Week 3: My Observations

Thus far one of the primary observations I’ve made both inside and outside of work through this program is a sense of unity amongst organizations and residents of Detroit. I believe that this stands out to me so much because it contrasts my experiences last summer, when I had the opportunity to work in New York City. In NYC it seemed like there were a limitless number of organizations working on specific advocacy and policy projects throughout the city. Sometimes these organizations would collaborate with one another (or at least recognize each others’ existence), but often when I would attend events hosted by organizations tangentially similar to my own few people at my office would recognize the organization or the recent work they’ve done.

This summer in Detroit has been markedly different. I’ve had to reach out to a wide variety of different stakeholders working on issues of displacement and inequitable development, and it seems as if they are all interconnected. Transportation leaders, housing affordability coalitions, labor groups, and environmental organizations all seem to know each other. Every time I find a new organization to talk to, it seems like the people at my office already knows someone there and have two or three anecdotes to share about the person from a time a few years back.

Perhaps part of this is due to the size of the two cities and the number of organizations doing work in both of them: New York is a city of 8.4 million people and Detroit is a city of less than 700,000. And Detroit’s advocacy groups don’t exactly work in perfect harmony either: one person I talked to specifically complained about the lack of actual organized coordination between the efforts of various groups. Yet, the genuine helpfulness that everyone I have reached out to for my work and the personal relationships that so many of them share point to something more. There is a real sense of unity amongst these organizations, a sense that together they can work to make a better tomorrow for Detroit. While people may certainly disagree on the specifics, everyone shares in a desire to work together to achieve this brighter future. Its a sort of solidarity that is difficult to describe.

This is a picture I took in Forest Park. It doesn’t really have to do with the rest of my blog post, but I thought it was an interesting shot portraying both the Detroit’s downtown skyline and a working-class neighborhood just outside of the area. I think it highlights the fact that Detroit is far more than the 7.2 mile stretch of greater-downtown that the national press covers…its a huge collection of hardworking communities who have stuck out hard times in the city.