MLK Celebration – January 14th
Time Banks – Your Time Has Come!
“Everybody has skills. Everybody has skills. Period.”
Like a lot of places, the folks in Portland, Maine don’t have the cash to get all the goods and services they need, so they are taking an old-school approach to help their friends and neighbors get through these tough times. NBC’s Ron Mott reports.
Check out this recent NBC story on Time Banks.
Meanwhile, the MI Alliance of TimeBanks reports that “there are now eight active TimeBanks and at least six more in exploration stage across the state.”
The New Agtivist: Edith Floyd is making a Detroit urban farm, empty lot by empty lot
Edith Floyd is the real deal. With little in the way of funding or organizational infrastructure, she runs Growing Joy Community Garden on the northeast side of Detroit. Not many folks bother to venture out to her neighborhood, but Edith has been inspiring me for years. I caught up with her on a cold, rainy November afternoon. While we talked in the dining room, her husband Henry watched their grandkids.
Read the entire interview with Ms. Edith at Grist.org
It’s Not all About the Benjamin’s, Baby
by Blair Nosan, Oren Goldenberg, Eitan Sussman, Amit Weitzer, Miriam Liebman, Dana Applebaum, and Zak Rosen.
Since Toby Barlow’s post, “‘Detroit,’ Meet Detroit,” followed by Rabbi Jason Miller’s subsequent response, there has been much discussion about both pieces, and what it means to talk about Detroit productively.
Looking Back
We are not writing to argue over who is a ‘real’ Detroiter and who is not, nor who is and is not going to save Detroit. We are more interested in unpacking our region’s history with a critical eye. We do this not to bring up bitter memories, or to point fingers, but because as young people raised in West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills, Huntington Woods, and Ann Arbor, now living in Detroit, we’ve come to believe that the way we understand and relate to our history very much informs our perspectives on Detroit’s present and future.
Rabbi Miller’s piece calls attention to pivotal chapters in Detroit’s history that have created many disparities between individual perspectives. Coleman Young’s mayoral reign and the uprising of July 1967 are both frequently cited as the cause for the metro region’s segregation. But these events do not stand apart from history. They sprang from the indelible and deep wound institutionalized racism had on the city’s Black population.
In the instance of the ’67 uprising, the clashing started when Detroit police officers raided an after-hours unlicensed club, where a party celebrating the return of Black Vietnam veterans was taking place. The uprising was, in many ways, a counteraction against the brutal Detroit police force, who many considered to be an occupying army at the time, committing countless acts of brutality. It was, according to many people we’ve met and respect, a moment of righteous indignation. While the riots were, for many Detroiters, a fearful moment in history, to others, the events that occurred during the summer of 1967 were in fact a rebellion.
And though Coleman Young drew hard lines between the city and the suburbs, it serves us well to recall that it wasn’t the mayor of Detroit who built a physical wall along 8 Mile. It was a developer in the 1940s who wanted to build homes for white families but skirt the federal government’s reluctance to back mortgages in the neighborhoods with too many homes owned by Blacks. The Young administration didn’t institute the racist lending guidelines that made it all but impossible for Blacks to secure a mortgage on a home in the suburbs — it was the same Federal Housing Administration that allowed for the building of a six-foot high wall to separate Black and white neighborhoods so that perceived integration did not drag down market rates.
When we fail to honestly discuss the multitude of histories that led us to the present, it becomes difficult to understand why Detroit is the way it is. That’s why we’re inspired and excited about the region’s recently initiated Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a process that aims “to examine the context, causes and consequences of structural and institutional racism in the region. By understanding and coming to terms with the forces generating the patterns of racial privilege and oppression that hold us all back, we can create a more just, equal and prosperous future for all.”
Looking Forward
Development in Detroit is experiencing another “renaissance,” and Rabbi Miller’s piece calls our attention to two very different visions of Detroit’s future. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission strives to create a more just and equal future through cross-cultural dialogue and truth telling, Rabbi Miller represents another common sentiment — that bringing more people, and thus, more dollars to the city will lead to Detroit’s “rebirth.” Yet, it is clear to us that the city never died, nor did disinvestment alone create the city’s problems, and thus money alone cannot fix them.
Development centered on wealth creation has led to housing incentives and marketing campaigns aimed at bringing the young “creative class” to Detroit. As long-time residents are losing their homes, wealthy donors and anchor institutions are subsidizing rent for newcomers. When we value new individuals and institutions over long-time residents and small businesses, we deepen the socio-economic and racial gaps that have long divided us. Additionally, we miss an incredible opportunity to realize the mutual benefits of collectively growing a city on principles of justice and stewardship, and to prioritize community knowledge over financially backed power.
Yes, the city needs money, a bigger tax base, and a diverse population. However, when money isn’t explicitly tied to the public good, we’re not really talking about renaissance. A true renaissance would be moving in a new direction, as a city and a region, and learning finally to value all voices, from West Grand Boulevard to West Bloomfield, and acknowledging that we need to grow our relationships with each other as much as we need to grow our financial base. While wealthy suburbanites may be buying buildings downtown and funding state-of-the-art education facilities, public libraries are closing and public service workers are being laid off in droves.
Metro-Detroiters of all stripes need to acknowledge that having a stake in our region means more than spurring economic growth. It requires learning and unlearning all the ways we’ve all built walls around the city, and around ourselves. And furthermore, it means, acknowledging and celebrating the amazing, creative, and effective work that’s been taking place in neighborhoods across the city for many years. Throughout the city, Detroiters old and young are busy growing a local, sustainable food system, nurturing a new education paradigm, and creating social enterprises that build community and capital. These are the projects that inspire us to live and work in Detroit.