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: Crime, Power, And Detroit’s Debate Over Federal Policing
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 weigh Detroit’s debate flashpoint over federal collaboration, trace how crime narratives collide with community violence intervention, and unpack why history makes National Guard talk a red line.
For more episodes of the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, click here.
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SPEAKER_03:Detroit 1 Million is a journalism project started by Sam Robinson that centers a generation of Michiganders growing up in a state without a city with 1 million people. Support the only independent reporter covering the 2025 Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people. Good journalism costs. Visit Detroit One Million.com to support black independent reporting.
SPEAKER_01: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 East I Community Network.
SPEAKER_04:And I'm Sam Robinson, founder of Detroit 1 Million.
SPEAKER_01: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. So it's time for Word on the Street, where we break down what everyone's been saying behind the scenes. And boy, have people been saying a lot lately.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, they have. We just had our, of course, mayoral debate a couple weeks back, which has resulted in a fair amount of fodder after the fact, mainly on Salomon Kinlock's comments related to the National Guard and whether or not he would actually welcome troops. You know, there's been some um you know, sort of manipulation of what he said, but also he has muddled his own comments to begin with. And I think I will start it by saying after she um made that comment, talking about Mary of Sheffield, of course, this past week came out and said to uh I think it was Violet um Iconomova in the Detroit Free Press, um he shouldn't have you know been tripping over his words. He should know uh that that this topic is is so triggering for Detroiters that he should have came out um and firmly said that no, I I do I'm not gonna welcome it is you know to be noted that Chuck Stokes did ask Mary Sheffield a different question than he asked Solomon Kinlock. It also should be noted in front of that that the question was sort of framed to both candidates as a okay, we're moving on to this next topic that has been a lightning rod national conversation. Uh, the topic of National Guard troops being deployed to American cities. He asked Mary, including the phrase National Guard, um, and he asked Solomon, would you welcome federal collaboration? And that's where Solomon is saying this is what this is the mix-up.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Well, number one, I believe they had those questions beforehand. But number two, his They told us that that they did not.
SPEAKER_04:I have to note that.
SPEAKER_01:All right, thank you for noting.
SPEAKER_04:Which I believe they did not.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I believe it, and it doesn't matter to me. He has been for weeks prior to the debate, he has been on a tough on crime, you know, this mindset around I'm gonna be tough on crime. I think one of his spokespeople, and they had to walk this back, said that Mary Sheffield was responsible for 500 homicides. And they said, okay, well, maybe that's too far. His campaign has accused her of being with um defund the police and attacked her for her attitudes about um about her requiring more um disclosure regarding the um shot spotter technology and her initial no vote on that. They have attacked crime statistics in the city of Detroit and said that the crime statistics have been manipulated and that they are not accurately depicting this. And all of this, whether or not he intends to, all of this plays into the hand of a sitting president who is also questioning crime data and saying there's this tremendous crime wave and um really politicizing crime and tragedy. And so he's accountable for the narrative that actually helped to lead to that question in the debate. And he's responsible for being intelligent enough to remember the question that was initially asked about um Donald Trump and federal troops. He is responsible for communicating to residents in the city of Detroit, I will defend you from federal overreach. At no point in his statement did he say, express any concerns about what's is on uh uh front and center with so many Detroiters, including myself, and that is the possibility of federal troops here. So when you hear that word, I was one of the first people to post about it, and I did not manipulate what he said. I literally posted exactly what he said. And in my opinion, it was wrongheaded. The idea that the city of Detroit needs to somehow collaborate with federal forces is ridiculous. The government, the city has been ref um coordinating with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, um, working with the city police and prosecutors for over a decade. That's not new. The only thing new would be troops. And he also said that he would welcome them in to police the soft spots. Well, who's going to be policing the soft spots, if not for troops? Certainly not the FBI. So, I mean, and even if you're talking about the FBI, just a week prior to all of this, Letitia James was um indicted for a crime by Pam Bondi's Justice Department. So even when you consider what's happening at the federal level and the use of um the federal criminal justice resources to retaliate against enemies of Donald Trump, people he's declared enemies, even people in his own political party, then you have to understand, and you should understand when you're running to be mayor of the city of Detroit, all of that. And I'm gonna end this by saying that the chief of staff of Triumph Church is Ralph Godby, a former police chief who knows about crime statistics, understands everything I've said about this collaboration, and understands the nuances that he may not. And so it's it's still a failing response. I don't think it was the right one. And I think what Mary said when she talked about the Spectre of 1967, remember, she talked about that immediately before he said, you know, not to patrol, whatever. And so, no, I don't think it was manipulated. I've been accused of lying, I've been accused of misdating him. I didn't like the things he said, even though Chuck Stokes flubbed and made a mistake in the way he asked that question. It was still his responsibility as a debater. And I'm let me let me put it like this. I believe that had he been asked that question first, in the way that he asked Mary Sheffield, and Mary Sheffield had to come afterwards, Mary Sheffield would have had a better response that would have been responsive to the concerns of Detroiters. So um, yeah, that's where I'm standing with Kinlock.
SPEAKER_04:The uh quote exactly to Chuck uh was not in martial law. Chuck's question was whether he would welcome uh added resources from the federal government to combat crime and enforced immigration. Kinlock said, not in martial law fashion, but in collaboration in order to make sure that we're protecting soft spots throughout the city of Detroit. When we asked Kinlock after the uh debate was over to add context to his comments, um, he said that that National Guard troops patrolling the streets is never acceptable. He said, and I quote, particularly when you understand the history in our community, uh dating back to the riots, the community would never be palatable to that. But when you start talking about working in collaboration and partnership, when you start talking about large venues, large gatherings, which we didn't get much added context to what he means by large venues, large gatherings, particularly some of the violence we've seen in recent times. We can always partner with communities and law enforcement agencies to help assist in that, but not to police and patrol our communities.
SPEAKER_01:And that doesn't help at all, as far as I'm concerned. Again, when you look at what happened in 2020 when people were peacefully protesting Black Lives Matter and the aggressiveness of Detroit police officers, we don't have soft spots in that way. But again, you can't have these conversations outside the context of 2025 Donald Trump, and he still hasn't responded to that, by the way, at least not from what I've seen. This is a person who has created a whole new set of terror categories. If you are anti-capitalist, you are now a terrorist, a domestic terrorist. If you are in some ways anti-U.S. government or criticizing the U.S. government, if you oppose what um, if you call what's happening in Gaza genocide, you may be ending up on a terror list. The soft spots in this context, we're talking about somebody running for mayor with a hostile, threatening, fascistic president. And if you don't understand that we don't want the feds here and that we have the capacity to police our own people, if you don't believe that, that's a problem. Now, here's the thing. He's been living in Oakland Township, he's been coming into church, driving back to Oakland Township, raising his son there, living with his wife there for how many years? And so I'm sure having moved back into the city, it may look like this is brand new. Maybe he forgets what crime was like in Detroit. But the other suggestion that somehow Detroit just became an unsafe space for many people is absurd. I'm 62 years old, and when I was a little girl, it was the murder capital of the United States. It's always been perceived of as a high crime city. To suggest that somehow crime is now rampant and it's gotten worse when all of the data says it's getting better is one thing. But here's the final thing I want to say about this. He is out there trumpeting these crime statistics as problematic at the same time that there are several groups who have been involved in community violence intervention projects and also bringing crime down in their local communities. So when he is discrediting the Detroit Police Department and their crime statistics, he's also discrediting the work of many people across the city who have been working so hard to try a different approach.
SPEAKER_04:And also to your point, he's really just parroting accusations that we've heard in recent weeks from Republicans like Mike Rogers that will use that line saying that urban communities across the country are fudging their crime statistics, are misrepresenting dangerous crimes or violent crimes as less violent or dangerous as they are. Um Mike Rogers um back last year when he was running for um Senate against Alyssa Slotkin held a uh event at the 180 church. That's where Trump went last year with Lorenzo Sewell and Ramon Jackson. Um they've also been not just going to city council and accusing Janice Winfrey of voter fraud, but they've been accusing the Detroit Police Department of fudging their crime data and statistics. And when he said that, you know, that uh obviously the the unclear answer on whether or not he would um allow troops. That that was one part of it. But I think what was more alarming to me was that there was no evidence uh given after we at we asked him for added context on those comments. Because I mean it's come right out of a line of this is what Republicans are saying to justify National Guard troops being deployed in cities.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. That's the justification for them being in Chicago. This horror crime wave. And it was only a month ago when JD Vance said to Whitmer that he wanted to send troops to Detroit. Um, again, maybe he doesn't know that. I expect people running for mayor and wanting to be mayor to read the newspapers and know what's happening and understand the situational context and understand the position that we're in right now. So I don't get it. Um, I think that most people were turned off by that response, even after the explanations, because what people really wanted to hear was a robust defense of our city. And what people really wanted to hear from him was some acknowledgement, no acknowledgement anywhere in his remarks that CVI is something that's working in our community. Mary Sheffield mentioned it, but he didn't. Of course, it would have gone against the grain because he wants to depict her as a failing leader. And because she has contributed to CVI and supported it, he can't speak on that context. But we don't need somebody who is politicizing tragedy. Because every murder is a tragedy. The fact that we're still living in a city where people are losing their lives is a tragedy and we're all sad about it. And the idea that somehow we've got a crackdown on crime, you know, the last time people did this was in the 1990s, before long before you were born. Um, in the 1990s, when the crime bill was adopted by Congress. Same kind of, you know, fear mongering. Um, you know, it all started. In fact, there's this book that Orlando has us reading, crack. And um, it's a book that really speaks about the crack epidemic. And the way that the news media took hold and it became politicized was when Lynn Bias, who was a basketball player at the time, died after snorting cocaine. And that unleashed a wave of legislation culminating in the crime bill. And this is when pastors and politicians were all saying, no, we've got to do something, we've got to do something. And in that panic, we have lifetime minimum sentences. You have three strikes and you're out. You have so many legislative actions that restrict the rights of black American people in cities. The crime crisis, the crack cocaine epidemic was completely different than the heroin epidemic that swept white America. In this instance, we mass incarcerated a generation of people, a couple generations of people, further plunging our city into crime, um, just creating parentless families, not just fatherless families, but mothers are going to prison too. It created chaos in our community that we can't take back. And so for people with long memories like mine, we want your gut instinct to be said to say, no, we're not going to do that. There are other solutions. You're a pastor, you know people who have lost their lives, and you know people who've killed people. And you know that at the backdrop of all of that, you've got trauma. And unless we're willing to deal with some of the trauma that is intergenerational, multi-generational, and community-wide in our communities, we're not going to meaningfully reduce crime. Not with the feds here, not with more police officers and more prosecutors. Those people come after the fact to address what's happening beyond their, you know, their vision. So I don't give him a no. And yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Not I don't think a lot of other people did. I I uh saw several people online say that they were going to vote for Kinlock until he said that. Um, in one of his defense um statements, he it was in a video that he posted on Instagram. Um he ended the video saying, you know, you guys are all accusing me of becoming a Republican, which is you know crazy, ridiculous. And he ended it using one of my pieces of reporting from last winter, saying, I was the only candidate on stage that has never been to a Trump party. Thought it was interesting comments, obviously, this week. If you have not read, uh the host of that said Trump party, Mark Savaiah, he was the CEO of uh Leaf and Bud. You guys remember his billboards all over the place that Detroit City Council actually helped get rid of. Um I think it was Angela Whitfield Callaway that led an uh ordinance against the amount of uh weed billboards. But it was uh you know interesting to he to see that story sort of come back 11 months later. People on Facebook, including Anthony Adams, who is supporting um Solomon Kinlock, were using my story and talking about that. But it is interesting, you know, Mark Savaia, um, he's just been selected by President Trump as a special envoy to Iraq. Uh interesting how that works out. Don't know what his qualifications for that are, but he is a you know, weed entrepreneur, and um he does a lot of work in Detroit, is what I heard when I was talking to um folks about him around the time last year. Mark Savaia gave maxed out Mary Sheffield's um uh campaign and they had a uh photo on Instagram together that he has since removed. His photo is full of Trump um um you know photos. But I guess my question to you is if if you went into a Trump party and you didn't realize that it was a Trump party going in, would would you stay?
SPEAKER_01:You know, I'm not running for mayor, and I never will run for mayor, and I'm not going to in any way um justify things that I don't agree with. But I think what I'm more interested in is what policies is this person putting forth and what is the person saying on the pan campaign trail, and what is their track record working with Detroiters to solve issues? Um, no offense to you, but it feels like a gotcha moment.
SPEAKER_04:And Well, I'm just saying, like this is what the Kidlock supporters are using against her.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know that his 14% support um is, and we're we'll we'll talk about that next. I understand that if I wanted to run for office, I would not ask a candidate who could not break a 20% mark in terms of support for advice, nor would they be the person in front of my candidacy because what a lot of other people see is this piling on against women and it it doesn't look good or feel good. So I understand that's what Anthony Adams is saying. And, you know, I actually had had somebody say to me, somebody I respect and honor, that the problem was that Ken Locke was emotional because of all of the mud slinging. And I suppose the mud he was slinging did make him emotional because he's been slinging mud all campaign, season long, and that's all he has. He's told us everything he considers wrong with Mary, but he doesn't have an explanation for why he did not raise his child here, why he does not live here, why he did not buy a house here. Even Duggan bought a house before he moved in. He didn't even buy a house. He moved in with his brother. This is a pastor of a megachurch, moves in with his brother so he can establish residency in his brother's home. Doesn't own a home in the city of Detroit yet, and we know that when he loses the election, he will be living in Oakland Township again. So this feels a little bit like carpet bagging to me. You come in for a reason and then you leave when you don't get what you want. And you don't have any political vision for what people want to see in Detroit, or if you do, you can't articulate it very well. That's the reason why he's losing. Not because people are twisting his words, but because people are wanting different things from him. And I want to clarify when this campaign season began in January, and I heard he was coming into the race, I was excited about that. I thought he was going to bring a different perspective. I thought that he was going to draw on the brain trust within um Triumph Church and would learn and act on their behalf. What I see now is somebody who is unused to being criticized and be becomes really upset when he's criticized. Somebody who is not willing to learn from the many brilliant people as part of his church so that he can speak intelligently about some of the issues where he doesn't know enough. I see arrogance. And I also see real misogyny or misogynist. I see a lack of respect for women. I can never get over seeing him talking to those women. People talking about Mary Sheffield likes to go to the club, she likes concerts. It's the kind of thing that is chilling to me. That somehow there's something wrong with a woman liking to enjoy recreational things. And he might walk that back. Maybe there's some context that I'm missing there, but all of those things together are pretty chilling. I don't believe he supports CVI. I'm not even sure he knows what it is.
SPEAKER_04:My uh what you know, I think happened on stage was he's unable to message the sort of inside baseball, insider politics to you know the masses on a debate stage. You know, name-dropping Robert Davis, who, you know, only a fraction of the audience is gonna understand what you mean by that. And when he says, you know, you've been uh badmouthing me and my family and my church, and he's saying it to Mary, he he's really saying it to Robert Davis, who he believes Horace Sheffield is paying through his pack, which we have no evidence of. We ask Kinlock and his campaign, are you do you have any evidence that Horace Sheffield is behind uh the work that Robert Davis is doing? Obviously, um uh you know, a a person that understands politics understands that Robert Davis is not operating for free. And there are people paying Robert Davis that are clearly um in line.
SPEAKER_01:He's got the whole 13th Congressional District uh operation on his side. The mailer he sent out with a picture of Orlando Mion, that was sent out by his brother, right? So, you know, again, we know this this is how politics work, okay? Um, people ask me so many times, you should run for mayor, you should run for mayor. I'm not running for mayor in part because I just like having a private life. But if I did run for mayor, I would understand that people were going to exume every kind of critique they can against me. That's how politics work. Putting it on Mary Sheffield and saying, Well, I got some other things, I'm gonna say some things to you, and I got some things I haven't used yet. Well, what haven't you used? You had um Adolf Mango write a scathing article in um MLive. You've had all kinds of rumors about her. I'm sorry, Deadline Detroit.
SPEAKER_04:You've had all of the MLive has posted not one article about the Detroit Mary's race to this point.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, thank you. Thank you for clarifying it was deadline Detroit. But I mean, you know, this is what you do. You hire your people, she hires her people, your brother helps you out, her dad helps her out. You can't stop these things from happening. There could be a business person somewhere who doesn't want him to be in this in the mix. But making that kind of accusation doesn't really fix things because is it true? And the thing she said or the things that people said about his wife that I saw was that his wife was at the concert too. That's not an attack on his wife, it's a fact. And then somebody else said he was there as well. I don't know if that's true, but somebody I talked to said that he was in the suite with his wife and that she and her son were sitting in that same suite. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but that's not an attack on his wife. That is really um leveling the playing field. But it's the kind of thing, again, it's a very misogynist. Don't bring my wife up. You can't bring up that your wife was there. Is that an attack? Anyway, I don't want to spend too much time on it.
SPEAKER_04:Mary Sheffield asked by uh Malachi Barrett on the Detroit Next podcast series that they do. Um Malachi has done an amazing job of that throughout this um election season. Mary said that she learned a lot from that process. Of course, you know, defending herself. Uh Conrad Mallet, the corporation counsel uh for the city of Detroit, said there was no wrongdoing. Um, her accepting those tickets and uh giving them out. And I think the the answer, if you go and watch that episode, I think Malachi might have it clipped on his Twitter timeline as well. Um, but you know, it was not a very defensive, no, I didn't do anything wrong. No, I mean it was like, yes, I want to ensure that um, you know, I I am included in everyone who was elected to represent Detroiters are are acting, you know, yeah in accordance with the law.
SPEAKER_01:He literally said shades of Kwame Kilpatrick. That's what he said. Um and it was ridiculous. And the thing is that Comerica Bank does not do business with the city right now, and then they throw, well, it might do business in the future. Well, the good news is pretty soon there will be no Comerica Bank because Cumerica is merging with Fifth Third, and therefore it can't do business in the city in the future. But this idea that somebody who might in the future want to do business with the city cannot offer concert tickets to somebody who is, you know, running who's a political leader in the city, is stretching the meaning and intent of the ethics law. We know what it is. We know that they do not have a pot. If they had a current bid out there, if they had current legislation or ordinances they were trying to pass, that would be one thing. But the speculation was something they created and then exaggerated and it didn't work because most people just didn't see the ethical, you know. And then the other thing that his camp accused her of, and you heard this, uh, was selling those tickets. They said not only that she received them, but she sold them. He has no proof, and he actually tried to walk that back and said, Well, maybe I misheard. So um I saw people saying, well, it's time for him to drop the bombs he has on Mary. I think he's dropped all of the ammunition in his pocket. And at any rate, we're gonna come back and talk about the polls because regardless of whether or not he's dropped all the ammunition or not, it looks to me like it would be a little bit too little too late or a lot too little too late given the direction of this race. We'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_01:We have um been speaking at length about Kenlock's statements at the debate, which really were, you know, disappointing to say the least. Um, but let's talk about Mary Sheffield leading in the polls. There was a poll this morning that um shows that Mary Sheffield has a commanding lead. And I don't think anybody's surprised by that um that she's leading, but the it size the lead um surprised some people. Um at this point, she has a 65%, um, 65% of the people voted, said they were supporting her compared to 14% for Solomon Kenlock, 20% who don't know, and 1% who will possibly write in the candidate's name because they don't support either one.
SPEAKER_04:Richard Zuba, he is the uh Glaren Glenn Gareth Group uh pollster or president CEO of that um polling firm. He said, I do not see one ray of light for Kenlock in any of these numbers. So there's 500 people polled, which it's not that many people, but that's a good sample for a poll like this. It's you know scientific. 20% remain undecided. I think that's interesting. So I mean Kenlock could get all of these 20% folks and still fall uh you know quite short. Uh 1% said they backed another candidate. Right. I wonder who that who is who I mean who's the popular right in Canada this year. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:I think that um some of the people that I've spoken to are still supporting Santil, for example. They still believe she would have been the best person for the job, and um some people just Just never moved away from that. But a lot of people did move from Santil Jenkins to Mary Sheffield. She basically consolidated her lead and he has not grown his at all. In fact, if you really look at the fact that now you're in a two-person race, I think he had 18% in August, and you're showing 14% support right now, again, with 20% undecided, and we don't know what that 20% looks like. Um how people are going to shake down because some of those people are people who really still did not have their favorite candidate on the record and are going to be reluctant voters at the poll if they show up at all.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see if we get another poll before I I've doubted. I think this is probably going to be it.
SPEAKER_01:The next poll is November 8th. No, I'm sorry, November 4th. The East Side Extravaganza is on November 8th. And so that date is on my mind, but the next poll is November 4th, and that's we'll know. Now, what I'm reading here also, um, it looks like possibly one third of the vote is already in. And of the vote that's already in, 73% of the people who've already voted say they voted for Mary Sheffield. 18% said that they um voted for Ken Locke. So again, she's got according to this, and this is like we'll we'll only know when the polls are counted, votes are counted, she's got 73% to 18. And it's it's you know, she's got almost two-thirds of the vote that's already been made. So it's gonna be a uh it's more than an uphill battle for him.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and as part of this poll, the Detroit News also asked voters whether they thought the city of Detroit was going in the right direction. People do see that. 76% said they see the city going in the right direction, 11% said wrong direction, 13% said I don't know. Um and I think you know it's interesting you sort of contrast the Tale of Two Cities narrative to the narrative of I've been part of the change. And it makes you know a little bit more sense why people are like, yeah, we see the change, and if you're a part of it, then you know we we want to continue with that change. Um the Tale of Two Cities thing, you know, uh you do hear it, and I I don't think he's completely wrong. Yes, there are uh people in pockets and places in the city of Detroit that have completely gone unrecognized by city leadership. I don't think that's that's wrong to say, but to not have it again when you know Mary would hit him um kind of consistently during the debate. No solutions. Yes, you're correctly addressing the problems. You know, we can all see the problems. And Mary's ability, again, I think taking a page out of what not to do, watching Kamala Harris's campaign playbook. You know, you remember Kamala on the view saying she would have done nothing else different than Biden but put a Republican in the cabinet. Mary has, you know, not shied away from the fact that there is more to do and and tried to explain to people listen, here's what I was able to do as city council president, and here is why uh a part of my pieces of of my agenda were not able to get through. We're not because of the council or the the position, the role of council president, but because she had a you know uh right of left of of you know, median, middle of the road, however you want to describe independent Mike Duggan now. Uh she had Mike Duggan as as governor, and she has done a really an interesting triangulation job of when I hear people talk about, well, why why couldn't you do this? Why couldn't you do that, you know, sort of blame Duggan without blaming Duggan out?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, I don't think that's triangulation, I think that's fact. I think that Mary Sheffield has made demands and pushed Duggan in many ways. Um, there is a really nice free press story about the work that she's done to really hold to try to speak on behalf of a justice community. So if you look at her track record and you add her track record to her current conversation, she's not vice president. She's president of the city council, and she's been a city council person for this entire time. And as a city council person, she has tried to represent people who felt unrepresented. I'll give an example. She really pushed them on home repair. When I first came to ECN in 2016, um, there were very few dollars allocated to home repair. Most of the money that went to home repair was going to 0% home repair grants. And Mary Sheffield demanded each time to put more money in home repair for senior citizens. That's a concrete action. She's a person who said, let's look at an affordable housing trust fund so that we can put money aside to invest in affordable housing. That's a concrete action. She talked about, you know, inclusionary disone housing ordinance where a certain proportion of the housing that is being built has to be set aside for people at an affordable rate. Now we can all argue whether the housing is as affordable as it needs to be. What you can't argue is that she has not been a voice for those things. You can't argue that she was not a voice that helped out with the property tax appeals process because it's her ordinance that led to that. And the problem with someone who doesn't ever go to city council meetings, and she pointed out you've never been there, and possibly hasn't um watched them, is that it you have to be there and you have to be watching what's happening to really understand who's doing what, who votes how, how each of these people votes. Mary votes with a more progressive portion of city council most of the time. Most of the time. Okay. Not all of the time, but she does vote with progressives most of the time. And because of that, she can rightly say that not only would she do something different, but yeah, things have gotten better, but I would have done things differently. Um and I don't want to be in the position of defending, you know, plutocracy. There's some things I wish that Mary Sheffield had been willing to champion while she was on city council. There are some things I wish city council would take on that they have not. And so we are going to have to continue to ask and demand those things of whoever is sitting in office. But I think it's fair to say that you cannot blame the city council president for the mayor's behavior in office in a strong mayor city like Detroit, where the mayor gets to write the budget, hire all the people, decide the organizational chart for the city, and negotiate deals. City council has a role where they are expected to keep the mayor in check. And we have nine city council people right now, only two of whom are at large. The way this mayor operates, and we talked about it with Gabriela Santiago Romero when she was here on um Authentically Detroit. The mayor will say to a city council person, I won't put anything in your district unless you give me these votes. And so people find themselves having to either sacrifice their district's needs in exchange for um for for their integrity or accommodating the mayor's desires at the expense of their district. And it's uh, I mean, at the expense of the city as a whole. Um it's a catch-22, and it has a lot to do with his leadership style. And I hope if and when Mary Sheffield becomes mayor, that she doesn't do that, that she doesn't split Congress and fragment Congress out council. But, you know, Duggan is an expert at power.
SPEAKER_04:Well, Horace Sheffield and Scott Holliday are are working to ensure Mary has the five plus one on her on council, just as Duggan has, you know, Mary and his allies. And she's very well could come out uh in favor of Denzel McCampbell this.
SPEAKER_01:Well, she may she may very well come up with him, you know, and I certainly support him. Um, but I think that, and I support, you know, he's not in my district, but I support him because I think, again, it's important for people to understand if he becomes city council person, even though he's not in my district, he works for me too. If Gabriela Santiago Romero works for me too, every single city council person works for every single Detroiter because that's how our charter is organized. Now, the reason that we have council by district is to make sure that we have diversity in council, geographical diversity of people in city council to make sure that we don't have whole entire areas of the city where there's no representation at the city council table. That's the reason. But just like we elect people to Congress, when we elect people to Congress, we expect them to be a check on presidential authority. We expect them to act on behalf of the entire United States while also making sure they bring some benefits to their district. If you have somebody who is a congressperson who doesn't vote unless it impacts their district or who sells their vote to the president to benefit their district, you know, that's kind of corrupt. And so I want people to really think through how we hold our city council people protect um accountable. A council person is not a mini-mare. They are literally there in a legislative role, representing the will of the people and challenging the executive to make sure the executive is, you know, not overreaching. So that that that's that's my sermon for the day. I do want to take a minute to talk about no kings. Were you at the No Kings rally?
SPEAKER_04:I was in Texas. Oh, you were Dallas had, I think, 300,000 people out there. I was in Dallas, Texas. Uh Garland. So no, I I saw no Kings or any ralliers against the Kings.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Well, I didn't I didn't rally, um, but I did um participate in some activities prior to the rally with a few activists.
SPEAKER_04:I saw Kinlock was at one of the No Kings rallies.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, that was fun. And, you know, wanting to clarify some statements. Right. Yeah. You know, and and apparently some people are saying he's saying it's not true, or Anthony Adams is saying it's not true. But I heard that event organizers would not let him um take the mic. Is that true?
SPEAKER_04:I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's that's the rumor. And, you know, it's a rumor. I don't want to spend, I don't want to spend another, but let's talk about no kings because no kings has nothing to do with city elections. No kings is really people coming together and saying that the power must be returned to people. Our civil rights are important, and we want Congress to be able to perform roles Congress is supposed to perform. We don't want them the president to be able to single-handedly wipe out slash budgets for funds that have been appropriated by Congress, or in other ways violate civil rights, or use the DOJ as his personal hit squad. We really want the president to behave like a president should ideally be a president of the United States. And that is not to in any way pretend like, you know, the United States president cannot be problematic in many instances. But right, I think what people are feeling right now is that we don't have many rights that are being protected by anybody, not the Supreme Court. The lower courts might try to protect us, and the Supreme Court then lets it go. This president can deport people without hearing, send them to places they didn't come from, and do that because the Supreme Court is willing to give him maximum authority and he is ex, you know, he's allowing for that. So, you know, the rally happened. And um, again, I didn't participate. I worked for like 12 hours on Saturday. We had an event here to commemorate Grace Lee Boggs 10 years after her passing, and it was beautiful. Um, but that was in the evening, and then during the day, I was doing some um organizing and having conversations with some amazing people across our state who really have a strong vision for what justice can look like. Um and most of the people I was with, and there was over 100 people there, went to the No Kings Rally. So when I got home after nine o'clock, I get on social media as I do, and I saw people mocking and belittling the No Kings Rally.
SPEAKER_04:And yeah, they were probably most of my peers. We didn't know not a lot of my peers w wanted to be around there because it's you know, you you saw the demographics of it and hostile to them.
SPEAKER_01:The people who I saw were my peers. I don't really have that many. I'm talking about people. I do have Gen Z years, but I didn't have them on my page saying those things. Your first of all, your peers really communicate via Twitter and Instagram. Mine are on Facebook, right? So your peers weren't in this conversation. But what I'll say is of the people I was working with on Saturday, a lot of them were your peers. You know, when you look at the fact that um Yusuf Shakur was there and speaking, he's not your peer. He's between our ages, but he certainly is a black man with some street cred who is in the community speaking out. And I think, you know, when you look at the crowd and you see a bunch of white people, you're not always seeing the black people who are there. Um, but I think rather than, and unless you're there, you really don't know who's there, first of all.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, that's the conversation was it was a bunch of white people. That's that's that was the criticism against them that you saw.
SPEAKER_01:But but the criticism I saw was coming from MAGA saying, hey, look at these white people, look at these white people. It the the and then you had other people who weren't there chiming in. The people who were there, first of all, when you take the time out of your day to stand for something, the last thing people should do is mock it. Secondly, the majority of this nation is white. And a lot of times we say, listen, white people have to solve their own problems, white people have to solve their own problems. And then when they show up, they're saying, Well, how come it's just white people? Well, okay. So you really just want to be mad, okay?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I I didn't quite understand that uh line of attack against, especially coming from white conservatives who are saying, Oh, look at all these white boomers. Because they're trying to that's the who you are all also white boomers.
SPEAKER_01:Because they're trying to be divisive and they're trying to, and this is what they do, they divide us. They play blacks against Mexicans, they play native-born blacks against black immigrants, they play white people against black people. That's how they have to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04:The greater criticism that I saw from people that were my age and not MAGA was that what are what are these No Kings protests or rallies doing? And is it really a protest or was it a rally? Uh, the idea that you know that the dancing on the street is going to fix anything, I think we can all agree that it's probably not.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if I agree with that. You know, my I don't know how my nephew did a short video about a protest in Rochester, New York against police violence where people were dancing in the street and then they got beat, and he's one of the people who got beat. And he talked about the expression of joy, the fact that joy is resistance. And so when you see people expressing joy in these places, it doesn't mean they're not serious. Some of the things that I know happened. One, people got petitions circulated around invest in my kids and take money out of politics. When you have a thousand people gathered, you can possibly get a thousand signatures. Two, you have people from across different movements communicating with each other and building power. Three, you have people celebrating the fact that they are standing in resistance. And why shouldn't we celebrate? Why should we always have to look downtrodden? Can't we be happy sometimes? I mean, people talk about black joy being revolutionary. Well, in this year, in 2025, if you can find a reason to dance, dance with me. Because most of the time the news is so depressing, you just feel like crying and going to sleep. And so the we are angry. And I get it.
SPEAKER_04:But I think the critics that I saw were were coming from folks that are angry and feel like their anger should be that should be the tone of the events.
SPEAKER_01:What are they doing? Do they have their own events? Because most of the people I saw are I actually had somebody come on my Facebook page and say that the most important way to resist President Trump is social media. I people somebody came on my Facebook page and told me that I said, Are you kidding me? He said, Well, yeah, because Netanyahu says that that's the thing that scares him most. Let me go back because it's 2025, and we always tell people, let's look and see what happened in the civil rights movement. People were marching and everybody got along. 2025. Thurgood Marshall, I think he's on the Supreme Court at this point in 1965. I believe he's on the Supreme Court at this point. 1960s, he's calling MLK a rabble rouser. This is what he's doing in the 1960s. That rabble rouser. This is how people perceive the movement. Have you read the letter from a Birmingham jail where people say, Oh, don't come to Birmingham and do this now, now is not the time. And he said, if not now, when? There were this idea that black people in the United States and white progressives are unified around Martin Luther King is a historical. There has never been a movement where everybody is on the same side. When we look back, everybody likes to imagine they were on the right side of history. But it mind you, when the march on Washington took place, there were many people who, in when Malk Mess came to Detroit and delivered the ballot or the bullet speech, I believe that's the one he delivered in 1963, he went to King Solomon Church and he was ridiculing those Negroes who were marching with Martin Luther King hands in hand with their oppressor. We look back and it's a great event. I saw somebody post yesterday, maybe it's yesterday, that the um Million Man March was a failure. We always find a way to criticize people who do something. But what I said on my page is don't tell me that what I'm doing doesn't make any difference. Just tell me what you're doing and how I can join on.
SPEAKER_04:I think a part of the criticism that I saw as well are coming from people who spent you know weeks and months outside in 2020 when uh sort of seemed like the general public had that level of anger and the sort of uh more radical vibe to the uh events and the people that were showing up to the events. I sort of akin the No Kings to sort of like the women's march after Trump was a very good thing.
SPEAKER_01:2020 people ridiculed the the Black Lives Matter march and said it was too many white people then too. 2020, the Detroit City Council president at that time, Brenda Jones, was um agreeing with the police that they were out of line. You there we can all look back and remember things differently than they were. The reality is sometimes you have protests, sometimes you don't. Now, my cousins who live in Washington, D.C., um, at the No Kings March there. And one of my cousins had a picture of snipers on the roof pointing down at the crowd. My cousin is biracial, half Guatemalan, half black. Her daughters, her children are biracial, Guatemalan black, and white. Okay. Her daughter and her son look Puerto Rican. They look Cuban, they look Hispanic. And in Washington, D.C., do you know how scary it is for them to walk down the street right now? But they were out there. And so, as we're ridiculing them, also keep in mind what's happening in places like DC, where people are afraid to walk down the street, where sniper rifles are aimed at them. If we don't have a show of unity now, then when are we gonna do it? What the one of the beautiful things about the No Kings march are was that it took place in places where, in Trump country, in places where people were coming out in large numbers and saying, we protest too. And so when Republicans are out here mocking it for being all white, and some people are too sophisticated and cynical, if you don't agree with it, don't go. But please do not minimize and discourage people from some show of you know solidarity, because solidarity is all we have right now.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, a little bit of the, you know, it's like attacking the folks in Midland at the band shell over there in Central Park. It's like, you know, oh, look at all these white people. It's like, yeah, that it's do you want them to bust in different groups so they like it's like that's who lives in Midland? Who else is gonna be there?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's easier for us to point fingers at each other and attack each other than it is for us to be accountable and do things. What are we doing? Again, I don't do everything everybody is. I didn't go to the No Kings march. First of all, I have a bad knee. Secondly, I had a busy day, and I thought I don't really like marches that much, okay? I don't like standing around that much. That's not my thing, right? But it is somebody's, and I want to thank them. In 2020, I was thanking people too, because I'm like, I might get a um HIV, not HIV, I'm I guess I might get COVID. I'm staying home, right? I'm too old to do this. I'm in the risk group. So, but people are doing it, and if you're doing it on my behalf, I just have a big thank you. I understand it's not perfect, and I know somebody can come up with something better, and I just want you to do it so that I can join that too, or I can support that too. It's not that I don't think that's the only thing that'll work, it's something. And it was enough to rattle Trump's cage, and that mattered to me. You know, you know he was upset because what he created that horrible video that people, yeah. Where he was what? Literally, literally defecating on protesters. The president of the United States, and his defenders, oh, he's just joking, oh, he's got a good sense of you, he's just pulling your tail because dignity is no longer uh, you know, imagine Obama doing something. You can't, you can't, because he would never stoop like that. But just you know, when you look at what Trump is doing, um, you know it bothered him because he did that horrific thing. And so anyway, um I for one, I understand people are frustrated. I know people feel like there's not enough doing, I know all of that, but the extent to which we direct our frustrations at each other instead of the person who is working overtime to try to rob us rob us of all of our rights, um, it's destructive. And I want I really do hope that we can come together a little bit better and understand everything's not for everybody, but when something is for somebody, do you.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I guess we'll leave it there. Uh you want to put everyone out of this book? Um looking at Toxic Debt.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I'm reading this book, Toxic Debt, rereading this book, Toxic Debt. Um, I've been reading it because I'm preparing for my class this evening. And so this book really talks about, you know, a century of really uh over a century of environmental injustice in Detroit. It is an environmental justice history of Detroit. It's so interesting and so fascinating because most people think that environmentalism started in 1970 or maybe around the time they were born. But the environmental issues that we have in the city of Detroit existed in 1840 when the first privatized water department was established by the city of Detroit. And they have not gotten better because of certain political the role of industry in helping to shape our public policy. And the um the fact that Detroit, the way Detroit resolved environmental problems, and the environmental problems were a whole lot worse. Um most businesses, factories, industries were burning the kind of coal that left dust on everybody's business, made it hard to breathe, and got in people's lungs. The way that people resolved this was not by saying, let's improve the factories. They resolved it by saying, I'm gonna move my family away from here. And so the people who got to live closest to contamination were the people who could not afford to leave. And you know who those were. Black people. And at that time, a lot of Eastern European immigrants were trapped in these places of you know, contamination. And that lays the groundwork for where we are right now. Um, it's not that people didn't know better, it is that it was not in the interest of industry to make things better. And 2025, we know better about a whole lot of things. The environmental protections exist right now, zoning exists right now, all of those things exist right now, and yet you still have people like in the Cadillac community in on the east side of Detroit who are dealing with the same things 120, 140, 200 years later.
SPEAKER_04:So yes, they are. And it is just something you go over there, yeah, and it's just sad. I mean, it's dusty. This guy, Josiah Rector, is the author of this book. He's currently um planning a second book on race, labor, and environmental justice on the Texas Gulf Coast. He's a uh urban historian at uh the University of Houston.
SPEAKER_01:And I consider him a friend. Um I started teaching um Josiah Rector, uh, I reached out to him, and he's actually come to my class and taught my class. We brought him to Detroit during the pandemic, during an annual meeting, and I passed Al Calbis's book. There's history that you will learn in this book that you're not going to get anywhere else. I think it's just fascinating. Did you know that Mayor Pingry proposed free water in 1896 and that the city, citizens of Detroit, voted for free water?
SPEAKER_04:We didn't get it?
SPEAKER_01:No. What happened was what happened was um it was, I think the Supreme, you Michigan Supreme Court said that it was changing how water was that that water structure was a violation of the city charter. And you couldn't change a city charter outside of, you know, um the the 1900. That's the next time they would have been able to do that. By then, Mayor Pingree became Governor Pingry, and the fight for free water ended. But, you know, when I got to East Side Community Network and I started learning more about water, I started questioning why we charge for water anyway. And people say, well, somebody's got to pay for it. Well, people have to pay for paved streets, people have to pay for police officers, they have to pay for parks, but somehow we find a way to put that and bet that in our tax dollars. Schooling is free, water is commodified, and I think it's really interesting. Um, so if you are interested in reading the book, we still have a few complimentary copies we can give away. I'm gonna try to get Josiah back. Um, and I should mention also that last weekend when we had the Boggs Center commemoration for Grace Lee Boggs, we also invited Scott Kirchige, who was led by Scott Kirchgey, who is the author of The 50 Year Rebellion, which is another book that I teach in my class. And he also agreed to um, you know, teach, you know, be a guest lecturer. But Scott is the president of the Boggs Foundation, not the Boggs Center, the Boggs Foundation, which was created by Grace before she passed away. And according to the foundation, which the board includes amazing people like two of Grace's nieces, Jimmy Boggs' son, and some local luminaries. Um, the Boggs Foundation control contain um controls the intellectual capital of all that was Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs. So um anyway, um, two of my favorite people. So the 50-year rebellion is something that I encourage everybody to read. Toxic Debt and Environmental Justice History of Detroit. And really soon, really soon, I'm gonna be finished with my book. And I'll just give you a teaser, the name of my book, and it's a novel, is 40 Acres and Future D. Now, what does that mean? You'll learn in the future, but I'm inspired by these authors. This book will be a um fictional history of Detroit. It'll include, well, it's fiction, but it'll include and be rooted in Detroit's black history. Oh wow, that's exciting. I'm really excited about it.
SPEAKER_04:Well, congratulations on the title. That's uh I'm gonna give you an advanced copy. I was gonna say, please do. I can uh get some uh news coverage of of that when you're ready. But you know, talking about uh mayor and and Governor Pingry, I have some of those Pingry wallets that that company uh makes. Oh I forget what's the guy name of the guy, but um they're out at Eastern Market. This Pingry character, you know, he argued that the poor and the working class were were subsidizing the rich by paying higher water rates uh and they received lower volumes of water. Um they say here in the Detroit Free Press article from Josiah Rector, uh in its annual report later that year, the water board struck back at Pingree's claims, calling his proposal so utterly impractical that it does not merit discussion.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds a lot like some of the uh criticisms against some of the it's I mean that the the the way that that our cities organized, the fight between corporate elites and working people, I mean the idea that certain people are marginalized and all of those these themes exist today. And I don't know, when I was in high school, I never liked history, you know. Read the history books and it was boring. But as an adult, when I read We are going to be joined by the trade. We are the working family hurdy and working up so that we can really build her in the state of Michigan. That is what I have for you. Um I'm really excited, and um I will be gone next week. I really hope we can both make it because it's gonna be the next Wednesday I'll be back, it's gonna be the day after the election. And so really being able to break that down, we'll see if we can get some people here to talk to us about their candidacy. Let's try to line that up now. Um, but I'm really excited about what's coming. I will not talk to you until after the elections. Well, maybe online or stuff like that. But um, and as for the listening audience, thank you so much for listening to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. Be sure to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on our platforms. And of course, support black independent reporting of Detroit1Million.com because good journalism cost. And you are actually providing the ammunition that people are now using against each other.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, they yes, yeah, yeah. That'll happen again at the governatorial uh race with Duggan.
SPEAKER_01:So just call these the Samuel Robinson Archives.
SPEAKER_04:I appreciate you guys for listening in and reading as always.
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