Dialogues with the City THIS IS DETROIT
Transcription
Dialogues with the City THIS IS DETROIT
412 413 In a local school, 123 pupils were asked by a teacher, “Were you born in Detroit?” Sixty-nine replied, “Yes.” Fifty-four said, “No.” Since nearly 45 percent of these students had moved to Detroit from some other place, the teacher and the classes became interested in determining how many of their parents were native Detroiters. Upon inquiry it was found that in only seven cases were both parents born here. In twenty cases one of the parents was born here, but in ninety-six cases neither father nor mother had been born in Detroit. In other words, most of these parents were not native Detroiters. THIS IS DETROIT Citizenship in Detroit, Prepared by the Department of Social Studies under the supervision of C.C. Barnes, the director of Social Studies in 1938. Excerpt from Chapter 1, pg.1. Dialogues with the City “Were you born in Detroit?” Sean Baxter 414 415 Pages 1 and 4 are a spread from the City of Detroit’s proposed generalized Detroit, like every other city on Earth, is a city of people. If Detroit is to land use plan published in 1947. It introduces it’s plan using the images be successful again, it must harness the diverse stories that Detroit’s shown on both the adjacent page and the previous page. These pictures citizens can offer. One may finally recognize the importance of the of the good and bad parts of Detroit are immediatley followed by the individual’s quality of life and the story that one person will tell of their planning rhetoric that proposes to remove the bad parts of Detroit as experience living and navigating the city. part of a movement to make Detroit a better place to live and work. The following chapter concerns exerpts from various interviews and This way of framing problems and their solutions through images, conversations that take the rhetoric of what the city is, and can be, to a data, and generalized rhetoric ignores the people and the individual new level; the level of the personal story. stories that are most affected by the changes. Historically, progress and improvement in Detroit have served as representations of how not to pursue urban renewal. It could be argued that the plan’s greatest failure was its ignorance in regard to the lives and desires of the people who were to become the subject of the massive changes in the 1950’s and up into present day Detroit, and the inability to integrate its own citizens’ dreams into its plan. Very few cities could boast of having a population as diverse and dynamic as the population of people that lived in Detroit in 1950, but the city failed miserably at utilizing that enormous asset to its advantage. THIS ALSO IS DETROIT 416 I think the Detroit community is very well developed. In my community on the Detroit east side I trust my neighbors. We’re together, 417 In my community on the Detroit east side I trust my neighbors. Black and White. In some ways, my moving to Detroit was almost a political statement. I did not want to live and raise my kids in white suburbia. I wanted to live in congruency with my politics. When I decided to buy a house—a large financial investment—I decided to do it in Detroit. My neighborhood is aesthetically beautiful. My neighbors are very close. At any point we can have a party just by calling all the neighbors together. [laughs] I just can’t see living anywhere else. I’m involved in politics partly because I’m so angry. Last night [November7, 1990] some comrades and I watched that terribly onesided ABC TV show ‘Prime Time” that focused on Detroit and Mayor Young. It said nothing about the good side, the good people, the positives of Detroit. Moira Kennedy being quoted in Detroit Lives, by Robert H. Mast (1994) It said nothing about the good side, the good people, the positives of Detroit. 418 419 I’ve lived in Detroit since I was born in 1950 and I’ve watched the neighborhoods change. The first neighborhood I lived in, where my parents still live, was in an area of Lothrop and West Grand Boulevard. It’s made up of all kinds of flats and duplexes. It was a middle class neighborhood in the 1950s. There was one Black family when I was born. By the time I was fifteen it was almost all Black. I grew up with the advantages of a multicultural background. On my block there was a German family, a Japanese family, a Polish family, an Irish family—all first generation—along with two Arab families: mine and another of Lebanese background. Then Black families moved in. The second Black family on the block was Roger Short’s family. He’s now the auditor-general of the city of Detroit. When I moved here onto Parkside Street, I was one of the last whites to move onto his block. We had divisions in the neighborhood, but they were geographical, not racial. Roger Short was the big ally on my block. He was the kid who scared away the gangs from the other blocks, all of whom were white. He was protecting us. Frank Rashid being quoted in Detroit Lives, by Robert H. Mast (1994) Images taken from Detroit News’ Online Archive’s Detroit News PhotoStore Collection titled Michigan’s greatest treasure—its people. Images are of Greek (and AfricanAmerican), Scottish, Austrian, Polish, Japanese, Arab, and Palestinian Detroiters. 420 421 I moved to Detroit to work for the Associated Press. I was miserable in that environment. It was the most racist and sexist place I ever had the lack of pleasure to work in. I fell in love with Detroit. My involvement in Poletown started in 1981. The first time I visited a Poletown neighborhood council meeting, the people really won my heart. They were hard-working, working-class, union people who were gradually putting together a pretty sophisticated analysis of what was being done to them in the destruction of their community. I wanted to put my skills at their disposal, so I don’t think I missed another meeting after that. The resilience of the people in Poletown is one of the things that I found most striking. People were having their neighborhood decimated, houses were on fire, there was construction dust. People would come into the church center and say, “I can’t breathe, I can’t sleep at night.” The folks in Poletown invited the daughter of the chairman of General Motors to have her wedding at the Immaculate Conception Church [scheduled for demolition] when it became public that she was getting married. They rented a bulldozer and took it to the house of the chairman of General Motors to let him know how it felt to have bulldozers pull up on his lawn. Once the church had been taken over by the police, they wove flowers through the fence that was between them and church demolition. Police officers were put every twelve feet along the fence to keep people from scaling the fence to stop the demolition. The ladies went and got red vigil candles from the church that they had saved and put them beside the feet of every police officer. The neighborhood was not saved. The Cadillac plant was built. It’s not been a very productive or worthwile plant, even from GM’s perspective. Ironically, the analysts have said that the plant’s too big. [Laughs] Shortly after opening the plant, they permanently laid off 17,000 Michigan workers. The City Council was quoted as saying that was a real slap in the face after all they had done for GM. But I wouldn’t say the struggle for Poletown was for nothing. Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann being quoted in Detroit Lives, by Robert H. Mast (1994). Images Left and Opposite taken from Jenny Nolan’s January 27, 2000 Detroit News article, Auto palnt vs. Neighborhood: The Poletown Battle. 422 423 I was born in Puerto Rico in 1953. When my mother was pregnant with me, my father came to Detroit to do labor. His entry to Detroit in the early ‘50s was part of the second migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland. This was part of Operation Bootstrap, which included a major exportation of labor from Puerto Rico. The second wave settled in an established Mexican community in the Corktown area, the Holy Trinity area. That’s where I was brought up. The second wave was much more reflective of the island as it is now: a rainbow of colors. I came to Detroit when I was five years old. I was an altar boy at Holy All the good stories about him are very true. Trinity Church where Monsignor Clement Kern was the pastor. He was a community organizer in the Latino community. All the good stories about him are very true. We were in one of the most progressive churches in the city. They ministered to the poor. Skid Row used When I grew up, the reason I didn’t steal wasn’t because there was police around, ‘cause there wasn’t no police around. I didn’t steal because I to be located close to Holy Trinity, and Father Kern and his people didn’t want the neighbors to know I would steal. The conscience of the community was your policeman. Now, when you get in the city, because ministered to those folks. everybody don’t have nothing to do with nobody’s business, everybody, therefore, can do anything and there’s nobody to chastise them. There’s no discipline on you. Osvaldo Rivera being quoted in Detroit Lives, by Robert H. Mast (1994) Osvaldo Rivera is the director of Latino Family Services, in the southwest section of Detroit. The alienation took place in the way we live, in production, the way we related to each other. Then as we got all of these refrigerators, those electric gadgets, I don’t need the neighbors next door for nothing. I got my own TV, my own movies. I’ve got my own icebox. I don’t have to borrow nothing from them. Now you can’t borrow nothing from your neighbors because they don’t relate to each other. James Boggs being quoted in Detroit Lives, by Robert H. Mast (1994) 424 425 I can give you a story. My life. Starting when I was a little kid, going on about three or four years old. I was living in the area around Hastings. Hastings was the worst street in Detroit. They still got prostitutes over there now, in the old condemned houses. I used to go down Hastings, them prostitutes used to get kids, nine, ten years old, they’d get them to go down to the five-and-ten-cent-store, and have them to stealing perfume and lipstick, little cheap perfume, go down and steal a batch, they’d give us a quarter for it. ‘Til my father found out I skipped school stealing it. That was the last time. Google Street images joined into panorama at the Detroit intersection of Willis and Grandy. We can talk. I ain’t doing nothing today, just sitting around. That’s all We can talk. I ain’t doing nothing today, just sitting around. That’s the truth! I ain’t lying! I ain’t got no water nowhere but in my kitchen. And then that be cold. That be cold. I ain’t had no...I can’t wash my dishes today! Because I ain’t got no hot water! He going to tell me something else. No, no! I don’t live in a damn slum like this! Never lived like this before. ‘Til I come here. That factual truth. I ain’t got no - now, how am I going to take a bath? Tote water from out of the kitchen sink! And I ain’t got no hot water right now to wash dishes in there. I can’t wash my dishes! I had to go to my sister’s house to take a bath! It been cut off for going on three or four weeks, a month now. I ain’t got no hot water. In my bathtub, in my kitchen, neither. Listen, I ain’t got no water. What am I going to wash dishes in cold water for? You can’t wash grease off a plate, can you. My boss is Mr. Ricket. I got nothing but rats up in here. Now I got to tote hot water? Naw, no, no! I mean, I pay him so much money a week. An interview of Catherine Foster taken from Voices from the Corner, by Raphael S. Ezekiel (1984, field work done between 1967–1972) we’ll be doing all day. Sitting around, seeing the guys, having a drink. I don’t go to work ‘til six. An interview of Nathan Coolidge taken from Voices from the Corner, by Raphael S. Ezekiel (1984, field work done between 1967-1972) 426 427 Now I have a son in college. And I’m really interested in what they’re doing in college today. It cost quite a deal of money to send your kids to college today. It’s not just like getting a high school education. It costs you money. I’m sending my son to college. I’m not married. I’m a single woman and I work and I’m trying to send my son through college because I’m trying to make him responsible. I’m trying to open up things that could happen today, the ways of life and the ways that people should live regardless to whether they do live this way or not. I have a very open heart. And I’m Christian-hearted. My mother raised me. My mother was a very Christian woman and she knows nothing but Christianity. And she raised me in this respect. Respect. And do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And this I was raised with and I respect that as of today. And I teach it to my son the same thing down the line. Now my son is nineteen years old. He graduated at the age of sixteen. And, I never had any trouble with my son. He doesn’t have his name on Stanford University Protest any police records as of today. And he’s a very respectable kid around the city. And, as being a mother, working hard, doing the things that I think a mother should do, I’ve given up very much for the kid. I try to teach him the right way to go. An interview of Joanne taken from Voices from the Corner, by Raphael S. Ezekiel (1984, field work done between 1967–1972). Joanne came over one afternoon to talk to Catherine. JoAnne is a bus driver for the city, one of the first women in that position. Images of Student Protest during the time of the interview on the opposite page. And I’m really interested in what they’re doing in college today. 428 429 I received a visit from a student I had warm, and intact. We throughly enjoyed taught at the Univeristy of Michigan, where working with them. This particularly surprised I am employed as a faculty member in social us, and the surprise gave us pause. psychology. She wanted to tell me how her life was going; among other things, she told We realized we had expected a world of me about her work, teaching in a Black High shattered souls rather than brisk students School in Detroit. I asked to come and visit her who played chess and warm neighbors who eleventh graders. liked us. Recent descriptions of broken lives in the ghetto had led me to very different I went to school and taught several classes expectations. I needed a good, hard look, close with her. The school was in an all-Black up. Here was the world I wished to understand. neighborhood, and [my wife] and I had several surprises. Initially, we were frightened when we walked from our car to the school. This University of Miami Memorial Classroom disturbed us. We had forgotten how alien I needed a good, hard look, close up. Here was the world I wished to understand. one could feel. Later, however, after having a wholly enjoyable time in the school, we found ourselves smiling and easy when we walked back to our car - and found ourselves smiling happily at friendly people on porches, who greeted us with warmth. Finally, the students Hampton University Graduates were a pleasure. They were bright, intelligent from the introduction Voices from the Corner, by Raphael S. Ezekiel (1984, field work done between 1967–1972). Raphael Ezekiel is describing his initial experience in 1966, of a neighborhood in Detroit prior to beginning the field work for the book from which this quote is taken. 430 431 People say, life is what you make out of it. Some years you progress and there’s some, regardless what you do to try to get ahead, it’s always something come up that will pull you right back to where you started. I have experienced these things up from nineteen fifty-eight up until now, off and on. Everything is running smooth and all of a sudden something, that puts you in a rut, makes you fall right down it. Then again, it could be one of the kids gets sick. That’s a lot of worry and unhappiness. There’s a lot of things that can happen make you unhappy. Then, there’s the other times. When everything is running smooth. The kids happy and healthy and well. Your husband, he happy, and you happy, and he’s trying to progress. And, you know, I couldn’t think of anything that would make anybody happier. You know, have your health and everything. It would mean a lot. That’s the way life is. Changes. God didn’t promise that every day would be fine. You have to put up with, you have to accept, the bad with the good. People say, life is what you make out of it. No. Maybe to some people it is. But a lot of things in life you have to accept it as it comes. An interview of Rebecca Stone taken from Voices from the Corner, by Raphael S. Ezekiel (1984, field work done between 1967–1972). No. Maybe to some people it is. But a lot of things in life you have to accept it as it comes. 432 433 It’s one of the benefits of living here: sometimes there’s just nobody around to say you can’t do something. We were all by ourselves at dusk along the river, just a few blocks from home. We’d walked as far as the path would go, and there we saw a place where a field had flooded and frozen and I went out to investigate the ice: just a few inches thick, but wide and unscarred. I could smell memories: the inside of hockey gloves; inevitable hot chocolate. We came back the next day with our skates. The boy is still too small for skating, so the poor thing had to settle for scuttling along in his boots, and those moments where I’d scoop him up and charge across the ice, setting his feet down to glide while he cackled. No one hassled us; we didn’t see another soul. We’ve gone to the public rink downtown several times, but with gangling teens learning to skate by gripping the boards and swinging their blades face-level to a four-year-old, this trespass was markedly safer. It’s one of the benefits of living here: sometimes there’s just nobody around to say you can’t do something. After an hour or so, the girl could have kept going, but the boy had fangs of snot and a strong case of not fair. The virgin ice was scarred with all our fun, and a thermos of hot chocolate waited by our boots. Our Rink, Sweet Juniper Blog, Posted: Friday, January 8th, 2010. Opposite: Photos from Our Rink, Sweet Juniper Blog, Posted: Friday, January 8th, 2010. 434 435 I got a great freelance job out of the blue the does he sleep? When does he see his kids? other day and spent that evening with a se- When does he relax? Whenever he can, “which curity guard hired by a Detroit neighborhood ain’t often.” association to patrol its streets at night, responding to resident safety concerns because I don’t tell him that I went to law school, or the police don’t. When I meet him he is obvi- quit a good job on purpose, or moved to De- ously wearing a bulletproof vest. After stories troit because San Francisco seemed too nice. of crackheads stabbing him with screwdrivers All of these things that seemed to make so and evicted tenants setting fires in alleys, we much sense suddenly sound so ridiculous. In- fall into a customary silence. Most nights are stead I wear a mask. I pretend like we actually long and dull, he admits. I consider asking have something in common, which of course if he ever listens to books on tape, but then we do (and all that truth would just get in the think better of it. “Is this what you do?” he way of it). “I was working at a brake plant be- asks. “You’re a photographer?” fore they moved it to Mexico,” he says. “I was earning $25 an hour and I thought I was going “No,” I say. “Not really. I don’t have a job right to do that till the day I retired. Now I got these now. We have two kids and I take care of two jobs and I’m lucky to have them. Still we them.” just can’t seem to get ahead.” The air softens. “Playing Mr. Mom? I did that What would he say if he knew the truth? for two-and-a-half years, after I lost my job.” Someone once commended me for the sacri- We talk about the ups and downs. His kids are fices I’ve made. But, I think, I’m so privileged I the same ages as mine. “I miss it,” he says. “I’m don’t even know the meaning of sacrifice. working two jobs right now. I haul concrete for a waterproofer all day, and I have a couple of these twelve-hour shifts a week.” When No title_ I got a great freelance job out of the blue, Sweet Juniper Blog, Posted: Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 I don’t tell him that I went to law school, or quit a good job on purpose, or moved to Detroit because San Francisco seemed too nice. All of these things that seemed to make so much sense suddenly sound so ridiculous. 436 437 We finally got busted breaking into buildings. We finally got busted breaking into buildings. We got into the Lenox part of the complex. The hotel interior was not as cool as expect- We were in an alley behind the Madison Lenox ed. An unrepaired hole in the roof had caused Hotel, and I was looking up as D was about years of interior damage that left plaster from to leap from a window, and suddenly a cop the ceilings on the floor, plaster crumbling car comes flying up to my car, slams on the from walls, and water damage everywhere on brakes, and the cop gets out and draws his the upper floors. Little was left in the way of gun. I put my hands up and yelled, “I’m un- artifacts. A lot of newspapers and magazines armed!” He didn’t care. “What the fuck are you from the early 90s were in there, left right doing in there?” he asks. “Nothing! Just taking when the hotel finally closed. Obvious signs pictures” I reply. The gun is still out. “I got of squatters were all over the place as well. enough trouble with the bums goin’ in and out We went to the roof, but had to be careful of there,” he yelled. D sheepishly climbs out because 50,000 suburbanites, and hundreds of the window, and luckily the cop tells us to of police to protect them, were swarming the move on without ticketing or arresting us. But area because of the Lions game. Bad day for damn, the week had just begun and already exploring. someone is pointing a gun at me. Please don’t shoot me, Detroit Blog: Stories from the Motor City, Posted: Monday, October 20th, 2003 438 439 He packs away the CDs and the old cassettes, leaving the posters on A little store in the inner city often has a strong relationship with among the area’s thugs, word was to leave this store alone, which sat “It got to the point I had to reduce my hours, because I was paying the wall for last. the neighborhood it’s in, especially in an area where most of the vulnerable with no bulletproof glass, no anti-theft door alarms, no iron someone $80 a day and I was making $60, so the math don’t add up. businesses have closed. Those living in the blocks around it will make bars on its big windows. And if the math don’t add up, you got to make a decision.” “People in the neighborhood, guys in the neighborhood, the ones that As he presides over the last days of an 18-year dream, music plays kind of run the neighborhood, they tell everybody, ‘Don’t mess with from a speaker set on a milk crate outside the door. A sign in the That’s why Esaw would organize customer appreciation block parties Pearl’s,’ and that all came from a respect thing for all that we did. You window announces reduced store hours, where before it was a sign But the phone keeps ringing, bringing reminders. “Yes, next week is with bands, food and games on blocked-off streets. It’s why he’s taken never see people come in here with a smoke, you never see someone warning that the end was near. And the phone keeps ringing, bringing our last day,” he tells each caller who phones him after hearing the folks from the neighborhood on bus trips to Cedar Point, with new CDs come in with a drink.” calls from more customers who had to hear it themselves from the news somewhere. “We’re gonna be OK,” he adds. All the calls are going playing on the stereo the whole way down there. And it’s the reason he the same way. handed out $1,000 scholarships every year to promising high school Once, the store got robbed by an armed gunman. When the neighbors students in the city. He’d have them write an essay on a topic like what heard what happened, they told Esaw they’d handle it. “I guess maybe it hasn’t hit me yet,” says 52-year-old Walter Esaw, a point of shopping there to keep that one alive. A smart store owner as he boxes the stock of his little record store, Pearl’s Music, on knows this and returns the favor. Kercheval near Van Dyke. After almost two decades at this spot, and 80 years total in Detroit, they’d do if they were president. “We’d sit up at night going through, the store can’t make it anymore. reading them all,” Esaw says. owner himself, who has to relay the news, over and over, one customer at a time. “Music is a luxury,” Esaw says, standing behind the store counter, “Just to tell you about the neighborhood, two days after we got robbed looking through the window at the quiet street outside. “You have — they’d taken some cassettes and stuff — they put the money in a to eat, but you don’t have to hear some music. Detroit and the state “It comes down to economics,” Esaw says. “The sales are just down. We “It was never about having a record store. We knew that through cassette with a note saying, ‘Sorry we robbed you,’ and put it back of Michigan are just going through hard times. They just can’t afford never were just for profits, but we were always saying that as long as it having a record store, and the music, that we could get kids to come in in the mail chute. I called the police and they said they’d never seen music anymore.” paid the bills then we would be here.” and talk to us and maybe we could be able to help them do something. nothing like that before.” We always wanted to do something where we could give something Business tanked about a year ago, he says. Though the store back.” survived the rise of digital music and the easy-to-find bootlegs in the neighborhood, it couldn’t outlast a terrible economy. Esaw is a full-time accountant, so this job has been a weekend labor of love that started costing too much time and bringing too little money. Gestures like these made the neighbors fiercely loyal to Pearl’s. Even The Last Song, Detroit Blog: Stories from the Motor City, Posted: Monday, December 6th, 2010, this story originally appeared in the Metro Times. 440 441 THIS IS DETROIT Images that depict the common stories of Detroit: GM, Henry Ford, Jimmy Hoffa/Unionized Labor, Motown, Red Wings, Tigers, Racisl Violence and Riots, Abandoned buildings, 8 Mile 442 443 THIS ALSO IS DETROIT Images that depict the people of Detroit: Images from People of Detroit Blog, Detroit News Archives 444 445 Citizenship in Detroit: a supplementary reader in Oates, N. Stanley. Proposed generalized land use plan, an News One. More African-Americans Attend College, But community civics.. Detroit, Mich.: Board of Education, explanation of a basic plan designed to make Detroit Graduation Lags. N.d. More African-Americans Attend 1938. Print. a better place in which to live and work.. Detroit: College, But Graduation Lags, Hampton University, Detroit City Plan Commission, 1947. Print. Virginia. NewsOne for Black America. Web. 28 Jan. Ezekiel, Raphael S.. Voices from the corner: poverty and racism in the inner city. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. Print. Griffioen, James. “sweet juniper!.” sweet juniper!. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://www.sweet-juniper.com/>. Kornhauser, Arthur W.. Detroit as the people see it: a The Detroit News. “Michigan’s greatest treasure -- its people.” The Detroit News PhotoStore. The Detroit 2011. Student Protest Images. “The History Cooperative.” The News, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. <apps.detnews.com/ History Cooperative. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2011. pictopia/index.php?project=MichiganPeople>. <http://www.historycooperative.org>. “The People Of Detroit.” The People Of Detroit. N.p., n.d. University of Miami. Students in Memorial Classroom. survey of attitudes in an industrial city. Westport, Web. 27 Jan. 2011. <http://www.thepeopleofdetroit. N.d. University of Miami Legacy, Coral Gables, FL. Conn.: Greenwood Press, 19761952. Print. com/>. University of Miami Libraries. Web. 28 Jan. 2011. Mast, Robert H.. Detroit lives . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Print. Nolan, Jenny. “Auto Plant vs. Neighborhood: The Poletown “detroitblog .” detroitblog . N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2011. <http://www.detroitblog.org/>. Students took action in the 1960s and 70s.. N.d. CHANGING Battle.” Michigan History. The Detroit News, 27 Jan. TIMES & CAMPUS, Stanford University Campus. 2000. Web. 25 Jan. 2011. <apps.detnews.com/apps/ History of Stanford. Web. 28 Jan. 2011. history/index.php?id=18>.