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
Black Detroit Democracy Podcast: When Old Politics Meet New Challenges with Bryce Huffman
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 Bryce Huffman, Bridge Detroit’s Engagement Editor, joined Donna and Sam to discuss how Detroit's mayoral and council races are unfolding as candidates learn from each other and adapt their platforms to community feedback, creating a dynamic competition of ideas that could reshape the city's political landscape.
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 3:Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people. Good journalism costs. Visit DetroitOneMillioncom to support Black independent reporting. Detroit Democracy Podcast. Every week, we open this podcast with a reading of the preamble to the Detroit City Charter, read by the one and only Bryce Detroit. The City Charter is our constitution, which defines our rights and the way government should work. I'm Donna Gibbons-Davidson, president and CEO of the Eastside Community Network.
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. 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 history as a gateway to freedom, a beacon for justice and a laboratory of liberation. Today we're here with Detroit's Engagement Director, yet another Bryce Bryce Huffman, to discuss Detroit's mayoral and council races. Welcome back to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, bryce. And also, how are you today?
Speaker 5:Thanks for having me. I'm doing good.
Speaker 3:Okay, how about you, sam? How are you doing?
Speaker 4:It's another hot day here. We got a little bit of rain to cool us off, but it has been hot. Folks in the Jeffersonian and all across Detroit that were without their HVAC systems.
Speaker 1:The past few weeks.
Speaker 4:I hope they have gotten taken care of. They have at my apartment, so I'm grateful in that Things are going a little cooler over there in art center, cultural center.
Speaker 3:It must be hot potato, because my air went out this weekend and so we had to put fans up. And so we went to the hardware store and we got into a competition. Kevin was like I'm just going to use an old-fashioned window fan, that's the greatest way. All you're doing is recirculating the hot air. And I said, no, we need one of these turbo fans. And he was like those are cute, but they don't work as well. And I think he may have won the argument, because that window fan really did cool our room, but in other rooms we needed that. But anyway, so it was kind of interesting, and to go through this heat wave with people and to experience it and not be protected with air conditioning was an interesting thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, it's terrible If you don't have air conditioning. Your standard of life is lowered and limited, and so shout out to everybody in Europe doing that every day and it's just normal to them.
Speaker 5:It's fans over by where I'm at. We have AC and it just doesn't work that well. When everyone's using it at once, it's like, well, you just got to use a fan.
Speaker 4:When you sign a lease and within the lease says there is central air, is that not a break of the lease on the end of the landlord if their air system that you signed up for does not provide air it?
Speaker 3:is, and so you have the rights to put your rent in an escrow account if you decide that you want to enforce the lease. But if the landlord is complying or doing everything to try to fix it, sometimes there's just a delay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they'll put it into those leases too. Read the fine print, because it'll say you have no rights if our stuff messes up.
Speaker 3:Well, the landlords, the lease cannot preempt public law, and so I would look at landlord-tenant law, not what a lease says. If I can put in a contract something that's illegal, then that contract is unenforceable in that one area.
Speaker 4:Stephanie Chang has a good booklet that she hands out. It's tenants' rights.
Speaker 5:I need to grab some of those and just put them at the front door of my building. I think we really need to.
Speaker 3:We need to have them here, so that's a really good idea. I'm going to make sure that we have that here. We put that in our website. But I'm really excited because we worked and we were able to distribute over 100 window fans to people, and so when I was able to experience how efficiently it cooled our bedroom, I was like, wow, these things really do work pretty well. So you know, kevin, you win. But you know, the only concern I have about that and it's a concern many people have is air quality. Luckily, we did not have bad air quality days on the days we also needed to use the fan, because one of the other concerns is that the window, if it's drawing in toxic air, what does that mean for the environmental health inside of your home? So we've got to look at all of that. But I'm glad we distributed them and I do want to say that that $19 window fan still works.
Speaker 4:That's great. Yeah, I walked into CVS one of the nights that my air was out and just so happened coincidence that the guy I walked past walking in, walking out with the fan the big that was the last one. You can get those window fans on like DoorDash now you can just Really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I was looking it up I was like oh, they're just right there on the East Warren CVS, but the guy got the last one. I was informed by the clerk there. But, bryce, we're here. In a few hours you're going to be at another candidate forum.
Speaker 5:Yes, Our seventh that we've done this summer so far. Yeah, and what is it about? Yeah, so when we were thinking earlier this year, how do we want to approach the 2025 election, we were like during the summer, everyone's probably going to do mayoral forums. People are going to get a lot of chances to hear from them, to see them, get FaceTime with these people, but not so much with the city council races, especially before the primary. So we were like what can we do just to kind of make sure that there's access for the voters, make sure there's access for the candidates? So we put together an event series called Meet the Candidates.
Speaker 5:It's really simple. It's just let's meet the people running for city council in your district, which has been great, because in some of the districts that don't have any challengers on the ballot like District 1, like District 3. And 4. And 4, the district we're sitting in right now it gave us a chance to invite some of the write-in candidates, some people that don't quite have the profile yet, don't have that immediate name recognition. We all in Detroit have gotten to the ballot before and we look at this long list of names and we're like oof, well, I know that name, so I'm going to vote for that person, and we need to not do that. We need to know who we're putting in these very important positions.
Speaker 3:So there's actually I was looking one of the community organizations in Detroit is having a writing candidate forum or something like that to train people on how to support writing candidates Detroit People's Platform is doing that I can't remember the date.
Speaker 5:Do you know, Sam?
Speaker 4:I do not. Malachi's schedule probably includes it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we can post it maybe on our socials. I thought it was an interesting concept. What is the value of a writing candidate forum?
Speaker 5:I think it does a few different things. The first is it just gives voters a look at people who are indeed running for their support, trying to get their vote, people that they might not just run into or might not just hear about in their everyday lives. It also gives candidates a chance to get in front of voters that they might not otherwise get to interact with, and the value for that from the voter side is some of these writing candidates. Let's be honest, they're not going to win this election right. They're up against someone who has just been out there.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, they probably won't win. Yeah, yeah, that's the more accurate way to put it.
Speaker 4:That's the more journalism way to put it.
Speaker 5:They're probably not going to win, but what it does is it gives the voters a chance to hear ideas from people that aren't necessarily likely to win, and I think the value there is. It kind of is the marketplace of ideas, so to speak. It lets ideas compete with one another, it lets people poke holes in those ideas, it lets people find ways that okay, that idea, the way presented, might not be realistic, but I like a thread of this. How can we make that?
Speaker 3:happen.
Speaker 5:So it does that.
Speaker 3:One of the things I've observed is if you've been following the Candace, because this is the most exciting municipal election in my lifetime- Really.
Speaker 3:I have to say that I mean, obviously, when Coleman Young was elected and I was 10 years old, I guess that was really exciting for my parents. It was exciting in one way because you had the first black mayor of the city of Detroit. But what makes this race so exciting is there's so many choices and there's a competition and there's all of these universe of this, all of these, the universe of ideas that have not been floated, and what I'm seeing is some candidates pick up and learn from each other and begin modifying their platforms. And that's how democracy really should work. You're not stealing an idea. You're growing as a candidate If you are able to take in some new ideas and reshape your vision for the city. Have you seen that happening as you go to forums where candidates are learning and growing with the voters?
Speaker 5:Yes, actually. It's typically not the city council candidates, however, that are adopting a lot, it's mayoral candidates will show up to these forums just to listen, just to meet voters, and you'll hear them say, oh, these people are bringing up a lot of issues related to the land bank per se, Like that's probably the one we hear about the most. The land bank has so many problems and so many different people have floated ways to fix it or just completely get rid of it. And there will be mayoral candidates who show up to these city council forums and they're like oh man, everyone at this one particular forum in this district really wants us to just abolish it completely. They don't want to retool it, they just want it gone. What does that mean for how I approach when questions are asked about that in future mayoral forums or in interviews? So we have seen quite a bit of that.
Speaker 5:We've also seen candidates pick up ideas for how to engage with residents from other candidates we saw right here at the Eastside Community Network for our District 4 event. Shakira Hawkins is one of the write-in candidates and she was kind of explaining her process for engaging with younger voters, people who haven't maybe had the chance to vote in elections before or haven't taken the chance in the few elections they have been able to vote in. And I remember after it, James Harris, who's running for city council at large, was like oh, or, I'm sorry, Shakaira Hawkins is one of the at large candidates. Another at large candidate was like oh, I kind of like her approach to this. I've been doing some of my own things, but I like how she worded this, I like how she thought about that. So the candidates do kind of borrow from each other in some ways.
Speaker 3:One thing I noticed in the mayoral race is straight out the gate, Mary Sheffield was talking about trying to generate new sources of revenue. Right, yes. And so she talked about the sales option tax or something like that downtown.
Speaker 5:The entertainment tax.
Speaker 3:The entertainment taxes. Yeah, to know me is to know. I've been fighting for that for many years. I was really excited to hear that, although it seems like that is moving away from the center of her platform. But she talked about that and there was another revenue source that she talked about, and then all of a sudden you start here, so until Jenkins talked about the penny tax and the Detroit penny tax or whatever that is, and then all of a sudden you start here, so until Jenkins talk about the penny tax and the Detroit penny tax or whatever that is, or, and then Mary Sheffield talked about the half penny tax, and so they're hearing each other.
Speaker 4:They're all saying that we don't need a mayor with on the ground training. I think four can't four candidates separately have all said that.
Speaker 3:Well, that was a great applause line. That was a great applause line at Mackinac, wasn't it?
Speaker 4:It was, it was like a standing ovation, yeah, so they've been taking from each other and sort of you know, yeah, they're reading the room, so to speak, reading the room.
Speaker 3:For me, when I hear them shifting their policy platforms, then it tells me that they are also listening and maybe growing with what they see are popular lines of attack, and so that's exciting to me, because we do need to shift. All of the mayoral candidates have come out in favor of refocusing attention on neighborhoods. You know, when asked, most of them are saying no, every neighborhood deserves the same type of resources. This whole idea of strategic neighborhoods, where we've picked 10, is no longer something that any of them are saying that they want to perpetuate. On the other side, none of them is willing to even tackle the dissolution or the change to a downtown development authority.
Speaker 5:Right, you'll hear people maybe vaguely mention we need to change how this works, and then they'll immediately move on to something else. At least that's what I'm seeing at some of the forums. Sam, you've probably, I think, been to more of them than me at this point. Are you hearing kind of something similar, as people are talking about the relationship between downtown and the neighborhoods?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, I think people are really struggling people as in these candidates city council, specifically candidates um, with the, the sort of balancing people versus corporate um.
Speaker 4:You know I ml had a story yeah mary's campaign using the, the sentence that you know our campaign has not taken any corporate PAC money, which obviously we know she has. And when you say you know, they sort of vaguely they'll mention stuff like oh you know, we do need to revamp or restructure the land bank or the DDA. Mary has been very vocal on doing a study of what it would take, the feasibility of eliminating it.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean quite honestly, that's something that she and I interacted on, and so I felt really heard when the studies were conducted and when there was actual research, as opposed to people telling me why it couldn't happen.
Speaker 4:I don't hear any plans, and that's the thing that I think.
Speaker 3:But you're not going to hear them right now, there was actual research, as opposed to people telling me why it couldn't happen. I don't hear any plans, and that's the thing that I think, but you're not going to hear them right now. No, you're not going to hear them right now because nobody wants to alienate the business community and it's very disappointing to me that nobody is willing to say maybe Ken Locke in one of his vague conversations says, well, it hasn't been working, but you're not hearing details of how anybody's going to take that on.
Speaker 3:I think that's the reason why it's important for me and others to stay outside of the campaign bandwagons, because I feel as though, as a citizen, my right and responsibility is to continue to advocate after somebody gets elected to office, whoever is mayor. Whether it's somebody I vote for, somebody I don't vote for. I think that we have a responsibility to hold them accountable. They will be feeling the pressure, regardless of who all of these corporations support. They'll be feeling the pressure from corporate America to amend their values and their ideals to fit the needs of that community. We have to be just as vigilant after the election as we are right now. I'm really hoping there's going to be much greater voter turnout because of the competition for ideas. But a couple of things. One I keep hearing well, none of the candidates are qualified, or things like that that's so false.
Speaker 3:Which is voter suppression. It's absolute voter suppression. It's absolutely false and, quite honestly, it's racist. Right, because to suggest that none of these black candidates are capable of doing what Mike Duggan has done for the past 12 years is insulting to the capacity of black people to lead. It's the kind of thing that you always hear when black people step into leadership roles is well, I'm not quite sure they're ready, and so I will fight to support the capacity of almost everybody on the candidate list Not everybody, but almost everybody on the candidate list to step up there.
Speaker 5:You made sure to jump in with the not everybody.
Speaker 3:John Barlow will not get my vote and I'm just going to go on record saying you know, we interviewed him and the question came. I think Orlando said what do you think the role of mayor is? We weren't getting the kind of answers we were looking for and that's as much as I'm going to say right now A very strong no. I didn't like what he did to those young ladies and so I just feel very comfortable coming out and saying what I have to say about him.
Speaker 3:But I think we can use our intelligence and look at a person's track record, not just in doing work, because if you are of a certain age, you've been working for a period of time Not just in leading, but have you led any kind of political process? Number one have you been accountable to people? Number two, have you demonstrated the ability to work with others? Number three and have you made yourself available during this campaign to the people you want to elect you? If the only forms you're showing up for are televised and corporate sponsor, then that tells me something about how you view the community that you expect to elect you, and I've heard little digs at people who are hosting forums. Well, these people expect us to show up and they aren't important enough for sure, you know, little suggestions that somehow we act entitled to their presence. According to the Detroit City Charter, we are entitled to the presence of politicians in our communities. We are entitled to be heard and to have direct conversations, and so I have concerns about some candidates who aren't showing up at the various community forums and I would say that they are not ready to be mayor, in that to be mayor in this city should mean to you know, subject yourself to public scrutiny at every level.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I think, even though there's some candidates who I vehemently disagree with on policy matters, the fact that they are willing to engage and get into the nerdy legal, written part of what makes something function or not function for the benefit of residents, I gotta applaud them, because that's not an easy thing to do. It's not an easy thing to subject yourself to for months and months and months, especially when you will look at polls and maybe not be as high as you want.
Speaker 3:I completely agree with that. Thanks for that. Take, Bryce, because I don't have to agree with you to respect your ability to be mayor.
Speaker 5:Right, right. I think anyone in media probably has things that they disagree with dugging about, to put it lightly. But when you think about doing the job of mayor, it's like you got to respect that sometimes he just does the job that he's asked to do. And that's not what everyone does.
Speaker 3:When you bring that up. I've heard many people criticize his job as mayor and I've certainly criticized his job as mayor. I haven't heard people say he's not qualified to be mayor. I think there's a distinction. I don't like what you're doing as mayor and you're not qualified are distinctions that are of significance and I think that you know those things are said. You know when, when Charlie Duff and those folks had the forum and people were acting out and you've been to how many forums?
Speaker 3:How many forums have you seen people act out and people are polite and respectful at every forum, but when you have hosts being impolite and disrespectful, that's what you start seeing from. You know some of the audience.
Speaker 5:The moderator is the one who sets the stage for how a forum or debate goes and if the moderator allows for that to take place.
Speaker 4:that's what's going to take place. There was one moderator on that stage that was not qualified to be there. No, Put it like that.
Speaker 3:I think there were three moderators or maybe two, I think. The reality is the moderator, charlie the Duff, was intentionally insulting and I don't like gotcha journalism. I don't really like Emil Elric only showing up to play gotcha journalism. Well, this person said this and they did this because I think he thinks the most important thing for voters to know are campaign misstatements. Show up and talk about the substance of policy and the kinds of things that will make a difference in Detroit, and then, when you talk about campaign misstatements, I'll care, but he's a person who's very good at being a watchdog and you know, especially watching over Detroit politicians to find flaws, especially watching over black Detroit politicians to find flaws, but not really showing up to really reflect our voices in meaningful ways as far as I'm concerned. So we don't have perfect candidates, we are not perfect people and I don't think we should anticipate that. What do you think is going to happen? Do you have any predictions about what's going to happen in August?
Speaker 5:For the mayor's race.
Speaker 5:I mean, I think it's pretty easy to predict Mary Sheffield is likely to move on past the primary. Beyond that, there's so many undecided voters that one day I wake up and read some things or I talk to people out in the community and I'm like, oh well, I predict, based on the popularity contest that politics can be sometimes, kinloch is probably going to pull through the primary. Contest that politics can be sometimes, kinloch is probably going to pull through the primary. Just this week a couple of times I've been out in different neighborhoods in vastly different parts of the city and I'm like, oh, maybe it'll be Santil, because I'm hearing more people talk specifically about her experience and why that would matter as mayor. I haven't really beyond those two kind of as the 2A, 2b. I haven't really heard too many other full-on endorsements of people as mayor. I've heard a few people in Fred's district talk about why he'd make a great mayor, but even the way that they would phrase that wasn't like a ringing endorsement that he should be mayor or that he ought to be.
Speaker 4:You think Todd Perkins or James Craig who's going to finish higher? Perkins?
Speaker 5:Yeah, perkins, I think after Mackinac, after he was snubbed from Mackinac and I'm saying snubbed because that's the term he wants to use for it right.
Speaker 3:Well, he was a snub.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, because he wasn't on the stage, I think he was able to use his experience as an attorney to really like pick through all of the things that candidates on the stage said and kind of flip those to voters and say, ok, this person said this on the stage. Here's what I can tell you about how this would actually go, and I think that there are a lot of voters that like resonated with that the idea that this was a hand-picked group.
Speaker 3:It wasn't necessarily based on polling. I think most people don't care. I'm being honest with you, I think I think I like perkins right and I I think craig has a built-in base that's always going to support him, whether it's because they're republican or because they're pro-cop, or because they think he did a great job as a police chief. I think his base cannot grow. I think it's because they're Republican or because they're pro-cop, or because they think he did a great job as a police chief. I think his base cannot grow. I think it's sort of— it's limited.
Speaker 3:Very very limited, it's restricted. I mean, if you like him, you like him.
Speaker 5:But if you don't like him.
Speaker 3:There is no way that you're going to—some people will vote for him, right.
Speaker 5:He could say all the things that you would want a candidate to say, and it doesn't matter. You're not picking him.
Speaker 3:The interesting thing for me is that Durhall wins debates. He's a really good debater, he is personable, he, you know, makes connections with people and some of what he says sounds really good to people who are listening.
Speaker 4:He also has some outlined plans, yeah.
Speaker 3:He's very specific in his plans. Whether or not you like his plans, yeah.
Speaker 5:He's very specific in his plans. Whether or not you like his plans, the fact that he gets that specific is a draw.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, he says things like you know we need neighborhoods, need economies and therefore every neighbor should have his own corridor improvement authority. And that sounds really good, without really understanding what a corridor improvement authority is, they're funded and how that would work, but it sounds good. So he has a bunch of sound good things. When he talks about what attracts people to Las Vegas and New York City and he points out it's not the neighborhoods, that sounds really good to some people who are hoping that Detroit is a more popular place. And so he ends up and he does a very good job bringing in personal stories with his wife and others, so he wins debates. But that debate winning does not translate into support.
Speaker 5:Right. I think that's a really good distinction to make, because I've heard after some of these forums people will say and I'm using this word specifically because it always strikes me when people say it they say Fred sounds very mayoral. I've even heard a couple say he sounds presidential almost in how he speaks about some of these issues. But most of the people that tell me that have not also said that they're supporting Fred. So it's to your point. It's like even if you sound great in a debate and even if you do get specific, that isn't always enough.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's not. I think that people are partly basing their votes on who they think will win, and so the perception of success or popularity contributes.
Speaker 4:Imagine if we had ranked choice. That's interesting. We posed that question to our readers.
Speaker 3:Actually, a couple of had ranked choice. That's interesting.
Speaker 5:We posed that question to our readers actually a couple weeks ago and it was interesting there were some people that were just so against the idea of it and some of the reasons they were like, well, it would just increase the cost that elections are, and I'm like OK, that's fair.
Speaker 5:That's fair. But we also had a lot of people that were very much in favor of it. They said it would kind of ease the pressure of feeling like all of Detroit's problems and issues that have been around for decades and decades, only one person can be picked to kind of solve those With Ranked Choice. A lot of these people feel it would at least give a template for, okay, who is the second most likely to fix a lot of these things? Who's the third most likely to fix these things? So yeah, I'm all in favor of rank choice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that there's a real debate about which one works best. I know some people are really in favor of proportional representation over rank choice. I think we could do a good job. Maybe this is something we can work on helping to explain to people how it works, why those things are better, because a lot of times we're just getting sound bites and until you really understand not only how it could work but how it has worked to improve democracy in other places, people are going to be comfortable with staying as we are.
Speaker 3:I've heard some people say don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. We might be throwing out democracy and I think that's not true, but I do think that it would be important to educate people. So maybe you know, in the because there's going to be in 2026, hopefully something on the ballot where people get to decide, and maybe doing some community forums as a next thing that Bridge Detroit can do Maybe we could do it together Educating the community on all of these different improvements to democracy and also what are threats to democracy. You know, I'm really, really passionate about that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I love that idea Especially, just like the basic voter education piece. There's a lot missing from our civic education. You know, in high school is when people are supposed to get a lot of that. But having worked in some of the schools, I don't know if it's happening on a city level.
Speaker 3:But even if it happens. I went to high school. I took government in high school. I'm assuming you may have taken government in high school and I'm a political science major. But you know what I didn't learn about, even in my poli-sci undergrad classes? I didn't learn about a downtown development authority. I didn't learn about a building authority or brown to evaluate how that disempowers populations of people. I know that the United States is perceived around the world as a weak democracy for many reasons, and so just because you vote doesn't mean that you have a strong, functional democracy.
Speaker 4:What you're talking about just reminds me of being at MLive and working with a man named Otis McKinley. He's a spokesperson at MEDC. Currently they're going through a just convoluted crisis of their own doing. Faye Badoon she's a businesswoman received a $20 million grant that a year into that grant she was discovered. It was found that she was spending it on um sort of expensive coffee makers and high-end sofas.
Speaker 3:Is there a?
Speaker 4:better use of money. Yes, and otis would always use this language. That was so hard for me as a young reporter to understand, um, and we would talk about that in our newsroom of like, why is medc using such jargon to explain pretty simple ideas? It's intentional, very intentional, to confuse the public. I mean, that is a strategy that I don't even think he would disagree with if I told it to him right to his face. You guys do not communicate with the public. Well, because of the things that you're doing. You layer them in jargon so it makes it hard for us to really understand what it is you're actually doing.
Speaker 3:Can I tell a story?
Speaker 3:Of course A couple years ago when there was legislation to provide funding to the people not the people over the queue line, yeah, and it was in the convention, some type of convention bill at the state level.
Speaker 3:And so Chase Cantrell mentioned that on Facebook and I said, oh my goodness, let me look that up. And I looked up the law and I must have read that wording about 10 times and I still didn't understand what it meant. It's like okay, that's intentional. I'm pretty smart. I should be able to understand a bill if it's written to educate and to inform. But if it's written to help facilitate kind of underhanded things, then it looks just like this bill looked, and I think that happens way too often and again, that is an attack on democracy because you're not giving informed consent to these things. You think you're supporting one thing and you're supporting another. Another example is the community violence intervention, where you know that bill was in Lansing and the idea is that we're going to support community violence intervention on a statewide level it was 1.5 million to the Detroit CVI group.
Speaker 4:Exactly it was such a small, but they came to Detroit Matt. Hall came to Detroit at the headquarters of the DPD headquarters, to say this is for you guys. You know, this is what we're going to do for you.
Speaker 3:And where did most of the funding go? Policing.
Speaker 5:Most of the funding went to enhance policing.
Speaker 3:And so they changed, but it's still the bill, whatever the bill is. And so now, if you vote against it, you're not in favor of CVI. So you sort of use CVI to sweeten even more spending on public safety as opposed to spending money on perceived public safety, which is, I don't consider, policing public safety.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I remember back in 2021 or 2022 when the city was debating about if they were going to use ARPA funds on ShotSpotter the gunshot detection system and I remember they would always use this language. That just wasn't a reflection of their own statistics and I was always confused by it. I'm like you could get a lot of buy-in just being fully transparent about what you want to use this for, yet it was just what you're talking about. It was this like almost confusing way to get you to say well, if you don't support this, that means you're in favor of gun violence in your community and it's like it's political manipulation, it is I mean think about this, the best example ever.
Speaker 4:I mean going back to before I get into this one, going back to the cvi funding. Mike duggan and matt hall and you know, karen woodside and albus farhat get to say what senate democrats don't care about black detroiters, because they're the ones holding up this bill over what their want for this bill to include police accountability measures that might hall has told me personally that he'd be open to oh, it know.
Speaker 3:I think here's the thing. That's the reason why we need to organize at the community level, because people, we don't even have a blueprint for what black Detroit democracy looks like. Right, we don't even know what democracy will look like under. What do people in Detroit want? We've had forums, but what are? Have we reached a consensus on what kinds of things we want to see? Anybody can say they're representing black Detroit, whether it's land value tax, whether it's insurance reform, car insurance reform, which didn't really cost too much in the long run. But you throw this out and it's always in the name. And even I-375 resurfacing was supposed to be somehow reparations for Black Bottom, the destruction of Black Bottom.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you can't replace what was lost and they know that they can't.
Speaker 3:And we're not asking for that. How about you give reparations to the $600 million in overtaxation? There's a reparations case right there.
Speaker 4:And MDOT hates when you even bring that up. They hate being in these rooms where Black families are talking about Hastings Street and the legacy of MDOT, removing them, and MDOT will, on the phone with me, will be like, well, you weren't there, we weren't there, none of us were alive for this. Why are they so angry at us? It's like guys, come on. Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous. It really is. I was going to say gas tax. Remember when the gas was out of control in 2022 or 2021? Tax Remember when the gas was out of control in 2022 or 2021?
Speaker 4:Democrats wanted to remove the gas tax itself. Republicans not wanting Whitmer, ahead of the election, to get a big win. We're like no, and the reason why we're not going to do this is because it's going to take money out of schools. Democrats, aren't you guys so concerned about education funding? And then, when Republicans turned around and said, well, we want to lower gas, how are we? We going to do it. We're going to eliminate the sales tax on gas. You know what democrats said. And so republicans didn't get a big win, which wouldn't have mattered for tudor dixon. Um is? They said that no, because that's going to take out of the roads. Funny, we know we got to do the roads, and so you see this. You know political footballing back and forth because one side doesn't want the other side to have a win.
Speaker 3:That is exactly what's happening, right now in Lansing and it's just sad. I want to be really clear. Republicans don't want Democrats to have a win. Okay, and it's almost always Republicans or Republican-leaning Democrats. People don't want progressives to have a win.
Speaker 3:That's what gerrymandering is no-transcript demonstrate consensus because they have values, they have consistent values. Well, because consensus is not valued. Okay, this idea of being a consensus lawmaker is not valued. In the Republican party, they call people seeking consensus Republicans. Name only rhinos, right, but in our, on the Democrat side, they run. This is what um Alyssa Slotkin is running on, right. Listen, I have this war plan, for she always has a war plan because she's CIA. I've got this war plan to make Democrats powerful again, and it's always moving to the middle.
Speaker 3:She's going to be the next, zoran, and we're so busy moving to the middle, I want you to remember a quote from Barack Obama, who said that if he had run for election at the time that Ronald Reagan ran for election, he would have been a Reagan Democrat. That's what he said that his values were not that different than Ronald Reagan's. If you are my age, or if you were around when Ronald Reagan was president, to have the first black president compare himself to Ronald Reagan, who ran on, you know, putting welfare queens in their place, that is like 20, 30 years from now, somebody running and saying I'm going to run like Trump. When you run on hatred of black people, then you Ronald Reagan was a person who was opposed to housing integration when he was in California.
Speaker 5:Right, and the tapes of him and Nixon coming out to talk about opposed to housing integration when he was in California Right and the tapes of him and Nixon coming out to talk about black people.
Speaker 3:He was a straight up, unadulterated racist and his campaigns were, and he harmed black people. And so when? But look at what happened? Reagan was elected in 1981. And I know that because that was my first election was 18 years old. Barack Obama was elected in 2008,. Right, and in that period of time, the Democratic Party moved to the point where a Democrat was running no red state, no blue state, but he was running as a moderate.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean Kamala Harris ran with.
Speaker 3:Dick Cheney's daughter, yeah, liz Cheney. And that's what happens. And so, democratic Party, we have to decide whether the values are consensus or the values are actually running on principles that are relevant to people who've actually stopped voting, because a lot of people have just opted out of elections, especially young people. Right, y'all are just like either I'm not voting or I'm voting third party, because I can't support any of this, because the Democratic Party has moved so far right, and if we can keep moving right, or we can decide that we are going to have a party that stands for something, and it's really up to young voters who are going to make that difference.
Speaker 4:Young voters came out in a historic effort the most ever Democratic voters to ever vote in an election just happened in New York City, and so how that election will affect these other campaigns. I see Abdul on his Instagram has a will post a. You know, looking for the next Zoran.
Speaker 3:You found it, but look that creates a whole other set of conversations right, Because who is in favor of Zoran and who's not Looks to me like my people, people my age in New York are opposed to him, and so there's this real fissure right now. Also because it feels as though there's this young progressive movement that is fighting against the traditional Democratic Party that most black Democrats feel like they're part of and feel threatened by this movement.
Speaker 4:They've worked so hard for so long to be a part of that Democratic establishment to where now they find themselves in power, power threatened by folks that have, you know, real countering ideas than they do. Why, a lot of the times we see? Because candidates like andrew cuomo or eric adams are backed financially by people like bill ackman and you know um mike bloomberg, who you know are sort of aligned with trump in many ways, bill ackon being one of Trump's main funders and being able to having to explain that. It's difficult, isn't it?
Speaker 5:It is a little it's difficult, but it's not complicated.
Speaker 4:I see it playing out right here in. Detroit in D6 with Tyrone and Gabby right. I think that's like a very good example of like young progressive, democratic, socialist versus black establishment?
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that's why I'm like it's corporate, it's difficult, not complicated, right Like and I always use this example how do you win the hundred meter race? You're the fastest guy. That doesn't make it easy to do. It's a simple thing to do. That doesn't make it easy to actually accomplish. So I think for younger, more progressive-leaning people, the blueprint is mobilize, organize, be in community, talk through the issues with people, talk about what is really in their best interest. But that doesn't mean it's easy to overcome people who are in power.
Speaker 3:It's not easy to overcome people who are in power, but it was not just the people who are in power. It's not easy to overcome people who are in power, but it was not just the people who are in power, it was also voters who are suspicious of Zoran If you look at the voting outcomes, and that has a lot to do with the way that the Democrat Party and the black church have really become so. Most pastors, it feels to me, are more aligned within the Democratic Party, most black pastors not all of them, but most and I think that there's a traditional, there's a very conservative set of values that are still maintained by traditional Democrats. You know that a lot of younger folks don't agree with whether it is you know the anti-trans, you know mindset and you know the homophobia that you find within some communities or whether it is you know these thoughts that welfare, that women and men, we need more marriage, whatever those conservative values are that thread themselves through traditional democratic circles that younger folks are willing to fight. And then I think young people are also more committed to environmental justice as a core concern.
Speaker 3:Race, environmental racism is as important as any other form of racism, and so it's just a different worldview and there's less knowledge about some of these other things, if you look at the values in Detroit I think it was I can't remember who reported on this, but I think it was Outlier when they did a study and they looked at the top priorities for older voters in Detroit public safety, the top priority for younger voters in Detroit housing. Zoran is talking about housing.
Speaker 3:Not necessarily the same things that some of the older voters are concerned about. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, zoran.
Speaker 4:You know he won thanks to white, hispanic and Asian middle and higher income voters, not to say he didn't have elder, black, low-income folks a part of his campaign, and same with Cuomo. Of course he had white, asian, hispanic voters that came out for him. But he of course won among lower income and black voters. The 12-point margin is pretty drastic and that makes me kind of wonder at a certain point does the black establishment class just get left behind? If progressives like Denzel McCampbell and Gabriela Santiago Romero sort of say another one comes in four or eight years later, could they remake what the Democratic Party is?
Speaker 5:I think so. I think they can. I'm curious to hear from your experience, though, because there have been progressive candidates throughout the history of Detroit that you know predate me and Sam. But how does that tension usually work?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think it's true of any. This is a generational issue more than anything. I grew up in segregated Detroit which was 80% black and the neighborhoods and everywhere I went was 100% black, practically until I went to high school. And then I went to Mercy High School and it was like oh, but I grew up in a majority black city with black power meaning one thing right, all the black people live together and black power went one thing and we were really fighting against suburbs. Suburbs really telling us, you know, coleman Young was always under investigation.
Speaker 4:Duggan says us versus them. That's what he he'll describe that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Duggan was them at the time. By the way, Duggan was in Livonia.
Speaker 5:Some would argue he's still there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so well you know. So I think that it really was. There were really. I mean, I remember being 15 years old working at Baskin-Robbins on Grand River and getting chased out of the community in the car of my boyfriend at the time when they were saying get out of here, in words, and throwing bottles at us here in words and throwing bottles at us.
Speaker 3:I remember being in school and being told to go back to Africa in word when I was in a Catholic high school, middle school in Detroit. I remember neighbors across the street taunting us saying go back to Africa in word. And I remember my neighbors across the street now that we have four girls and three of us were about the same age and there was a family that lived across the street from us and they were not allowed to play with us. We had no friends on our block because white kids were not playing with black kids. And I remember my cousins having white friends and their friends telling people that I was too black for them. And it's interesting because people are like oh, I didn't know, there was racism against light-skinned people. Okay, yeah, racism is racism, and so Detroit was a very racist space. I went to Mercy High School, which could not have been more than 10%. Black and white kids in Farmington Hills refer to Mercy High School as the black school, and my white classmates were ashamed to acknowledge going to school with me outside of class. So that's the world I grew up in. I didn't grow up in a world where white kids and black kids were in the classrooms talking to each other and sometimes even socializing with each other or dating each other. It was just extremely rare.
Speaker 3:No-transcript. Most live in communities far flung outside the city of Detroit, and so politics has to be different. We can't just run for election representing black people in our shared community. We are now representing people in communities that are not like us, and we have to learn how to sell ourselves to those communities. Donovan McKinney has a formula for that. Many people don't. I think that you know what are you running on, and I think those democratic, socialist values are the ones that are going to win elections for people who are trying to win in larger districts.
Speaker 4:And we saw it with Asian voters, elders. Today, new York Times had a story about how Zoran ended up winning those voters talking about affordability, talking about you know what it what it is that folks need delivering on those promises. The quote that he posted today was like we'll see if he actually comes through with these things, and that's going to be the struggle. Obviously, in the case of Zoran Mandami in New York, in the case of Detroit's 76th mayor whoever it will be elected on November 4, they're going to have to compel their state legislature and assembly to change state law and policy in order to enact some of the policies that they want to see happen in their cities.
Speaker 3:I just want to just close out the thought. There's a fear of being politically marginalized, of being politically unimportant. Right, I've heard people talk about the browning of black power. Do we matter anymore? Are we politically influential anymore? We have a white mayor, we have a white school superintendent, we have two non-black representatives in Congress. Two non-black representatives in Congress and a lot of the people, even at the state level that are representing us because of redistricting aren't from our community, and so do we have voice as black people? I think that really, in 2025, moving forward, we really have to look at coalition voice. I think that this idea of, unless we're going to resegregate, we're not as segregated as we used to be.
Speaker 4:And it makes no sense now, because we used to make up a larger share of this country than we currently do.
Speaker 3:Right, yes, I mean. Well, we were the largest minority share and now you have other minorities coming in equalizing and now surpassing our share and it's threatening, especially when you had to fight so hard to get your share. And then on top of that you have trust building. That has not happened between communities. There's a lot of unhealed pain and disappointment that happens between communities. We've tried to address that here through unity efforts, but I think we're going to have to keep at it and I think, with Zoran and others, you can't just get mad at people and I'm not saying he is and just walk away and say, well, these aren't my voters. You have to really understand the psychology and the reasons why people don't trust you and work diligently to build that trust if you are elected.
Speaker 4:Have you seen Mississippi Masala?
Speaker 3:Yes, of course, and I know his mother did that.
Speaker 4:And it's just interesting, you know, when we talk about this issue, that movie itself that did that. And it's just interesting you know, when we talk about this issue, that movie itself Right it kind of underscores the whole thing Right.
Speaker 5:It shows you where his foundation lies.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and you know he's Ugandan, and that's the other thing that's really, really interesting is that he is actually. His people are Indian Ugandans. So is Kash Patel, by the way. But you know, what we're seeing also is how even the continent of Africa is diverse, more diverse than a lot of times we're led to believe. There's conflicts between Indian and African people in the continent for all kinds of reasons, like there are all over the world, and a lot of times we have people who are not part of the white majority pitted against each other. And who does it benefit? Who does it benefit for me to mistrust these people? People look at Indians as one thing right, but India has more caste and religious and language groups than just about anywhere. Even though India is not a continent, it's a nation. It is probably the size of some continents, and also there's just the diversity within there that one Indian person cannot possibly represent all of them. Right.
Speaker 3:Kash Patel does not represent India any more than you know than Mandami does they represent, you know. I think that this group blame, group identity, the racial categorization benefits one group of people and we don't even know their histories.
Speaker 4:They're turning up the racism sliders on the Twitter algorithm. They have since Elon took it over, but now, with anti-Semitism being rife on that website, so is an anti-Indian racist sentiment. That's really just. I don't know. It's not funny, but a lot of the 12-, 13-year-old, 14-year-old suburban white kids, just that's all they care about now. That's their humor. It always was. You were talking about the racist abuse you received when you were growing up in school. I don't want to guess what decade that was, but I mean 2006,. It was like the same thing 70s and 80s Right 70s and 80s.
Speaker 4:You know, 40 years later, 30 years later, you know, I will be able to tell my children I left the city, that I was raised Midland because of racist racism, harassment and abuse.
Speaker 5:Yeah, For me it was a U of D, seventh grade year. I'm like, ooh, this is a. I'm on seven miles still. But this does not feel like I am currently in Detroit with some of the stuff I'm hearing.
Speaker 3:You know it's so interesting because U of D when I was growing up, I had a lot of friends who went to U of D and that was not their U of D experience.
Speaker 5:U of D actually became more racist than it was back in the past, the more black kids that got there, the more racist it became.
Speaker 3:There were plenty of black kids when I was there, when I was growing up, U of D had a really large proportion black student body. I mean not large, which is probably the same proportion as it is today. I don't think it's that different. I think that the difference is that most of the white kids who went to U of D also lived in Detroit. A lot of them don't live in Detroit and they're bringing their racist ideals with them to that space.
Speaker 5:They're bringing their gross point ideas and their Bloomfield ideas. Yeah, I had a lot of those experiences.
Speaker 3:So did you stay beyond seventh grade?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I was seventh all the way through 12th.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it got better after seventh grade.
Speaker 5:No, it got worse because seventh and eighth grade there's just so many fewer students Freshman year, so it went from 75 of us in the whole eighth grade to over 200 freshmen. So yeah, there's kids that were coming from all over. I had classmates from Ohio at U of D, which makes no sense because Toledo has a good Catholic school there.
Speaker 3:But the mindset, though, the father went to U of D and it's like a family tradition and we're going to keep that tradition alive. That's exactly what it was. But when I was at Mercy, I was jealous of U of D, of people who went to U of D, because Mercy was so openly racist and it felt like U of D was not. As a matter of fact, my sister was the first black homecoming queen of U of D Wow, and she was homecoming queen, I want to say in 1979.
Speaker 5:That's crazy. That made her a Detroit celebrity, right? Yeah, I'm about to say that that's cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you talk to some of the older folks. It was a big thing, right. So they had a black homecoming queen in 1979. And you know, I'm not sure that would happen right now. I don't know what's going on with the school.
Speaker 5:I wouldn't, yeah, when it comes to, I wouldn't know how they even pick. I don't, I don't remember.
Speaker 4:We don't have that anymore.
Speaker 5:We don't have a homecoming queen I'm about to say we were too PC you know, People's feelings got heard and participation trophies and everything. I think we had them, but I don't ever remember. I know we didn't do prom king, prom queen.
Speaker 3:I don't remember, I think it was a student vote and that was really kind of wild. That's funny. But so in some ways Detroit was less, you know. But I have to say my kids, you know I have. My youngest is now 30. So I would imagine you're a little bit younger than I'm, the same age oh, you're 30?.
Speaker 5:I'll be 31 next month.
Speaker 3:All right. Okay, so my youngest was 30. And you know he went to school at Groves High School and at Groves in Birmingham he experienced some racism, more so at Derby Middle School. Really. At Groves. Oh, derby Middle School was outlandishly racist. Groves was just kind of racist, but it was soft racism right.
Speaker 5:It was like the kind of racism that you laugh about in the group chat later.
Speaker 3:No, you don't necessarily laugh about it, but it was like never, like nobody called you the N-word to your face. Everybody acted like they loved you. But you may or may not be allowed to take classes at the same competitive level as white kids. Now my son was able to, for all kinds of reasons, including I threatened people, but I did. When they didn't want to let him in on his class, I said, okay, bring his transcript to a school board and let's put it on open record, explain on open record why he does not belong. And, oh, maybe he does. But people were really nice.
Speaker 3:He graduated from high school with a 4.3, 4.4, I don't know something, 4.something grade point average and one of his white classmates asked him if he was going to run track in college and he said no. And he said, well, how will you go to college? And there was this perception that he was, you know, primarily an athlete and not primarily, you know, a student, an academic student. But it wasn't hateful. You know what I mean? It's a different kind of racism when people act like they, like you and they hang out with you and you're cool and you're fun and all of that kind of stuff, but they don't respect you.
Speaker 4:A lot can be told about that kind of you know, the decision of how many friends you still have from like going to a predominantly white high school, like I always. You know it's interesting like people today how that shaped them. It can go two different ways. You know what I'm saying. It can always go two different ways. They can fall susceptible to that culture and just be like, uh-huh, they're just making you know it's not a big deal. Or you can be like nah F, you, you're stupid. You know I chose the latter. Well, he did too.
Speaker 3:So the funny thing is so in middle school really really racist, right? High school he's, you know, state champion track and field. So he's winning these championships and the white kids from Derby are coming into. So he's winning these championships and the white kids from Derby are coming into hey, phil, and he's like, do I know you?
Speaker 1:And he unremembered all of them.
Speaker 4:I don't remember my friends either.
Speaker 3:And then he went to college with some of them. He's like. I have no memory of them. He intentionally unremembered them as a defense mechanism, so he was not at all bought into that. But I see other young people who did buy into that and I would imagine you observed that. Some of the same things, because I don't imagine maybe it was a U of D.
Speaker 4:They're addicted to spending their money at white spaces Like they can never go into, like spaces that look like, where people that look like that?
Speaker 5:No, that's. I've noticed that too.
Speaker 4:That like will only go where white people are. And I'm just like dude, like do you see You're?
Speaker 3:black and that's the reason for, you know, really trying to uplift it. You know, having a mother like me, it's very hard for children to, you know, get away from this, because I've always been one who wanted them to and I always talk to parents. I had a lot of friends who didn't want to talk about racism with their kids because they felt like, you know, it would make them paranoid. But I always felt like if you don't talk about racism, then it's like sending them to battle with no weapons.
Speaker 5:Right, it's like sending someone into a football game without a helmet. Like what are we?
Speaker 3:talking about Like it exists. Kids are susceptible to it. They need to be prepared for it. So tell me what racism was like. Though you said you had some of the same things. Did you have people who were not willing to speak to you in school?
Speaker 5:No, so at U of D the way it worked, because I came from Herlong Cathedral School.
Speaker 3:This small private school that used to be on Woodward and Ward. My nephew and niece went there. You probably know them, go on.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So like it was all black, though right, or very overwhelmingly black, I should say I had like a couple white kids in the school at some point, but when I went to U of D, that dynamic fully shifted.
Speaker 3:But you didn't go straight from Hurlong to U of D.
Speaker 5:I did so. I went from Hurlong because we closed at the end of sixth grade. Oh, you were in sixth grade, so all of the boys, except two of us, went straight from Hurlong to U of D.
Speaker 3:And see, my nephew was a year behind you and they went straight from. All of the other kids went straight from Hurlong to Bates.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what they did Same teachers too, right?
Speaker 5:Yeah, a lot of the teachers moved on to Bates. A couple I think one or two went to Burton. So it was weird going from this school that was really small class sizes. It felt very familial to U of D, where it's shirt, tie, dress, shirt, business shoes, belt, or you're in detention for 40 minutes after school and it's just like okay, I guess that's what we're doing now.
Speaker 5:The racism there was viewing everything through this culturally white lens, right. So like even the way that teachers would talk about Detroit was, oh, I remember Detroit back in the day and it was full of people and so vibrant and beautiful. And now it's just not that anymore and I'm like you mean, it's blacker now, like that's what you're saying. So from an early age, luckily, my dad would talk to me and my brother and sister about racism, like when we were really little. So by the time I encountered it, I knew what I was seeing, I knew what I was hearing. I was like, oh, you're coming at this from like an anti-black Detroiter type of lens. Got it I now I know it, cool, um. But for me I was in that weird space where it's like I want to try to educate people. I want to try to change people. I want to try to make them see the error of their ways and that-.
Speaker 4:It didn't last very long.
Speaker 5:No, that attitude that I had lasted all the way until, like, my sophomore year of high school, because what would happen is you'd get one person to change their way of thinking.
Speaker 1:And you're like oh.
Speaker 5:I can do that for everybody and it's like, no, you can't. No.
Speaker 4:I can't.
Speaker 5:I had to learn that and then I'm sure it happened for you you graduated and then you saw people who were no longer around their black friends for a while.
Speaker 4:And you saw the attitudes shift back to what they were before they met you In middle school. Yeah, like a lot of these people that I know in Midland who got good, well-paying jobs $130,000, $50,000 doing whatever, they don't know anything more than what they knew in middle school in terms of how process, law, policy and circumstance work on people and how their role within society. When you are taught not to care about anybody else but yourself, that's probably what you're going to do for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3:I think there's that. I think also it's helpful to understand that individualism is an American ethic, you know.
Speaker 1:And so individualism.
Speaker 3:It's an American ethic.
Speaker 3:You know, the rugged individual is the person who we look up to in the United States of America. That's the person that we celebrate. So that's one thing. Many of us come from a cultural background. Most of us come from cultural background where individualism was death right, so you had to have more communal and also just the values were more communal. This idea that nobody gets left behind is something that was really a part of and that's why people you know we say you forget where you came from, as an insult to people.
Speaker 5:I don't know if your generation still says that, we say that, but more than that we say all skin folk ain't kin folk.
Speaker 3:Well, we do say that, but people who forgot where they came from was the. That was the worst kind of insult was you're no longer in our group, and so I think that that has been diminished over time. I think the other thing is that white supremacy is the operating system of our nation. It operates at all different levels. We're taught in so many ways that white is right, and so people who are not taught to resist that internalize it in a lot of instances and internalize inferiority, especially when it's soft racism. See how racism when you call me an N-word I'm like I'm not listening to anything you have to say after that right. But the soft racism where you're my friend and you're cool and I'm just being condescending to you and treating you like you're a little bit less, is the kind of thing that's easier to internalize. We have a miseducated people who have been unfortunately internalized and absorbed the wrong lessons, and so unlearning that becomes part of the process of becoming who we need to be, and it's a difficult process.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is Some of that. Unlearning might be able to happen from some of these candidates that are able to inspire us in the public right.
Speaker 3:Well, I think young people are really. I love young people because I think young people quickly unlearned it. I think that you know a lot of things that happened. You know a lot of us raised our kids to believe racism was something we conquered in the 1960s and woke up to a world which was as racist as and so, wait a minute, you didn't prepare me for this. So I see a lot of young people being very radical.
Speaker 3:A lot of my peers growing up say, oh, you know, my son is just like you, donna, and I always mean because I was always kind of radical and their kids are more radical. So I'm always very complimented by the fact that young people think like me, because for so long nobody did. I didn't know your father, maybe we could have gotten along, but so many people consider me they call me Angela Davis, like that was an insult. But so I think that really my hope and dream is that young people are able to take these lessons, know how to function within a multicultural world and learn how to really focus on issues and understand that racism is not just something that happens to black people, it is something that oppresses people of color all over the world, and we don't have enough time for that conversation now, but, by the way, I do like your necklace. That's the map of Africa. It shows where you come from, family and your thinking. Let's talk about the city council real quickly as we wrap up City council at large. Who do you predict will win?
Speaker 5:At this point I think the only at large candidate who I'm like, confident I think will make it through is James Harris, because I think with the at-large candidate who I'm confident I think will make it through is James Harris, because I think with the at-large races it is overwhelmingly showing me when I do these candidate forums it's more about popularity than anything it's. Do people know who you are already? If not, when you show up to a room do people remember you? And that is the takeaway I'm getting from a lot of the at-large discussions I've been in. People know him already because he's with the Detroit Fire Department. You know he's been able to be in different corners of the city so he knows how to talk in different spaces, do you?
Speaker 3:think it's possible that anybody is going to be able to overtake Mary Waters and Coleman Young in the general election.
Speaker 4:It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough.
Speaker 5:Such a formidable lead. I think you know, if there is a candidate who engages young voters and really speaks to the things that matter to anyone under 30, 35, maybe they could do it. But I don't see that happening. I see, kind of like you said, it's a lot of them are trying to fall in line with democratic party talking points and talking to the older black Detroiters who go to church every single Sunday, and not that those voters don't matter, because they clearly do. I love a lot of those people in my community. Make the community work. They make up the broad majority of voting.
Speaker 3:And you know, yeah, because I want to make sure that people understand.
Speaker 5:These are wonderful people for the most part we're not saying they don't matter.
Speaker 3:Who've been fighting the good fight for all of their lives. And the fight has shifted and some of them aren't ready for that new fight.
Speaker 5:But, yes, thank you for pointing that out, and I think whoever can talk to the people who are seeing that the fight has shifted, they could probably overtake Coleman or Mary At this point. I don't know if there are people that will vote for one and not the other, though, and that's going to be the thing that dictates it.
Speaker 4:It's going to be interesting, janae Ayers is also a candidate.
Speaker 3:Yes, I've seen people want Jenea Ayers back in office, which you know.
Speaker 4:I think the Detroit Free Press said so yeah, they endorsed her.
Speaker 5:I've seen her endorsed a couple other times too.
Speaker 3:She voted the way. You know, republicans want to see people vote In what competitive districts.
Speaker 5:So districts, what I mean? Uh, so the competitive, the most competitive district will be five, I think, because not just competitive because of the number of candidates, but because it's a district that encompasses such a weird swath of the city. Yeah, so you got to be able to talk to people in island view and basically by the marina and also virginia park. Yeah, you know, you're, you're really, you have to play a balancing act that, um, to mary sheff's credit, she knew how to talk to people in different neighborhoods.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's what makes her a formidable mayoral candidate.
Speaker 5:Right, it's like being forced to understand the way that these different city departments interact with the residents of different neighborhoods.
Speaker 3:So whoever comes out of five, who do you think are the top frontrunners?
Speaker 5:So whoever comes out of five, who do you think are the top frontrunners? I think George Adams and Renata Miller are probably the frontrunners in five.
Speaker 4:I'm hearing a lot of people talk about Willie Burton and Esther Hagebuch. I can't lie.
Speaker 5:Willie's already been on a ballot and I think that puts him yeah. He's already been elected before by people in that district.
Speaker 4:Esther is sort of the adult in the room of these District 5 forums.
Speaker 5:She clearly has the most experience working within government Right, and I think 5 is going to be interesting. Tonight we're going to be in District 7. By the time this airs, I don't know if that will have already happened.
Speaker 3:It will air tomorrow, well, maybe tomorrow.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So last night we were in District 7. And District 7 has got four on the ballot, I think that one.
Speaker 4:It's Bobby Johnson, karen Witsett, denzel McCampbell and Regina Ross. Regina Ross yes, karen will not be there. She texted me today and told me no, why would I go?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think she just sent me a thing saying she won't be there. I don't want to answer questions.
Speaker 5:Gone won't be there. I don't want to answer questions, gone, yeah. So I mean I think seven's not as competitive as five, not just because of the number, but I think Denzel, he's just out and about more than some of the other candidates, so it's just like easier to predict him winning. I see him talking to more types of voters and he's a great candidate.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and he's a candidate that shows time and time again. Hey, even if we disagree, I get what the underlying issues are and I think that's really important for a city council candidate, Like understand what the role of city council is and what the limits to your power would actually be. I will say Regina.
Speaker 4:you know she narrowly lost to Fred in 2021. So voters also already know Regina Ross and in Detroit, where the elections are decided by 80% of eligible voters, not voting, having that name recognition on a ballot gives you a level of legitimacy, fair or unfair.
Speaker 3:We have three, though, because we've got Witset?
Speaker 5:Yeah, because Karen has already served, so it's not like she's and.
Speaker 3:Denzel ran for clerk and did pretty well with that, but I think his council race is even stronger than his clerk race.
Speaker 5:Yeah, he learned a lot from that race, and I think he and I don't remember if we were recording when you said this. I think we weren't. Yet you said that you think he'd be even better on council than he would be as a clerk. I think he knows that too. I think he, yeah, yeah, he's being supported by DSA.
Speaker 4:They're having their monthly general meeting on Saturday of this week, which I would imagine would be populated heavily after what happened in New York this week. Populated heavily after what happened in New York this week. A lot of energy with young voters right now. That did not exist in the presidential election for dot dot dot, the New York City mayoral primary. Why would that be a thing that is relevant or effective? Because people are so disaffected and so upset at the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just so excited by young voters. So, okay, district, we've got district seven.
Speaker 5:Yeah, seven District we've got District 7. Yeah, 7. 5 is going to be competitive, and what else? 2. So 2 is interesting because we've got Roy McAllister, who was unseated by the current councilwoman, angela Whitfield Calloway, going against each other, and Helena Scott, who is in state rep.
Speaker 1:Yes, she is.
Speaker 5:All of them have experience being elected, so in name recognition, within District 2. Now I think whoever is going to win District 2, it's going to come down to who can talk to both the very affluent Palmer Woods, sherwood Forest, part of their district, and then the rest of their district.
Speaker 4:I was riding through District 2 over the weekend. Light Up Livernois event going on. Shout out to Rufus Bartel and all those folks activating that commercial corridor.
Speaker 1:I heard from.
Speaker 4:Todd Perkins and James Harris talking about this is exactly what we're talking about when we say these commercial corridors need something to do. A lot of Roy McAllister signs. I noticed that he had the most signs and I just you know I don't know if that was a I don't know if signs translate to votes. They don't. I see a lot of Todd Perkins signs, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:Sometimes people are just really good at signage. I think that you know that'll be an interesting race.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean this is so. I love talking about this, love talking politics. We've got to get together with you again. I still want to do those forums right.
Speaker 5:Yes, we've got to talk about that.
Speaker 3:And we've got to make sure that we're helping people along and not assuming that people understand how politics have shifted. Got a lot of work that I'm going to be doing in the near future on that, but anyway, thank you so much for listening to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. Be sure to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms and, of course, support Black Independent Reporting on Detroit1millioncom, because good journalism costs and also Bridge Detroit is doing good journalism and I'm on the Bridge Detroit Community Advisory Committee and so certainly support all independent journalism because that's the difference between freedom and fascism is people having good information and people being able to express themselves freely.
Speaker 4:Unbought and unbiased. Unbought and unbiased, that's right no-transcript.
