Authentically Detroit
Authentically Detroit is the leading podcast in the city for candid conversations, exchanging progressive ideas, and centering resident perspectives on current events.
Hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Orlando P. Bailey.
Produced by Sarah Johnson and Engineered by Griffin Hutchings.
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Authentically Detroit
Candidate Series: Annexation and Expansion with Rogelio Landin
On this episode, Donna sat down with write-in candidate Rogelio Landin to discuss his vision for Detroit’s future. This episode is the seventh in a series of interviews with candidates in the race to become Detroit’s 76th mayor.
Rogelio Landin is a longtime community activist. He has a long history of being involved in Latino civil rights groups in Southwest Detroit. He is currently president of the state chapter of United Latin American citizens (LULAC). He's a contributing political columnist for El Central newspaper in Detroit and in recent years has been involved in five neighborhood advisory committees.
He believes in part that by annexing 28 “distressed” communities in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties, Detroit will once again have the clout to solve many of the city's woes.
To learn more about Rogelio Landin and his vision for Detroit, click here.
Up. Next writing. Candidate Rogelio Landon joins the Authentically Detroit candidate series to share his vision for the city as Detroiters prepare to select the 76th mayor. This will be the seventh in a series of interviews. Keep it locked. Authentically Detroit starts after these messages.
Speaker 2:I'm Orlando Bailey of Outlier Media and Authentically, detroit, and I'm Jair Stays of Daily Detroit. Detroit, we've got something special coming up that you won't want to miss.
Speaker 3:That's right. Orlando. At 10 am on Sunday, june 21st, we're bringing together Detroit's mayoral candidates for an in-depth community forum right in the heart of the East Side.
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Speaker 2:Oh, and on that form there is a spot for your voice to be heard to help shape our questions and the conversation. That's right. Whether you're a longtime resident or new to the city, come by ECN on June 21st. It's your chance to hear directly from the candidates who want to leave Detroit. Hey y'all, it's Orlando. We just want to let you know that the views and opinions expressed during this podcast episode are those of the co-hosts and guests and not their sponsoring institutions. Now let's start the world.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of Authentically Detroit, broadcasting live from Detroit's Eastside at the Stoudemire Wellness Hub inside of the Eastside Community Network. I'm Dinah Givens-Davidson. Thank you for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform for authentic voices, real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. No-transcript Detroit and in recent years has been involved in five neighborhood advisory committees. He believes in part, that by annexing 26 distressed communities in Macomb, oakland and Wayne counties, detroit will once again have the clout to solve many of the city's woes. Rogelio, welcome to Authentically Detroit. And how is this blessed day finding you?
Speaker 4:It finds me in the best place in Detroit right now, at this time and place. Let me compliment you, commend you, on upholding the integrity of the program and, with that, the integrity of the program and with that, just thank you. I appreciate so much the opportunity to engage your listeners and speak with you about issues regarding Detroit.
Speaker 1:You know, this is an exciting campaign year for me In my lifetime. I think this is the most contested mayoral election that I've ever seen, and it's a time where people need to bring in new ideas, and you probably have the most imaginative idea for how to expand and improve Detroit. You want to talk about it.
Speaker 4:Actually, it's in the spirit of our African-American heritage and community. It's a Sankofa moment for Detroit, where you look to your past to strengthen your future. And if we look back 100 years, it was the last time we annexed anything, and that was Redford. Now why we stopped, I don't know, but annexation is how Detroit was built and that's why I've dubbed my campaign name Detroit 2.0. Because this is how we did it 100 years ago and this is how we can do it again and make up for what has been a decades too long slide in our population.
Speaker 4:Slide in our population and growth is a key element in everything that everybody's looking at going forward.
Speaker 4:But yeah, this is a time, and rightfully so.
Speaker 4:But getting back to my fundamental issue, everybody who's running will tell you we need more, more, this, more that, whether it's housing, education, workforce, talent development, economic development, capital access, pick an issue, the end word is more.
Speaker 4:Nobody's telling you how Annexation is key because it is a way that we can lift all boats of distressed communities in Southeast Michigan. It is a way where, if we get together and accumulate the one asset that we have, that is, population, and put it all together, we have over a million people, our ability to generate more resources from both federal and state revenue sharing goes up, and this is a non-tax way of increasing resources. To come back and apply to the things that we're going to need quickly, because we're running out of ARPA money, we're running out of other resources and there have been estimates. Union contracts are due, a lot of the bills that are going to need to be paid are due and at the State of the People. That question was posed to the candidates and I'll let people decide whether they got satisfactory answers or not, but my sense of it was the solutions or proposals that were levied were insufficient to deal with the expenses we can anticipate.
Speaker 1:All right. So a couple things before we get into the meat of that right, okay. So you are Latin American, but you also identify yourself with African ancestry.
Speaker 4:Oh, I do. I'm probably first of all. My roots are here in Detroit. I come out of Delray. People from Black Bottom didn't used to go to Delray, okay. So yeah, I have an affinity, I have cultural competencies, I have roots.
Speaker 1:Where are your?
Speaker 4:people from before my people. I was born here. No, I mean you're yeah, from Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, Okay, All right.
Speaker 1:Because I think what a lot of people don't know is that a lot of Mexicans, a lot of people in Latin America, also have African ancestry. Absolutely, you know. There were people enslaved and brought over from the continent to all of Latin America, not just all of the Americas, not just North America.
Speaker 4:Yeah, this isn't. You know, historically speaking, and some of the old folks who may remember Dr Ray Johnson, he had Robeson School. He used to ask me during Black History Month to come and lecture at some of the classes and schools on the history of that trade and crossings were actually in the Caribbean and in Mexico, in Veracruz, in Chihuahua, and you know there were a number of ports and these are communities, but today, with the size of the Hispanic community, the fact is that 25% of the Hispanic community self-identifies as Afro-Latino. So you know the emergence there, even in South America. You go down to Brazil, you go down to Bahia very deep, deep African roots and culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was really surprised to also hear that Colombia has very deep African roots.
Speaker 4:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:And there are many people there. I think you know one of the challenges that the way mass media portrays Latin Americans. There's a certain look and you're Latin American and somehow people with higher levels of African ancestry are erased from the public portrayals of what Latin America is. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I'm not proud of it, but the fact of the matter is is that the Spaniards created the caste system and it was one of the things. That, and because of literacy and we'll get to that later they showed you where you were in society in pictures. If you were light-complected, you were up front. If you were mestizo or medium-complected, you were in the middle, and if you were dark-complected, you were up front. If you were mestizo or medium-complected, you were in the middle, and if you were dark-complected, you were in the back. And this was a way of— All over the world.
Speaker 1:That was not just in Latin America All over the world right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I mean, you know, seriously, that's why you have so much bleaching skin bleaching in India, for example. All of the colonized places were sort of ranked in that way and you see white supremacy permeating through all of our societies. And one thing I was describing with some folks is the original people in the Americas did not speak Spanish or English. They were all colonized right and one colonizer kind of beat out the other colonizer. But really we are dealing with the remnants of that. And I say that in this conversation because it's important for people to understand how divided we've become and allowed ourselves to become based on ethnicity and this idea that it's us versus them. And we're going to be hosting a unity breakfast soon to try to erase the idea that we are so different. We're dealing with different types of oppression, but oppression nonetheless. I was listening to a young poet in Southwest Detroit describe ICE and his experience with ICE and I thought that sounds like a slave catcher. So our experiences are not that much different. So our experiences are not that much different.
Speaker 1:As you are looking to be mayor of Detroit and annex these regions, you say why don't we have more annexations? But you know, in teaching students I was teaching recently at a university level and I said Detroit did not have a population decline. There is a population shift. We have a few more hundred thousand people here today than we did in 1950s in Metro Detroit, but in 2025, most of those people are living outside the boundaries of Detroit, but the population hasn't really declined in the way that it's portrayed, because people leave Detroit and they go to other parts of the metro area. The reason that Detroit has these separate communities has a lot to do with racism, don't you think?
Speaker 4:Oh, no doubt, there's no question, and in fact, the reason for so many things that challenge us, if you will, here in Detroit, is all systemic, and there are basis for that in terms of how you treat it with regard to access and opportunity based on race and the interpretation of value that we bring as a people of darkness.
Speaker 1:But more specifically, there's the Home Rule Act in Michigan. Are you familiar with that Somewhat? Okay, so 1909, there's a Home Rule Act which makes it very difficult for cities to annex neighboring communities. There has to be agreement between both communities. You can't just say as a city, we're going to annex Redford, I agree, and Redford has to agree, it wants to be annexed, right. And then you have to take that to the state legislature and go through that process. So how do you see yourself convincing? I can see why. Maybe in Detroit's mind it's a good idea to annex communities. But how do you see Detroit convincing? Grosse Pointe Park, we're going to annex you. What is the process for that?
Speaker 4:Again, when we started, you made a point of saying the 26 distressed cities and that is what we all have in common, and just because we're out of the bankruptcy doesn't mean we're not distressed All of the elements that make you qualified to be a distressed community still exist. So my thing, I didn't just come up with this. I started down this path in 2005 when I ran for city council and I tried to float that balloon then and everybody said no, no, no, don't say that, don't say that, and I'm sorry that I didn't today, but the thing is this 20 years later, those same 28, two of those are townships those same 28 communities are still in distress. They're still a problem to their respective county executives.
Speaker 1:So your thought is that we will annex distressed communities because they would see a benefit in being annexed with us?
Speaker 4:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we'd be bringing in more need and more challenges, not fewer right.
Speaker 4:We would be collectively addressing everyone's needs, including our own.
Speaker 1:But you know, I mean, if you have like people say all the time, how come Detroit doesn't annex Highland Park? And that seems like an obvious, easy answer no longer Hamtramck, but Highland Park is a pretty broke city in the middle of a city and it seems like that might be to their benefit. Why not? Why haven't we done it?
Speaker 4:Well, I don't have the answer to that. But under a Landin administration, we will call all the stakeholders in. Now you can opt in. You don't have to. As you say, you have to follow the process, but when there is a mutual benefit to this, that doesn't you know. Yeah, there are things that need to be worked out tax bases and whatnot, tax bases and whatnot but the bottom line is this If you've been in distress for over 20 years and if you had a solution, you would have enacted it now. No county executive and it doesn't matter what, not L Brooks Patterson, dave Coulter is interested in discussing it Did we get Royal Oak Township?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess. My question for you, though, is how does that benefit Detroit, If you look at a city that and I'm not saying that I'm opposed to this I'm asking you this from an economic standpoint right, and that's exactly it.
Speaker 1:I think that, from a political standpoint, if we could bring more of these distressed communities in, black people would have more political power, because most of these distressed communities are majority black communities, right, so let's bring all home now. You may have left home to get away from Detroit, but come on home, because together we are stronger. Exactly. But here's my question we would go from being one of the poorest cities in the nation to the absolute poorest cities in the nation if all we brought in was low-income communities.
Speaker 4:No, I disagree. Okay, and here's why. There's some basic, to your point, economic principles to this, and that is, quite simply, efficiencies that are realized through economies of scale, and there's any number of business models political models, whatever that are being used to do just that in terms of managing growth and populations. Now my thing is suggesting well, let's take what we all have in common and make it work for everyone's benefit, because the benefit is in the increase, in the revenue sharing. Nobody's trying to hear anything about more taxes, and that's why these communities and Detroit have remained in distress all these years. It's one of those all hands make light work. It's one of those macroeconomic models that we can use to our advantage and make it more attractive. Now we talk a lot about and let me just say here a couple of weeks ago, the Michigan Chronicle brought in three mayors Atlanta, montgomery and New Orleans. All three cities use annexation. Atlanta probably more so than most. They were projecting they were going to go from number eight to number six in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1:They're using annexation to manage their growth Right, but that's because those states permit annexation to happen without so much red tape.
Speaker 4:That doesn't mean we can't get there either, but let's work with what we have. First of all, the states doesn't have any more money to give us, necessarily the feds, they don't want to. But they can't argue with their own revenue sharing plan because most of the states and cities that use it vigorously are in the South and there were red states and red communities. But to me the gold standard on annexation is Charlotte and Mecklenburg. They have in their charter a provision that says they come up every two years with a five-year annexation plan going forward. They are in constant review of annexation and how they're going to manage their growth and revenues relative to what they do.
Speaker 1:So I'm not opposed to what you're saying. I understand the value of all of this. I understand that, if you have, I think Detroit has something like 100, I mean, the metro of Detroit has something like 186 municipalities.
Speaker 1:We have the highest level of fragmentation of any metro area in the nation. You have five gross point communities. Each of them has their own city manager, their own systems that treasure. They can afford it, but it's duplicative. It is it's duplicative. They can afford it, but it's duplicative, it is, it is, it's duplicative.
Speaker 1:And when you look at all of these small communities, you have this village and this township and you have all of these different communities that have to hire people. Businesses are encouraged to merge and municipalities aren't. Look at our school districts. How many school districts? Now that you have charter schools, you have so many school districts that each of them has a superintendent, a treasurer, a school board. Each of them has all of these systems that would be more efficient together, but our culture in Metro Detroit is rooted in being able to escape from one group to another.
Speaker 1:When I'm moving on up, I don't just move to this side of town, I escape to this community, which has its own public school system, and it allows me to escape these people of color that I don't want to deal with, and there are other things to keep them apart. So it feels as though even people in Detroit sometimes want to escape Detroit. Even black people sometimes want to escape Detroit. Whether you're moving to Warren or Southfield or East Point or Roseville, you're trying to escape what is the city of Detroit, because there's this feeling that Detroit, for many people who are in the suburbs, is pulling us down, even if you can point out that there's financial distress. But I have a question for you, because this is not a bad idea. I think that there's a lot of details that need to be worked on. Why become mayor to do this? It seems as though this kind of initiative could be done by anybody, through a petition drive or some type of ballot initiative, organizing the community around this idea. Do you have to be mayor to move this forward?
Speaker 4:Not necessarily as you stated, but here's what you do have to be mayor to move this forward, not necessarily as you stated, but here's what you do have to be mayor for. You have to be mayor to engage and deal with all of the other things that would influence an affirmative vote on annexation. Let's talk about those things. Yeah, and you know, let's start with schools, because education is my next priority. That said, to your point, here we are 30 years later and where we have not moved the needle on illiteracy, we have not moved the needle on poverty and we have not moved the needle on unemployment. Now some would argue and quibble and say, well, we've made progress on poverty. Yeah, two or three percentage points, fine, tomato, tomato tomato.
Speaker 1:Those are interesting statistics, though, because they're talking about percentages, not whole numbers, and so if you attract in more upper income people, then the percentages of poor people go down, but the poor people are still poor. It's not like we fixed that. It's just that. We've also brought in other people and we've directed a whole lot of resources that could be used to help poor people now used to attract in those other people to reduce those percentages.
Speaker 4:Well, my commitment is, in fact, the core of. You know, people say that the longest war America's been in was the war in Afghanistan. That's not true. The longest war we've been in is the war on poverty.
Speaker 1:Are we fighting that?
Speaker 4:Not anymore, but you know that was the rhetoric around Afghanistan because of our involvement.
Speaker 1:No, I mean rhetoric around poverty. What does our war on poverty look like? Not good, what kind of weapons are we using?
Speaker 4:Exactly, and what we need to do is revisit all of the resources that we have, because poverty essentially has become an industry and there are people with vested interest in the status quo.
Speaker 1:Who.
Speaker 4:Anybody who's making money off of poor folks, so just Contractors, providers, you name it and not to say that they won't be needed ongoing. Having worked all these years in the human services area, in workforce development, in education, in all of that, it would be nice to say that we could work our way out of a job, work our way out of a contract, but there's always people coming into the system.
Speaker 1:That seems like it's blaming the people in a mid-level system. I just had a conversation with somebody you know. In this nation, full employment is the scariest thing possible to big business, because full employment means that people can demand higher wages. You need to have poverty to drive injustice. You have to have poverty. If you don't have people without jobs and you don't have desperation created in some corners, how do you justify paying some people $10 an hour, not really raising the minimum wage Substandard wages.
Speaker 4:Raising the minimum wage Substandard wages.
Speaker 1:Substandard wages in substandard conditions, poverty benefits capitalism. And then what happens is people who work in these industries are told oh, you have to get rid of poverty, as though poverty can be gotten rid of. We need poverty to maintain our economic system. You're not going to get rid of it. And people? That's socialism.
Speaker 4:That's what they say. That's to your point back. If, like I said, I've been around for a minute, but the Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act stated or stipulated that 4% unemployment was full employment, Exactly Okay. So there was always a provision for a minimum of a 4% unemployment to be considered full employment, so that you would have that stream of poverty in the system to provide those checks and balances in terms of maintaining and not creating the demand side.
Speaker 1:To have an exploitable labor force. The exploitable labor force, just like undocumented immigrants, are part of our economic system. If you got rid of undocumented immigrants, you might have to pay more for food or construction, and we have been right. We get rid of all these undocumented immigrants, because undocumented immigrants don't have minimum wages, they don't have workers' rights and they don't even have the ability to complain.
Speaker 4:I don't know if you recall, but back about 20, 25 years ago there was what they termed a mockumentary or a satire called A Day Without a Mexican. You can find it on YouTube. I would invite people to revisit that and to get some sense of the absurdity of getting rid of all of the migrant workers, undocumented workers, service workers, whatever that you have.
Speaker 4:And it was focused just on the state of California, which today is 50% Hispanic. But you know, when you take a look at that, you realize the absurdity of all of the things that are going on. And for the people who think that getting rid of all the undocumented people in America and sending them back to their country of origin, fine, Know this it doesn't change the trajectory of where they're forecasting our numbers to be in the next 25 years.
Speaker 4:There's a scapegoat? Yeah, because those people were never counted in the census. So you can take them all away and it doesn't change the trajectory of the numbers that are coming.
Speaker 1:That's why we're trying to get rid of birthright citizenship and other things, because there's a desire to actually get rid of it. But you're absolutely right, those people are not counted in the census. Mass incarceration serves the same purpose, right? You have prison industries that have another exploitable labor force, and they even have to be paid less than undocumented immigrants. So when we talk about poverty being dictated by social workers or social service organizations, it really bothers me that we don't look at the real structure of poverty. Sure, some of them will. Sometimes we set up these programs to appease and make it look like we're making a difference, but the people who need poor people to be people to poor are not necessarily social service agencies.
Speaker 4:Oh, no, no, no, they're legitimate in their role and in their function and in their effort and in their work. I tell you, I was chairman of Matrix Human Services and I spent seven years getting them stable. I've been involved with Head Start. I've been involved with SARE National, sare Local, sare Coal, ros, ies. I mean, I've got a long history.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to take a break and learn more about the history when we come back.
Speaker 2:Have you ever dreamed of being on the airwaves? Well, the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network is here to make those dreams come true. Formerly known as the Deep Network and located inside the Stoudemire, the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network are for studio space and production staff to help get your idea off of the ground. Just visit authenticallydetcom and send a request through the contact page. Interested in renting space for corporate events, meetings, conferences, social events or resource fairs? The MASH Detroit Small Business Hub is a 6,000 square feet space available for members, residents and businesses and organizations. To learn more about rental options at Mass Detroit, contact Nicole Perry at nperry at ecn-detroitorg or 313-331-3485.
Speaker 1:All right, we're back Talking with Rogelio Landin. I'm sorry, I apologize for not getting that right. About your history in workforce development and anti-poverty programs.
Speaker 4:Tell me what you learned along the way and how does that apply to your vision for your work as mayor? What I learned along the way is the fundamental thing that people want is an opportunity, and that comes in many ways and configurations and everybody has different needs. I could give you a bunch of anecdotal stuff, but the bottom line is nobody started out saying they wanted to be illiterate. Nobody started out saying they they didn't want to be a skilled worker. Uh, nobody started out. Uh, basically, where they find themselves today when they're in a situation where they need assistance in order to get that jump start and uh, I, I fully supported the mayor's program when he called it Jump Start. He's the only person in the years that I've been in this game who had the vision to say we have to go all the way back to literacy and start pulling people. Which mayor is that? Mayor Duggan.
Speaker 1:So what has?
Speaker 4:he done for literacy. The whole Jump Start program started initially with the idea of getting folks who were illiterate up to speed and then into the workforce system.
Speaker 1:So where has that worked?
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I haven't followed the— the thing is that this mayor is very good at naming things and they sound really cool and then nothing really changes. It's just got a new name. So I'm just trying to understand, because in my work I haven't seen a whole lot of increased access to literacy programs, and I have to agree with you.
Speaker 4:Now I would say that with the number of people in the city of Detroit, they should have ran out of money in the first 30 days. They were paying stipends, they were, you know, all kinds of incentives, transportation, you name it to get people to get to class or to get to a program or to get someplace in upskilling and reskilling to get more competitive in this labor market. The Detroit Compact for our high school students, essentially guaranteeing college admissions and education.
Speaker 1:Why aren't these programs being utilized at scale?
Speaker 4:Well, that's a good question, and it's one that I intend to find out about.
Speaker 1:How will you find out about it?
Speaker 4:Research, looking at data, getting input from people that are responsible for these programs.
Speaker 1:Have you ever talked to board people and find out why they aren't working?
Speaker 4:Actually no, and when we're ready to move into education, I'll just tell you quite simply why, and I don't know if we're ready for that yet. You can go there. Okay, my position on education is quite simply this. Dps went bankrupt. Dpscd has been in its configuration for some time and still not producing any results. I believe that what we need to do is move to a strong mayor model.
Speaker 1:We have a strong, mayor model. No, you don't, no you don't you mean in education, in education, oh in education, okay, okay, you mean in education, in education, oh in education.
Speaker 4:Okay, okay, right now. Everybody. In fact, at the Council of Baptist Pastors event that they had over at Tabernacle, all the candidates that are running for mayor essentially agreed they were going to support DPSCD. I'm sorry, I don't Not in its present form, nor with its results, not in its present form, nor with its results. So you know, I'm not prepared to throw another generation of our children under the bus in terms of what they can look forward to. We talk about absenteeism, we talk about all of the other social determinants that adversely impact our children's ability to learn and to be successful.
Speaker 1:Why are children absent?
Speaker 4:I don't know, but my sense of it is they haven't been able to garner the value of the educational experience. And, given the results and the outcomes, I could understand why someone would say even parents why am I sending my kid to school? Why am I going to go out of my way to do this? For what?
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting because I've worked in nonprofit field for something like 40 years. I've been here for nine. I work with students, I work with parents, I work with people who experience the systems and if you ask me, I could actually give you some very specific answers. I think too often people think about other.
Speaker 1:We otherize other people and assume, oh, they don't understand the value of education. We don't look at transportation, housing stability. We don't look at school closures and how that has impacted students to have direct access to schools. We don't look at school closures and how that has impacted students to have direct access to schools. We don't look at policies around uniforms and late starts and everything like that. We always assume that there is something inadequate about the people who are not benefiting in our society. It's kind of like we blame the victims. If you say, well, they don't understand the value of education, then it suggests that education is that there are not these other barriers. I wonder would it be helpful for somebody who is running for public office to actually talk to some of the voters who are negatively impacted by these systems to find out their point of view and their experiences?
Speaker 4:Absolutely. And back to your question that you asked me earlier why do I you know, on the annexation issue have to be mayor to do that? On education, I would say the same thing because we need to change our model and to be able to get to all of those questions that you raise and deal with all of those policies that adversely impact our children's and families' abilities to be successful in their education pursuits. And to your whole point, I'm not blaming the kids about the value proposition in terms of what they do, a value proposition in terms of what they do, but at the same time, you know you get what you get and there is a value, a relationship that's assigned to that. And if the system isn't providing what it should provide, that isn't on the family, the children, the community. That's on the system and that's where that and most folks will tell you.
Speaker 4:I've been all over the country in education issues. I've presented the national Title I, I've developed a resource equity solution. I've spent 20 years with the National Council on Educating Black Children, national Association of Black School Educators, of which our own, dr Harville, was president of back in the day, and on and on and on, and did the work in Ohio with the Closing the Achievement Gap program that served as the underpinning for the my Brother's Keeper program under the Obama administration and worked in 17 urban districts in Ohio with programs that were successful. Urban districts in Ohio with programs that were successful. So my point to that is this it's not just about mayoral control or mayoral strong mayor model. It's got to be a strong mayor who understands urban education and how to make those things happen.
Speaker 1:I will just contend that talking to policymakers and providers and teachers and educators will not tell you what students need. Unless you talk to students and their parents and really work to understand them, you won't understand the barriers. And this has been a lifelong pursuit of mine trying to elevate voices of people who are unseen in our community Because so many of them face. I'll give an example. I'll give an example. I used to live in East English Village and frequently I'd be on what is this Street? Cadget, near Warren, near East English Village, prep, which is now renamed Finney, thank goodness. But I'd be there in the morning and I would see students Walking out of the school building. Getting on buses Didn't make any sense to me. I saw students walking out of the school building getting on buses Didn't make any sense to me. I saw students walking out of the school buildings, walking into the stores near there, and that didn't make any sense to me. And then I learned that the school had a policy that if you arrived late you could not enter the school building for the first hour. Now you have students who don't have regular transportation to school, who are dependent on buses, which are notoriously late and unpredictable. And if that bus gets you, then they're late. Rather than the school providing safe shelter and helping that student be in class, the school says oh no, we're going to punish you, go away. That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:If you're worried about attendance, but then the attendance problem is not the school policy. The attendance problem is these parents don't care about their kids. We have so many young people who are couch surfing, meaning that they don't have a stable home, so they're staying with somebody else's home, possibly on a sofa or the floor, because they don't have permanent home, and they go from place to place to place to place to place, couch surfing. Well, you don't know how to get to school from here here, and it makes it very difficult. However, the McKinney-Vento Act is a homelessness act which requires schools to provide transportation to homeless students. So that's a systems problem if a homeless student can't get to school.
Speaker 1:Another example schools have dress codes, and the dress codes of schools imposed sometimes mean that students who don't come to school get kicked out. Well, if you're a poor kid or you're not living in the same place you were living in before, you may not have your school uniform, which means if you go to school in the wrong clothes, you're going to be kicked out. And so, when you look at school policy, my question is does school policy promote attendance or no? Because poverty is something that transcends most people's ability to escape in the short term. Now you can't escape poverty. You can work full time making $12 an hour and not afford housing. You know that right. And so, when we look at this, we're not talking about people who don't work. We're not talking about people who don't work. We're not talking about people, necessarily, who don't try, but we're talking about people who are struggling inside of systems, and their struggles are invisible to the people who make decisions about their lives. How would you, as mayor, do a better job of understanding these things?
Speaker 4:better job of understanding these things? Well, certainly I would bring my own experience and what I believe is a deep sense of understanding and compassion. Now, does that mean I know everything? Absolutely not, but I do know the intersectional relationships of all of those multi-levels of barriers and things that again contribute to an adverse environment for success in terms of our children and families. That said, we would look for again, and maybe it's because I don't know, I'm not inside and the systems themselves really aren't going to tell us, because that would be like telling on themselves. So, you know, let's take over our schools, get inside, find out where the gaps are and let's start filling the gaps. Is that going to happen overnight? Not at all, but let's prioritize, find out where the greatest needs are and begin addressing them as quickly as possible with whatever resources we can assign to it.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's switch up a little bit. Let's talk about economic development. Every mayor, every mayoral candidate, has been talking about economic development. Every mayor, every mayoral candidate has been talking about economic development. What is economic development in your book and what would you do, as mayor, to improve the economy in the city of Detroit?
Speaker 4:First thing I would do is reclaim a lot of our assets, and by that I would say like the Detroit Medical Center. Everybody knows that nobody's happy with and or about DMC. We need to get our medical center back and get our standing back in the community. That represents thousands of jobs. It represents a lot of prestige in terms of reclaiming our position. My own personal history. I made history here in 2012, being the first patient in the country to undergo an impeller process. That got me involved in cardio advocacy. It got me involved in running around country. I've even testified at Congress on it. Detroit is the number one market for Impella.
Speaker 1:Can you?
Speaker 4:describe what that is. Impella is a heart pump that they use instead of or in place of doing open heart surgery. Oh, wow, and Detroit owns cardiac health and cardiac history. In 1952, the first open heart surgery was done here in Detroit at Harper. It was a heart pump that was developed by GM Wayne State and Dr Doe Drill from Harper Hospital. It looks like if you go to the second floor at the heart hospital it looks like a little mini 12-cylinder engine and you can see the automotive influence in the design.
Speaker 4:Today I wish I had brought one with me. My experience made closed heart surgery possible where they inserted a mini heart pump with a catheter shut me down. Five, six hours later I was good to go out. I was chairing a board meeting in 36 hours versus the six-month recovery on open heart surgery. So we are positioned, historically as well as technologically, to own the cardiac space, and that's one of the things I'd like to see us do. We saw what happened with Dan Gilbert's MedTech Innovation Center. He's already got Banff coming in. They're going to be moving in those areas. I don't foresee a lot of problems in terms of momentum in doing some things in the medical tech as well as the actual health issue. Now we look at our populations, we are disproportionately represented in cardiac, in obesity, in high blood pressure, in all of these maladies that come with stressors and any number of things and social determinants of health.
Speaker 1:Now, you know. It's very interesting that you say this. Nobody else has brought up health care. No, but health care I'm reading and I kind of knew this is the largest employer in the city of Detroit. If you look at all of the hospital systems, they employ more people than GM and Ford and Chrysler. We need to build on that, but there's not the same political influence of health care systems on local policy.
Speaker 4:There will be, if you elect me.
Speaker 1:Okay, tell me what that looks like.
Speaker 4:What it looks like is us again reclaiming our assets. And let me say this while I'm there Everything I'm going to talk about on economic development, I have already secured the financing and the funds to do I can buy DMC today and everything else that I'm going to mention. My second part of that economic development formula is and I've already had conversations with county commissioners and people from the Port Authority regarding the fourth leg of a logistic system that never materialized and I think we're in a good place right now to do that with infrastructure and that's a development of a clean port all the way down the river. Get rid of all that industrial blight and build up a clean port to complement the freight. What Warren Evans would already like to see as an expanded aerotropolis. Debbie Dingell would like to see an expanded Aerotropolis.
Speaker 1:Aerotropolis.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the project that went out. Robert Fucano first planted that seed back in the day when they were looking at doing more with Willow Run in terms of freight and commerce and kind of connected to what was happening at the expansion at Detroit Metro. So and what we need to do now is we spent 10 years there was a group working on the double stack rail system out of Newfoundland in Canada to bring freight in off the oceans and the ports up there, truck it down here. You may recall.
Speaker 1:Why truck it down here as opposed to bringing it by freight?
Speaker 4:No rail.
Speaker 1:Why don't we see more at the Port Authority? Why don't we see more ships, freight ships?
Speaker 4:actually docking here. We don't have the port facilities and the capacity.
Speaker 1:Why not?
Speaker 4:That I can't tell you. What I can tell you is this I am committed to building a port and I can say I've got the money to do it.
Speaker 1:When you say you've got the money, are you wealthy?
Speaker 4:No, no, I'm about the brokest person in this campaign.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when you say you have the money, what do you mean?
Speaker 4:I have commitments from four VCs who have said they are interested in investing and financing humanitarian projects in Detroit, and that's a broad scope, and I'm proud to say that all four are African American, Two are male, Two are female. Can you introduce me to them? Yes, I will. All right, I have ideas too. No, not a problem. But you know what I'm saying is and I think Mayor Duggan just said something the other day about somebody's big ideas he didn't put a lot of stock in anybody's big ideas if they didn't have the money. Put a lot of stock in anybody's big ideas if they didn't have the money. Well, I can say without batting an eye I've got access to the resources to finance whatever I've done and I just closed that deal last week.
Speaker 1:Imagine not believing in projects until people have the money. That would suggest that only wealthy people have the right to innovate in our society, and it's crazy to me. A couple more topics I want to get to before we're done. One of them is housing. What are you going to do about housing?
Speaker 4:I think housing everybody's trying to build down, I'm about building people up. Sonia Mays said on a Detroit Next segment that what we have and let's not take anything away from housing, but is a income deficit where we need to get people built up. And that's why my focus is going to be on literacy, it's going to be on education, it's going to be on upskilling, it's going to be on reskilling to get people to make more money so they can meet the housing availability.
Speaker 1:So we're assuming that under your leadership we will no longer have minimum wage jobs in Detroit.
Speaker 4:I don't believe so, because the value proposition will be there.
Speaker 1:Okay. So then, who's going to work at McDonald's?
Speaker 4:Whoever's still coming into the system, and McDonald's isn't going to be paying minimum wage as such.
Speaker 1:Well, they're paying $15 an hour right now, I think.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they're going to wind up paying more, because the more we upskill and reskill, it's going to create more demand, and I think that's one of the ways that we do that. Now, how do we pay for that? Right now, $26 billion every year is being left on the table in tuition reimbursement, so folks who have access to it, with less than 5% of the population taking advantage of it. So we're leaving billions and billions of dollars for tuition reimbursement on the table. I would reach out to labor, I would reach out to professional associations, I would reach out to any group who is responsible for providing the staffing, talent and workforce that we need and encourage them to encourage their staffs to take advantage of this tuition reimbursement, upskill and make room in their slots for people to move up.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Eastside Community Network is where we're located right now. We're a community development organization. There are about 25 of us in the city of Detroit working in coalition with each other. There are many more than those, detroit working in coalition with each other. There are many more than those. How does your administration see working with organizations like this to achieve your agenda?
Speaker 4:Oh, you're basically ambassadors. You're going to carry the water, you're going to bring the input, you're going to be the center of communication.
Speaker 1:Will we be paid to carry water, or is this volunteer service?
Speaker 4:Nobody does it for free. Okay, I don't know anybody that does it for free.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, a lot of times people want to draw and you know, let me pick your brain. You know our brains get picked a lot with no compensation. So, I'm just curious about how you see your administration working with us.
Speaker 4:You know, I believe that you demonstrate the value of the relationship by investing in it and while I don't apply that to myself, I've always said the only power in knowledge is sharing. I don't mind sharing anything with anybody, and if it does you some good, great. You know I can give you all kinds of background in terms of volunteerism, but if it helps, it helps. There's a value to it somewhere, and just like there's a value in what you produce and what you do, there's also a value in what you prevent, and we need to take a close look at what that could be and how we can prevent certain things. But getting back to groups like that, I can tell you right down the street you've got the Samaritan Center. Would you say that that's a viable asset to the community here on the east side, absolutely 25 years Hispanic owned and operated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm well aware of that, sir Metro owns well, it used to own it in partnership with Boysville and now it owns it outright, so I'm really familiar with the history of that. I think that there are ways, certainly, that we can acknowledge and really work more effectively together across ethnicities, across geographies, to make things work. But I do have one final question for you. You are running to do something that has not been done in 12 years, and that is you are running to try to win a writing campaign. So what's your strategy?
Speaker 4:to try to win a writing campaign Right. So what's your strategy? My strategy is essentially to adapt to a new way of campaigning which I've come to learn, which is social media and Internet and doing things in bytes. So I'm going to dissect my campaign and put it out issue by issue in terms of engaging, informing and hoping that it'll drive people. I think once they see my issues, once they see my positions and once they see that I am the one candidate who not just tell you what, but I'll tell you how. There isn't anything I've said that I'm not prepared to defend and stand up for, and tell you how it's going to get done and assign the dollars and the value propositions in terms of doing it.
Speaker 4:And let me just say that there's been a lot of conversation about the neighborhoods and we hadn't touched on that. Oh, touch on it. You know, neighborhoods and commercial corridors are, quite frankly, organic and that's you know people's. A lot of the candidates seem to think that, well, you know, we want to do this and we want no, it doesn't work that way of how they would like their neighborhood to be A vital commercial corridor, verner Highway, the gateway to the city in and out, in terms of commerce and things that are dynamic and vibrant and happening. It's got a strong arts and culture component and so you know we. But that didn't happen overnight. It started out with homeownership, which is the anchor of all neighborhood stabilization. You get 50% homeownership. You don't have to go looking for people to open up in your commercial corridor.
Speaker 1:They'll come. You know what, having grown up in other parts of Detroit, where there is much more homeownership, I can tell you some commercial corridors are not full. Detroit, where there's much more homeownership, I can tell you some commercial corridors are not full. I grew up in a very well off neighborhood near Woodward Avenue and there was nothing then. There's nothing now, so I'm not certain that's true. When I look at Southwest Detroit, what I look at is a very self-contained community. That's almost as if it was Hamtramck. It's a majority immigrant population, very tight-knit, and people don't necessarily leave to come to other parts of the city. You could go all day in Detroit and not see a single Latino person on your walk of life.
Speaker 1:Because, people are so segregated, highly segregated, and my aunt is Guatemalan and she grew up in North. I mean, she didn't grow up in Northwest Detroit, she raised my cousins in Northwest Detroit along with my uncle, but she was always, you know, stood out because she was an immigrant living in Northwest Detroit and most of her connections were in Southwest Detroit socially. So how do you get around that? I mean, you have the segregation kind of. Whenever you have segregation, it kind of breeds this creation of vibrant business districts. My mother grew up in Detroit. In a highly segregated Detroit, Black business districts are thriving. You know, Oakland Avenue was doing stuff and they had everything that you have on Verner. The difference is that many black people over time began to disperse and assimilate into the broader infrastructure, whereas in Southwestern you weren't seeing that happen in the same way, Wouldn't you say? That's true.
Speaker 4:To a large extent Okay, but a lot of that is security, a lot of it is culture, a lot of that is language, a lot of that.
Speaker 4:Absolutely A lot of that is language, a lot of that, absolutely, which is why you've had Hungarian enclaves like in Delray. You've had German enclaves on the northeast side. You can look back at the history and see where people settled and, as you say, dispersed. But I can send you a map that Kurt Metzger did back in 2004, commissioned by Kwame back then, and I was amazed when I saw it myself, and essentially it's a map of Hispanics in Detroit with shades of blue, and, yes, the darkest blue was in Southwest, but there was not one part of the city of Detroit that was not a shade of blue. Right, okay, so we are in fact everywhere, not necessarily in identifiable numbers, but we're there.
Speaker 1:I don't mean to suggest that you're not there anywhere. I'm just meaning to suggest, if you go to New York City, for example, the Hispanic Latino people are present everywhere. If you go to LA, they are present everywhere. If you go to LA, they're present everywhere. If you come to Detroit, the concentration is Mexican town and there still is that relative segregation. But listen, I want to thank you for coming and this has been a really, really interesting conversation, because your ideas, your mind, just works differently and, regardless of what happens, I hope you continue to put your ideas out there.
Speaker 1:Because, change won't happen without good ideas. Go on.
Speaker 4:I just want to leave with this. One note is nobody is talking about the most important stakeholder in our city, and that is the people is on uplifting and building up our populations out and out of poverty so that they can begin to contribute and fulfill their objectives in terms of a better life.
Speaker 1:And on that we can agree. The people are the most important part of any city, of any place, and we certainly need to be more people-focused. So if you have topics that you want discussed on Authentically Detroit, you can hit us up on our socials at Authentically Detroit, on Facebook, instagram and Twitter, or you can email us at authenticallydetroit at gmailcom. First of all, I want to thank you for coming on here. We got a little confusion last week and now we got to clear it up, or the week before last, but now it's time for shout outs.
Speaker 4:Let's start with you, rahulio. Do you have anybody you want to shout out, wow? I wouldn't know where to start or where to finish. Let me just say to everyone who has demonstrated their support, their commitment, their investment in moving this agenda forward, always thinking of our city first, our people again, as you said, the most important part of this campaign. That said, let me just say, since I am a write-in, r-o-g-e-l-i-o-l-a-n-d-i-n. Rogelio Landin, and, coincidentally, that's only seven letters in the first name, like Michael, six letters in the last name, like Duggan. So you did it once. You can do it again. Please think about voting for me.
Speaker 1:All right, I'd like to shout out the candidates this is hard work and you guys are doing hard work and raising issues and, like I said, this is exciting to me to have all of these issues out there, because one thing about change is it doesn't happen until people start thinking differently. So thank you for contributing and all of the candidates are contributing because you're putting your whole self out there for critique and criticism and everything.
Speaker 1:So thank you, and thank you for coming in as a write-in, because I know that's hard and you're continuing on with your campaign, really continuing to push your message. So I look forward to seeing what happens in August and staying connected. All right, thank you so much, all right, thanks a lot. We're moving on up to the east side. We're seeing lots of hot moves in the sky Moving on up to the east side.
Speaker 2:We finally got a piece of the pie. It's so bright in the kitchen. I've seen some burns on the grill. Took a whole lot of trying. I'm Orlando Bailey of Outlier Media and Authentically Detroit, and I'm Jair Stays of Daily Detroit, detroit. We've got something special coming up that you won't want to miss.
Speaker 3:That's right, Orlando. At 10 am on Sunday, June 21st, we're bringing together Detroit's mayoral candidates for an in-depth community forum right in the heart of the East Side.
Speaker 2:This isn't your typical candidate event. We're talking real issues, real solutions and real talk about Detroit's future.
Speaker 3:Join us at the East Side Community Network at 4401 Connor Street in Detroit from 10 am to 2 pm.
Speaker 2:We'll be joined by my Authentically Detroit co-host and community leader, donna Givis-Davidson, to moderate this important discussion.
Speaker 3:Space is limited, so make sure to RSVP through the Eventbrite link in our show notes. Oh, and on that form, there is a spot for your voice to be heard, to help shape our questions and the conversation.
Speaker 2:That's right. Whether you're a longtime resident or new to the city, come by ECN on June 21st. It's your chance to hear directly from the candidates who want to leave Detroit.
