More than 120 people gathered together for a community dialogue on education and Black Male Achievement this Thursday at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. The stage was set by the student co-hosts Lauren Danzy, the leader of the Detroit Independent Freedom Schools youth group, and Xavier Clemons, an 11th grader at Frederick Douglass Academy. Sharing their concerns about the importance of thinking together about education, they asked the gathering to focus on central questions. These included: How do we engage Black male youth in our schools and communities? What has worked for us collectively and individually? What is our vision for our schools and our communities? What is the importance of understanding ourselves, our cultures, and our histories?

It should be obvious to everyone that those in control of the State of Michigan oppose democracy, distrust the wisdom of people, and are determined to strangle cities and municipalities that are the home of our most progressive thinking.

Governor Snyder has persisted with his decision, and his alone, to stop free bottled water distribution in Flint. Both the citizens and their elected Mayor have asked the Governor to continue making free water available until all lead pipes are replaced throughout the city.

The past week exposed the vulnerability of people and the waters on which life depends throughout the Great Lakes region. We have seen extraordinary disdain from elected officials about our responsibilities to one another and our earth.

Last week we had an opportunity to reflect on the legacies of Emergency Management. Two schools of architecture, Taubman College of the University of Michigan and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture of Columbia University brought together scholars and activists from Detroit and around the country to probe what the experience of Emergency Management has meant to our city.

This week we learned that Friends School will be torn down to make way for a wealthy housing development. Friends School was a valued community resource. It offered an educational experience for young Detroiters based on Quaker values of peace and social justice. Detroit Friends was started in 1965 by Judge Wade McCree Jr. in response to his daughter being turned away from a white private school. Until 2015, when it was forced to close, Friends developed children in the city as responsible, thoughtful, creative citizens.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan delivered his fifth State of the City speech at Western International High School on the Southwest side last Tuesday evening. He gave a nearly hour-long power point, getting appreciation from the packed house. Mainstream commentators approved as well, noting his emphasis on neighborhoods rather than downtown development. Most lauded his ideas to improve schools, transportation, housing, and job training. The Mayor talked about reducing crime and improving access to higher education. His basic theme was that those Detroiters who “stayed” should now benefit from neighborhood initiatives. Under the banner “building one Detroit for all of us” he said, “We’re going to do it with the Detroiters who stayed.”

People are marking the 50th anniversary of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, usually called the Kerner Report, after the Illinois Governor who chaired the effort. President Lyndon Johnson appointed the commission on July 28, 1967 while the rebellion was still raging on the streets of Detroit. The commission was charged with answering three basic questions about the uprisings that had been raging across America. Johnson asked, “What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to keep it from happening again?”

This week the students, teachers, and support staff of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida will resume classes. They will find ways to move forward in a place infused with memories of violence, fear, and pain. And they will continue to show a deep commitment to organizing people against school shootings. They are planning a March on Washington “to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end this epidemic of mass school shootings.” Schools and communities around the country are planning walkouts and marches in solidarity. 

This week a group of us from the Boggs Center attended the North Dakota Study Group’s (NDSG) 46th annual gathering. The NDSG is a loose collective of progressive educators, artists, activists, authors, teachers, and students who “come together annually to engage in an ongoing seminar on democratic possibilities in the U.S. and world education.” Its members have persistently and consistently pressed for deepening democratic theory and practice in education and in our communities.

Betsy DeVos has completed her first year as the head of the Department of Education. Some have argued that she has been ineffective in carrying out her right-wing agenda. Some take comfort in her foolish public statements; arguing for guns in school in case a bear wanders in, comparing schools to taxicabs and food trucks, and claiming Margaret Thatcher as her idol.

Members of the Michigan State Legislature have learned nothing from the poisoning of Flint. This week the legislature is considering handing over the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to corporate polluters by passing three new bills currently under consideration. Together these bills are an environmental disaster that would put all of us at greater risk.

This week, Governor Rick Snyder gave his 8th and final State of the State address. It was filled with relentless positive comments. Snyder emphasized population growth, reduced unemployment rates, a strong automobile industry, and gains in personal income. “We’re headed back in a positive fashion,” Snyder said. “The State has enjoyed a tremendous recovery and now we’re accelerating this comeback into the future.”

Last week Detroit received the news that it did not make it on to the short list of cities being considered for the new Amazon headquarters. A total of 238 cities pitched their virtues to Amazon in the hope of becoming the new home of Amazon’s second corporate center.

Amazon is the fourth largest company in the world and is planning on investing $5 billion in the expansion. It asked cities to apply for consideration and said they were interested in education and skills of the workforce, transit and the built environment, and the livability of their communities. It also asked for a list of the tax incentive programs each municipality would offer.

The celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. comes in the midst of a moment of national disgrace. It is not only that the words of the current administration are cruel, hateful, and dangerous. It is also that its policies are. The brutality of a dying empire is seeping into all of our relationships, poisoning us.

It is easy to think democracy has been restored to Michigan. The faces of Emergency Managers no longer loom out at us in the daily news. Kevyn Orr has disappeared from Detroit. He is now a partner in charge of Jones Day’s Washington D.C. office.

Darnell Earley is gone from Flint and Detroit. Although in early February he is expected to return to view as he is likely to be charged with involuntary manslaughter for his role in the poisoning of Flint water.

The turning of the year is a time for reflection and recommitment.

Many of us are glad to see 2017 end. As the new year arrives we find ourselves drawing on fragile signs that longings for peace and justice persist, emerging in the resistance to acts of inhumanity that mark those in authority. Throughout the country, people are recreating ways of living together based on values that hold the promise of protecting life and restoring health to our communities and the earth.

For many of us this is the season to turn toward family and friends. It is a sacred time, calling for reflection and affirmation of our deepest longings for peace on earth. Rarely has such a hope been so far from our daily reality. We are living in a moment when relationships among people are marked with causal violence and intentional brutalities. Since 2001 we have been a people at war. It has been the backdrop of the lives of an entire generation who have never known a time without active US military interventions.

The undermining of democracy is accelerating in Michigan. A new frame is emerging from our business owners and their publicists. They claim that business, supported by public money, is better for people than political decision-making.

People in Michigan can celebrate a small victory this week as public outcry forced the state legislature to scale back its latest attack on local government. The Emergency Management Team provision was withdrawn in the series of bills aimed at pension finances. The proposed package of bills sponsored by right-wing republicans to deal with pension commitments would have established a new level of emergency financial managers, setting aside basic local control in the name of financial responsibility. Both Democrats and moderate Republicans balked at the provision, acknowledging the new legislation was more emergency management by a not very different name. Since the disaster in Flint, Emergency Management by any name has not been a popular idea. So the provisions attempting to expand this were withdrawn. Few elected officials are willing to support extending Emergency Managers.

The Michigan State Legislature is no friend to democracy. Nor is it a friend to cities. Dominated by right-wing ideologues, the State Republican majority is once again mounting an assault on all those who believe in local democratic control.