Sunday, September 26, 2010

Detroit on My Mind - The Changing Face of Detroits' Inner City pt. 5

This video depicts the beginning of white flight (gentrification) back to Detroit. This is the upside but it does not address the displaced population of Blacks. This same scenario is being played out around the country and is an ageless/endless cycle.

It is particularly poignant because I grew up one block over from where the video scenes were shot!
Blessings! Rev. Qiyamah



Detroit on My Mind pt. 4

This brief video highlights a few of the community based organizations working to build capacity among residents of Detroit and their efforts to turn things around and recover hope in the face of the economic devastation.


I have been viewing videos on Detroits "demise" all day and many really depicted a dreary forecast for Detroit. However, having heard Mayor Bing's master plan to demolish 10,000 abandoned houses and replace them with industrial farm land I think it is possible that the efforts of a few Community Based Organizations might be too little and too late.

Nevertheless their efforts did help me to regain perspective in recognizing that all the pictures of the devastation could just as easily be balanced out by the gentrification in areas like the Boston/Edison area. My concern is that with whites rushing back to the inner city to claim the foreclosed mansions and renovating them to their former glory (which is a good thing) what happens to the dislocated individuals (almost exclusively black)? Thus race raises its ugly head in all of this. Ironically the 1967 insurrection (not riot)is so far in the past that it might be easy to forget that so much of this is about race politics. Hopefully we will get it right! Meanwhile, we just have to keep revisiting the life cycle and reincarnating ourselves and returning to do this work until then!
Blessings! Rev. Qiyamah

Detroit on My Mind - pt. 3

Grace Lee Boggs, 94 year old Detroit based activist reflects on socialism and worker

Detroit on My Mind Revisited - pt. 2

Detroit on My Mind - Conversation with James Boggs

I will be posting several reflections on Detroit. Many of them will highlight some of the long time activists and organizers in Detroit.

I dedicate these posts to my father who worked at Ford Motor Company beginning in 1946 until he was forced to retire due to heart problems in the 1970s. To my knowledge he never a missed a day of work and was a loyal worker who if he thought about rebelling and doing something else the faces of his ten children were a constant reminder that he had made some decisions that were irreversible.

To him and all the Black men that toiled first in southern fields and then migrated north to the factories for a better life!
Blessed Be! Rev. Qiyamah