By Arthur Horwitz Forty-three years after the murder of founding Michigan Civil Rights Com-mission Executive Direc-tor Burton I. Gordin in a downtown Detroit parking structure, his case remains unsolved, questions about the motive and identity of the killer unanswered and memories of his service to the state and its residents forgotten.

Gordin arrived from Phil-adelphia on April 1, 1964 to become the state’s top civil rights professional, exactly one year after Michigan voters ratified a new con-stitution that contained the strongest civil rights language of any state in America. It empowered a non-partisan Civil Rights Commission to protect those rights and investigate al-legations of discrimination.

At the time of his death, he was a na-tionally recognized civil rights leader, part of the original class of progressive Jews who partnered with Blacks in the fight for equal rights. He was also navi-gating cross-currents in the Civil Rights Movement, a potentially volatile mix of integrationists and Black nationalists, who were also engulfing his own depart-ment. Gordin was an integrationist. His death at age 50, and the mysterious cir-cumstances surrounding it, made page one of daily newspapers in Detroit and across the state. The New York Times and other national media also took notice.

Detroit police con-cluded that Gordin died from a botched robbery at-tempt. Essentially, Gordin was a random victim in the wrong place, at the wrong time with a nervous assail-ant. Aside from the police, nobody believed it then. And it appears nobody be-lieves it now. It was treated as a local crime, with no ev-idence or confirmation that the FBI or Department of Justice may have been in-volved in the investigation.

And as the case went from hot to cold, from top-of-mind concern to out-of-sight-out-of-mind disin-

terest, so did memories of Gordin. There is currently nothing - no plaque, no scholarship fund, no lec-tureship, not even a framed photograph – that serves as an enduring reminder to Michigan residents of the service Gordin provided, perhaps at the cost of his life.

The circumstances surrounding Gor-din’s death must be revisited. There is no better time than now, as Michigan enters the 50th anniversary year of the ratification of its constitution and cre-ation of its Civil Rights Commission. New testimony must be taken. New theories about his death must be pursued. Re-gardless of the outcome, Michigan must assure that Burton I. Gordin receives the enduring recognition he earned for his pioneering civil rights work.

Arthur Horwitz is publisher of the Detroit Jewish News.

By Bill Johnson In the upcoming primary election there won’t be a record number of Detroi-ters going to the polls to decide the final candidates in the race for mayor, city council and city clerk.

It’s doubtful that the race will be the rock ’em, sock ’em, down and dirty out-come that produce winds of change that radically alter the political landscape.

There simply aren’t enough voters left in the city who care — or believe — that those holding elec-tive office will make a differ-ence in their lives.

Pundits, in need of a hotly contested race that draw voters from the far reach-es of the city are trying to ramp-up the dialogue by prodding and pointing out the differences between the leading con-tenders.

A few challengers are charismatic with ideas and résumés that qualify them to intelligently discuss potent financial and bread-and-butter issues that need addressing — city services, crime jobs and investment.

But office-holding in Detroit is pretty much an unfruitful, dead-end career that is no longer attractive to incumbents or challengers.

The appointment of an emergency fi-nancial manager practically guarantees that for the foreseeable future the city will be managed by someone who is not elected by anyone. Knowing that even-tual winners will have no real political power will cause scores of potential voters to sit out the election because they will have determined the outcome is meaningless.

There is no real sense that the elec-torate feel compelled to rush to the polls to uproot the powerless political estab-lishment. There is no evidence that disenfranchised masses are anxiously waiting to usher into office a fresh batch of candidates who promise to “make things right.”

Substantial political research also has identified the powerful relationship between social status and turnout.

When voting participation falls off, it is the poor and less educated who stop voting. And the lower down the econom-ic ladder one goes, the lower the partici-pation rate becomes. In this regard, De-

troit has one of the highest unemployment and school dropout rates and poverty populations in the nation.

The resulting abysmal display of civic participa-tion also suggests that De-troiters are turned off and tuned out.

No doubt the historic lack of political response to public concerns is a con-tributing factor that adds to a sense of helplessness and frustration.

That means the ranks of those who have become disillusioned about politics will probably swell since they can’t pin their hopes for a brighter future on the

election outcome.

City churches once produced a reli-able stream of dedicated voters. But many of the middle-class, law-abiding, educated and informed voters in these congregations have taken refuge in the suburbs.

The business community may get in-volved, but they have money rather than a ballot.

Senior citizens, the most reliable voting bloc, may choose to throw up their hands in disgust about conditions in the city or the state of Detroit poli-tics.

Political indifference, however, isn’t

new to Detroit.

City elections haven’t produced huge turnouts in decades. Of the estimated 700,000 residents, for example, there are more registered non-voters than voting age adults who aren’t registered. And on a purely mathematical basis, it is hard to make the case for any Detroi-ter voting. The turnout issue isn’t im-portant without definable differences in the attitudes among those who vote and those who don’t.

There is no law to compel voting, and under the circumstances no way to browbeat city residents into participat-ing.

But who’s to blame?

It is voter apathy that allowed the De-troit political process to become some-body else’s exclusive domain in the first place. So there’s every reason to believe there will be more “Gone Fishing” signs than “Gone to Vote” signs come Elec-tion Day.

So why bother?

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April 24-30, 2013 Page B-4

Women deserve the Paycheck Fairness Act

Detroit Election 2013: Don’t bother

Why urban entrepreneurship is crucial to Detroit’s comeback

Members of Congress are participating in Equal Pay Day, highlighting the disparity of women earn-ing only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2013. April 9 is the symbol-ic date on which a woman’s wages catch up to what a man would earn in a previ-ous year, in a comparable field of employment. In acknowledging Equal Pay Day, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) re-leased this statement: I join my colleagues in Congress in marking Equal Pay Day, a day that sym-bolizes when the average woman will have worked an additional amount in 2013 to make up for the difference be-tween her salary and the salary of her male colleagues in 2012.

Today stands as a reminder that, de-spite the many advances working women have made in our country, significant barriers to equality in the workplace continue to endure. April 9 is the 99th day of the year, symbolizing how women all across our country must devote 99 extra days a year to work if they want to be treated as equals.

Our mothers must spend 99 extra days away from their children to be treated equal to our fathers, and our daughters must spend 99 extra days to

catch up to our sons. In ad-dition, according to a new report from the American Association of University Women, the women in the 13th Congressional Dis-trict of Michigan earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, mirroring the national average.

These figures are simply unacceptable. For this reason, I urge my col-leagues to sign on to H.R.

377, the ‘Paycheck Fairness Act,’ leg-islation that provides American women with real guarantees of equal pay for equal work, by strengthening and clos-ing loopholes in the nearly 50 year old Equal Pay Act.

Now more than ever, many middle-class families depend upon female earn-

ers to put food on the table and roofs over children’s heads. It is time to pro-vide women in this country with the legal protections they need to finally end the discrimination that they see in their paychecks, and finally guarantee the rights that women have had in name only.

John Conyers Jr., is the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and the second longest serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

By Dana A. Thompson While many voices are contributing to the chorus of solutions to the urgent problems in Detroit, in-cluding its fiscal crisis, there is little or no conver-sation about how to build and sustain minority urban entrepreneurs, especially young minority urban en-trepreneurs, in Michigan’s largest city. The reality is that minority owned small businesses in urban areas like Detroit are critical to de-veloping new jobs and industries.

It is common knowledge that small businesses are essential to a healthy economy and they create most new jobs. According to the U.S. Small Busi-ness Administration, small businesses comprise 99.7% of U.S. employer firms and 64% of net new private sector jobs. In addition, according to an Initiative for a Competitive Inner City report, small businesses play a vital role in inner city economies with 99 percent of all busi-nesses in inner cities being small busi-nesses and 80 percent of total inner-city employment coming from small busi-nesses.

And, despite a slowly recovering na-tional economy and a recent jobs report showing a national unemployment rate of 7.6% and an unemployment rate of 6.7% of Whites, that same report shows the national African-American unem-ployment rate is 13.3% and the Latino unemployment rate is 9.2%.

Given Detroit’s looming fiscal crisis, these alarming unemployment rates among African-Americans and Latinos and the importance of small businesses to job creation, one strategy that must be tirelessly pursued is cultivating a sense of entrepreneurship among De-troit’s citizens, especially its youth, and providing minority urban entrepreneurs with the necessary resources to grow and become viable.

Philanthropic organizations, com-panies and individuals interested in solving Detroit’s fiscal woes and in en-couraging entrepreneurship in Detroit should fund entrepreneurship programs for Detroit school-aged children start-ing in kindergarten so that these young people begin to understand the value of owning a business.

These entrepreneurial programs should focus on the importance of owning many different types of busi-nesses but especially those that are technology oriented such as informa-tion technology, software, social media and consumer apps businesses.

A recent Milken Institute study found

that the best performing United States cities and metro areas in terms of jobs, wages and technol-ogy performance are those cities and metro areas in technology clusters. In fact, the United States’ best performing metro area is San Jose, the heart of Sili-con Valley and the tech-nology hub of the United States. It is vital for the Detroit metro area to con-tinue to develop more tech-

nology oriented businesses.

Young people must be introduced and encouraged to engage in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathemat-ics) education programs throughout their secondary school educational ex-perience and there must be novel cur-ricula to encourage middle school and high school students to stay interested in the STEM fields and pursue these fields in college.

I recently led a trip to the Bay Area in California with University of Michigan students interested in developing their own innovative ventures. The students had the opportunity to visit and talk to major players in the technology sector such as the CEO of Twitter. They also toured the offices of technology giants including Facebook, met with ven-ture capitalists and pitched their busi-ness ideas to leading players in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps if young people in Detroit were trained in these STEM fields and could see how their study of these fields could lead to owning their own tech-nology companies and being a part of a transformative innovation economy, more of these young people would be in-spired to pursue these areas of study.

Those Detroit high school students already excelling in STEM related pro-grams should be encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial ventures developing technology oriented products and ser-vices.

Dana A. Thompson, an expert in social enterprise, small business and urban revitalization, is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and director of the Entrepreneur-ship Clinic and contributing author to “Building Healthy Communities: A Guide to Economic Development for Ad-vocates, Lawyers and Policy Makers.” She is chair of the Community Econom-ic Development panel of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Sec-tion and former director of Wayne State University Law School Small Business Enterprises and Nonprofit Corporations Clinic.

John Conyers Jr.

Bill Johnson

Dana A. Thompson

“The appointment of an emergency financial manager practi-cally guarantees that for the foreseeable future the city will be managed by someone who is not elected by anyone. Knowing that eventual win-ners will have no real political power will cause scores of potential voters to sit out the election because they will have determined the outcome is meaningless.”

“our mothers must spend 99 extra days away from their children to be treated equal to our fathers, and our daughters must spend 99 extra days to catch up to our sons. In addition, according to a new report from the American Association of University Women, the women in the 13th Congressional District of Michigan earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, mirroring the national average. These figures are simply unacceptable.”

Justice and remembrance for Burton I. Gordin

Arthur Horwitz