I have lived in the city of Detroit for almost my entire adult life. I consider the city my home. This is where I met my wife and got married, where I’ve worked for almost two decades and where I have fought for my rights and livelihood as a worker.

I have watched what successive political administrations have done to this city ... and what the exploiting and oppressing classes have done when those political administrations didn’t follow their orders precisely.

And it was one thing when it seemed like the decisions being made that led to the city being worse off were because of incompetence, pandering, nepotism or arrogance.

Regardless of which of the previous administrations I have lived under — Coleman Young, Dennis Archer, Kwame Kilpatrick or the short-lived Ken Cockrel Jr. — it always seemed that there was never a sense of wanting to actually destroy Detroit as a city.

But times change, obviously, as do administrations. After the undemocratic ouster of Kilpatrick in 2008, due to his apparent (but not genuine) unwillingness to sell everything not nailed down to the Renaissance Group of capitalist privateers (pirates), and the caretaker Cockrel regime, we knew it was going to get bad for working people.

But we didn’t count on David Bing.

Bing, a former basketball star and business middleman, rode a wave of Black “middle class” backlash against the “old guard” in Detroit politics (generously funded by suburban “white flight” capitalists and professionals around the Renaissance Group).

Bing also had the backing of the corporatist leadership of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama’s White House.

Even before he was catapulted into the Manoogian Mansion through a low-turnout election that was a textbook example of apolitical and personalistic “campaigning,” Bing had made clear his intention to declare war on the city and its working-class residents.

(But, of course, given that his opponent was Cockrel, few workers actually voted.)

After taking office, Bing made good on his word. What has occurred in the year since has been nothing short of an open war between the city government and workers.

Now, Bing is going after the city itself.

At a time when Detroit is suffering from 50-percent unemployment, 50-percent graduation rates, mass utility shutoffs, crumbling infrastructure and declining population, Bing has decided that it is time to “downsize” Detroit by bulldozing whole neighborhoods.

“There is just too much land and too many expenses for us to continue to manage the city as we have,” Bing told the rightwing talk radio station, WJR 760, last month.

“You can’t support every neighborhood,” Bing continued. “If we can incentivize some of the folks that are in those desolate areas, they can get a better situation. If they stay where they are I absolutely cannot give them all the services that they require.”

No, Mr. Mayor, but you can certainly give the Renaissance pirates all the service they require, such as handing over the public lighting department to DTE Energy (the utility monopoly responsible for 14 deaths so far this winter), or the city’s water and sewerage department to suburban privatizers.

So why not forcibly remove thousands of Detroit residents from their homes after they reject your pittance of an “incentive,” force them into overcrowded neighborhoods (or out of the area altogether), and plow over one-fourth of the city, all so DTE can have an easier time with shutoffs and the cops can more efficiently harass residents?

The head of the “downsizing” effort for the Democrats’ Brookings Institution recently told the Detroit News, “There is a nothing-left-to-lose quality in Detroit, much like there was in New Orleans after Katrina.”

A “nothing-left-to-lose” quality?! We, the working people of this city, have plenty still to lose! You’re the ones who want to leave us with nothing, like yours counterparts did to workers in New Orleans. It is you, and your capitalist system, we need to lose.