cburr

In Sugrue’s housing sections, he argues that as a continuous influx of African-American migrants came to the city seeking industrial and wartime work, they found their ability to locate decent housing blocked. Official and unofficial segregation was the rule, and blacks had to deal with incredibly crowded housing; even if a family was able to […]

It is my opinion that is just as important to document people’s opinion on certain phenomena as it is to document that phenomena itself. One great example is the trajectory of the city of Detroit over the last 50 years. To many people, the events transpired started with “riots” that led to “white flight” paving

In Chapter 8 of The Origins of The Urban Crisis, Sugrue expands on the racial profiling of blacks in Detroit through the media and even classrooms. One portion that struck me the most was when Sugrue wrote of an event in the mid-1940’s, where a teacher named Mary Conk at an all-white school in northeast

The group meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays have been very informative, as I know they were intended to be. Of course, in the Tuesday meetings, I learned a lot about different organizations making changes in the city and what the progress of new initiatives has been. However, what I have found most interesting has been

In my original post, I don’t think I really understood what the scope of my project would be. I knew I was leading an anti-idling campaign, but the direction of my project was highly dependent on who I met with and what they could do for the campaign. I ended up doing way more with

In The Origins of the Urban Crisis, I learned a lot about the policies that restricted where people could live. This made me think of the current problem in Delray. To build the new bridge to Canada, many houses in the Delray community must be demolished. The people in these houses are being forced to

My first week I wrote optimistically about the program, Detroit, Focus: HOPE, and the people I had already met in the program. I can remember the somewhat-forced optimism when I first wrote it; I always try to look on the bright side but it takes me a while to become acquainted with any new space.

I knew close to nothing about the “race riots” in Detroit before the start of this program. I’d hear “race riots” mentioned here and there and knew some people sited these “riots” as the beginning of Detroit’s downturn. Now, after living in Detroit, getting to know Detroiters, and hearing Thomas Sugrue talk and read his

During this free-form post, I’d like to write an ode to the lovely bird Penny Feng-Altayar, that Jean and I found and nurtured, until she could be taken to a new home. I found Penny an eventful Wednesday afternoon. I came back to UTowers on my break, because I forgot my laptop charger at home.

People engaging in simple philosophical debates or with too time on their hands have at one point pondered the ever stupid question: If a tree falls in the forest and no is around to hear it does it make a sound? I’ll save my response for later but lets dive into a little history first. ______________________________________________________________________