It’s been a fruitful three weeks working with Soulardarity and with the cities of Highland Park and Detroit, but I really feel like I’ve been here much longer. So far, what I’ve observed the most out of my organization is a sense of such genuine care and desire to help the community. Their goals are big, but their commitment to seeing them through gives me confidence that they can and will create lasting change in the ways of obtaining energy democracy. The desire to create real change in Highland Park is so deeply ingrained within my organization that I’m beginning to really develop a sense of real frustration with the bureaucracy of this country, state, region, and city. It makes me angry to see disarray in the city when so many parts of Detroit are “flourishing” i.e. becoming gentrified. The sense of frustration I feel right now about how much inequality and lack of moral obligation I see on the behalf of those in power, I think, will transform into a more driven desire to help communities everywhere even after my work here is “done.”
Although we cannot upload photos at the moment, I was going to upload a photo of the Highland Park Community College. The college was shut down in 1996, but the building is still standing. It’s honestly an incredible piece of architecture too, resembling more of a castle or a church than a modern school. It stands as another testament to the massive potential that Highland Park has (even just with its housing stock) and the frustration that I’m sure a lot of residents feel knowing such an incredible building cannot be harnessed for the good of the community, particularly on such a focus as education.
Hi Nissa! I would love to see the photo of the Highland Park Community College. It is so frustrating that it is standing there empty, when it could be used for so much good. I think about that when I see a lot of the other abandoned buildings around Detroit, as well.
Nissa,
I’m both glad and upset for you and with you. To discover the anger and frustration of a community — of thousands and thousands of voices — is overwhelming and tremendously motivating. When people once satisfied become disturbed, they sometimes struggle to recognize themselves. Rest assured, Nissa, that these feelings will transform you into someone different, but in only the best of ways.
“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards!” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here’s hoping that the newly lit fire-under-your-ass makes you gracefully uncomfortable.
I recently drove through Highland Park just to look around a little bit and saw Highland Park Community College as well as a wealth of massive houses. I couldn’t help but wonder who now lived in these houses. The stark contrast between these and the boarded up and blackened houses on nearby roads really begged the question of how this country continues to believe, consciously or not, that its sequence of mistreatment of African-Americans as well as of its poor is acceptable. It really makes me wonder how well-intentioned our society actually is.