Updated: Group protests outside Detroit area gun shop



SOUTHFIELD, MI - About a dozen people spoke out Saturday afternoon against violence, firearms and unemployment in Detroit during a protest outside a suburban gun shop.

The Rainbow PUSH Michigan-sponsored protest in Southfield was meant to compare the prosperity of the suburbs to the poverty in Detroit, said the Rev. D. Alexander Bullock, pastor of Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church in Detroit.

"Guns need to come out of Detroit and jobs need to be imported in Detroit," said Bullock, state coordinator of Rainbow PUSH Michigan.

The gun shop was chosen not because of high firearm sales to Detroit residents, but because it sits just north of the city limits on Eight Mile Road, Bullock said.

To some, the road represents the racial and economic boundary between the city and its more affluent suburban neighbors.

Detroit is among the nation's leaders in homicide and violent crime. As of Sunday, 149 homicides had been committed in the city this year, up 3.5 percent over the same period last year.

The unemployment rate also is one of the highest in the country. Some estimates show that at least one in four adults is without a job.

"There is a pattern of genocide in Detroit and America's urban communities," Bullock said. "Black men are unemployed, uneducated and unprotected. These factors have produced a pattern of genocide and self-perpetuated homicide. This is a national crisis. We need a national response. We need an urban policy that takes guns out and brings jobs in."

The "Guns Out-Jobs In" initiative fell under Rainbow PUSH Michigan's Crusade for America Parent and Youth March. The crusade is part of a larger movement demanding "an end to the flow of guns in urban communities," according to the organization.

The protest was one of 25 across the country.