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: Power Plays and Dirty Tricks
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.
In this episode, they discuss President Trump’s threat to deploy the national guard in the city. Together they unpack how this rhetoric stems from dehumanization rather than genuine concern for Detroit residents and how these same dynamics show up in local politics. Including ballot initiatives that hide voter suppression under the guise of protecting democracy and campaign mailers falsely implying the endorsement of candidates.
For more episodes of the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, click here.
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Speaker 2:Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people. Good journalism costs. Visit Detroit 1 millioncom to support black independent reporting. Interested in renting space for corporate events, meetings, conferences, social events or resource fairs? The Mass Detroit Small Business Hub is a 6,000 square feet space available for members, residents and businesses and organizations. To learn more about rental options at Mass Detroit, contact Nicole Perry at nperry at ecn-detroitorg or 313-331-3485.
Speaker 3:Detroit. Welcome to the Black 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 Givens-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 this 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 our 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. Welcome back to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. It's time for Word on the Street, where we break down what everyone's been saying behind the scenes. Sam, what have you heard?
Speaker 4:Well, I've been hearing quite a lot. Donna. First of all, how are ya? It's another hot September day. The summer is still going. We're not in fall just yet. I've been going to the gym and eating my protein, Am I?
Speaker 3:looking good, am I looking big and strong? You are, you're looking great.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Yeah, you as well. Today I've been having to think about this gubernatorial race that we have next year. Jocelyn Benson and Mike Duggan are both touting endorsements from Michigan Teamsters Duggan. Yesterday, his campaign claimed that the joint council, the Teamsters leadership, is headquartered right down here on Trumbull in Detroit and Kevin Moore is the president. They announced that the Teamsters would be endorsing Duggan and, in the press release, described that the endorsement was on behalf of its 10 local affiliates. That was not true. Five of the 10 have endorsed Jocelyn Benson and one of them has actually endorsed Chris Swanson, and so they made a correction later yesterday.
Speaker 4:And it's going to be really interesting to see where these labor groups and where some of these broader organizations that we often see endorse Democrats have another candidate that they're flirting with. Obviously, we've seen dozens of faith leaders, wendell Anthony included, endorse Duggan. Faith leaders, wendell Anthony included, endorsed Duggan. And what's that going to mean for them in their future with Democratic Party, as Curtis Hurtel is openly threatening anyone who backs Duggan that they will be ousted from the Michigan Democratic Party. Well, is he going to oust a?
Speaker 3:pastor, I think there are issues that are bigger than that right. So my question is what is the role of unions right now in politics?
Speaker 4:That's a good question.
Speaker 3:You know, detroit's history is really interesting because the UAW really started in Detroit at a time when unionization was really growing as a legitimized activity in our nation, you know, following the New Deal right. And so in the city of Detroit, black workers, black auto workers, were able to gain influential positions within the UAW and get the UAW to fight for things like housing, like healthcare and other socially good things. And the UAW became activists on behalf of their members and also the families of their members and the communities served. Right now, the UAW shows up in two ways, or unions show up in two ways, from what I can see Number one to make demands on government and two, to try to influence policies and political decisions not really policies.
Speaker 3:We had a conversation one of the organizations I work with in a board meeting last night talked about where are the unions in all of these fights that are happening at the community front. And so if the unions don't show up, except for those reasons, you know, why do I even care how many of the people and we talked about this before when the UAW endorsed Kenlock how many of those endorsees actually live in the city of Detroit and to what extent should their voices be allowed to be used in that way. During the presidential campaign last year, the AFL-CIO did not endorse Kamala Harris and there was a lot of controversy over that, although many locals did show up to do so. But I just don't think that the union voice is a trusted voice right now and I don't think that their endorsement means what it used to be, because members are going to vote based on other things. From what I can see, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4:When you talk about the disconnect with the UAW, sean Fain has been supportive of Trump's tariffs, saying that they could be used, and should be used, as a tool. When asked you know, what positive effects of the tariffs have you seen?
Speaker 3:He hasn't answered that question you know he hasn't answered that question. Well, I mean, you know we have. I think we are right now legitimately in a recession and I don't know if that's the positive impact he had in mind. I think that again. I think Sean Fain has done some things well and I think I like some of his rhetoric when he's saying things that are attacking, you know, larger systemic issues. Does he have his finger on the pulse of the city of Detroit? I think not, and I don't even think it's his job to have his finger on the pulse. I think the Democratic political establishment is aging. How many Gen Zers belong to the UAW, the AFL-CIO, the SEIU? That's a good question.
Speaker 4:I was shocked when I went to Wayne the city of Wayne, during the stand-up strike and I realized how many of my peers are UAW members actively working in plants.
Speaker 3:I mean I was actually surprised.
Speaker 4:I didn't think it was that many, because I go to high school in Midland Michigan, where no one is going to end up working on an energy car factory.
Speaker 3:And I'm not suggesting that there are not Gen Zers working in plants. What I'm suggesting is that if you look at Gen Z voters as a whole, a declining proportion of them like when I was young many people my age belonged to unions A large proportion very few voters actually belong to unions, and the smaller participation is going to be younger people because unions don't have the same level of strength that they used to, and so part of the disconnect is generational. Part of the disconnect is that the democratic establishment is geared towards outdated notions. How many gins of years belong to churches? How many gins of years belong to unions? And yet we use pastors and union bosses to decide to represent our communities? I just don't think they can, and so it's a problem when you have them fighting over this, but I don't think that Duggan or Benson or whoever they're running against, is going to win or lose based on what the SEIU says or does?
Speaker 4:I think you're right who should represent people? I mean, should influencers and food reviewers on Instagram be those people?
Speaker 3:Absolutely not. I think that people need to represent themselves first and foremost, and people need to form affinity groups that are politically active so they can make their demands. And if that affinity group is some new kind of union, if it's an artist union or whatever, fine. But in a lot of instances those affinity groups are going to be different. If you look at any kind of social change movement, it's never been establishment organizations that are fighting for change.
Speaker 3:Why You're established and people are trying to de-establish you, to replace your establishment with something else, and so I think that for me, it's not unions versus anybody else. It's not. What it is is that you have entities that purport to represent people. So that's going to take us to our next one, like the 13th Congressional District. Or the Democratic Party in the city of Detroit is supposed to represent the 13th Congressional District in Michigan and it does not. The people who are part of that and you know it doesn't, because very few people in our community actually attend the meetings belong all of that. This year, the brother of the head of that 13th Congressional Democratic Party.
Speaker 4:The brother of the mayor. The brother of the mayor.
Speaker 3:The candidate running for mayor, Of the candidate for mayor. Well, I was going to say yes, he is the chair.
Speaker 4:Jonathan Kinloch is the chair of the 13th Congressional District.
Speaker 3:I'm saying yes, the brother of the chair is running for mayor is what I was saying? Yes, and so that brother of the chair is running for mayor. What has the chair of the 13th Congress? Has he decided to represent voters in the district or has he decided to get his brother in office? A lot of spending. He's spending more money. The 13th Congressional District is spending more money on Kenlock's race than Kenlock himself. They're sending out mailers to people in the community and one of those mailers arrived in people's mailboxes yesterday and it was devastating.
Speaker 3:I got a call from Orlando about three o'clock. He called me. I was in a meeting. He called me right away. I was in a meeting. He called me right away and I said I guess I better answer the phone and he told me that the picture that he and I took with Solomon Kinloch during our candidate series was appearing on a mailer for Kinloch Number one. I'm not endorsing Kinloch and I've made that really clear and I don't need to talk about why. That's my personal decision based on my professional judgment of who is the best candidate.
Speaker 3:But secondly, orlando is a journalist and, as a journalist and the executive director of Outlier Media, it is unethical for him to endorse a candidate, and so this placement of this photograph on this mailer was an attack on the legitimacy of Orlando's independent standing as a media professional and it pissed me off. It's wrong. If you know we're not endorsing you, don't put us on your literature. If you know somebody cannot endorse, don't put us on your literature. And so you know telling Orlando things like well, that wasn't me, that was my brother, it was intentional and they put our picture there, knowing that we did not endorse his candidacy Me endorsing another candidate and Orlando remaining neutral. It was wrong.
Speaker 3:And I know they know it was wrong. I know they know I wasn't endorsing him because I was working with another group planning on hosting a debate which reached out to Kenlock and asked Kenlock if he would participate in the debate, and one of the pieces of feedback was it could not be at Eastside Community Network because they felt I was biased against Kenlock. So if you're telling people I'm biased against Kenlock, why am I in your literature? So that's something that impacted me and that it really made me angry. But it impacted my friend, my colleague, my co-host, orlando Bailey, and it really makes me furious in his regard because it's not fair. You know, as we have these podcast sessions, I'm the one with all the bias and you're always trying to keep the check.
Speaker 4:We try, we do a pretty good job, but we appreciate your voice.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, I appreciate that, but there is a distinction between your voice and mine, right where you are willing to walk that neutral line and I am not, and so I think that we can't conflate our voices. I think the interesting thing is that we have separate voices. Orlando and I have separate voices. We're friends, we're colleagues. We have separate voices. Orlando and I have separate voices. We're friends, we're colleagues, we are co-hosts. We have separate voices. Orlando won't say the things I will, because sometimes he doesn't believe them and sometimes it wouldn't be ethical for him to say what he does believe. So I want to be really clear, and you know, in the past we said that you know, and with Authentically Detroit, we say that the views of these hosts do not reflect their organizations, but the views of these hosts do not reflect each other. Is that fair or no? Let me see, you might even agree with me sometimes. That's right.
Speaker 4:That's right.
Speaker 3:That's not your journalistic voice we are not speaking with the same voice. That's right, okay, so I just want to clear that up. Orlando is not endorsing Kenlock. I am not endorsing Kenlock. If you see the literature and most people who posted and responded on Facebook say, yeah, I saw that and knew that looked strange, if you're seeing it, it is literally misrepresentation. And for those people who know Jonathan Kenlock I'm hearing this is just business as usual.
Speaker 4:So that's one word on the street. Yeah, back to talking about the mayor's race. I'm going to hear from Mary Sheffield tonight at Holy Trinity Catholic Academy. We expect to hear about ICE and how a Sheffield administration would navigate working with the Trump administration, which today in Howell, livingston County, said that you know, gretchen, we're more than welcome to send you the National Guard. All you have to do is call. Jd. Vance said that JD knows that Gretchen won't be calling. Mike Rogers has been saying that and I have been asking Mike Rogers' campaign how would this help? I don't get answers to that.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, the point is not to help, the point is to intimidate and to silence voices. People are afraid, not because people who don't commit crimes are afraid of having these people patrol their streets, because we know what it means to have people who don't know our communities and don't respect our communities and don't even understand our communities, patrolling our streets with weapons and the power to do what they choose. People are getting snatched up by ICE not just because they're committing crimes, not just because they are foreign, born without documentation, but because they look a certain way. And, by the way, the Supreme Court just justified that and said no problem, doesn't matter, you can racially profile for deportation if you want. And there's actually what am I going to say? A precedent for this.
Speaker 3:I think I talked about, maybe some time ago, operation Wetback, a mass deportation event that happened under I believe it was President Eisenhower, where they were trying to get rid of so many Mexican immigrants, and so they started deporting people on boats and on planes and sending them back to Mexico, and included a lot of the people who were deported were not Mexican, were American citizens. Some of them had Mexican ancestry, but you know, you can't tell what a Mexican person looks like Mexican people can look all kinds of ways and certainly like many other Latin American people. Sending some people back to Mexico when they come from other places is wrong, but also sending people, it's just wrong. I think mass deportation is wrong, period, but the willingness to make mistakes in mass deportation efforts, the unwillingness to understand that each person who is at risk of deportation has an individual civil right to due process, an individual civil right to be able to document various things, be able to document various things. We're in a time when it's okay to just make discriminatory mass actions in order to achieve the goal of white supremacy, and so that's the fear.
Speaker 3:I don't think they're here to help. I think that the pretext is always going to be an emergency. When emergency management was here in the city of Detroit, there was a declared emergency. When emergency management was here in the city of Detroit, there was a declared emergency and Trump had declared a national emergency. The immigrants were invading various communities and committing all of these crimes, and now he has turned his attention to urban communities, meaning black folks. You know, one of the things, one of the last things that Charlie Kirk said was he was kind of— Was gang violence Was gang violence.
Speaker 3:His last words were gang violence. Right, and so we know who that's directed at. So anyway—.
Speaker 4:Talking about the National Guard, I really want to focus on what it is actually doing right when we talk about Doge and government efficiency, cutting wasteful spending right. A few months ago this was before the presidential election happened I said Democrats are the new Republicans. Maybe I should have said Republicans are the new Democrats, because right now, the entirety of the Trump presidency has been like grandstanding symbolic gestures like Gulf of America or Department of War.
Speaker 4:There is no president or deploying the National Guard to create the perception that crime fighting is happening, when we know that it is actually not. And they're standing around.
Speaker 3:If people don't understand the history of the Democratic Party. I think a lot of people in your generation have learned about the Democratic Party through a demonized lens that was shaped by the Republican Party. You know the Democratic Party through a demonized lens that was shaped by the Republican Party. The Democratic Party started the war on crime. The Democratic Party did these things, and without really having to be knowledgeable about what the Republican Party has been doing all along. But the Republican Party is the party of McCarthyism. The Republican Party is the party that defended Nazis that came over from Nazi Germany who were arrested as war criminals, and it was Republicans who fought against them. So the Republican Party does not have clean hands. The Democratic Party passed the New Deal in the Democratic Franklin D Roosevelt's administration. Republicans were trying to figure out how to unravel Social Security, how to unravel union rights, how to unravel housing rights, because Republicans are all about profit and they always have been. Even when they were freeing the slaves it was about profit for Northern industry. So when we look at the Republican Party, they're not the New Democrats. The Republican Party is the Republican Party of old on steroids, and I want to make that clear because I think that there's been a lot of historical miscommunication. We know that Joe Biden is the person who wrote the crime bill right, and we know that President Clinton was the president at that time. But what people may not know is that Joe Biden became the crime senator to try to appease the Republican Party at the time.
Speaker 3:Richard Nixon, who was a Republican, was anti-crime, was talking about, you know, putting police in the streets, and so, yeah, the Republican Party is showing its colors. We've had the National Guard in Detroit before. When I was a child it was here. We know what the National Guard did. When I was a kid, my first memory is crawling underneath a window during the 1967 rebellion, because a four-year-old girl and I was almost four years old was shot when her mother lit a cigarette in an apartment above a store by the National Guard. National Guard killed many, many people. A police state is never, ever safe for Black people, so, whatever their intended stated purpose, the impact is never good for us.
Speaker 4:Do you think that they know that they're never good for us? Do you think that they know that they're what they're advocating for is not going to lead to a decrease in violent crime, or do you think they believe that it will and they're misinformed? I'm just because we both agree right, left and right, republicans and Democrats both agree that we need to find solutions to reduce crime. Right and in Detroit we've seen-.
Speaker 3:I don't believe that.
Speaker 3:Donald Trump and the Republican Party are motivated by a concern about crime victims in Detroit. No, I don't believe they are. I think that the reality is they're not trying to address crime victimization. What they're trying to do is address white supremacy. I believe that they believe we are not supremacy. I believe that they believe we are not human. I believe that they believe we need to be contained. I believe they believe we need to be corralled and imprisoned and other kinds of things. If you look at the things that they say about us, they treat us like we are contaminated, not just the people committing crimes, all of us. And I don't think they see a distinction. I don't think they would look at you and say, oh look, there's Sam Robinson. He looks like a good guy. I think they would look at you, let's see if he's one of the good ones. I think they would look at you and see a threat. And my concern is when you are already dehumanized and when you send the police in to a dehumanized community, you're not trying to protect that community, you're trying to contain it, you're trying to punish it, you're trying to corral it, and I don't think that's ever going to be good for us. If people were concerned about crime, they might look at what's happening all over America in terms of gun crimes In rural America. Some of the rural American cities are much more criminal, have much more violence than we have in Detroit. They're not looking at crime maps. Some of the same people wanting to send people to Detroit have more criminality where they live and they know it. The way that crime is depicted is this other way. Now, one of the things that the federal government did conveniently is they got rid of all of the data, so we don't have crime data. They just stopped releasing information about how white supremacists, how they removed information from the Department of Justice about the impact and threat of white supremacy on crime and the terrorism caused by that. But they know it's there. I do believe they know it. Two men were just found hanging from a tree, and this is not the first black man that's been found hanging down south Were they deploying forces to try to protect these men? Are they investigating it? No, so do I believe they're coming here because of a real concern about black folks in our communities? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3:And the challenge is because we do have crime. Some people welcome it. Some people welcomed the crime bill. They said oh, there is crime, let's have the crime bill.
Speaker 3:And the crime bill led to the greatest growth in incarcerated population anywhere in the world. It destroyed families, mommies in jail for the rest of her life because she was riding in a car with daddy and he had cocaine in the car, and you didn't even have to have a whole lot of it because the disproportionality was great. I don't know if you remember the three times an out for the rest of your life. You committed a crime three times. You could be arrested for life. For the rest of your life. You committed a crime three times. You could be arrested for life. And finally, what are the root causes of crime? Is it blackness? Or is it trauma, poverty and all of the associated factors? If those are the root causes trauma, poverty and all of the associated factors then you will treat the trauma, the poverty and all of the associated factors. If it will treat the trauma, the poverty and all of the associated factors. If it's blackness, then just lock them up, throw away the key.
Speaker 4:Can I tell you that I do think that some on the right not currently in office or part of mainstream conservative Republican commentary, but we're getting closer to commentators who believe that blackness is the root cause, that believe that in race science and I hear it. I heard it when I was a kid growing up in Midland Michigan. You heard that in second grade and third grade and fourth grade and fifth grade. I feel like all the way up to like high school. I heard race science from white people but I'm hearing it now more in political thought and online social media or on Twitter.
Speaker 3:It's the whole what they called neoconservativist movement, that whole movement when Donald Trump was first elected. I started reading some of their writings and it's scary because they actually believe we are inferior. This is not.
Speaker 4:And it's a widespread held belief by people who are in office. They're not going to say this out loud, but they're in community and breaking bread with and family members of people who, yeah, believe that black people are inferior and it is so much pervasive in white communities and organizations than we realize.
Speaker 3:Beliefs about black inferiority are norms.
Speaker 4:Oh, it's so normal.
Speaker 3:And it's normal for many black people. Okay, many black people believe that black people are not as intelligent as white people. Many black people believe that black culture is inferior to white culture. Many black people believe these things, but almost all white people have been raised to believe in the superiority of whiteness, even if that's not what it's called and it's done through media, it's done in every kind of way. So the norm in our society is that. And then you started seeing black people move into places where they weren't inferior. And, as you see that, black people move into places where you cannot call them inferior. That creates cognitive dissonance. Right, they must be cheating places where you cannot call them inferior. That creates cognitive dissonance. Right, they must be cheating. They must be lying. There's something wrong or they are the exception to the rule.
Speaker 3:Look at what Donald Trump said when Barack Obama became president. He didn't just say I don't like his policy ideals, he said he is not American. He forced him to continue to try to prove his Americanism and all of the lies about that, but he also attacked his intelligence. He said that his transcripts from her were falsified. He said he was only there because of affirmative action. He wanted people to believe and many, many people did believe. They needed to believe that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama could not be great. Look what they said about her Obama and Michelle Obama could not be great. Look what they said about her. They said she's not a man. Look at what they said about him. They said that he was not a real man. Right, they talk about trannies now and all of this attack. They've used that language on Black women like Michelle Obama, who achieve high levels of success.
Speaker 4:Like Serena.
Speaker 3:Williams and Serena Williams and even Beyonce. People have literally said Beyonce knows looks like a man and I'm like Lord have mercy. I feel sorry for that man looking like Beyonce. If he wants to look like a man, okay.
Speaker 4:I feel sorry, whatever his romantic partners look like probably pretty bad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. The reality is it's a ridiculous statement, but it's dehumanizing. You cannot convince me that people who see me as less than human have beliefs that I should legitimize. What you can convince me of is that they have sincere beliefs in that regard and that they're sincerely believing some of these things make sense, and I believe that there are many people who voted Republican, not out of hate but out of a belief that, yeah, they really do need to be contained, right. But I also believe that there are people who have given into these feelings of hatred. There are many men who've given into feelings of sexism and believe that women are inferior, and you know, and there are many Americans of all ethnicities who have negative beliefs about foreigners.
Speaker 3:The one thing that the MAGA movement is really good at is playing up stereotypes and helping to foment a lot of internecine fighting so that nobody trusts each other. And the more we fight each other, the more I don't trust these. Look at the movement. I never, ever, heard of African descendants of slavery as a movement before Donald Trump was elected. That was financed, that was supported by the right, by the Koch brothers and others in order, and they have spokespeople. They put them on social media and you will have younger black people your age and a little bit older arguing forcefully that African immigrants are the problem. They don't deserve these things. We don't like them. Even when they have people, friends, who are African immigrants, well, those are the exceptions. That's something that the right wants to happen, because if we're mad at Mexicans and Mexicans are mad at us, and we're all mad at Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and Haitians and Ukrainians and everybody else, then we cannot come together to resist their oppression. And so right now we've got ICE, and ICE is a problem for immigrants, but not for black people. We stand aside, and I've heard so many black people say well, that's not our problem, it's not us. This time, when the National Guard comes to places like Detroit and targets black folks, immigrants are not going to be in our fight. They have their, and that's how they gain power and so resist it.
Speaker 3:Resist believing that they have good intentions. Resist believing that anybody that cannot see you as human can want good things for you as a human being. Not want what you want. They may want. You know, I have cats, right, and I want my cats to do well, but my cats don't necessarily have all of my rights, like when they try to run out of the house. I keep them in there. I feel bad about that. But you know what I'm saying? They're not human. They don't eat my food. They eat cat food. I don't eat their food to make sure it tastes good. I just put it in a dish and let them eat their cat food, let them drink out of a cat dish. I love them, but they're not human and they're not treated like me. They may or may not want what I want. Maybe they want what I cooked for dinner.
Speaker 3:And the same thing, I think, in a Republican context right now, the MAGA context. I'm not talking about Republicans, because MAGA is a movement of white supremacy. It is not a movement of Republicans. It has taken over the Republican Party and the Republican Party is now the MAGA party and I don't trust anything they say or do, and I think sometimes they say or do things to try to earn our trust or try to dismantle our thinking. But look, charlie Kirk was killed by a white man and there was violence at HBCUs against black people and there's a text on black people and there were suggestions it was a black person. I read somewhere. What's the guy's name, is it something? Robinson the killer?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Is it Tyler Robinson?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:Tyler Robinson. Now, when you hear Tyler Robinson, many of us hear brother right. It's like someone say woo. I'm so glad when I saw his picture he was not black, because if Tyler Robinson was a black man, that would have created even more problems for our community. But even though he's not a black man, we are still blamed for his death and for Charlie Kirk's death. So those are my thoughts on that, but we do have another hot topic we want to get to.
Speaker 4:We do, and that's Sontiel Jenkins. Oh, go on. Yes, well, you want to talk about Sontiel? I just saw Sontiel at Babo. Yeah, shout out to Babo. Right there on Woodward and Ferry Good restaurant Sontiel and her husband frequent often. She endorsed Mary Sheffield over over the week. Is she trying to get anything out of it? Probably not a job. Is what she told dana fauna of the detroit free press and I and malachi barrett standing around cody high school? Um, yeah, what do you think? What do you? I don't think she doesn't want anything I think santil jen Jenkins.
Speaker 3:I think the excessive scrutiny of her motives is just another example of misogynoir. This is what candidates do. You don't win. You endorse your opponent. Hillary Clinton endorsed Barack before he offered her the job of Secretary of State. I'm assuming Harris endorsed Biden before he offered her the job of Secretary of State. I'm assuming Harris endorsed Biden before he offered it, but before there's Buttigieg also endorsed Biden. Other people endorsed Biden. Not all of them ended up with jobs. Politicians endorse people after they pull out of races for many reasons. This is not new. The suggestion that she's doing it because either her campaign convinced her and she doesn't have a mind of her own, or she's doing it out of self-interest I don't know that. I think Santel Jenkins needs a job. I think her husband actually is doing pretty well and she lives a pretty stable I think they could probably just retire.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and you know what she's employable.
Speaker 4:She could run for another office.
Speaker 3:She could run for office or get a job somewhere else. Let's be clear she did not come out of the unemployment line to run for mayor. No, she has decades of public service and credentials behind her. She does not need a job. She was running for mayor. She didn't run for mayor because she needs a job. She ran for mayor, regardless of whether or not you supported her, because she believed she could make a difference in our community. And I believe that every politician who ran for mayor, for the most part, was doing it out of a sincere desire to help Detroit. I don't believe that people were just doing it to get a job. I mean everybody, all the frontrunners, had jobs, didn't they? We're talking about Kinloch, mary and Santill and Todd and Durhall.
Speaker 4:They all had jobs. I will say, some of the questions about Santill's motivation do stem from the fact that they were openly adversarial toward each other on the campaign trail.
Speaker 3:And that's what candidates do I mean, you remember?
Speaker 4:Kamala Harris going at Biden for racism and then Biden selecting her to be his VP.
Speaker 3:People love to put women in a catfight. They love to say this woman doesn't like this woman. She said these bad things. She said bad things about Mary Sheffield. Perhaps she said even bad things. You know. She said bad things about um mary sheffield. Perhaps she said even worse things about kenlock. Okay, if you want a part-time mayor, kenlock's your man. Okay. That's a whole lot worse than if you want to see her on his. See her, look on instagram. I mean, one is this person is not available socially and the other one is this person will not do the job of mayor based on she had a word for everybody.
Speaker 4:Santil did say that Santil did question Mary's ability to be an effective mayor.
Speaker 3:She, of course you do, you're running, you're running. She questioned everybody's ability to do as well as she did. I don't think that she said anything about I think Mary is the least qualified person in this field. She's less qualified than these people. She said she's less qualified than me. I would not run for office. But if I ran for office I'd probably be saying people were less qualified than me too. Okay, that's part of the process of running. You're convincing people, I'm the best.
Speaker 3:What she said? And she did reach out to me thanking me for respecting her decision and she said I still believe I was the most qualified person for office. She's not giving that up. You can't vote for her for mayor, so you can vote for Mary Sheffield, and she wrote an editorial towards that extent. And so give some respect to this professional, experienced, seasoned professional that she understands how to navigate her way through this political process and that she understands how to navigate her way through this political process and that she is not somebody who's acting with some kind of catfight mentality of she's not good.
Speaker 3:She knows who Mary Sheffield is and she knows who she is. She believes she was better and I'm sure she had many reasons. Mary Sheffield won the primary and you know Kinloch came second and she chose Mary Sheffield as the person that she chose to endorse and we should respect her opinion as opposed to scrutinizing the reason for it. Duggan endorsed Mary Sheffield and people, people, is she going to endorse him? He endorsed her for whatever reason. Every endorsement comes with a reason, but I find this scrutiny to be disappointing.
Speaker 4:I will say right now I do expect Mary Sheffield to endorse Mike Dougan for governor. I have no reason to believe that, other than just Mary's answer. When I asked her what's Mary going to say, she just got an endorsement from the guy.
Speaker 3:I have no reason to believe that, other than just Mary's answer when I asked her. I mean, what's Mary going to say? She just got an endorsement from the guy. Is she going to say no, I'm not endorsing him, I'm going to endorse a Democrat.
Speaker 4:We're going to find out. We're going to find out.
Speaker 3:if she does, we are going to find out, but I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt that she's telling the truth. She's a Democrat and he endorsed her and he's the previous mayor and they did not always get along, as he acknowledged Whether or not.
Speaker 4:She chooses to align herself with the Democratic Party or she chooses Mike. Duggan is something down the road for her. Duggan has said over and over again I am not asking people who support my campaign to leave their party.
Speaker 3:Curtis.
Speaker 4:Ruttel certainly isn't respecting that party. Curtis Ruttel certainly isn't respecting that. Jim Runstead has not really talked as much about it as Curtis Ruttel has that Jim Runstead is the chair of the Michigan GOP.
Speaker 3:I mean at this idea that Duggan has, that we're not asking people to leave their party, but what we're asking them to do is to leave us vulnerable leaving them vulnerable to a MAGA movement that has literally stalled our state, has put our state in paralysis.
Speaker 3:The reason that we don't have a budget is not because Democrats are being unreasonable. The reason we don't have a budget is because of look at what the House is trying to do. You can't pretend as though this is just a simple division of ideas and both sides are going too far. Duggan is both siding an argument that is really one-sided, and that is there's one group of people who are deciding to dismantle the state and another group of people who are trying to figure out how to rearrange the coins. Neither is perfect and I have lots of criticisms for people in both parties, but what Duggan is saying and what a lot of people are fearing is without somebody willing to stand up to MAGA in Michigan on a political level, on a budgetary level, on a policy level, then we will be even more exposed and more vulnerable to what the Republicans bring. So I think that Mary Sheffield will have to keep that in consideration.
Speaker 4:It's going to be interesting too with Curtis. He's the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. Does he really want to start off a relationship with Detroit's first woman mayor in a sort of adversarial style? I couldn't see that from the state party. Their biggest pool of voters is in Detroit, and so would you really want to beef out with the mayor?
Speaker 3:of Detroit.
Speaker 4:I'm not suggesting he's already doing it now, so maybe I'm not suggesting, he's already doing it now. Curtis Hertel is already beefing out with the mayor of Detroit, so I guess he might not be.
Speaker 3:If we look at how Republicans are functioning and not individuals. If he has not disavowed MAGA, he's MAGA. I don't see any independent decision-making where Republicans this Republican is voting against this thing that the other one's like.
Speaker 4:I would push back on that just because just last week I mean the city of Detroit Mayor Duggan's spokesperson called Mike Rogers an unserious politician and really criticized him for advocating Trump to send troops to Detroit.
Speaker 3:Did you see that statement? That's not. But that's not Mike Rogers. I'm saying that every seated Republican is here. I'm not talking about everybody. Every seated Republican that I've seen has been on one side of the issue. Now maybe you've looked at seated Republicans and you've seen some who are voting against Trump. They kind of started to challenge him around Epstein. So whether it's Rogers, whether it is I was talking about Duggan.
Speaker 4:I was saying Duggan was pushing back on MAGA.
Speaker 3:Sure, he pushed back on MAGA, but I'm talking about the budget. What has he come?
Speaker 4:out and said about the budget he has not pushed back on MAGA.
Speaker 3:He literally pushed back to protect his power as mayor. He's sitting mayor right now and they're saying we're going to take over your city. Of course he's going to say I can run my own city. Where has he been when he said we, this budgetary, the house budget is wrong, the house budget is harmful to he's not going to say that because he's allied with matt hall right now.
Speaker 4:Who matt hall is getting criticized for republicans for the perception of he's being too pro duggan. I want to zoom in though.
Speaker 3:But okay, go ahead. We are trying to get a budget passed. This man is trying to be governor and at the time he's trying to be governor. You're saying that Matt Hall is being told these things, but Matt Hall is proposing a budget that is fully aligned with what is happening at the MAGA level. There's nothing. They're looking at cutting all of the services. They're looking at cutting so many things in our community.
Speaker 3:So we can't pretend like this is a separate thing. All these people have different personalities, but if the political objectives don't change and you don't stand up against those political objectives, why would I trust you with the leadership of the state when we already have a president with that same thinking? And what I'm saying is that we make it about people, but we have to look at what the actual policies of these parties are. Look at what's happening. We have a president who literally forced every city and state to fly flags at half mass because a public personality was executed and the governor and the mayor had to apologize for not doing so and say well, we made a mistake, there was some equipment failure.
Speaker 3:We're looking at a president who has sued Harvard and U of M and is saying they're going to take black studies out of schools. They're going to stop spending money in schools with high percentages of black populations because they see it as discriminatory. There's anti-blackness at work. They want to gut Medicaid. They want to gut food stamps. They want to gut HUD. They want to eliminate the Department of Education. Knowing these things, if you say I'm going to help negotiate their agenda, who is going to fight them? Already, some people feel as though the governor is not fighting hard enough.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:But if you have a mayor who is running on the belief and he has said this that both sides have gone too far and therefore I'm going to try to bring people back to the middle, there's a lack of trust. If you think he's going to, I think he thinks he can get in there and he can negotiate with Matt Hall, but I think he would negotiate away a lot of our rights and a lot of our power. And Duggan has also declared himself to be colorblind. He does not deal with racial justice issues.
Speaker 4:You'd never hear him talking about race. I do hear him sometimes talking about it and that's really interesting. Now, in the context of I'm leaving the Democratic Party, I'm appealing to conservatives.
Speaker 3:When do you hear him?
Speaker 4:What specifically Twice in the last two months. One was well, I'll just talk about the Chinatown in both of the contexts, where he's talking about racism and he's talking about injustices done by the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, talking about Vincent Chin and how, when he was a college student that was the talk.
Speaker 3:It was horrible. What's the other one? Let me finish. When he was a college student. That was the talk. It was horrible. What's the other one?
Speaker 4:Well, let me finish. When he was a college student, it was an interesting perspective to hear from Gabby Santiago Romero, who that was her district. They just recently did a honorary name street name for Vincent Chin, who was murdered in. Was that the 80s?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 4:In the 80s Very interesting. Horace Sheffield spoke about how he had tried to be a sort of bring you know Latin Hispanic UAW workers and Asian UAW workers and black UAW workers together and Duggan spent seven minutes talking about when he was in college. This was a huge topic and his dad was working for the prosecutor at the time and he railed against his dad in a letter to the prosecutor and his dad called him saying why are you doing? What is this? Disagreed with you know his Republican father over the lack of prosecution for Vincent Chin. Called it a hate crime, said it was clear injustice. He spoke another time about an instance of an injustice when he was a, before he came, because to my understanding you remember better but the prosecutor was resigned out of protest over that Vincent Chin.
Speaker 3:I can talk about that in a minute, but tell me about the other one.
Speaker 4:I can't regurgitate. Okay, well, let's talk about Vincent Chin.
Speaker 3:Vincent Chin was literally beat to death outside of a strip club in Highland Park because people thought he was Japanese. He was Chinese. He was beat to death and the people who killed him were exonerated for his murder. It's disgusting. That happened when I was also coming of age. It was devastating. My brother-in-law, who is Filipino, grew up around the block from that on Eastern Street in Highland Park, and so his whole family still lives there. You could have looked at Jimmy and thought he was Japanese or Chinese, I mean because all Asians look alike, right. So that's racism and I don't ever want to minimize that. He's also willing to talk about Black Bottom.
Speaker 3:He's also willing to talk about all of those historic harms. Many people are willing to talk about racism as a historical thing, but not racism as a present day thing. So if you're not talking about what's happening to immigrants today and racial profiling, if you're not talking about housing injustice today and roles that he's played in contributing to racism right now with predatory governance, then that's what I'm talking about. Everybody can acknowledge yeah, in the past we did really bad things. Thank God, we got better. Now the universe bends towards justice and we're just now. Now it's an economic argument. This is the argument a lot of people make, and he's willing to make that argument.
Speaker 3:But my statement is this Since Vincent Chin was murdered, which was a terrible, horrible thing, you've had mass incarceration. You've had all kinds of things happen inside of our city that are clearly racist. Whether you look at the predatory behavior of housing foreclosures and the city's failure to protect housing contractors were allowed to poison communities with contaminated backfill. If you look at the way that money is spent in Detroit, all of that is racist. And when you talk about two Detroits, you're really talking about a Detroit that is built for richer, whiter people coming into the city, where poor black people are left behind and there is ample documentation of that. And when you talk to Duggan about that, he calls it divisive. He says and he says well, I don't like to talk about that because it turns people off and I like to stick to the facts. So I stand by my comment that he's colorblind about current events and about the actions of public policy, although he does a really good job of pretending to care.
Speaker 3:You remember, this is the same person who announced the redoing of I-375 as reparations, because it used to be Paradise Valley and we moved all these people out. And now we're going to have reparations, we're going to build this community for them. It was never reparations. How dare he use our history like that? So I also have concerns about him misusing our history in ways that are harmful.
Speaker 4:There are growing concerns in District 5. I want to zoom in to District 5 and talk about.
Speaker 3:Esther.
Speaker 4:Hoggebuck, who is running a writing campaign.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm a District 5 member and, quite honestly, we had a District 5. We invited all of the city council people to come on, authentically Detroit and out of district five. Renata Miller declined to respond and Willie Burton said he was going to be here and just didn't show up, and so that's not a good sign, you know. I want to think that our district five folks are going to make themselves accessible and be accountable. It'll be interesting. I think that Esther Hogglebook is going to really struggle with the write-in campaign because she's just not well-known.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And she doesn't have money and a machine behind her to get it done, does she?
Speaker 4:She said after the primary, I had a difficult time making a decision who to support. As I spent time, I couldn't consciously ask people to vote for somebody who I didn't feel comfortable supporting. She told me yesterday Quite a few people reached out to me to consider running as a write-in. It's an uphill battle, she acknowledged, but the more I thought about it, the residents of Detroit needed to have a real choice to represent them. What are the issues over the two candidates that made it past the primary, renata Miller and Willie Burton? Well, if you ask Louis Aguilar of the Detroit News, you know he compared Renata's 21-year-old domestic violence charge in her past social media posts about the LGBT community to Burton's eviction from Lafayette Towers and his arrest during a Board of Police Commissioners meeting in July of 2019, in which there was no charges filed against him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't look at the eviction as disqualifying if it's a matter of him being able to afford his living situation.
Speaker 4:And Willie said you know it was a story that all too many Detroiters are familiar with rising rents and I was pushed out.
Speaker 3:And I certainly don't look at his political speech and his protest as disqualifying. No. What I want to know, though, is what he plans to do in our district, and so of the two, I think that he has fewer disqualifying things on his record.
Speaker 4:I will say Renata has been very actively involved and I have been one of the few reporters that she's responsive to.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I know she didn't respond to Lewis's story.
Speaker 3:She didn't respond to us at all.
Speaker 4:I talked to her yesterday and she told me I understand how hard it can be to lose an election. Even so, the voters spoke loud and clear in the primary and selected Renata Miller for Detroit City Council, District 5.
Speaker 3:Did you ask her about her homophobia?
Speaker 4:No. It was a text message. I asked her for comment on Esther.
Speaker 3:Can you ask for a comment on her homophobia? Yes, I will. I'm really concerned about that.
Speaker 4:She claims it's white people in the media concocting a narrative around her.
Speaker 3:Are those things on Facebook or not?
Speaker 4:They still are yes.
Speaker 3:Okay. So if they're on Facebook, it's not concocted it. So if they're on Facebook, it's not concocted, it's reported. And I think that people like to pretend as though you don't have the right to scrutinize their public speech, but unless it's something that you care about, for her that may be immaterial.
Speaker 4:For me it's not Especially in District 5, where I think a lot of gay and lesbian Detroiters exist, quite frankly, Well, absolutely.
Speaker 3:West Village has always been a welcoming community. Yeah, I mean, quite frankly, people um in communities would be impacted by that. I think in 2025 there's a restaurant on on mac avenue, um, that used to serve vegan food. Um, there was a period of time when I was vegan. My niece convinced me that it would be better for my health and the planet and I tried it, but I missed cheese and cream, so I had to go back. Um, but um, there was a period of time there was this vegan restaurant and it was the best vegan food ever. It was Dominican and I mean it was great.
Speaker 3:I used to go in there and just get the best meals and one day I tried to order it. When I was trying to convince Kevin to be vegan, I was like, kevin, we're going to go here and get some vegan food, and it wasn't open. And then I found out that it had been shut down because the son one of the sons of the owners who worked there had tape recorded somebody who and mocked a couple I believe it was one of the people may have been trans, but it was a gay couple and posted them on Instagram and the protest shot them down in the restaurant closed within a few months, even after they fired the son. So Detroit does have an active and organized gay community, and in District 5, it's going to be really significant. I think those things could in fact damage her campaign if enough people know about them. Willie Burton has certainly made more headlines in some ways just because of his flamboyant behavior on the Detroit Police Commission. So it'll be interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Willie has also been criticized for missing many Board of Police Commissioner meetings. Renata has been really, really active. She's been door knocking. She's got the support of the UAW, Mary Waters, Scott Benson, the Black Slate endorsed her. The Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights endorsed Renata. She's 57 years old, she is a UAW retiree and she has got a fascinating history. You know, if you ever have a chance to talk to her, she's been through so much. I talked to Renata at length. She is just an interesting person.
Speaker 3:I talked to Renata at length when I was leaving my daughter's house one time. She's in District 5. I couldn't get away from her. She's a conversationalist.
Speaker 3:She's a nice lady, she's a personality, she sure is, she's a nice person and you stand for and what will you support If I believe you are bigoted? I have a concern about you standing for things that I think are important we don't have. I mean, detroit has policy-wise, detroit is very welcoming to LGBT community right, we have laws on the books and we had them long before many other communities banning housing discrimination and employment discrimination. In the city of Detroit, however, there's still discrimination and I just think you know. Ultimately, we just want to make sure that people don't bring bigotry to the table, and I mean, everybody has some bigotry. I just that's a concern of mine.
Speaker 3:But she is likable, you know. I will acknowledge that she is knowledgeable about some things. She states that she's actually a cousin of Angela Brown Wilson, who I loved and lost earlier this year. She's an East Sider with deep connections here. But when you sit at that city council table, my question is will you represent your constituents fairly, equitably and justly? And I don't know. I mean, if I was Willie Burton, I probably wouldn't go to police commission meetings either. They dislike him, he is marginalized and he's not respected in that space.
Speaker 4:Because he pushes and scrutinizes the police department in a way that no other police commissioner does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so you know, there's two questions right. What is the role of the rebel? What is the role of the rebel in, you know, just challenging the system and bringing awareness to the system's failures? We do not necessarily need city council people to always be agreeable and pliable and do whatever. Sometimes we need people to just say no, so that they can raise issues and help make government more accountable, and so, to the extent that's what he's doing, I don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 3:My question, though, is can he transcend being a rebel so that he can also be a constructive force and helping to push along some of the things that I care about? Because a rebel for rebellion's sake is not as useful as a rebel who's actually trying to accomplish something with a clear set of political expectations and policy expectations. And then also, you know, to what extent is there vindictiveness? Now I'm going to sit on the city council and I'm going to hold the police commission accountable for my city council perch, because I couldn't do it as a police commissioner, and that feels to me as though, if the accountability gets to be personal and not professional and not objective and not constructive, it could be problematic. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean it's an interesting time. I'm really really excited about what's happening in the city. I'm excited about some of the ballot initiatives. Have you been informed of all of those?
Speaker 4:I have actually. Today was the first Board of State Cambushers meeting without a new ballot proposal language to be deliberated over. Shout out to Haley Harding, who reported that she is a reporter at Vote Beat. Yeah, I mean, we got a ton of them. We talked about a couple of them over the last several episodes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but there's many more. Yeah, you guys can go listen to Imani Foster. Yeah, talking about money out of politics? Yes, there's those, but there's ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is good.
Speaker 4:We need to have Pat at ranked choice voting. Come on the show. Yeah, I've been talking to Pat via email for like a year. This effort which, interestingly enough and get ready for this Donna's going to love this one Mike Duggan's campaign, I believe has formally endorsed rank choice voting. Rank my vote.
Speaker 3:That's good.
Speaker 4:They were at his Michigan Central event, actually Silently I don't think he has made any statement in support, but they silently are backing that effort.
Speaker 3:Okay, I mean it's smart. It's smart to back that effort. I would are backing that effort. Okay, I mean it's smart, it's smart to back that effort. I would. I think there is also a concern that many have about some of the election protect an election protection initiative that's disguised as an election protection initiative.
Speaker 4:But what they're trying to do? Yeah, go ahead, go on. Well, it's just so similar to secure my vote from 2022. Remember that one when they would go into barbershops and be like this is gonna make it easier for black people to vote and it would do the exact opposite, right?
Speaker 3:And so with this one, they're not just looking for you to have your you know voter ID, not your driver's license or your Michigan state ID. They also are looking for you to have a either a passport or a birth certificate Right with your. That matches the name, matches your ID, and whenever I hear things like that, I get really concerned, because I've been married a couple of times and divorced and my name is not the name on my ID A lot of women have I have married names, and so if you are married, then you have to have your marriage license as well as evidence of your name. And so imagine going to vote and the people who already have trouble processing the votes have to go through all this scrutiny, and of course, that will impact absentee ballots and other ballots, and so it's a real concern of mine.
Speaker 4:And the effort is done out of the fear of voter fraud which, again, guys, we catch it all the time. You can go look up all the instances of Dana Nessel and Jocelyn Benson announcing voter fraud taking place. We're just going through the Hamtramck voter fraud relating all these Republicans in Hamtramck that are doing ballot harvesting, which they accused people in Detroit of doing four years ago, with no evidence.
Speaker 3:Well, I think we can call it fear and we can also call it propaganda. I think it's propaganda. I think the propaganda is designed to suppress votes, like many other things are, because if we make it more difficult for people to vote, then we can have more power. So I don't look at any of these things as stemming from, I believe you know, the 2020, trump won 2020. This is that same crowd, and when they say Trump won 2020 because black cities supported him and in those states where black cities helped tip the balance, he would have won what they're really saying is they don't think black voters should have the same access to the ballot as other voters, even if that's not the thing they say out loud. Well, what they're really saying is they don't think black voters should have the same access to the ballot as other voters, even if that's not the thing they say out loud.
Speaker 4:Well, what they really think is that black communities are too stupid to administer elections. I mean, that's literally what they believe. They don't believe that they are able to do it.
Speaker 3:Or un-American. You have to keep in mind that Americans, black people, are not seen as American. You know, when I was growing up, people would say go back to where you came from, go back to Africa inward, go back to Africa inward. I heard that all of the time as a child. Okay, and clearly I did not move here from Africa. They knew that People will look at people who are, you know, asian, of Asian descent, and just automatically assume they are not real Americans. And so there's this mindset that real Americans are white people and real Americans should control the ballot.
Speaker 3:We interviewed a guy named David Daly on Authentically Detroit last week. He's amazing. He's a member actually of Voters, not Politicians on the board with me and he's written books about the attacks on democracy. One of the things he points out is that in the 1970s, as the electorate became more diverse, there were efforts to suppress the vote and also to limit the impact of democracy so that we could have the you know, continue the existing white supremacy in our nation. And so you can't take race out of this conversation, you can't take white supremacy out of this conversation, because it's connected.
Speaker 3:They're not going into places like Traverse City or into places in the Grand Rapids suburbs and saying let's look for people who don't really have the right to vote. They're coming to places like Detroit and they're scrutinizing our votes because they don't really have the right to vote. They're coming to places like Detroit and they're scrutinizing our votes because they don't want them to count. Maybe they wouldn't mind if they count three-fifths the rate as white vote, but they don't want them to count fully. So anyway, these are ballot initiatives that we need to be aware of. There's a bunch of them out there. Do you know how many?
Speaker 4:No, there's a bunch of them out there. Do you know how many? No, there's a ton. I would have to go to the meeting minutes of the Board of State Canvassers and find out all of them. But you guys will see them at Eastern Market and at events that you go to 2026. Yeah, these ballot initiatives are trying to be put either on the ballot or be adopted by the legislature.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So let me just go through a couple of them American Citizens for Voting is—that's the proof of citizenship the constitutional amendment that we were talking about Voters to stop pay cuts, to suspend Public Act 1 of 2025 and place legislation on the ballot for voter approval. To address minimum wage changes. We talked about Michigan ganders for money out of politics and we talked about rank my vote. But there are many others and let me see. Let's see. There is a question about whether to hold a constitutional amendment prohibit property taxes is one of the potential ballot measures.
Speaker 4:This is they're collecting signatures, for that the constitutional convention one is going to be the most pivotal, because if that passes, then the Constitutional Convention.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they want to change the Constitution. We've never lived through that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean both. There are Democrats that also want it, less than there are Republicans who want to go in and take out the abortion codifications that Democrats recently put in the Constitution.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean yeah, I think this is really being pushed by the right.
Speaker 4:It is yes, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think this is really being pushed by the right. It is yes, I have heard from Democrats who talk? About home rule and allowing local municipalities to pass ordinances and laws without state intervention.
Speaker 3:I think that there are people who believe that we can amend the Constitution and remove some of those things. I think in 2025 or 2026, this is not the time to do it. There are certainly things I would love to change in the Constitution, but I think that we have to be aware of the risk and the intent of the people who are trying to change it. They're not trying to change it because they are, you know, wanting to end home rule, to change home rule laws and all of those other laws. They're doing it because they want to, you know, restrict our rights and you know, of course, the redistricting is a constitutional amendment that they also want to take away. So those are things that are happening.
Speaker 3:Another one let me just make sure I understand all of them. Well, we did talk about the Prohibit Property Taxes Amendment and that's going to be really, really popular. If you prohibit property taxes, the question is, where is the income going to come from and what is going to happen to spending? Because property taxes support schools, Property taxes support so many activities and property taxes, of course, support cities and a lot of state functions. So that should be a real area of concern for all of us.
Speaker 4:It should. It should we're going to see those petitioners at Eastern Market. I've already been seeing them.
Speaker 3:It's interesting the sort of underworld of petition signature gathering that exists yeah, one of the things that you also should look for when you are signing petitions is is this a paid or volunteer?
Speaker 4:yeah, it'll say circulator, it says it. You can ask them.
Speaker 3:But I think, understanding you know I'm gathering signatures for, you know, invest in my kids. And in talking to some folks, I found that it's important for me to explain the origins of the petitions, even to get people who are friends and friendly to the movement or the idea to support the initiative, because there's a lot of mistrust and a lot of confusion out there. I think it is incumbent upon all of us to help people understand why people are wanting to do these things. Not what they say, because of course they're going to color it as something that's justice-oriented for everybody. But why they want it done is frequently because they want to take away somebody else's rights and knowing that you know if it goes on the ballot. Sometimes it goes on the ballot and you can vote it down, but let's try to keep some of these things off of the ballot, folks.
Speaker 3:And with that, I think that my time is pretty much up. I have another meeting I have to go to, but I want to say a couple of things. I'm going on vacation, I'm going on a cruise, my first time on a cruise.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, that's cool. I've never been on a cruise.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, and I'm going on a real vacation, so I'm going to really, really, really try not to work, but when I come back on August 8th, we're going to launch the Black Detroit Democracy class at the Stoudemire Wellness Hub on Wednesdays from 6 to 9 pm, and so I really hope, if people are interested in going into more depth about all of these systemic issues around democracy and also really understanding how best to achieve democracy. This is the same class I teach at Columbia University. I will be using the same materials, the same textbooks. I actually have a handbook that we're going to be printing and publishing and sharing with folks because it's important. The other thing is that ECN now has a set of legislative priorities or policy priorities for the city of Detroit that we're going to be finalizing and circulating, because it's important that people understand what justice looks like, and I'm really looking forward to actually getting even deeper into this fight. I want to thank my co-host, sam. It's always great having these conversations and debating you, and we'll see you next time. Any last words?
Speaker 4:Thanks, Donna. I will see all of you at Babo no-transcript.
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