Lede: Workers in Detroit have taken some body blows over the years and are suffering now, but the spirit of the city that boxing legend Joe Louis called home refuses to stay down. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

Poor and working class people in Detroit are feeling the brunt of the recession, but there’s a spirit of resistance to this economic system’s injustices. And it’s alive and well in Maureen Taylor of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization.

[Taylor]: "Homelessness up. Child abuse, domestic abuse, up. Poverty up, food prices up, unemployment up. Political corruption exploding, gas prices exploding. Hopelessness, up. Seems like the cost of living is goin’ up, but the chances of livin’ is goin’ down!

We only have a few years left try to convince the blue-collar, grassroots worker that the fate of the nation is in our hands. There are more of us than there are of them, and I’m talkin’ about those corporate pirates.

Only labor, and labor means people that are employed and unemployed, can restore peace, can eliminate poverty, can institute universal health care, can save the environment and can bring the world back from the brink of elimination that these corporations are sendin' us to."