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.
Check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @AuthenticallyDetroit!
Authentically Detroit
Black Detroit Democracy Podcast: Beyond Hudson’s and Trickle-Down Economics with Antwan Hart and Sedrick Huff Jr.
The Authentically Detroit Podcast Network in collaboration with Detroit One Million presents: The Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Sam Robinson!
Together, Donna and Sam illuminate the complexities of Detroit’s unique political landscape and give residents a resource for navigating civic engagement and election season.
On this episode Black Democracy Project interns - Antwan Hart and Sedrick Huff Jr. - from the MSU Innovate Program joined the conversation around Detroit’s alleged comeback. Both Antwan and Sedrick are political science majors on the pre-law track at Michigan State with an interest in reforming the criminal justice system. These impressive rising leaders will be assisting with the Black Democracy Project over the summer.
For more episodes of the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, click here.
Detroit City Government is a service institution that recognizes its subordination to the people of Detroit. The city shall provide for the public peace, health and safety of persons and property within its jurisdictional limits officers, in seeking to advance, conserve, maintain and protect the integrity of the human, physical and natural resources of this city from encroachment and or dismantlement. The people have a right to expect city government to provide for its residents decent housing, job opportunities, reliable, convenient and comfortable transportation, recreational facilities and activities, cultural enrichment, including libraries, art and historical museums, clean air and waterways, safe drinking water and a sanitary, environmentally sound city. Keep it locked. The Black Detroit Democracy podcast starts right after these messages.
Speaker 2:Detroit One Million is a journalism project started by Sam Robinson that centers a generation of Michiganders growing up in a state without a city with one million people. Support the only independent reporter covering the 2025 Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people.
Speaker 3:Good journalism costs. Visit DetroitOneMillioncom to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. I'm Donna Givens-Davidson, President and CEO of the Eastside Community Network and co-host of Authentically Detroit.
Speaker 4:I'm Sam Robinson, founder of Detroit. One Million.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening in and supporting our expanded effort to build another platform of authentic voices for real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. We want you to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. The purpose of this podcast is to encourage Detroit citizens to stay vigilant in the fight for justice and equality. With a special call to action for Black Detroit, we seek to build awareness of our into organizing his role in this year's city elections and how to engage young people in local politics. Welcome back to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. How is everyone today?
Speaker 4:Donna, I'm great. How are you? I'm great, how are you? I'm doing well, I'm a little tired. After last night we saw the Hudson's for the first time, and was it some, you know, amazing, grandiose, like, oh my gosh, this new type of? No, it was like a room in another room, but we saw it for the first time and there was a balcony with some fake trees and plants and you got to see that angle, looking down on Woodward, thinking when was the last time people have like, had this angle some fake trees and plants?
Speaker 1:and you got to see that angle, looking down on Woodward thinking when was the last time people have had this angle?
Speaker 4:Since before that, probably decades ago, since before that building was torn down, but the building itself was kind of eh.
Speaker 3:The building was closed when I was a child.
Speaker 4:It's unfinished.
Speaker 3:It is unfinished, it's unfinished and it is also architecturally uninteresting to me from the outside. I expected to have that wow factor and I was like ugh. And I don't want to be always negative, and no, I'm not angry for people who are listening, I'm just saying that it did not really strike me as beautiful as I thought it would. And the other question I had is how beautiful will it be 40 years from now? You know, there was a time when rinsing was like really hot. Now everybody's like let's tear it down. Anyway, kamau, how are you?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm well and I co-sign it. It doesn't feel like an epicenter or like when you think of this. The mayor said it's beautiful.
Speaker 4:So a lot of people there were like like, oh, my god, breathtaking, you know. So I mean, it's a taste.
Speaker 3:It is, and I saw it through your eyes. Some people are just so excited about everybody. Remember, when the queue line started, people were like this is going to solve public transportation and I had some disagreements with family members because I was like I don't see how I can probably ride my bike faster than the queue line. Why would I get on the queue line?
Speaker 5:but yeah, but otherwise I'm well. It's been a great year and also, too, it's a circus politically right now, which I love the circus hasn't ended.
Speaker 4:It stopped in like november to december 31st and then just continued yeah, it keeps things interesting yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, what's interesting to me is the way people admire, you know, mike Duggan. They admire him for things that make no sense in terms of political leader, and I want to spend some time really talking about that and just untangling what does it mean to be a great mayor of a city of Detroit? What does it mean to say Detroit has come back? What metrics are we looking at? Are we looking at poverty? Are we looking at homelessness? Are we looking at the condition of neighborhoods? Are we looking in terms of environmental health? Are we saying, geez, now we have the Union Station and we have this cool new building on Woodward and we can look out in places? Those are my questions, because I think sometimes we're having parallel arguments and my argument is always going to be about equity, inclusion and justice, but other people want different things from their city and I suppose their views and values count as much as mine. We just don't see the world through the same lens.
Speaker 4:There's a lot of different measurements. I mean, they just did a city press conference last week talking about the black and Hispanic wealth that has increased through home value, and I think if you're looking at home value, that is one metric. Does that shine light on the circumstance of each and every resident living in those neighborhoods that is even affected by the question?
Speaker 3:Let's be real clear. This study is the same study that was conducted and publicized last year. We're going to get into that study and the flaws in the actual design of the study. Just because somebody releases a study does not mean it passes muster as a true academic project, a research project. Sometimes people just throw information together and reach conclusions that we can't use on our side, but I want to spend a little bit more time talking about correlation, causation, sample size and how you know who's benefiting, because the study lacks all of that integrity. Before we do that, though, word on the street. What are you hearing, Sam Kamau? What are you hearing from people in the street right now? What are some words?
Speaker 4:Well, the thing that I'm hearing the day after and even last night in the Hudson's, is that this is a mayor running for governor. It was interesting to see all the council candidates back there. Two of them were running for mayor, of course, city Council President Mary Sheffield and District 7 Councilman Fred Durhall, as well as Solomon Kinloch was seated. Duggan shouted out a lot of the clergy he did. He did not make any reference to Solomon Kinloch or Triumph Church.
Speaker 3:I'm glad he didn't, because that would poison me Anyway.
Speaker 4:He shouted out. All the other council members, der Hall and Mary got their shouts out.
Speaker 5:Well, by nature, the state of the city is similar to the state of the state. It is to present to council what their priorities should be for the year, and so it's often why they pull them into saying, oh, this person helped with this. And I think a lot of folks are feeling and this is the morning after that, the argument that we've been making for the past decade or so around tax abatements for billionaires that that argument has shifted. It's now this we need to do this. This is the way that we do development, different than other states where many folks are questioning why isn't the money going into our neighborhood?
Speaker 3:I think you know, if you looked at the Trump administration and his priorities and the mayor of Detroit and the mayor's priorities, they're going to be kind of the same. You're not going to see a big focus on the environment. You're going to give lip service to the environment, but you see your job and the role of the city as helping to facilitate business interest. Yes, and isn't that what the EPA is saying right now? Listen, we're facilitating business interest. There are just so many ways that I see some parallels here. And again, I'm not trying to be negative, I'm just being honest with my assessment of things. We have a trickle-down city Could be positive.
Speaker 4:By the way you spin it, the campaign's looking for some Trump support, some Republican support.
Speaker 3:And he'll get it.
Speaker 5:But I think you're right when you talk about trickle-down economics.
Speaker 3:Right, I'll tell you what trickle-down economics. Now, long before either of you was alive, when George Bush was running against Ronald Reagan the first time, before he became vice president, we're talking about George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan was talking about trickle down economics. For the first time we heard that term in a political conversation and George Bush called it voodoo economics. He said listen, wealth does not trickle down like that. And that mindset has become so normalized in neoliberal thinking that we really do believe that if we make billionaires wealthier billionaires, we subsidize billionaires. Somehow. People who are risking losing their homes and people living in substandard homes are going to benefit. And I want to spend some time really, really dissecting. What does that mean? And word on the street? That's the word on that street, right? But you also go to bus stops and you also hang out in the hood. Is that the word in the hood?
Speaker 5:No, I mean, I think it was interesting to see an extended segment about the auto industry and shifts into manufacturing over the past 10 years. If you look at the auto market, most people are not buying cars. Right now, we're seeing tariffs come, cars are more expensive than they've ever been, many folks depend on public transit to get around, and so I think the conversations that they were having were ones that are appealing to, yes, to the business community, to corporations, but at the community level, folks are concerned about, particularly right now they're concerned about, like medical transport, free clinics, they're concerned about mental health, housing costs, and so those are the things that are impacting people more at the community level. But when we shift that conversation away from that to you know, how do we make sure that billionaires are in better position to shape this region? It doesn't give them an opportunity to be heard. So that's what I'd say.
Speaker 3:I think that that's an important you know consideration that people just bring a different lens, a different set of needs in this community, where St Lance has got so much subsidy and so much support, building this new plant to build three row Jeeps that nobody's buying and it's like, first of all, again, you know, I think you know one thing about when you get as you get older, you start seeing things that younger people don't see, Because I grew up and I graduated from high school in 1981. And in 1981, you had this tremendous auto recession where everybody lost jobs because the United States was building cars that people weren't buying. We had, at that time, an oil crisis. Oil prices were going high and I remember my father purchasing a Volkswagen Rabbit. This is a Cadillac man's Coupe de Ville, you know some rooftop.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm talking about and he's in a Rabbit because the oil prices have gone up and Cadillacs were not energy efficient, fuel efficient, and the Japanese automakers were taking over the market. There was a lot of hostility towards Japanese people. There was actually the murder of Vincent Chin, who was a Chinese man who they mistakenly believed was Japanese, and they just killed him. There was that much anger and the auto industry literally the US auto industry, collapsed. Chrysler Corporation collapsed.
Speaker 3:Decades later, four decades later, what are we doing?
Speaker 3:The exact same thing that failed us 40 years prior. We're building vehicles that are not fuel efficient, that do not meet any of these standards for clean air, and the price points are so high that people are from other places, not just Japan, but Korea, and some European car makers are just really creating a really strong competition for vehicles sales, and so we're going to see some layoffs in an industry that Detroit subsidized. Factory Zero is the Poletown plant. Right, and the Poletown plant was subsidized in the same way this Chrysler plant was. But the final thing I want to say about this is the environmental damage remains. Even after the jobs go away, even after the plant shut down or downsized, the environmental damage remains and the shifting of resources to support these billionaires who then pull out is a permanent loss of opportunity for the people who could have used those same resources to fix up their blocks. And if we evaluate in that way, then we're doing something good. But unfortunately we look at these narrow metrics that are twisted to sort of fit a narrative.
Speaker 4:A lot of it is pride. I mean that narrative is so you know we're so prideful of our car auto history I heard the mayor over the weekend talk about. At this youth mobility summit at New Lab, which the mayor is very proud of, we'll tout and highlight New Lab and all the hundred and some companies that are inside of that tech innovation. What do you call it? Incubator is the word. What do you call it? Incubator is the word.
Speaker 5:And even more broadly, you kind of pointed to the federal policy and how it impacts us here. America is a nation that is trying to compete more broadly with China and Brazil and other rising nations. So we're seeing a state like Michigan go back into manufacturing because we're trying to compete with these larger nations, and so I think that's a big part of it as well. It's baked into the pride of the auto industry, but also a lot of American pride.
Speaker 3:They associate it with pride and I think pride has something to do with it. I think you know it's bigger than pride. I think a lot of younger people I think it's generational People my age have that pride. Younger people are like you know what? I just want a car share. My son is he'll be 30 this year.
Speaker 1:He's a little bit older than both of you guys.
Speaker 3:But listen, my son does not own a car and he does not want to own a car. He is applying for a new job. He lives in LA and he's like listen, this is a train ride away. This looks like the job for me. That's his thinking. His world does not involve.
Speaker 4:Which we're starting to hear that from leaders. Now the acknowledgement of you know, warren Evans is talking about it. Dan Gilbert a couple of years ago actually talked about it. Dan Gilbert was at the state of the city yesterday, got a standing ovation for everyone.
Speaker 3:Did he stand?
Speaker 4:I don't know if he did.
Speaker 3:He stayed seated.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but really paused and slowed down to reflect on the legacy of Gilbert and the Family Foundation and the investment. Talked about his son who passed away of cancer a few years back, and talked about it. Even despite the personal tragedies that Dan Gilbert has suffered, he has not wavered in his commitment to the welfare of the people. Of Detroit.
Speaker 3:Is the quote the welfare of the people of Detroit and I get that he's a smooth talker, yeah, and I think that that's great and I think that you know, of course we have empathy for both Dan Gilbert and his son and his wife for their loss and I'm not a person who does not appreciate, actually, what Dan Gilbert has done in terms of his philanthropy, because the Illich's have benefited from some of the same kind of tax breaks and corporate you know philanthropy and they have a corporate welfare and they have not done what he's done.
Speaker 4:I think that two buildings down there they got their arena and that a little Caesars headquarters down there.
Speaker 3:They, they have, um, you know, got much more than that and much more largesse and much more grace from the city. They have actually two sports, two arenas. Right, they have the two arenas, they have all of the corporate welfare.
Speaker 4:The stadium and the arena.
Speaker 3:The city built LCA and it's not even charging them rent and they're collecting money off of that. What you don't see is an equivalent level of philanthropy. And so if I had to choose my billionaire, I'd choose Gilbert over Illich, simply because Gilbert at least has a sense of reinvestment. And that is not to also say that we expect more from our billionaires, but I do have empathy for him and I think these stories, these individual stories of greatness, makes sense.
Speaker 4:Yeah, duggan, at this new lab event over the weekend, said Silicon Valley, which he said he's been to four times since last quarter. He said that, like last month. So he keeps going to Silicon Valley. He says we're not going to be the tech, we're going to be cars, we're going to be automobiles. So when you talk about pride, it really is like this is our stake in the tech. We're going to be cars, we're going to be automobiles. So when you talk about pride, it really is like this is our stake in the ground. We're not going to give this up. This is our territory. You're not going to make your Apple car. Steve Jobs. Get out of here. Not Steve Jobs anymore, but Tim Cook. Rest in peace to that other bad guy.
Speaker 4:The Walter Isaacson biography. You read that and you learn a thing or two about Steve Jobs. But it's really interesting to me that we're so attached and we just can't get rid of it. Governor Whitmer, when she talks, you'll hear her really echo the sentiment of people like Mary Barra or Jim Farley of Ford and GM. And when you read the Deadline Detroit story of Mayor Bing, I think 12 or 13, 15 years ago, talking about who really runs the city, I don't think much has changed in terms of they trust, and Doug even talked about. Instead of pushing back on the corporate, back on the suburbs, working with them has yielded success, at least in terms of generating revenue, which is interesting.
Speaker 5:But I think that I love to zoom out. I think if we look at, there's a whole party realignment happening right now. That's been happening for the past few electoral cycles. If you look at states that have made investment in transits, ironically enough it's been states where there have been Republican supermajorities or right-wing governors. It's not to say that they're champions of transit and of well-being. Even you know, baked into that conversation about let's work with McComb, let's work with Oakland County, you're starting to see these kind of right wing politicians start to create more of a narrative around like how do we work better at a regional level, where I think Democrats are kind of staying pat and trying to do the same thing over and over?
Speaker 3:Well, I think that the Democratic Party is a party without an identity.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think there's a lack of identity because we don't even know what we believe in. We don't know what our values are and what our bottom line is. The thing about Republicans is they know exactly who they hate and they know exactly what they want to do and they're unified around that.
Speaker 3:They hate abortion, they hate the LGBTQ community, they hate DEI, they hate taxes and because of that it's very easy to get them. They want small government. What do Democrats want? Democrats want people to be able to. We're kind of on the fence and we're all over the place on a lot of these issues.
Speaker 4:I think they want a few different things, compete against each other.
Speaker 3:Competing things. I don't think that there is a belief that is shared among Democrats that housing is a human right, that housing is a human right, that water is a human right, that economic development should not be subsidized. We should be subsidizing small businesses instead of billionaires. I don't think that neighborhoods matter. I don't think there's even agreement on the preamble of the Detroit City Charter. I think we are all over the place. And because we're all over the place and trying to figure out what sells, we support manufacturing because we believe that is going to make us popular with people, because people want manufacturing jobs. The biggest business in Detroit is not cars. What is it?
Speaker 5:I have a few answers. I mean I tend to say it's real estate or mortgage companies, but it's financial services. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Financial services are the biggest industry and if we acknowledge that Dan Gilbert owns the biggest industry in Detroit, you know. And then the other guy who lives in Bloomfield Hills I don't remember his name United Mortgage Company.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He's also a big employer.
Speaker 4:Matt Ishbia.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm Matt Ishbia.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay, thank you United.
Speaker 3:Wholesale.
Speaker 1:Mortgage, Wholesale Mortgage yeah.
Speaker 3:So you have Rocket Mortgage and Wholesale Mortgage, and that's true the United States is. So much of our policy is being driven by financial interest, by investors, the investor class, which is our bonds, and all of that, and they get to set the priorities for a city every single election cycle. If you look at what the mayor brags about increasing home values, the reduction in poverty, increased average wage those are all things that Moody's and standard and poor's want to see. What they don't want to see is increased housing affordability. What they don't want to see is improved quality of life. There's no measure for that.
Speaker 3:What gets measured gets attended to with policy, and I think our mistake can be when we accept measures that really correlate to, you know, injustice as appropriate measures or as equivalent measures to measures around justice. So for a justice-oriented person such as myself, I'm not interested in understanding about the Detroit's relationship with Macomb County unless that relationship is somehow improving the quality of life for average Detroiters and average Macomb County residents, and I think that's the danger is, we fight the battle on their terms and not on our terms, and the Democrats have failed to figure out what those terms are. The Democrats have said hey, listen, I'm kind of like Republicans light. I'm like a Republican who doesn't dislike gay people. I'm the Republican who likes DEI, except for the people I hire in my offices.
Speaker 5:Which perfectly sets the conditions for Duggan to seize this very neoliberal narrative here in Detroit and then for the governor's race, because there's a lack of an agenda coming from the Democratic Party. And so I agree, and I think that's a lot of what, and so I agree, and I think that's a lot of what we're seeing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that it is up to us and that's why we talk about the Black Detroit Democracy podcast it is up to us to figure out what that agenda is. We're taking a break right now and when we come back we're going to dig more deeply into the specifics of the state of the city.
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 offers 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 MassDetroit 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 MassDetroit, contact Nicole Perry at nperry at ecn-detroitorg or 313-331-3485.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to Authentically Detroit where we're going to once again discuss the state of black democracy in Detroit through the lens of the state of the city. I promised I was going to have some conversations about this data, about these homeowners black and Hispanic homeowners making so much money off of these home sales. So you might even ask yourself what data set tracks who's benefiting by race. You know, and there literally is. If you go to the Wayne County you know deeds recorder, deeds, whatever. They don't identify race or ethnicity in the deed recording. So if that's your source of information, how would you know if black and Hispanic people benefited? So I asked the question because I looked through the data and it looks like they're getting the information from the Wayne County Register of Deeds. They're looking at the values of the registered deeds and property sales. They're assuming that if these sales and these transactions are taking place in a majority black neighborhood, that black people are benefiting. If it's a majority Hispanic neighborhood, hispanic people are benefiting. So let's talk about a historically Hispanic neighborhood in the city of Detroit, corktown, which is almost all white right now. Hispanic people, mexican people have been pushed out of Corktown. If you use that logic then you can say that, wow, this million dollar property owner in Corktown is a Hispanic person who made money, and you don't have to acknowledge that that person is now living in Dearborn or Lincoln Township because they were pushed out and they can't afford to live there anymore.
Speaker 3:If you are looking at that data and you look at West Village, or you look at East English Village or you look at Jeff Chalmers, if you look at certain key neighborhoods, it can look really good. Look at Island View, which was almost 100 percent black until too long, and now black people can't afford to live there. And so I just want us to think that through. I want us to think through. When somebody throws out that data, whose data is it?
Speaker 3:I'm working in the neighborhood of Chandler Park, doing housing in Chandler Park, and I promise you that those homeowners are not making you know the millions of dollars more. They're doing better perhaps, but not as much better as you would think. And even when you look at the average rising income or the average incomes in our communities, in the communities that ECN serves, income increases have been flat. You haven't seen median income increases. You're seeing still about $30,000, $31,000 a year as median income in most of the zip code areas that we're working in. So I think the data is distorted, I think the assumptions are ridiculous, as though somehow the researchers did not ever hear of gentrification. So I asked the question have you ever heard of gentrification? Why don't you look at mortgage records? Because mortgage records can do a much better job of identifying, because they have to, by federal law, at least for now, identify race and ethnicity to address past discrimination practices. Well, I would have done that, but I didn't have time to do that for this report.
Speaker 5:There it is.
Speaker 3:What researcher releases a report without taking the time to actually ensure that the data is accurate? So that's my current state of mind. It's just I think that we're not doing a good enough job really ensuring that even what's being reported is accurate. The final thing I would say is I had a community meeting last year when this came out and I said how many of you have seen your housing values double in this room? Nobody.
Speaker 3:Not the people who come here, talk to your parents, talk to their friends. Are they seeing that? Now, maybe because of the neighborhood they're in, they'll see that, but depending on what neighborhood they're in, you're not seeing much of anything. So that's my take on that. What else was talked about?
Speaker 4:Hasn't stopped the mayor from touting the numbers and the lineup. You had city council members last week.
Speaker 3:The mayor commissioned that study. So it's not that the study is not. Coincidentally, the mayor commissioned that study and he had commissioned the exact same study the year before and without giving away a name, I talked to somebody from that school at U of M who told me that the researcher was being pressured to produce that data. If you're being pressured to produce data on behalf of the city and the city is your customer you have to question whether or not there's data integrity.
Speaker 5:Yeah, the efficacy of it, yeah.
Speaker 3:If DTE produces a study on air pollution from coal burning plants, are you going to trust it? If Philip Morris produces a study on the impact of cigarette smoking on lung health, Are you going to trust it? The reality is that the entity that purchases these studies has some control over the outcomes. Yeah, 100%. So that's my take on that. But what else was talked about? I know he's now black and Hispanic families are now rich, even though we're seeing a crisis in Southwest Detroit, are now rich even though we're seeing a crisis in Southwest Detroit, where people's homes have been destroyed and people are being deported and are afraid to go to work, but somehow they are thriving in this new Detroit. That has come out and said we are not going to protect you from ICE.
Speaker 5:I'm sorry, go on, they're going to get a new park? Yeah, there's a new park.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's Wilson AB Ford Park is going to open up on the east side. There's a new park. Yeah, it's Wilson AB Ford Park is going to open up on the east side.
Speaker 4:And then if the state legislature can lift the cap, I think it's like a something, something billion dollar cap on the Brownfield Tax Incentive Fund, which Duggan talks about it as a discount. He says we're not giving any money away, we're letting them take discounts on the revenues the tax revenues that they generate from the project is the explanation, which is a pretty good one.
Speaker 3:Hard to argue that when they argue it back to you. It shouldn't be hard to argue it, though, and I think it's really interesting. We live in a polluted city and we clean it up. When somebody wants to develop that space, if it just stays poor, the pollution stays there. We call this brownfield redevelopment, and it's not always brownfields. Brownfield redevelopment was used to build that darn trucking station on Jefferson. They used brownfield money and they actually created more pollution in creating that.
Speaker 5:So I'm sorry, no, I agree. I mean there was extended conversation about that. There was another session talking about crime. Obviously that's always going to be a part of the Mayor's State of the City address and it was really championing particularly the approach of increasing policing spending and budget, along with the crime prevention intervention orgs, as this trailblazing model for the rest of the country and it was interesting how he almost packaged the.
Speaker 4:you know when, when black lives matter happened or when George Floyd was murdered, was the language that he used. After the murder of George Floyd, communities were dealing with the question of do we do community violence, intervention or do we give money to the police, and I'm not sure if that was the true call from the defund the police crowd.
Speaker 3:Let's do CVI Well you know, cvi was definitely initiated in our city by my friend Alaya Harvey Quinn. Really, doing a lot of research and organizing returning citizens and others to say we can do a better job with this research and organizing returning citizens and others to say we can do a better job with this. Anytime the mayor takes credit for putting a mere $10 million into this initiative, without acknowledging the hard work of my sister and actually my mentee.
Speaker 3:Aaliyah. I love Aaliyah. She's done such great work. Let's give it to this black woman who put her all into helping to bring people together around this. I believe CVI is a wonderful construct and it should have been done a long time ago, because crime and violence is an outcome of something and usually it's trauma and we leave untreated trauma by itself and that's really what they're trying to put their arms around. But the amount of money that we invest in that doesn't make sense. Now, the reason that what happened was they had was it ShotSpotter.
Speaker 5:Yep Shot. Oh, that was.
Speaker 3:And she went to.
Speaker 4:It was a tool a technology that identifies where people are, where gunfire happens.
Speaker 3:Yes, and unlike 911, this technology is believed to be reliable. So you have ShotSpotter and there's been ample evidence that ShotSpotter does not reduce crime, does not reduce gun crime and actually leads to further harassment and brutality against black men. Because I mean, if I'm shooting a gun, I'm not going to stand around and wait for the police, but if you walk outside after I shoot a gun, then you're a suspect. It makes every black man in that general area, or every black person in that general area, suspicious, but the crime fighting value is not there and you still have people calling the police or dialing 911 and getting no police response. Now if I'm hearing a gunshot, I'm a shot spot or two. Nobody's responding to nobody's responding to me and you know if my life is at risk.
Speaker 3:So I think that there's just flaws with that technology. So Alaya showed up and she says instead of shot spotter, we need to invest in shot stopper. And so the mayor said okay, I'm going to take you at your word. If you can make this work, then we'll give you $10 million. And you proved to me that you can make a difference in six months. If we applied the same lens to ShotSpotter that we do to ShotStopper, perhaps we would not have ShotSpotter anymore because it has not delivered on its promise.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I'll say, like as an organizer that was working on that campaign against ShotSpotter, something that's really significant to note and I'm really happy you brought up Force Detroit is I remember having that meeting with Force Detroit during our campaign where they presented a full comprehensive plan of where they were positioned, where they were doing crime intervention work and with who, and so I think that's really really important to note because when we think about kind of the mayor's presentations of we made this investment, we made this decision, these are organizations that have full comprehensive plans based on the work that they were already doing and so- Kamau talk about that work.
Speaker 4:I mean, what does it look like? I mean some people have said it's like social work for the hood, like what is it.
Speaker 5:The reality is like folks are multidimensional, so a lot of it is social work, a lot of it is counseling, it's creating mutual aid and social services for people, and also to developing leadership.
Speaker 5:The big thing that I think is really important in response to what the mayor talks about of like all of these things that just come from his brain is his political mind is that people are building institutions.
Speaker 5:Like where we're sitting right now is an institution. There is a clear purpose and goal for it. The people who are members of it have a idea of why they're members and there's an agenda that they're actually taking action on externally in the world, and so I think, when people you know ask about what these organizations do, they're doing a lot of the hard things that, like, police officers can't do because they don't have the relationships with communities to actually intervene and say, how do we engage with someone who's in a mental health crisis? How do we intervene when there's an argument in the neighborhood that could escalate to violence? How do we, of course, like, develop leaders in the community before they're turning to crime? And so I think those things are really, really important to like. Talk about a bit of what you're bringing up of CVI, and that's what folks should be reminding themselves of when they hear the mayor's narrative about CVI.
Speaker 3:You know, the people who have the best access to the young people are not organizations like ours. They're people who are grassroots in the communities, who have their ears to the ground. Get a returning citizen. It's really interesting to me because my first professional job was with the Community Health Awareness Group where we worked with returning citizens and gay black men on preventing HIV AIDS in the 1980s. And they would come right from Jackson prison, come work for us and it's like okay, you have your ears to the ground, you are an outreach worker who can actually communicate. Okay, and we're back with Antoine and Cedric.
Speaker 4:What's going on, guys? How are we feeling?
Speaker 7:Pretty good, pretty good. It's my first podcast ever.
Speaker 4:First podcast ever. Well, it's about to be a lot more. This is all people do now, I guess, is just talk on podcast microphones. I'm interested to hear.
Speaker 7:You know what got you guys into politics. Let's start with you, cedric. Well, honestly, when I first came to MSU my goal was to become an attorney, become a lawyer. My first study first came to MSU. My major was criminal justice, moved around a little bit, studied psychology for a little bit English, because I got an interest in writing as well. Then that summer I was still a psychology major, but my interest in law was just still there. My overall goal was to be of service to my community, black community, in some form, shape or fashion. I realized the implications that mental health has on our development, um, but I became aware of systemic racism or systematic racism, whichever one you know, it's how you ever say it. I became, you know, aware of systemic racism and policies, hostile policies that affect us. You know our people, our people, and you know, realize that that was the true root of you know, our suffering. And going along with that, that intersection between law and policy, you know you can't have one without the other. That you know bolster my interest in politics as well.
Speaker 3:Okay, so give some examples of laws and policies that you think are representative of systemic racism.
Speaker 7:Redlining zoning laws, things like that.
Speaker 3:We talked a little bit about the criminal justice system as well.
Speaker 7:Yes, like in Lansing MSU, when I was up there there was an organization called Nation Outside Prison reform is something that I'm very interested in.
Speaker 7:Prison reform and you know just the prison system in general, they focus mainly on, you know, incarcerated individuals who were facing sentences that may have been lengthy they were pretty morally gray to the nature of the crimes that they committed and were more so focused on the duration of their sentence and, you know, getting them the representation and being in their voice on the outside as their inside, um, yeah, just things that you know they do ways that prisoners have been impacted in a way that they're not heard.
Speaker 3:My sister is a federal magistrate judge and I mentioned this to you yesterday.
Speaker 3:She just had a ruling that went her way she was really excited about that where she ruled that, basically, prisons say that prisoners cannot sue.
Speaker 3:Where she ruled that, basically, prisons say that prisoners cannot sue unless they have exhausted all of their complaints that they make I forget what they call them, but grievances.
Speaker 3:There's a grievance system unless you exhaust the grievance system, and it's almost impossible to exhaust the grievance system, and so, therefore, prisoners do not have the right to civil rights. And so she ruled and it was upheld that indeed you do not have to exhaust those grievances and the system has a way of blocking them from getting any type of court redress. And so that's something that just happened, that this has become rule, and it's going to be precedent in Michigan, where they have access to the courts and as citizens and they are still citizens, they're incarcerated citizens but they're not treated as such they should have the access to legal redress. The examples were women living in a prison where the conditions were environmentally hazardous to their health and caused permanent damage to their lungs, and one woman to her brain, and so she sued after being released and even so, you know, was blocked by the prison system saying, oh no, no, no, you still have to keep these grievances going. So yeah, I'm really proud of that and that's an example of systemic racism Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Where you just lose all rights as a human being because we are so overrepresented in the system Absolutely.
Speaker 7:And to add on to that, I know we talked yesterday. You know about my background. You know just my family legacy. I guess you could say I've always been not, you know, a very big not fan of. You know, when young black men back in the day, or even still today, go to jail on drug charges, they go to prison on these charges. And you know you've got an 18, 19-year-old young kid a kid my age, you know, a little bit older maybe in prison bunked up with a murderer. Or you know somebody who's created, you know, committed more egregious crimes. You know that's just, that's not sustainable, it's not fair. And a lot of times you know the amount of the prison population is mostly drug related charges of. You know citizens who are, you know, in those informative years of their life where they are developing and, like you know, 18 to 25 years old, that's when the adult brain is starting to form. And if they're in prison, if we're in prison, our people are in prison. You know they come out knowing nothing but jail.
Speaker 3:And you know the racialized nature of that, right, because when heroin was used primarily by black folks and by inner city urban folks, it was looked at as a moral crime. When it spread like wildfire in suburban and rural communities to white people, it became an illness. Yeah, all that is illness, though right, any type of drug addiction is illness. Drug addiction is is big a contributor to imprisonment, as drug sales, like the things that people do when we know they're unhealthy, so we have in our building, we have narcan and we can distribute it to people who are injection drug users and I'm glad because it'll save lives. But we don't do anything comparable to that when it comes to crack, cocaine or when it comes to marijuana. And right now, as we discussed yesterday, if somebody sells marijuana, like if I sell weed, I could go to prison for it. Unless I had $20,000 to purchase a license to open a dispensary, then I could sell weed legally and get rich off of it. $20,000 to purchase a license to open a dispensary, then I could sell wheat legally and get rich off of it.
Speaker 3:And that's the problem is, we have these two tiered multiple systems and it's always been that there's more. The prosecutions are harsher, the sentences are harsher when it comes to drug crimes that are committed primarily by black and brown people than those committed by white people. So I think it's an important thing for us to look into and it's, you know, one of the civil rights issues that rarely shows up on the ballot, like you know, in the gubernatorial race, in the mayor's race. We're not talking about. What are you going to do about, you know, reducing the police state, right? Certainly James Craig is not going to reduce the police state. What do you think, antoine, what are your thoughts, how did you get into it and what are your priorities?
Speaker 6:Yeah. So I mean I guess I'll just start off with kind of laying the groundwork, so I think. So earlier I mentioned just moving around a lot, so I just have a very interesting perspective, I think, compared to other people. And then going back to a psychology term of in groups and out groups, I feel like growing up I've always kind of been in my own group, like trying to find my way. So just naturally, being a person that's been out group, being a person that has a lot of experiences, even in other countries like Costa Rica or the United Kingdom, I've just naturally have had this broad understanding of the world. On top of that, I've just naturally have had this broad understanding of the world. On top of that, I've just kind of always been interested in mortality I mean not mortality, morality, because I think it's a very complex thing just given the nature of history, everything like that. And I'm really into art too and I think art just has a natural tendency to call out and critique society and just talk about what's going on.
Speaker 6:So who's your favorite artist? That's hard to say. Um, I've, right now I've been listening to a lot of kendrick lamar, just getting back into him, um, and then I'm also into some alternative music. Recently I've been listening to this artist um Elliot Smith, who's a really good songwriter. He um a lot of his songs. They're they're pretty, pretty sweet. He has a soft voice. He um mostly guitar led, but his lyrics get really deep, so um so we have melancholic.
Speaker 7:I listen to Elliot Smith a little bit.
Speaker 6:Oh, you like Elliot Smith.
Speaker 3:I have to check him out. I love Kendrick Lamar, I have to say I listen to his catalog.
Speaker 7:You got a favorite album.
Speaker 3:You know, no, I don't really have a favorite album. I think it's Mad Kid, good Kid Mad.
Speaker 7:City.
Speaker 3:I think I like that one. Lots of storytelling in that one he's. To me he's an artist where you have to listen to the whole album to really get what he's saying. If you listen to one song it may sound kind of like this is crazy, but you can see he's a great storyteller.
Speaker 7:Listening to one song or listening to it on shuffle is honestly a disservice to you. Side note I've read or I've heard that Kendrick Lamar's albums are all kind of. Their main medium is music, audio, obviously. But for example, good Kid Mad City is supposed to be told from the perspective of a play or a movie or something like that.
Speaker 6:Yeah, like a Quentin Tarantino movie. Exactly, it's like order and anthology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know my bad.
Speaker 7:Yeah Damn is supposed to be like a magazine cover. In terms of the cover art, it's just dope. I'm a Kendrick Lamar nerd.
Speaker 6:We can get into that.
Speaker 4:I like the Butterfly album when I was 10 years ago.
Speaker 4:I remember albums used to come out and hip-hop news websites would tweet a pre Before it would hit streaming. This was like there was an era that y'all probably don't even know about. That like was after we stopped really buying CDs but it still costs like $1.29 to get a song off, so you had to buy music and so, like Hip Hop, DX or like whatever magazine, XXL would give you a free preview of of an album that just came out. Like, oh, this album is out now. Blah, blah, blah. And I remember the day I stayed up for the Kendrick album and I listened to it all the way through the Butterfly and I forget who was the saxophonist.
Speaker 3:Is it Topimpa Butterfly?
Speaker 4:Topimpa Butterfly. I don't know the name of the saxophonist, martin or Smith Terrence was his name, I think Terrence something. But oh my God, I played the saxophone in high school so I was like, oh, that's so cool, like he's doing jazz music and everything. And still to this day, when I go back and I listen to those songs, kamasi Washington no, that's not who it was.
Speaker 3:Somebody helped him out. They said the primary saxophone is Kamasi Washington.
Speaker 4:Maybe the saxophonist I'm thinking about was a producer on the album, perhaps Terrence.
Speaker 3:Martin is his name.
Speaker 4:Regardless, yeah, I like that album. I didn't even like Good Kid Mad City that much when it came out when I was in high school. I don't know I was more into. I didn't even like Good Kid Mad City that much when it came out when I was in high school. I don't know I was more into. I don't even know what I was into in 2011. But I do remember all those albums coming out, man, I remember Take Care by Drake coming out staying up on the Tuesday you know what I'm saying Before school. That's when albums used to come out. I remember 808s and Heartbreak coming out on the CD like I got that on the CD in the store. I remember going to the store to buy Watch of the Throne, like at Best Buy, that's crazy.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm saying, like 2011.
Speaker 3:You know, I used to be a big Kanye fan, and it's so disappointing because College Dropout was my joint. I loved it, I listened, I listen to it all of the time. It's the kind of art that makes you think differently, right, and when you think differently, that's what really causes revolutionary change. Art is what changes people. It's what changes culture. You can't have culture change without somebody who opens your eyes to something. So I love art and I'm really glad that you brought that up because I think a lot of times that's underplayed.
Speaker 3:Lauren Hill is another one who I mean. I listened to her backwards and forwards, I mean when my kids were young. They know every word to every song, because I was going through a divorce with their dad and so I played it as my therapy. You know, lauryn Hill, or India Arie, is another great artist who really changes the way that you see the world. So I thank you for bringing that up, that you have these interests, and I'm really glad that you talked about otherness. Yeah, because it's something I absolutely agree with. I'm an outsider, right? Yeah, and I think outsiders see the world differently because they don't fit into the in-group and so they can see all of these different groups as a role for us to help drive the way people think and behave, because you know you always think of being an outsider.
Speaker 3:at least when I was younger I used to think of it as a bad thing because I never really fit in.
Speaker 6:No, I get that. Yeah, I'm shaking that off right now. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then you learn to embrace that identity.
Speaker 6:It's hey, wait a minute, I'm the outsider.
Speaker 3:I see you.
Speaker 6:Yeah Well, yeah, more on that. So that's just what really inspired it. Going into college, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to help people and I just one of the reoccurring themes in class where I would do the best is when it's about social justice issues. For example, in fifth grade we got to do a presentation about water pollution and I think around that time that's when, or maybe before that that's when the Flint water crisis happened. So, presented on that in high school, I joined something called the Student Equity Advocates and we just tried to connect the students to the faculty.
Speaker 6:Especially this was in Fort Collins, colorado, where it's predominantly white, and so a lot of students said they've, or students of color in particular, or even LGBT students, had some issues at the school, so we tried to address that and just more topics like that on climate change. And so then I applied for Michigan State and I heard about this program called the Social Science Scholars, and it's a cohort of students who are, in particular, just very interested in social science. So I interviewed, mentioned my background and I got in and I met a lot of like-minded individuals and I was really pushed academically, like I've always kind of been an academic kid, but I wasn't as focused as I could be, and so, um, just, I've done papers on, like, uh, the Louisiana cancer rally, which kind of got my mind racing about.
Speaker 6:Um, um, what's it called, like the environmental discrimination, I think environmental racism environmental, racism, um, and then just other topics, like I just like the way people take and we were talking about Kanye earlier he did something for um Larry Hoover talking about prison reform and it that got me interested because I feel like that's a very morality intense topic of um crime or I don't know punishment and like retribution. So I, uh, I think it's interesting and so I I got into um, uh, some research with prison reform and yeah, I don't know I could go on all day about what I'm into.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm so excited to have you here. Tell me about the research of prison reform. Give us some thoughts about what you came away with.
Speaker 6:Okay, so the research, our original intent was or I'll back up so the research was inspired by a Texas study and in the study they were looking at drug possessions in the years before COVID, during COVID and after COVID to see if there's no visitations then there must be a dip in how drugs are getting into the prisons. And I wish I could find the study. I don't have it off the top of my head, but from what they saw there wasn't a change. So it suggested a different story, which there's something we think is implied but nothing really exactly says. So we've got to looking on that in the state of Michigan to see if there's something similar. And so, upon just doing the research, we noticed some discrepancies in the data provided by the MDOC. And so then, while we were looking at the data, we realized we couldn't accurately Shout out to Chris Gouts of the MDOC.
Speaker 4:He's formerly MDOC. He was removed. He's on leave. I haven't actually heard what. I had to pause you there because you just mentioned MDLC and I have to make. I have to bring attention to Chris Gout's being a sexual harasser, allegedly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so much injustice happening inside these prisons. Yeah, it is, he was their communications director that would lie to the press and the public. Oh, I remember him. Yes, he's terrible.
Speaker 6:That's interesting for what I'm getting into. You probably talked to him, oh, maybe not, I don't know. But we were looking at the data and we realized we can't accurately give an assessment of what's going on here if the numbers aren't lining up. And interestingly enough, we got to present some of that data at the Capitol in Lansing data at the Capitol in Lansing and around that time, some of the data that was really dramatic, where the numbers were off by like hundreds. They actually took that down and fixed a lot of their mistakes, which is really interesting.
Speaker 6:So now our study shifted from looking at how the drugs were getting into the prison to more about transparency, and it's interesting because a lot of what we learned is on one end, it could be someone which you could suggest that people are just not being diligent about their work, or maybe they're trying to hide something, but also it's an industry that's not funded very well and it's not an industry that a lot of people want to go into. So a lot of the's not an industry that a lot of people want to go into. A lot of the times they don't have a lot of people actually working on a lot of the transparency and a lot of the data.
Speaker 3:You mean the prison system is not one.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I have my own thoughts on that.
Speaker 3:You think so, yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah Well, yeah, I'm not totally informed.
Speaker 3:I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying.
Speaker 6:Yeah, um, but I lost my train of thought with that, but, um, it's, it's interesting because we were, we're really focused on visitation rights, because one of the main things, that kind of um what's the word for it that you know when.
Speaker 3:That impacts? Yeah Like recidivism. Yeah like recidivism. Yeah like recidivism, yeah.
Speaker 6:So when people have visitation rights, they're less likely to go back, and so anything that can take them away suggests that people may not, you know, get out of that system. So, which is why we think it's important to look at a lot of this data, and so we think it's important that there's transparency there so we can accurately assess if they're carrying out their methods in a good way. I think that's important.
Speaker 3:It's super important. I can't wait to see the data.
Speaker 3:I know you'll share it with us in the future and that we'll be working with the two of you to an area that we really haven't worked in the past organizationally. Like I have a very personal interest in this, but our organization has not really worked with returning citizens as much as we should. We have not worked on prison reform as much as we should. But if you're having a serious conversation about civil rights and issues that impact Detroit, you have to talk about mass incarceration and the policies that lead to it and everything else related to that, because it impacts our families and impacts our economics. It impacts how many people even get to vote, how many people know they have the right to vote. Our census is impacted by that, because you know that people who are incarcerated are counted in the places where they're incarcerated and that's usually not in the city, right, and you know visitation is made possible when people live close to where they are incarcerated.
Speaker 3:The fact that we are enriching or at least stabilizing these communities, and the only other thing I wanted to say when you talked about the attraction of people to this field, is that prisons are dehumanizing. When you are in a position and you have a job where you're required or expected to dehumanize other people, you become less human as well, and so if you're a prison guard, you're operating in a dehumanizing environment, and then you are also dehumanizing other people. There's something that corrupts the souls of the people around them, and if we really want to save the souls of everybody, then we got to figure out different ways to deter crime. Yeah, so I I could talk to you all day and luckily I get to talk to you a whole lot because you're going to be here and maybe we'll have you back on here after you do some research for us and help produce the project through um, your program, and then you can stay connected to us, because I think we are very blessed to have you here at ECN this summer.
Speaker 7:We're blessed to be here absolutely.
Speaker 3:I was so happy when I got the resumes. I was like, yes, we need more young people here helping to fight these causes. And, of course, I really appreciate partnering with Sam. This has been such a great conversation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it has no-transcript.
