or set of instutions is the chief cause of our local exploitation, has heavy influences on nation exploitation, and is one of the major institutions (in the realm of defense research at any rate) involved in exploitation on an international or imperialist level.

POLITICS

In money, lies power, and the University of Michigan is no exception. The best way to understand this is by a couple of examples, one that occured during voter registration last year and the other that happened over the summer while you all were gone.

The first instance the University attempted to discredit the voter registration drive and divert the energy from registering voters to fighting the University itself. The University used its enormous economic control to thwart the voter registration allies, to attempt to prohibit a traveling registration mobile and to discredit any attempt to raise money through community benefits as being smoke-ins of that evil weed, marijuana.

The second example of the University wielding political power was during the bombcrater digs this summer (more of which you can read about further on in the paper). In this case the University used its influence to force the city police--those attached to the University--to vamp down on the people digging the bombcraters (for the second time!), arresting 38, and roughing up many others. The U's policy was to teach the people not to mess with ol' daddy M, which worked sort of because the idea, which at first the people thought was dynamite, was thought to be invalid and the bombcrater 38 were alienated from the rest of the community. Since then the University has been dropping the charges one-by-one.

CULTURE

Cultural repression, as the progression just completed indicates, on the part of the University is reflective of both the University's political and economic stands. The example used of the attempted thwarting of the voter registration benefits can be used again to exemplify both that culture is reflective and subordinate both to the politics and the type of cultural control the University tries to exert, on the rainbow culture.

Another example is of the University trying to stop a blues concert put on jointly by the Black Student Union and the Rainbow People's Party by not renting any of the only existing auditoriums in Ann Arbor for the gathering.

There are many more examples in each division, alot dealing with different elements of the community other than the students, but I think that we can see that the University, because of its tremendous economic control, as a very integral part of our lives, has heavy concern over the political and cultural developments of our community. And the University, just as the factories, can't run without its voluntarily conscripted members, which is like 40,000 people!

I've been babling through this shit too long, but I think that now we can make the assertion that students are members of this community, and, if fact, comprise a large portion of the community population ¾ of the year.

"A community is a comprehensive collection of institutions that will deliver our whole lives, provided that we can reach most of our goals within It. It serves us and we create it in order to carry out our desires." - Huey P. Newton

Now, let's start from where we left off and work our way back--culture, politics, and economics--with this definition of community offered to us by brother Huey P.

Culturally, the students have progressed toward what we call self-determination. The only way we can create and "comprehensive collection of institutions" to deliver our whole lives--is by rejecting daddy M's attempt to continually put forth the image and philosophy of Euro-American honk culture. This is good because it means that no matter how hard the ruling class fights to retain cultural control, even political and economic, there's no way that they can, short of destroying the planet, because the people are rejecting their shit about how far out white Euro-American culture is. This in turn influences the students analysis of the conditions. on this planet.

But, the students, like the bulk of the non-student community look at themselves as not being a part of this community, when, objectively they are just like those of us who stay here almost twelve months of the year.

In taking this view, students have neglected the political and economic aspects of their life in their community almost in full. About a third of the students last year registered to vote, which is the easiest, least time consuming of any community activity they could be involved in a small number of students demonstrate against a few things that they don't believe in, but rarely for something that they do believe in.

But, what of the responsibility of learning to be self-determinate, of creating economic, political, and cultural institutions in our community, self-determination programs that will "deliver our whole lives"? In what way have the students taken up their responsibility; as members of this community, except on a very limited basis? The answer to this is also obvious, otherwise the dedication and energy of the students in the community would be greater

The SUN is taking this issue of the paper to devote attention to some of the ways that students, as well as other members of the community, can get involved in determining their own lives, to some of the things that have happened while you were away for the summer, and for those of you who have just moved into the community, let this serve as an introduction to various projects that the rainbow community has been working on for the past couple of years.

The important thing here to understnad though, is that you, the students, are not aliens invading another community, but, rather, that you are responsible members of this community and should be involving yourself here by registering to vote, working on the different people's self-determination programs and tribal council committees, rockin and rollin at the People's Ballroom and joining with us to Free Ann Arbor!

I got to stop now and let you all get into the rest of the paper so that we can see together, what's happening, and what needs to be done. DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER TO VOTE BY  OCTOBER 7!!

 Welcome back Students!

SELF DETERMINATION!

-John Collins, Ann Arbor Sun