So, this blog post is ridiculously late. Oops! Our kids joined us at DFA this week, and between that and going home this weekend for my uncle’s 70th birthday party, time completely slipped away from me.
This week, The Detroit News posted an article about ARISE Detroit!, a coalition of more than 400 community organizations in the city who work to improve the lives of Detroit citizens year-round. This summer, ARISE is preparing for its twelfth-annual Neighborhoods Day, a day in which people from all over the city join together to clean up blight, attend health fairs, participate in back to school events, and participate in other neighborhood-centered activities.
This event strikes me as extremely important, especially as colonization and gentrification continue to take hold of the city. Native Detroiters are being pushed out, made to suffer so Dan Gilbert can continue to line his pockets, and with this they are also losing the ability to control the dominating narrative of the city. With events like ARISE’s Neighborhood Day, they get to take some of the ownership of their narrative back, though. They get to show the strength, beauty, and resilience of longtime residents of Detroit, all while coming together to improve their community on a grassroots level. I am not as clued in with local organizing as I would like to be, and this article reminded me of the importance of lifting up the people who are doing the hard work to improve their lives, their children’s lives, and the life of this city.
Hey Lia! This was a great post that reminds each of us about the power that residents of Detroit have to uplift and support each other when the odds are against them. I have never heard of ARISE, but I am truly interested in this group of organizations and the work that they do. Thanks for sharing!