detroit

As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs.

in Detroit, in July of 1967, what happened was no less than a guerrilla uprising.The Second American Revolution.

I guess this means we're uck-fayed, don't it Mikee?

The city belongs to the black man. The white man was a convenient target until there were no white men left in Detroit. What used to be black and white is now gray. Whites got the suburbs and everything else. The black machine__ got the city and the black machine__ at war with itself. The spoils go to the one who understands that.

In Detroit, we all talked the race game. It is a way of life.

The BEST revenge is to be fabulous.

Many Detroiters, for example, are beginning to see urban agriculture as a real part of the solution; to grow things right where people live, where they work, and definitely need healthier food on the table. Green city gardens are scattered throughout Detroit now, from the schoolyard at Catherine Ferguson Academy for pregnant teens and teen moms, to reclaimed land owned by a local order of Catholic friars (Earthworks), to a seven-acre organic farm in Rouge Park. Together, city gardeners, nonprofit organizations, and the Greening of Detroit resource agency are writing a new local-food story of urban Michigan.

It__ hard not to empathize with the mayor__ anger, given the injustices he__ suffered, but righteous anger rarely leads to wise policy.