urbica askedI look forward to it :) And I was thinking the racial tensions might have already have been known to have been high since the video stresses the racial and ethnic harmony of Detroit… if only it had been as true as they claimed :-/
Detroit: City on the Move
A promotional film made for the city of Detroit, MI in 1965, shortly before the 1967 riot and its economic decline.
Thanks for posting the video, it’s a neat time capsule of Detroit :) Although the stickler in me wants to say that the economic decline of Detroit started long before the ‘67 riots, which would be my guess as to why the video emphasizes the growing “renaissance” of the city and its friendly people (crime had been growing problem when this film would have been made). </sticklerness>
(Source: archive.org)
I’m shocked I haven’t heard more about this yet.
This past Sunday, Freep columnist Ron Dzwonkowski shed some light on an intriguingly different alternative to the much talked about M1 Woodward light rail system.
The gist: Move over light-rail, there might just be a…
I’d love for this to be all it claims, but especially being an engineer, it sounds a bit too much like one of those “if it sounds too good to be true” ideas :-/
Wandered around Downtown Detroit for a bit today, before it started precipitating everywhere. I’ve always loved the colored windows of this building. I can imagine with the right sunlight the inside is amazing.
April 16, 2011: Day 229
That’s my synagogue :)
After losing major grant, local do-gooders imperiled
Published: April 6, 2011
I’ve often written about Freedom House, the nonprofit, nonpolitical place that exists to provide shelter for those victims of persecution seeking political asylum in the United States and Canada. There is nothing else quite like it.
Over the years they’ve saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of victims and help them start new lives in this country and Canada.
But now they are in bad shape financially. They unexpectedly lost a major grant, and Deborah Drennan, the executive director, is worried they may have to close. “I’ve laid off six of my eight staff members, and both myself and the other two are working without a paycheck,” Drennan told me last weekend.
“As you know, sending people away from Freedom House is in many cases a death sentence. I can’t let this happen,” she said.
If Freedom House did close, it would be a mini-global tragedy. People come here, somehow, from all over the world. Rwanda, Cameroon, Libya, Russia. When they arrive at this century-old, redbrick house (a former convent) in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, they are often a malnourished, dehydrated mess. Most have been tortured, physically and psychologically; many have been raped.
Though we tend to forget, these are the kind of people for whom this country was founded. In fact, victims of political and religious persecution started coming here long before it was a country. (Think Puritans.) Because of that, the United States has, in principle, always been open to provide asylum for legitimate victims.
Trouble is, it often takes some time for asylum seekers to be able to prove they have been persecuted. Many of those fleeing for their lives aren’t able to bring all the necessary documentation. Some have nothing at all.
Increasingly, first the U.S. and now the Canadian governments have been clamping down on asylum requests. The average bedraggled victim can’t find and engage a top-notch immigration lawyer, much less pay one. Nor are they often ready to adjust to a life in a strange new world.
Which is where Freedom House comes in. It was established by a group called the Detroit-Windsor Refugee Coalition to meet the needs of Central American refugees in the 1980s. But the founders soon realized that there was a lot more need out there — and that most of those arriving needed more than three hots and a cot.
Today, they try to provide everything from a temporary home to transitional housing, once the refugee gets asylum. “Our services include medical services, mental health care, education, job training, recreation and legal aid,” Drennan said. In recent years, they haven’t lost one asylum case in the courts. Several former clients are now living in Detroit, working energetically to help bring the city back.
But asylum cases take a long time — typically eight to 12 months, sometimes years. The refugees are not legally allowed to work while they wait. So they help where they can. Some have been working with Ron Quick, a Freedom House board member who has a building firm, to rebuild the shelter’s ancient kitchen.
Some work hard to learn English. Freedom House used to pay for classes, but they’ve lost other federal and state funding, and, thanks to the economy, charitable donations are down.
So they are scrambling to just keep afloat, while they reapply for the grant they lost and try to come up with other sources of funding.
Personally, I think the best thing that could happen would be for Freedom House to be able to expand its operations, and work to settle many more deserving asylum seekers in Detroit. Those are precisely the folks who could rebuild the devastation into a city.
But for now, it is important they stay alive. Anyone wanting to help can send money or contact Drennan at Freedom House, 2630 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit 48216, or call: 313-964-4320. Incidentally, they also would be grateful for in-kind donations — paper goods, supplies, etc., all of which are fully tax-deductible.
Donations can also be made on their website:
http://freedomhousedetroit.org/index.php
Cost of a 3 bed, 2 bath, ~1900 sqft house in Woodbridge Detroit: $108k (and would probably come down from that, although it does need a little fixing up)
Cost of a 3 bed, 2 bath, ~1900 sqft house just south of Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco: $1.25M
Of course there’s a lot of intangibles that could skew the comparison one way or another depending on who you ask, but it’s a crazy difference nonetheless.
If this takes off, I’m moving to universe A
Edit: Consider the following:
While I’m sure the energy she mentions is not that as defined by physicists, if we look at the density of air, take 6% of the mass and convert it to energy using Einstein’s famous e=mc^2 formula, we find that every cubic meter of air contains an energy equal to that released by a 1.5 megaton nuclear bomb. I am physics, crusher of dreams!
Don’t Shrink Detroit, Super-Size It
By Mark Binelli
The Atlantic
Urban experts and politicians have decided among themselves that “right-sizing” Detroit by shrinking the city is the only way to save it. They couldn’t be more wrong.
As with much of the bad news coming out of Detroit,…
I get where the article is coming from, but the stickler side of me wants to point out that Philly didn’t grab up suburbs, at least not to the extent the article implies. Having grown up in the Philly area, I can say that it has a lot of similar problems to Detroit… a city losing population surrounded by affluent suburbs being among them. But I don’t think it’s grabbed suburbs since the 19th century when the city and county of Philadelphia merged governments. Not that a “Greater Detroit” would be a bad thing necessarily, I just want the facts to be straight :)
However, I recently read (and think I reblogged) an article talking about how the new incentives to live in midtown mirror similar incentives in Philly that have led to the stabilization/revitalization of some neighborhoods, so there may be some policy crossover yet!
Went here today. 4 floors of used books… didn’t have nearly enough time to take it all in. It’s amazing to me how I keep falling more and more in love with my city as I discover places like this, or just drive around and look at the buildings and laugh with my friends. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.
I too love this place
