The State of Our City
Mayor Duggan gave his third State of the City address last week at the Second Ebenezer Church on Detroit’s East Side. He emphasized the progress he has made cutting crime and increasing police response times, tearing down blighted houses, encouraging businesses, and creating job programs for youth. He discussed his initiatives to cut car insurance and to add new technologies of surveillance. He announced his intentions to carve out a role for the Mayor in the Detroit Public School crisis and said he is encouraging the return of power to an elected school board.
Most of the 2,000 folks in attendance cheered on as members of the audience stood to have their efforts acknowledged. But for the first time in over 40 years, the speech was interrupted 4 times by protesters.
Mayor Duggan would do well to pay attention to those protests. They say more about the state of our city than all of the orchestrated cheering. These brave young people who stood up to question the Mayor and his “relentless, positive, action” deserve the thanks of all of us who are concerned about the growing racial divide and brutal inequalities we are facing.
It was their voices that raised the important questions we face. Unfurling a banner that read “Opportunity for who?” They challenged gentrification, water shut offs, disinvestment in education, and Duggan’s ties to Governor Snyder and his emergency managers.
“Many Detroiters – especially black Detroiters – aren’t experiencing the ‘revitalization’ of greater downtown,” said Dakarai Carter, an organizer from BYP100. “Millions of dollars are being invested there, while our neighborhoods deal with disinvestment resulting in a lack of community services and resources. We are disrupting business as usual because we know that cities thrive on democratic control and shared access to resources.”
The reality is that Duggan’s speech was almost exactly the same as the speech given by Mayor Dave Bing right before the onslaught of emergency management and bankruptcy in 2013. Bing, too, offered five key initiatives: cutting crime and increasing police, blight reduction, Detroit Works to grow demonstration areas to redevelop neighborhoods, improve public transportation, and encouraging entrepreneurs.
That is why Duggan is failing the city. The questions we face are not the same as those of the pre-emergency manager-bankruptcy era. To move down the same old path of promising the “best way to handle the problem is to grow the city,” is the kind of relentless positive non-thinking that brought us the crisis in Flint.
Mayor Duggan refuses to look at the basic question of how do we develop a city that includes all of our people? How do we create relationships that foster care, compassion, and joy for everyone?
These are not empty questions. Nor are they utopian thoughts. Since Duggan took office, citizens groups have offered clear advice: Put a moratorium on foreclosures. Stop the Water Shut Offs. Adopt a Water Affordability Plan. Adopt a community benefits agreement. Develop place-based education to encourage our young people to learn while rebuilding the city. Encourage land trusts and cooperative businesses.
Shortly after the State of the City, Former Mayor Dave Bing, who no doubt recognized much of the progress claimed by Duggan, offered some advice “As much as we say or think we are being inclusive, the reality is we are not. There is an undercurrent of frustration and anger that could lead to a negative outcome.”
Detroit is a movement city with a strong history of developing creative grass roots alternative ways of living and being. Duggan’s old thinking shows no sign of recognizing the depth of the challenges we face. He would do well to listen to our youth.
“Shut up Duggan”: Why we confronted Mayor Duggan at his State of the City Address
Dakarai Carter and Paige Watkins
On Tuesday, February 23rd, the Mayor of Detroit held his annual State of the City address at Second Ebenezer Baptist Church on Detroit's east side. Young Black activists and activists of color from Detroit used Duggan’s address as an opportunity to disrupt and speak truth to the real state of the city. Using “Shut Up Duggan” as a call for the mayor to stop grandstanding and listen to the people, they asked, “Opportunity for who?” and, throughout the address, interrupted to lift up narratives and issues important to Detroit residents. Planned as a collaboration between Detroit’s chapter of the Black Youth Project (BYP) 100, Black Lives Matter Detroit, Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management, Raiz Up Detroit and the Detroit Light Brigade, this disruption was purpose-driven and intention-filled. Only 5 of us went in, understanding the room would be filled with thousands of people - still determined to have our voices heard. We knew that the mayor would get on that stage and talk about his plans for the city and boast his idea of progress and solutions. What we also knew is that he would not be honest about his involvement in the displacement of poor and Black Detroiters nor about his complicity in the continued disinvestment and disenfranchisement of communities through corporate takeover, emergency management and hyper-surveillance.
In his speech, Mayor Duggan said, “the best way to handle the problem is to grow the city.” He spoke about his administration’s solutions to blight - the thousands of homes being demolished this year and over the next several years. Naim Leal interrupted the mayor to ask - what does that mean if the only ones seeing that growth are in the greater downtown area? What about the tens of thousands of poor and Black Detroiters removed from their homes through mass foreclosures? The thousands of families having to deal with mass water shutoffs due to increased privatization of city resources?
Antonio Cosme of The Raiz Up disrupted Mayor Duggan’s speech on Tuesday pointing out the Mayor acting as an accomplice to the state and to the appointed emergency manager. Mayor Duggan followed by admonishing emergency management, saying, “I am more against emergency management than anyone I’ve met.” But we know that to be untrue. Detroiters know about his connection to Governor Synder and his close involvement with Detroit’s emergency manager since he has been in office.
Black Lives Matter activist Adrienne Ayers interrupted by uplifting the problems with the public school system under the control of emergency management. For years, Detroit schools have been crumbling - literally - with little support or even acknowledgment from the city or the mayor. It wasn’t until teachers and students began doing “sick-outs” and other coordinated, mass protests that the mayor personally toured and inspected the schools. At the State of the City, he discussed his plan for city-wide school inspections that is much needed, but well overdue.
When it was my turn to stand up and yell, “shut up Duggan,” people booed as I lifted up the privatization of public spaces downtown and throughout the city, the increasing number of private security firms and the lack of accountability these private companies have to the people they are policing. During his address the mayor only spoke of more plans to increase such security. Through Project Green Light dozens of businesses will participate in a program that will allow several cameras to be monitored in real time by the Detroit Police Department with no stated plans for transparent accountability. He also introduced that police cars will begin having license plate readers, in order to quickly scan for warrants and unpaid tickets. We don’t consider further criminalizing Detroiters a solution.
As activists and organizers, we have dedicated ourselves to working for the safety and freedom of all the people in Detroit and beyond. The disruption of Mayor Duggan’s address at the State of the City was us demanding that these narratives be lifted up. By confronting the mayor directly, we were ensuring that our issues aren’t lost in the false promises of “progress.”