Amplify Outside: Recreation as Liberation with Ian Solomon

On this episode, Donna and Sam sat down with interdisciplinary artist and founder of Amplify Outside, Ian Solomon to discuss recreation as liberation and how he plans to further amplify this message as the newest addition to the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network!

Ian John Solomon is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, Michigan. After receiving his B.A. in broadcast journalism from Walter Cronkite School and a stint as a congressional reporter in D.C., he found his love for community activism and storytelling required a more expansive platform. Deeply motivated by environment, Ian uses land as foundation and guidance for artistic expression and questioning.

Ian has exhibited and won awards across the Midwest, including being a 2023 Summer Fellow at Ox-Bow School of Art, 2024 Playground Detroit Fellow and 2024 Cranbrook Art Museum Purchase Award Nominee. Ian has received two Emmy nominations, an Emmy Award and a First Place award from the Society of Professional Journalists as host of a PBS-Great Lakes Now series’ Ian Outside’. Beyond his artistic practice Ian founded Amplify Outside, a Detroit based organization Amplifying Black outdoor recreation.

To learn more about Ian Solomon and his work, click here. 

FOR HOT TAKES:

WORKING FAMILIES PARTY: MICHIGAN DEMOCRATS 'SQUANDERED' LEGISLATIVE TRIFECTA

BENSON: TRIPS TO SELMA'S EDMUND PETTUS BRIDGE 'CREATED MY WHOLE LIFE'

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:06

Up next, Authentically Detroit welcomes in interdisciplinary artist and the founder of Amplify Outside, Ian Solomon, to discuss recreation as liberation and how outside is as political as it is joyous. It's a great day to talk about that. But first, we're gonna talk about what we're reading from the Michigan Chronicle this week. We're gonna talk about the brand new Detroit City budget. We're gonna talk about the Working Families Party calling out Michigan Democrats, we're gonna talk about Jocelyn Benson, her trip to Selma, and my one-on-one interview with her. We went everywhere. Keep it locked, authentically Detroit starts after these messages.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

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SPEAKER_04 1:39

What's up, Detroit? Welcome to another episode of Authentically Detroit, broadcasting live from Detroit's Eastside at the Stodemeyer inside the East Side Community Network headquarters. I'm Sam Robinson. I'm Donna Givens-Davidson. Thank you for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. We're here with the one and only interdisciplinary artist and founder of Amplify Outside, Ian Solomon, to discuss recreation as liberation and how he plans to further amplify this message as the newest addition to the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network. Ian, welcome to Authentically Detroit. It is a beautiful day. Very fitting that you're joining us today as it is like 70 degrees outside sunny. It is Monday, March 9th. We are finally into this, you know, turn of the season time.

Donna Givens Davidson 2:27

I wish I could amplify outside, but I haven't been outside to enjoy the sun for the five minutes. I don't even have to be a bit more.

SPEAKER_04 2:37

Oh, literally. That would be really funny. We should do an outdoor podcast one of these days with extension boards. Absolutely. But but Ian, how are you, man?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

You just moved? Yeah, I just moved. Uh we were just talking about dealing with uh AI chat bots with Wi-Fi. Um, so that's been a struggle, but I've been good. Um, like you said, enjoying that outside weather. So excited to be here. So excited to join the Authentically Detroit network.

SPEAKER_04 2:59

So yeah, I'm all smiles. I'm all good. All right. We're gonna run down some of this week's top headlines in the city of Detroit. Up first, we want to talk about the brand new budget. It's getting a little tighter. You know, the federal government is a part of that. But Donna, what did you take away from uh today's budget hearing from the new mayor, Mary Sheffield? City employees are gonna get a bump in pay, I see. Well, I mean, you know D dot gets more money.

Donna Givens Davidson 3:25

Anytime you have a cost of living increase, that's justice. And so for the mayor to say that every um one of her staff members is going to be paid a living wage, you know, you walk it like you talk it. And we try to do that here at ECN too. It's important to me from an ethical standpoint to um try to keep people at a place where they can live. And it gets difficult because she's going to have to cut about$34 million from her budget. But a lot of that money was actually kind of inflated by ARPA, and we know it was. Um, I'm really excited too by the increased spending on transportation. Public transit is a uh is important. And the kinds of things she's spending it on, first of all, increasing bus drivers' wages by$6 an hour, um, you know, increasing routes and just responding to voters. It was this city council has been willing to challenge her. They've been willing to say, we're not going to rubber stamp you, but they seem to be pleased, at least at first blush, with the fact that she is responding to what voters say they want. And I believe council president James Tate said that he thought it was historic, and it is, that um the budget she proposed was kind of a reflection of her service on Detroit City Council. When you served in that role, you kind of understand how to prioritize. Um, so there's more money, not as much as you may want to see in things like tree removal. There's more money in um home repair and some other targeted, you know, things. I haven't seen where the cuts are. When you have$34.5 million in cuts, I think that's the the number. Um, it's important to know are these cuts going to be essential city services, or are these cuts going to be cuts to um again, ARPA funded programs that we knew were gonna have to happen anyway? Um, the other thing that's kind of striking is that the housing dollars are being split between um the new homeless and housing services or human services department, I don't have that name in front of me, and HRD. And it seems as though HRD will be responsible for housing production and the new department is responsible for homeless services, but also helping people get housed. So one is centered on the human side, and the other is since um um is focused on the production side. I'm not talking about it now, but I might actually say the East Side Community Network has just gone through a kind of similar um um re-restructuring where we've separated production of housing from you know serving people in housing. So it makes sense to me in that sense in that way. I want to look at the details. And then finally, I want to point out that um I'm a big fan of participatory budgeting, but you can't start participatory budgeting in March. It really starts in the towards the end of this year or you know, in September, October this year, you start a process by which you allow the community to participate in deciding how dollars are going to be spent. And that's going to be especially important next year because 2027 will probably have even less money than we do in 2026. And this year there's a 2.2% reduction in revenue, um projected revenue.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

Participatory budgeting uh is something that Denzel McCampbell has been championing since he was a candidate for city council. Uh, you can read more about what that means on MichiganCronicle.com. I did a story about it like two months ago, and then Malachi Barrett of Bridge Detroit. Also just wrote about it today. Um, you can read that on Bridge Detroit's website. One campaign promise that I want to talk about that she says that she's going to use federal um government program, this block grant, community development block grant funding. You know, she hosted Scott Turner, the Republican uh HUD chief, perhaps that was uh to guarantee that they were going to continue to get these HUD dollars to infill housing and to execute a goal of a thousand new affordable single-family homes. Of course, in Detroit, I think the number is like 26 building permits in the last four years that have been pulled to build single-family houses. Not good. We're tearing down so many houses. Conrad Mallet and Mike Duggan tear down, tear down, tear down. Conrad Mallet and Mike Duggan, what about the vacant houses that you're putting these people now that are living on a block and they're the only house on the block?

Donna Givens Davidson 7:51

I don't think that's a Conrad Mallet thing. I think that's a Mike Duggan thing. And his housing policy from the time he assumed office was what he called multifamily housing. And um, most of that was concentrated in um either commercial corridors or downtown. Detroit's culture is single family housing. Some of us live in apartments, but our culture, identity, you know, you look at where do you want to raise your kids and how do you see home. Most Detroiters see it in a single family home. I had an opportunity to address the Coalition of Property Tax Justice that meets here for um every Saturday for um, it meets here for um coffee and stories once, I mean the first Saturday in a month. And so I talked about, you know, housing policy and um what I said resonated well. We're a single family city. People want to see that. Um, I appreciate the fact that the mayor is promising to build single family homes. As a nonprofit that's in the community development industry, um, to know my advocacy is to know that I have talked about, you know, trying to help organizations like mine acquire and rehab single family homes. A lot of them have been torn down by the previous mayor who um turned a deaf ear to that advocacy. Um and right now we don't have as many vacant single-family homes. The one thing about Detroit is there's enough vacancy that is coming that um, if they're supporting that, we should be able to put some new um single-family homes that have been vacant and derelict back into surface. ECN is working on four. We finished our first one, we're about halfway through the second one, and we have two more, and we pulled all four of the homes out of the demolition pipeline. Um, so I'm really proud of that. But I think that it's a great campaign promise. I think that's what people want. It's a reflection of um rebuilding the neighborhoods that have been dismantled by a whole host of public policy decisions.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

One thing, too, that she mentioned today that I saw, I I watched this briefly. Um, shout out to Dana Afana of the Detroit Free Press and Malachi Barrett. You can go and read more on their websites, uh Free Press in Bridge Detroit. One thing that I heard Mary talk about was the senior housing uh program. She wants to create a new office to support seniors living in, you know, some of the most derelict, some of the least cared about. I mean, these landlords don't live anywhere near here. Uh you know, the the city is not enforcing properly the codes and the the you know you have people living really in squalor in some of these neighborhood apartments, and it's actually like really sad to see, you know, up close with your own eyes. Andrew Aaron. Oh, I have. And I mean, even you know, where I live now, it's just like, guys, there's blight tickets, you know, trash, just all strone all about, you know, the the front door of this, you know, section eight low-income apartment is like wide open. Anyone can just go in. You know, it's like clearly just six or five, or you know, you know, not very many people living in this pretty much vacant abandoned building, but you can see the lights on at night. And and that's like you go look up Aaron Mondry at Outlier, he does a really fantastic job of reporting on these um properties. Outlier media just did a project talking to homeowners, not senior living apartments, but I mean everywhere across Detroit, they need repair. These buildings are so old, our infrastructure is so old. Um a lot of houses are are without uh you know grants or assistance, state dollars. People don't fit the profile of you know, somebody that lives in a big 2,500 square foot house. You know, they're they don't meet the income eligibility requirements to get the home repair grant. And because they can't afford a$60,000 roof repair, which you're just like, who can afford that, right? When you've inherited this house over generations. Um, you know, this office is gonna be something that I'm interested in, and I'm gonna be seeing, you know, similarly to how we saw on day one Zora Memdani go into these derelict apartments. It's gonna be interesting to see if the city turns up the heat on these landlord developers.

Donna Givens Davidson 12:07

I'm gonna say this democracy is not a spectator sport. You moved into this neighborhood, you're already seeing things and pointing things out. We have got to be part of making democracy work. If we're not in their faces, making demands, if we're not prioritizing things that matter to us, we can't expect the city to prioritize um the 139 square miles. That's our job to um work in partnership with the city to make things happen. And um, so it's gonna be really interesting to see. And it's also gonna be really interesting to see whether or not we're involved in that work. I'm really proud to say that um we um during our there were 26, I stretched 26 really cold days. And we operate as a resilience hub in those really cold days. And there was a woman who came here who pointed out she didn't have adequate heat in our her building, and we were able to assist her in getting an inspection in that building and hopefully getting the heat on so that she came here and we were able to help the whole building. We've got to, we've got to help out. This city is in trouble. There's so much multifamily housing, not just senior housing, period, that's in trouble. Um, I'm just reading this um article in Outlier Media about the um many homes, um, it it's gonna make me upset, that should have been or could qualify for tax foreclosures, but Wayne County didn't foreclose. It's up to us as citizens to kind of track that kind of thing. I'm not saying the public servants shouldn't be doing their job, but I will say that they have lobbyists. And a lot of times their lobbyists end up um speaking louder than we do.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting to see going forward how these new changes. Another new change, uh, the immigration office. Um, I don't have that new information right in front of me here, but um by the time this podcast is out, I am sure either myself, Malachi Barrett, Aaron Mondry, or uh, excuse me, Dan Afana, um, or Brianna Rice, even an outlier, uh, somebody's gonna have a story on the changes of the Immigrant Rights Office. Gabby Santiago Romero has been a steadfast champion of investing more dollars into that office. Um, she said today that our immigrant community is the most vulnerable uh right now, they are the most at risk of harm. And so I'm going to be looking into how that office is funded, how it works, and we're gonna be looking at the city as it goes forward and and sort of the back and forths that happen during budget negotiations. Last year's budget negotiations were kind of funny because we got to see two candidates for mayor sort of jockeying in Fred Durhal and Mary Sheffield. Of course, now Fred Durh works for Mary Sheffield as sort of the city's Lansing liaison. And so, yeah, we will be diving more into the city's budget going forward.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

Uh the next story we want to talk about is uh Brandon Snyder's Michigan Working Families Party. Um they had their first ever press conference. It was an endorsement presser to uh endorse Rashida Taleb, uh mid-Michigan's William Lawrence. He's running in the Democratic primary for the state's 7th Congressional District. That's currently represented by Tom Barrett. And of course, state representative of the 11th district, Donovan McKinney. I got a chance to talk to Kimberly Fisher, who is sort of the um, you know, Donovan Underling running for his seat as Donovan runs for Congress. The Working Families Party is.

Donna Givens Davidson 15:46

Yes, the 13th Congressional District is taking on Shree Thanadar.

SPEAKER_04 15:49

Yes, he is. Shree has a lot of money that comes from himself. Donovan is, you know, gonna need help. And so the event, you know, it was really interesting. The story that I took from it was Maurice Mitchell, he's the national director of the Working Families Party, saying that Michigan Democrats squandered their legislative trifecta. He squared in on, you know, the water affordability um um legislation that you know really could have happened and it didn't. Uh some people blame Karen Witsett, other people blame Joe Tate, other people blame Petersburg.

Donna Givens Davidson 16:23

Who showed up for work? I'm sorry. One of them, one of them showed up for work every day, and one of them made votes impossible. So I'm not willing to let her off the hook. I know that's your friend, but she was watching her dog and he was at work, and that's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

You know, he could have he could have sent police to her house and got her to Lansing.

Donna Givens Davidson 16:43

He could have, but he could have, and she couldn't wanted that to happen. He he could have, but she could have gotten in their car. I'm assuming she could afford one and driven to Lansing and left her dog being for.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

She said that she couldn't afford to do the the the dog sitting and driving to Lansing.

Donna Givens Davidson 16:56

I I get that. And so, you know, um, but he went to Lansing, she did not. She's always going to be accountable for showing up for work. If you show up for work and things don't happen and you try to make things happen, then you can say, well, I tried. But she did not go to work, and she didn't go to work intentionally because she wanted to stop things from happening. She wanted to stop the vote, and she got her way. She went on talk radio and talked about it. And so I give it and talked about it. So I give her credit for the obstructionism that she intended to cause, and I can't spread that to Joe Tate. Now I have criticisms of Joe Tate. Don't get me wrong. I have criticisms of the Democratic Party as a whole and Michigan Democratic Party. But this one's on her.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Sure.

Donna Givens Davidson 17:40

There were things, there was legislation she could have voted on, up or down, and she chose not to show up and then made excuses for it.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

So Mitchell at the Mothering Justice office near Eastern Market told uh me that Democrats actually need to deliver for working people. He said Democrats here had a trifecta, and unfortunately, they squandered that trifecta. That was a time for them to use all of that power to demonstrate what it looks like when we have power and the people have power. Mitchell told me that uh, you know, voters see Republicans, you know, when they're in office, they enact their will when in power. Um, you know, he said that the goal of the Michigan Working Families Party is to transform local politics. Rashida, you know, behind the podium said it's not enough to just have a D next to somebody's name. Um, you know, unfortunately, she says most of her colleagues are millionaires and they have absolutely no idea what it is like for working people. The Working Families Party has, you know, they deployed door knockers, political education for uh Gabby Santiago Romero, Letitia Johnson, Denzel McCampbell, and they've helped elect other people across the country, big names like Georgia Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock, New York Mayor, Zoran Mimdani. Um, and so it is interesting to see sort of this alternative. Um, I would not position them as far away from the Democratic Party as, say, the Green Party or say the other, you know, left-wing parties. They're not specifically a political party that is running candidates, more of a um uh, you know, group, uh uh interest group, encouraging Democrats to act upon the will of the people and not the will of the special interest donors.

Donna Givens Davidson 19:19

Yeah, I mean, I think that um, first of all, um, I think that Brandon Snyder is brilliant, and I think that in his brilliance, he is a pragmatic person with ideals, but he understands how to make things happen. I think that that's the difference between him and some other parties is he actually wants to win things. And so he's very strategic. I think the working family's party is very strategic. You don't bring out Raphael Warnock and not be strategic and Zoran Mandami. You're bringing out people who have a you know good chance of winning. So hats off to them. Um, I don't think most Americans are satisfied with the political representation that exists right now. I think most Americans don't feel as though politicians are giving them what they need. Um, Republicans are definitely better at the propaganda, but there's been study after study that shows that democracy is really shrinking in our nation, um, that voters are not getting what they need. And, you know, it I might blame somebody else, but I'm not getting what I need. And so I think the Republicans are better at blame, and then they don't give people what they blame. You know, Trump says, hey, it's not my policy, it's Joe Biden. I guess he's gonna say that until the end of his term. Um, but when when, you know, a lot of them are upset about what's happening in um Iran, a lot of them are upset about the tariffs, a lot of them are upset about, you know, Venezuela and um this belief that there's um bait and switch in terms of the immigration policy. We thought we were getting dangerous criminals off the street and we're not. I think really smart people really smart people are running to represent people who feel underrepresented and not underrepresented Democrats. I think underrepresented people are the ones I would go after if I were running for office. Understanding, not, you know, not like the gov gubernatorial candidate who's running as an independent, because I wouldn't I wouldn't run independent. The thing about Working Families Party is it's not a party. They're running, they're supporting Democrats, right? But they're also saying we're going to support Democrats who are addressing the lived experience and needs of voters, and I think it's really smart. Um, if you want a comparison to the right, it would be like the Tea Party when um when um you know Obama won. And the Tea Party did not form a real political party, it formed a movement within the party, and that's what the Working Families Party is.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

Perhaps the Tea Party's you know, continuation on, not one of one, not the same individuals, but the spirit of the Tea Party was encapsulated within the MAG movement of twenty fifteen sixteen. A lot of people say it's time for the Democratic Party to go through something similar to what the Republican Party in which the people took it over.

Donna Givens Davidson 21:56

Well, I think again, I think the corporate people say that corporation.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

And the special interests still control the Democratic Party in a way that they do not control the Republican Party.

Donna Givens Davidson 22:04

I'm old enough to say some things about that, okay? Because when I was young, um being a conservative was a bad thing. Being liberal was a good thing. People wanted to be liberals, you know. That was not a bad thing. You watch um All in the Family, and you know, Archie Bunker was, you know, whatever, and his son, he called him meathead, he was a liberal, and you saw those politics play out. And then in the um Ronald Reagan won, you know, you had the collapse of the auto economy, and Detroit really does, you know, control the world, the United States economy. When you had the collapse of the auto economy, when you had the OPEC strikes and, you know, and and the Arab nations saying, we're not going to allow you to control us anymore politically, and we're going to, you know, um withhold gas. When those things happened, Ronald Reagan came and he says, you know, it's New Day in America, whatever it is was that made white people really excited. I don't know any black people really got excited. White people are still excited about, you know, um Ronald Reagan. Then you had people like Bill Clinton come and say, we're going to create a new Democratic Party. And Bill Clinton was the first person who ran on a new Democratic ticket, and he won the presidency on the new ticket, and he pushed the party to the right. That's what it looks like when you reform a party from within. And now, those of you who are alive today, and everybody in this room, because you're all so much younger, New Democrat is all you know, right? You have not seen any other face of a Democratic Party. And going back even further, you have Franklin Roosevelt who took the Democratic Party and made it the party of reform. He brought the New Deal into the Democratic Party. Before then, black people weren't voting for Democrats.

SPEAKER_04 23:49

And the young people that get to watch the newness, I guess you could say it, you know, it's the the Zoran Mandani or the um who's another new age Democrat that is, you know, left.

Donna Givens Davidson 24:00

His one.

SPEAKER_04 24:02

Well, yeah, AOC and Bernie Sanders is where I was going. I was gonna say Bernie was sort of our first, like, oh wow. And then uh, you know, AOC came after Bernie. AOC seems positioned to be a Democratic nominee for president at some point of our lives. I would imagine how I would put the polymarket call she uh right then on there. Absolutely. She will be a Democratic nominee for president at one point. Um, where do we go from here and how do we infect it locally?

Donna Givens Davidson 24:28

I think that we already have. We have three city council members who are progressives. We have a mayor who seems to be connected to those folks. Detroit's politics have already moved left. It's showing up in the budget, it's showing up in the rhetoric.

SPEAKER_04 24:43

I think the city council president.

Donna Givens Davidson 24:45

The city council president. I don't, you know, I I'm not so that James Tate is, you know, what I would c call progressive, but he's more progressive than he was.

SPEAKER_04 24:53

And he'd be he's now beholden to those people because they voted him in.

Donna Givens Davidson 24:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 24:56

His opposition were the corporate conservative Democrats.

Donna Givens Davidson 24:59

Yes. And so what you're saying is the shift is already happening. And you've got to give credit to them. I remember when my friend, who I grew up with, Keith Ellison, ran for Congress, and he was the first Muslim in the history of the United States to ever w run for and win Congress. He was the first black man in Minnesota to ever win a state office. Now he's the attorney general, and he has so much influence over the thinking because he was caucusing with Bernie Sanders and with the Progressive Caucus in Lance in DC. And so I think we have to understand that change can happen slowly and then it happens quickly. And one of the reasons it's going to happen is because um people don't live forever. So you may try to hold on to your office until you die, but then you die and you have younger people who are going to replace you, and it's happening everywhere. I mean, you're seeing younger people coming in with different ideals. You don't think like people my age think. Thank goodness for that, because that's how change happens. Um I think we don't necessarily need a new party, but I think the working families party is about as close to what you're gonna get as a group of people coming together and saying, let's make this party accountable to a different demographic. And I think they're gonna see some successes this year, like they did last year. Um, and we're gonna keep on seeing that. And, you know, it's gonna be more successful than the Green Party because the thing about it is our system is so two-party that if you vote for a third party, it's really hard to win. And it's really hard to then have influence if you're a third-party candidate, because you, you know, if you're not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_04 26:31

Both sides are gonna work against.

Donna Givens Davidson 26:32

I mean, Bernie Sanders is an independent who caucuses with Democrats. He just calls himself an independent, but everything he does is with the Democratic Party. Um, so I I'm I'm optimistic. I see change. I'm really excited about this change. I remember when Keith ran, he was in 2006, he was running for office, and he said, Donna, you should run for office. And I was like, nobody would ever vote for me to do anything in the city of Detroit. The city was so conservative back then. It was what? Anti-environment, anti-poor people, homophobic. It was everything I'm not. And so now you have a party and you have people who are at this at the local level whose politics are not that much different from mine.

SPEAKER_04 27:10

Kwame said he would beat he would beat up his kids if they were gay or he would kill them. What did he say?

Donna Givens Davidson 27:15

Right.

SPEAKER_04 27:16

I don't remember.

Donna Givens Davidson 27:16

I don't remember what it was, but let's just say something like that. He is his his mindset around um women. I mean, it it you know, they were all good for one thing, um, mostly. And and it and it's different now. We have a woman mayor for the first time, and she's younger than any woman mayor has ever been in, you know, the United States. She made history in that way. So I'm excited, and I want us to stay positive because cynicism tends to be a voter suppression tactic. If I can make you believe that your voting doesn't make a difference, nothing will ever get better, then you just leave politics altogether. Um, hats off to Mitchell, hats off to the Working Families Party. I think they're doing a great job. I just want to also say, and this was the point I was making, is I don't think Republicans are happy either. I think that there are many people who vote Republican who are there for the taking. If you have somebody who's running on issues, they care about. All of these data centers all over the state, you know, there's a whole lot of mad people on both sides. Somebody's got to seize that moment. All of these people who are struggling with housing all over the state, urban, suburban, and rural, somebody's gonna seize that power and say, you know what? I'm running to support you. And I'm waiting on that.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

Well, you know, perhaps there is a person that is left of our current governor. She is a uh current off statewide office holder, and she has the support of several, you know, working families party adjacent people. I don't know if they're actually uh tied in, but Tanya Myers Phillips, Emily Divendorf, and Dylan Wegela. They are certainly some of the most progressive members of the legislature. You know who they are endorsing to be our next uh governor for the state of Michigan is a woman named Jocelyn Benson. Yeah, yeah. That was a good setup there. That was really good. I know, right? Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson.

Donna Givens Davidson 28:55

She is we can give him a half five.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

She is the front runner to become the Democratic nominee for governor. She spent the weekend in Selma, Alabama for the annual celebration of civil rights leaders who fought for the right to vote. She marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as she does every single year. She started her career in Selma, Alabama, investigating hate crimes on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Um she moved to Detroit to work for Judge Damon Keith, who she says she she came here to uh be close to in proximity to people that had worked on the civil rights movement. She feels like her career, her work is a continuation of the civil rights movement. She feels like the unfinished work is voting rights. Uh, I talked to her for 15 minutes and about 30 seconds on I think Thursday of last week. 15 minutes and 30 seconds. 15 minutes and 30 seconds. That was a that was a long time in journalism. That's a really long interview for a statewide office holder. Like this.

Donna Givens Davidson 29:52

It's an incredibly long time. But you know, you you you you might as well.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

You get to ask six questions, you know. Okay, yeah. And in the questions that you ask, uh, you know, you have to ask the toughest ones. And so I ask her about the 750,000 signatures that are gathered on behalf of these Republican folks out across Michigan, hoping to require ID and remove the affidavit option uh currently in the state of Michigan, you are already required to show ID before you vote. However, there is a uh you know legal binding document that if you lie on, you will, you know, get a felony charge, as has happened with several non-citizens that uh voted illegally in our election. Fifteen, in fact, non-citizens. That's more than two or three. And so Republicans are saying uh we should have zero non-citizens voting in our elections. You know, I I might I agree there. You know, you should probably be an American citizen to be able to cast a ballot. Of course, once you cast a ballot, you cannot take the vote back. And so we don't know.

Donna Givens Davidson 30:51

I mean, where you know who I mean, how many people, how many elections were determined by those few people? You know, probably zero that I think we also probably zero elections determined. You know, we spend so much time on petty things like that. And the only reason they're going after petty things like that is because they want to suppress my vote. And so they use that as an example, or they use that as a, you know, as a reason to say, well, therefore we have to make it difficult for everybody to vote to stop these 15. I think if you have millions millions of people voting and you have 15 people doing the wrong thing, then that is almost error-free.

SPEAKER_04 31:29

Right. I mean, and that's that's certainly what Jocelyn Benson feels like too, right? And she feels like uh, you know, that that agree, she agrees with with you, Donna, that um putting up barriers or or more requirements um for voters is just gonna make it hard. It's gonna disenfranchise people.

Donna Givens Davidson 31:47

That's the intent. It's always been the intent, whether there was a poll tax or there was a um, you know, grandfather clause, it was always to preserve the right to vote to the most privileged people and to stop people like us.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

And I do want to say, I know we talked about the signatures coming from Republicans, but there are a lot of I've been asked to sign that petition, you know, outside of the thing.

SPEAKER_04 32:09

The misrepresentation of these petitions by the signature gatherers.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

There are a lot of people signing that petition who think that they are protecting their right to vote and have no clue.

Donna Givens Davidson 32:18

Because that's what they're being told. Of course. Um, I was the crazy lady at the um, what is the the Rivertown market. Every time I'm going in and seeing people lie to people in their face, and they lied to a woman I know and respect, and it really made me angry. She's a senior citizen. And she thought she was upholding people's right to vote. And then I told her that's not what it was. And if you could see the expression on her face, she felt she she just was crestfallen. She felt stupid. She said, Oh, I didn't read the whole thing. You shouldn't have to. It should be illegal to lie.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

And that's what Secretary Benson told me as well. She told me that uh, you know, it's it's up to the legislature to change it. You have to change the law to make it illegal to lie to someone as a petition circulator to lie about what they're signing, and we've not done that yet. Jocelyn Benson told me. She says, I've been asking since 2006 for us to do it. She uh talked about the bill that uh Senator Malarick McMurrow and Senator Jeremy Moss were working on. Um, they, you know, Jeremy Moss has has brought my videos to the floor. Thank you, Jeremy. Uh you know, Malik McMurrow has quote tweeted my tweets uh reporting on the fact that this happens all the time. I'm probably the number one person to go up to a petition circulator say, you know, what what is that? You know, who who told you what to say? Who do you work for? And you know, there are times where um there are times where um it will get dicey, it'll get dangerous. One time that was didn't happen on camera, but the the lat latest I put it on my Twitter, and it, you know, a lot of people saw it. I had to like go to the Detroit police department. They like messaged me and were like, uh, is this a thing? And so I had to do a whole police report because somebody like grabbed me by the you know collar and threatened to shoot me. He didn't have a gun, he was like some guy that was just on the street. But it's like you you see the the petition firms, the companies that are just literally driving up down Woodward, rolling their window down and saying, Hey, you want to make a few dollars, you want to make some money? That's how they're recruiting these.

Donna Givens Davidson 34:21

So last time I confronted a petition circulator with a young woman, and she told me that she was trying to make some money because she was trying to get away from her abusive boyfriend, and she had a you know scar on her face, looked like somebody cut her with a knife, and so she was angry with me. How could you do this? I'm desperate, I need the money. And so people got mad at me because they thought I was bullying this poor woman who needed the help, and you know, indeed I was. And, you know, it's it's one of those things where nobody should be in the situation where this is what they have to do because they're desperate. We live in financially desperate times, but we also need to hold other people accountable for um for engaging them as is, I mean, you know, the the crack dealer is desperate, right? The murder for hire guy is desperate. We have a whole lot of people committing crimes because they are desperate, and that doesn't mean that the exploiter is off the hook. I'm not mad at her, I'm mad at the people who pay her. And I think we need to look and and and and track her. There should there should be a consequence, and there's not right now. So um why don't you bring that up? Um I I want to say something about Jocelyn Benson, though, and this Edmund Pettis Bridge because I think it says it speaks to something that's significant. She has a reputation in some quarters as being somebody who is racist because of her interpersonal relationships with people. Her policies are not racist, her interpersonal behavior can be racist. And I think you have people who are interpersonally very nice or seem inclusive, and the policies are horrible. There's this real tension in our society between personal sin and social sin, personal behavior and public behavior. When you are voting for a governor, you don't want your governor to be a person who has bad personal ethics. But you also want your governor to be somebody who is committed to the right things at a structural social level. Balancing those things out gets hard for voters, and um, it is going to be the case in November for voters to decide what matters most, especially those who are committed to justice. I don't like this person or I do. Am I voting for you because you're nice or because I like your policies? I'm a person who votes on policies, hoping and praying that the personal behavior is going to be held accountable in some way. But I'm not a person who says, I like this person, I'm gonna vote for them. And I think we need to get away from that because it's damaging our society.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

I will say that Jocelyn Benson has always been nice to me. Um I, you know, of course, we have the$775,000 settlement that came out of her office uh as it relates to this racial discrimination lawsuit. Talked about that. She told me that uh, you know, sometimes when you run for office and when you're in this field, this industry, this career of politics, that you know, you gotta sometimes you get you know stuff thrown at you and you gotta walk through a fire, she says. Um you can read more about what Jocelyn Benson told me about her racial discrimination law.

Donna Givens Davidson 37:32

She needs some leadership training. And she knows she might need some some training in those areas. I'll be straight.

SPEAKER_04 37:36

I asked her about her husband um who just relinquished his role with related companies. Uh, that is a company that is trying to build data centers with DTE.

Donna Givens Davidson 37:46

Building them.

SPEAKER_04 37:46

Yes. They're not trying to, they're just forcing them down. They're trying to diminish the the uh these poor Celine and West Michigan, you know, usually conservative folks that are like, uh no, we don't want data centers in our backyard where we chose to live away from the city because we wanted to have a rural country style.

Donna Givens Davidson 38:05

We wanted to get away from black people, and now we got data centers.

unknown 38:09

That's unfair.

SPEAKER_04 38:11

Uh Jocelyn told me that spouses don't always agree, um, which I thought was an interesting thing to say. Uh, she said that you know she's pleased that her husband is not working on these matters that are related to the things that she would be uh overseeing as the governor, approving or denying. Um you know, really, really got her on FOIA. She has been the biggest advocate and supporter of FOIA. It's interesting, and I and I told this to her. I said the criticisms that you get about Ryan Friedrichs, your husband, who is the sort of vice president of related companies. I don't know if that's his actual title. It was. It was. I you know, he is a uh a big wig at uh this development firm headed by Stephen Ross. Um she told me that uh, you know, she is listening to the concerns about data centers. And so we will see what that means. But um on FOIA stuff, it is interesting that she has uh advocated for spousal disclosure against the wishes of the governor. Um Governor Whitmer promised us in the you know press corps that she would open up the legislature in her office to public records request. That would mean that we could see what they're texting back and forth on their state phones or emailing on their state um email address. But we can't currently see that very much unlike county and city officials um who are uh you know required to give those documents up. Benson has said I have always worked within a transparent, you know, she's always as well. Can I see her emails?

Donna Givens Davidson 39:48

Yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

Yep, you can. Yep.

Donna Givens Davidson 39:49

She she she shares them.

SPEAKER_04 39:51

Well, I mean, if you want to FOIA her, you can.

Donna Givens Davidson 39:53

No, I mean, yeah, she Yes.

SPEAKER_04 39:54

Her I mean State Departments are not exempt from the legislature nor the governor's office.

Donna Givens Davidson 39:58

You know, that that's good to know. What I think is I think people are always willing to disclose other people's stuff. Whitmer was willing to disclose until it became her stuff, and then all of a sudden you get that. I think we as citizens probably need to go to the ballot box and make those demands instead of waiting on people we elect to decide they're going to open up their drawers and let us see everything inside. I've never seen anybody, you know, ethics are for other people. And we can hold people accountable because of what we do to have an ethical government. But I that that's one thing I think we have to demand. I don't expect anybody to get in that office and decide they're gonna give us everything we want from an ethical standpoint.

SPEAKER_04 40:36

Well, I'm gonna be holding Jocelyn's feet to the fire. I said, so when you don't do it, I'm gonna be able to like come and be like, You said you were gonna do this, and she's like, Yep, yep, yep. So we'll see.

Donna Givens Davidson 40:45

Ryan Fredericks. Has he stepped down from related companies? No, no, no. So he's taking on a new role. He's taking on a new role, and he's not going to be involved in Michigan. However, will he profit by these data centers? Because if as long as he's working for related companies, I think what a lot of people are concerned about is that he stands to personally profit. Um, there was a time when in Flintwater, the governor Snyder had Rich Baird in his office and his wife was a vice president or something like that at Nestle Corporation, and they were buying Nestle water and giving it to all those people in Flint. And so that was kind of good for Nestle, kind of bad for people. But um I think I I I'm really interested in in that conundrum because I think that if if something inures to the private benefit of the governor's husband, then you have to wonder the extent to which the governor is really gonna have accountability there.

SPEAKER_04 41:46

It's tough. Uh Ian, I am interested to hear what you thought about the whole Garland. You know, obviously Chris Swanson is still a candidate, but he is not raising as much money as Benson. Benson seems to be the formidable front runner. She does not appear that she's gonna lose any momentum. Um, obviously, on the Republican side and on Mike Duggan's side, they're squarely talking about Benson. They are not talking about Chris Swanson. They weren't really talking about Garland Gilchrist at all. What did you think when Garland dropped down?

Donna Givens Davidson 42:10

Well, they're not talking about the Republicans either.

SPEAKER_04 42:12

Right.

Donna Givens Davidson 42:13

He's running against Democrats.

SPEAKER_04 42:14

Well, I'm saying the Republicans.

Donna Givens Davidson 42:15

I know I'm just pointing out that the independent is running against Democrats. I just want to make that clear.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

You know, I I I saw it coming. I can't, I can't lie. Uh, I definitely I've had a lot of conversations about Garland, and I like Garland. Um I don't think he he was pulling game. I don't know how else to say that. I think that, like you were saying, like no one was really talking about him. I think it's unfortunate. I think I was.

SPEAKER_04 42:41

I was talking about his video with Jasmine Crockett.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Right. And you that's your job. Um, so it's like one of those things where it's like, are are people going to really talk about him? And you know, he was in that situation, like a lieutenant governorship, which is much like a vice presidency, where you know sometimes your job is to be on the sidelines and not make any noise. And unfortunately, you also have him on the side of Gretchen, who is wearing buffs and this and that. It's like he's he did not get nearly as much Detroit cred as Gretchen Whitmer got.

SPEAKER_04 43:14

I know. And do you think he could have done that himself? Like, do you think he should have probably gone back? I don't think that's his persona, do you?

SPEAKER_00 43:19

No, not at all. I don't. And so that's why I think unfortunately Detroit runs Michigan and Detroit runs on swag sometimes. And so that's why he wore the Jordan 2s all over the place. Right. And you know, sometimes you gotta have that little. I know we talked about personality, shouldn't interact with politics, but it's of course I I didn't mean that.

Donna Givens Davidson 43:39

Um of course personality interacts with politics. Of course, a person with charisma and swag is going to have more of a likelihood of winning. I I just kind of was saying that, you know, personality should not be the primary thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

I agree. Absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 43:53

Um, but no, I mean, swag matters. I mean, that's how you get attention. And I've known Garland for um a number of years, and I've always liked him. He He's a really intelligent person. He's very dignified. He's, you know, carries himself really well. Um, and that makes him a very good sidekick for a governor because you're never threatened he's gonna steal the show.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 44:12

And when it's your show, then you know, and and and and so I think we need to have somebody, maybe, who can command that audience if you're gonna run against her. We didn't have that in him.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Absolutely. And I'm also curious, uh, the timing for me was Garland dropping out, and then the next day the endorsement from the Congressional Black Caucus for Jocelyn. And that made me like go, okay, what was going on behind the scenes there? Was that the final straw for Garland where he's like, I cannot have I can't lose this endorsement?

Donna Givens Davidson 44:45

So Garland drops out of that race.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

Then um You're talking about Keith Williams in the state of Michigan legislative black caucus endorsement. Yeah, it did come that very next day. It came the very next day for Jocelyn.

Donna Givens Davidson 44:55

Garland jumps out, and then Adam Ollier drops out of the Secretary of State race, and he goes after, you know, so it's sort of like it runs downhill and it all feels very orchestrated to people on the outside.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

I mean, it was told I'm why am I I don't want to what's his name? I'm forgetting his name. He put out a video on Twitter. Um I'm completely forgetting his name.

SPEAKER_04 45:16

Oh, is it a Republican guy?

SPEAKER_00 45:18

No, a Democrat. Not a go. Um, he put out a video where he was like, man, we were really excited. Um, and now we're not. Like he was basically just like, you know, I got the I got the boss call. Um I'm off this ticket type kind of situation. So it wasn't even like people are guessing that it's orchestrated, even if you had someone come on and basically be like, this this is the play.

SPEAKER_04 45:39

And when I ask Curtis Rattel, he says, no, no, no, it's not. We don't, I'm not telling anybody to do anything. So who is? Is it the same thing?

Donna Givens Davidson 45:44

I mean, the reality is that you know the Secretary of State's going to be determined at the state convention anyway. And so that's an area where I mean you really have a lot of power at the Secretary of State thing. Hey, listen, dude, if you stop this, we'll we're going to endorse you or you're going to be selected for our as candidate for Secretary of State. Did that happen? I have no proof, but we'll see what happens when they have their confidence.

SPEAKER_04 46:08

Let's take a break. And uh, when we come back, we are going to talk to Ian Solomon about Amplify outside. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

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Donna Givens Davidson 47:08

And we're back.

SPEAKER_04 47:09

And we're back with Ian John Solomon. Ian is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, Michigan. After receiving his Bachelor's of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School and the stint as a congressional reporter in DC, he found his love for community activism and storytelling. He realized that it required a more expansive platform. Deeply motivated by the environment, Ian uses land as a foundation and guidance for artistic expression and questioning. Ian has exhibited and won awards across the Midwest, including being a 2023 Summer Fellow at Oxboat School of Art, 2024 Playground Detroit Fellow, and 2024 Cranbrook Art Museum Purchase Award nominee. Ian received two Emmy nominations, an Emmy Award and a first place award from the Society of Professional Journalists as a host of the PBS Great Lakes Now series, Ian Outside. Ian received his Masters of Fine Arts photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2024. Beyond his artistic practices, Ian founded Amplify Outside, a Detroit-based organization amplifying black outdoor recreation, and is the host of Detroit Public Television's PBS Great Lakes Now segment, Ian Outside. And Ian, you are one of my favorite people on Twitter. You are unafraid to go at anybody, including yours truly. And I will tell you, I learned more things and I talked to more people and I appreciate please never stop.

Donna Givens Davidson 48:32

When I when I first met Ian, I told him that my daughter Camille is always sending me his tweets. And so my children, you know, uh they they keep me, you know, cool. So I thought I'd know about Sam. They were like always sending me Sam stuff before Sam.

SPEAKER_04 48:46

No, Ian is he demands his own on Twitter as well.

Donna Givens Davidson 48:48

He does. Well, I know because of Camille, right? And so I'm telling him this, and um, we're doing this, this, um, talking about you during this podcast, and I'm talking to my son Philip in LA, and I'm like, you know, my friend's son Ian is um going to be one of our podcasters, Ian Solomon. He says, You mean your son's friend, Ian Sullivan? And so I realized then that he had told me about you years ago um when you first came back to the trade. You have to meet this guy, he's really into the kind of stuff you're into. I am so pleased to be sitting down with not only my friend's son, but my son's friend.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

Ian, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for reading that bio. I need to shorten that. But yeah, I'm so excited to be here. I mean, I got the call from you, like, hey, we're interested in this. And it was like, I keep telling uh Sarah, the producer, that it was the perfect timing. Uh, I've been wanting to just talk more about Detroit as a green Mecca for a long time, and I can't think of a better place to do it. Yeah, well, Detroit is a green Mecca question mark. I think it is. I think it is. Um, I think what we talked about a little bit earlier with Detroit kind of running the world in very many ways. Detroit is this microcosm of the American experience. We call it the great American city for a reason. And I think we talk a lot about that from a lot of different areas, but we never really attack it from like an environmental space. And I think it is a critical space for that conversation. Uh, we are the blackest city in the country and one of the most climate-resilient spaces in the world. And that creates an intersection that you can't say exists anywhere else.

Donna Givens Davidson 50:26

So, so help me understand how we are, you know, we have climate equity as one of our, you know, important, you know, um pillars of our work. And yet you're saying we are one of the most climate-resilient places in the world. It doesn't always feel like that too. It does.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

It doesn't feel like that. And that's a lot of what brought me to this work was looking at Michigan and looking at it as this place that I mean, I say this as a tornado just went through um a couple days ago and destroyed a section of a neighborhood, but we really are less likely to experience extreme weather. And we're not only less likely to experience extreme weather, but we have so many important resources right at our fingertips. And so, as a Detroiter, as black Detroiters particularly, it becomes a question not of our environment in a natural sense, but our environment in a political sense. What is our infrastructure, right? So many of the extreme weather events we've experienced, the misfortunes Detroiters have experienced, isn't because it was an act of God or there was some unmanageable storm that happened, even though that's what DTE will tell you what happened. It's because our infrastructure is failing. And that's a policy question. And so Detroiters are really being denied their climate resilience. And that's to me an issue.

Donna Givens Davidson 51:36

All right, that is so exciting here. You know, I look at us, we have more vacant land than any other big city, right? And people always look at that as a deficit. But it's uh actually a strength or a resource we could harness and be like unlike anywhere else. There's so much we could be doing with this vacant land, not just in terms of housing, because I want to put houses on some of this vacant land, but there's so much vacancy you could put houses on a whole lot of vacant land and still have some left over.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

Absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 52:01

What are some things we could be doing with the land?

SPEAKER_00 52:03

Well, Detroit is a huge hub in the country already and has been uh for well over a decade now for urban farming. So that's already a huge thing happening here. You have different organizations that are taking different vacant lots in different neighborhoods and putting resources into them to turn them into parks. I mean, there's one thing after another uh farming, parks, uh there's solar fields happening, which I don't like how they're happening, but it is one of those examples of open space being available there and being a resource for the community.

Donna Givens Davidson 52:33

But but actually exploited for and taken advantage of because it's not made a resource to the community. We don't have community solar yet in Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Exactly.

Donna Givens Davidson 52:41

And um it gets really frustrating to me to hear that described as community solar because we know that means something different. You can't just call it a thing a thing if it's not.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 52:49

But the urban farming is really exciting to me, especially when we start talking about hunger. And when you're talking about food inflation, the ability, our agency, um, our ability to actually grow food locally. Um creating a food sovereign city is something that's super exciting. And there's a big movement, and one of the, you know, the the leaders, national leaders of the movement, Malikia Keaney, is right here in the city of Detroit. You know, um also I do want to call out um some of our fellows. We have a fellowship program, and we've actually trained people and given them many grants to start some of those pocket parks and um community gardens and things, and it does transform the space. But there are environmental benefits beyond just having the garden and the pocket park. Can you talk about some of the other benefits when people are transforming these lots?

SPEAKER_00 53:36

I mean, what you're what you're having is um like we talked about food sovereignty, but we're also thinking about the cleanliness of the environment, right? So when you bring uh pollinators back through planting, you know, flowers, when you plant trees and take care of the trees, you are helping to clean the air. There are these like immediate environmental impacts that a neighborhood can feel. I think about Chandler Park, which is a huge park on the east side that has their water management system. It holds two point, I don't want to get it wrong, but I believe it's like 2.5 million gallons of water can be held in this Chandler Park pond. And that has really helped. It's funny, I'm interviewing Alex Allen, who's the executive director of Chandler Park Conservancy, tomorrow about this.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:17

Chandler Park Conservancy was birthed out of East Side Community Network.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

I did not know that.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:20

Yes, and Maggie was the mother. Maggie DeSantis was the mom. Really? Maggie was working here. Real quick history of that.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:27

Um, Chandler Park used to be like one of those places that I was afraid to go. Um when I worked here, yeah. Seriously, I when I worked here in the 90s, um, I worked for our legal name is Warren County Development Coalition. Um, you had parkside um homes right next to it, and I made the mistake of turning down Frankfurt. And I mean, it was while opener air drug sales and women dancing on cars, you could anything. And I was like stuck in my little Ford Escort like this, you know. You can't see me, I guess you can't, the cameras are here. And um, and and so people didn't use the park in the community. And then the Salvation Army promised to build an$80 million community center there. And um, so Warren Connor was one of the organizations that was gonna help them fundraise, and they dropped the agreement. And so Maggie started the um Channel Park Promise Coalition to try to force them to live up to their promise. And the Channel Park Promise Coalition, we couldn't force them to live up to their promise, but then you had the um coalition members sitting around the table and they said, Well, let's just form a conservancy, and that's the birthing of that. And so Alex Allen started at Chandler Park Conservancy 10 years ago, right around the time that I started eSec Minty Network 10 years ago, and he's done a great job of really transforming that space. We've got football fields, soccer fields, but we also have that um that uh the what do you call it, the marshlands that was built there. Um so yeah, so that's an example that is. I'm glad you're gonna be talking to him.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

You're interviewing him on your Yeah, I I actually report for Planet Detroit. Oh so I so it's gonna be an article about how parks in different green spaces, whether it's a park or a backyard, how you can implement different green infrastructure to help the community around you. So Chandler Park is a great example of that. I believe Eliza Howell and Rouge Park also have some really um natural infrastructure going on there.

Donna Givens Davidson 56:17

Eliza Howell is really amazing what they're doing there.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

Amazing. I went to their um their meeting for their master plan, and it is just I cannot wait to see what that park is going to be in five to ten years. I think it's really um underappreciated right now. It's one of the most beautiful parks in the city, and we have plenty of them, but they have amazing plans going forward.

Donna Givens Davidson 56:38

Yeah, a lot of really cool stuff. Very creative people are taking over, and that feels like it's not less organized than the Chandler Park Conservancy and more of a sort of uh people just sort of doing their own thing.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

It well, it is like that. So I'm also the communications and engagement manager at Detroit Parks Coalition.

Donna Givens Davidson 56:54

So I was I was wondering if you're still there. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 56:56

I'm still there, so I work with them. So, yeah, Sidewalk Detroit, which a lot of people understand as an arts organization, is the stewardship organization of Eliza Howe Park. And so they're they're functioning just like honestly, all the other stewardships. So they're functioning just how I see. I mean, everyone has their own flavor because every park has its own flavor, but they're really taking that that park, that coalition spirit, that conservancy spirit uh with them to Eliza Howe Park. And they're definitely more arts focused and and put a lot into that, but they're doing a great job.

Donna Givens Davidson 57:24

Yeah, we interviewed um Sidewalk Detroit a couple months ago on Authentically Detroit when Orlando Bailey was still co-hosting. And um, it was a great conversation. Um, but it it still feels like it's more loosely organized and more collaborative. And I don't mean that as a criticism of the Chandler Park Conservancy, I just think that, you know, the organization just feels a little different to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Oh, they're definitely different. I I mean, every I mean, most of the all of the big parks in this city have these stewardship organizations, which I don't think a lot of people understand. Like the city owns the park, and there are these separate organizations that are helping to program the park. Uh, and because all of these parks exist in different places, have different ecologies, all of these stewardship organizations have completely different flavors, which makes working at Detroit Parks Coalition so fun because our job is to kind of bring all those organizations together and come on common ground. But it really is something to see how people respond to what the community around them wants and then also just like actually what the land wants itself. You know, what is this land supposed to be? What is the the natural ecosystem here and how can we serve that?

Donna Givens Davidson 58:27

So can we talk about your Emmys?

SPEAKER_00 58:29

I just won.

Donna Givens Davidson 58:30

It's just one nomination, two nominations and one win. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 58:34

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I I it was so lucky uh for me to just accidentally be on a Zoom with a PBS producer one day as I just started Amplify Outside, where Amplify Outside started where I'm just literally showing people amplifying outdoor spaces in Michigan for Detroiters. A lot of people were asking me as I was personally exploring the upper peninsula, the west side, the east side, um, how are you doing this? And to me, it's like it's actually really easy. But I recognize that a lot of the barrier, although we understand it as economic, although we understand it as these very material things, a lot of times it's just narrative and the ability to demystify space. So I started making these videos where it was like a TikTok and Instagram reels where it's, hey, I went here, here's how much it cost, here's how much gas I use, here's much time um it took for me to get there. And people really responded to it, and I got so many responses that um, yeah, they were like, Oh, I went to that thing you told me, and I and you know, you showed me where we went, where I could go, and it made me want to get there.

Donna Givens Davidson 59:34

Well, you were doing that in LA though, too, too much to you.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Not really the same way. So in LA, because you know, I came back to Detroit because I realized I wanted to kind of serve my community.

Donna Givens Davidson 59:44

But what I mean is that, you know, my son who Philip has always lived outside. And he says that you sort of show them outdoor places during the pandemic when you couldn't go places. I was, I was.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

I was like the there were so many people, you know. Philip obviously isn't from LA, but there were people who were born and raised in LA where I was the person showing them the different spots going around because one of my hobbies is just looking at maps and seeing what looks cool on the map and going. Um, but yeah, it's it I definitely took that spirit, brought it back to Detroit, and it just kind of rolled out of control, honestly.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:16

Can we get some outlooks like uh like they got in LA? We might need some mountainous uh just for that. You know, they have outlooks in like suburban, like Midland had an outlook. We do like Saginaw has a couple outlooks. We got a couple outlooks um like on the top, you mean? Like yeah, like you know, can you see down like in Detroit and Wayne County? Is there outlooks? Like similarly to LA? No, right at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

Like not even close.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:42

I just there's an outlook that was like overlooking a chemical pond that Dow owned in Midland. And so that's what I think about when I compare.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:00:50

Um is it is outlook like a tower? Explain that to people like me who don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

Yeah, like basically a viewpoint, like a drive up, yeah, drive up. Yeah, it takes it takes some elevation. I will say if you go to the Upper Peninsula, there is a very large, I mean they have elevation there, but there's also some ski jumps that you can climb up year-round and get like a big view of. But yeah, Michigan is way flatter. It's very flat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:14

Yeah. I want to read a quote from uh the CEO of Bedrock right now. I knew you might have seen it uh over the weekend. He was uh in Grand Rapids talking to uh folks at the Grand Rapids Policy Conference and said, We want to be you. Our riverfront, our riverfront, Detroit, is nothing. He said, We have a dying Renaissance Center dying and 30, 40, 50 acres of empty riverfront. Jared Fleischer, CEO of Bedrock this morning at the Grand Rapids Policy Conference, Kate Carlson tweeted out. I quote tweeted Kate's tweet and said, question mark. And Jared, uh several hours later, uh responded. He said, All of the criminal critical comments are right. I regret my choice of words. There was an image behind me of the 30 acres of empty lots on the riverfront, thinking of the empty, you know, at least like a parking lot surface right near the riverfront, or excuse me, the Rensen.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:09

Of course, you know, in his mind, once he's trying to curry the the state to give him$250 million to tear down the two towers there. But it was an interesting sort of you know comeback. Uh you know, I haven't had our Jared Fleischer reply to one of my tweets before, but he says, you know, that's what I was referring to, what that could become for all to enjoy. My question for you, yeah, go ahead.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:02:32

I mean, let's just put this in context. There are parking lots. And then on the other side of the parking lots, there's the Detroit Riverfront, which which of the Riverfront Conservancy, which has been named one of the top riverfronts in the nation. Riverwater.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:46

Three or four years in a row. And so even to say that we want to be the Grand Rapids Riverfront.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:51

It's it's no, no, thank you. Don't think anyone in Grand Rapids would take theirs over Detroit. No, they wouldn't. I don't know what who was he trying to impress there.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

I don't see he says all the critical comments are right. I regret my choice of words. Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:03:03

Well, I I regret my choice of words, but I don't regret my dishonesty and inaccuracy.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:10

He says he was talking about the empty lots right near the Renaissance Center.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:03:14

But that's that's that's a political conversation. And people in 2026 should not be having the same political conversations they had in 2006 where they thought they could curry favor by putting down Detroit. That's exactly what was happening. And that's that's offensive to me. Um, I want to ask you a question about the you said that Detroit black detritus are denied the environmental or the climate resilience factors. Can you speak a little bit more about what that means? We talked a little bit about it, but I want to hear more.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Yeah, absolutely. So it really comes down to infrastructure. So I used the example of the floods of 2021, which we're coming up on the five-year anniversary of that this year, which is crazy. I can't believe it's that been that amount of time. And a lot of people who experienced that have not recovered in that five years. Um and what happened there was we did have a big rainstorm and the pumps failed in the city, like the electrical pumps failed, which is an infrastructure problem. But what DTE told us and told it told the community was that it was an act of God. And so people use the term like insurance companies or corporations use the term act of God to basically evade accountability when something goes wrong.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:24

That's what P Pete Exeth is saying right now to his soldiers.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:04:28

It is, it is, it is, it is, it is I I listen, thank you. We were so involved because you know, we serve support the Jeff Chalmers community, and it was the Connors Creek pumping station that failed, and the fruit pumping station that failed. And um, I think it was a fruit station, it didn't fail. There was no power, and they knew there wasn't power. And anybody who looked at weather.com knew it was gonna rain really hard. So um what fell was the leadership of the people to say we need to have this working. But what really made me angry, even angrier than the failure, was the lie that, well, even if these pump pumping stations had worked, we still would have had the same thing happen. So I'm like, so then why do we have pumping stations? It's a lie and it's an insult to my intelligence, it's an insult to the intelligence. And then, oh, then you flip around and say, Well, you know, as soon as we got them back up and running, the water receded quickly. Well, wait a minute, I thought it didn't make a difference. I think what you're talking about in terms of evading responsibility is exactly true. Glee with paint nobody, DWSD paid nobody, and there's people who still have water or the consequences, whether it's a broken water heater, broken furnace, um, black mold, E. coli, and other toxins still inside their homes because they could not afford the cleanup. And that's for a lot of people, and we did interviews with folks, a lot of people it they get scared every time it rains. That was the worst, but it's not the only one. So can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

Yeah, absolutely. I mean to the to the g to it being Being scared every time it rains, I'm not a homeowner. I just moved out of my loft, um, which was on Jefferson and Mount Elliot. And I too was scared every single time it rained because, and we talked a little bit earlier about housing in general Detroit, whether it's a single family home or a multifamily home, that it's just crumbling and the city isn't taking advantage of it or not taking advantage of it, taking care of it. Uh, I remember that was my first summer back in Detroit, actually, from LA was the flood summer where we had a lot of rain. And every single time it rained, particularly that heavy time, it was like a river going through my hallway. I was on the first floor and I was literally building a levee every time it rained to my front door. Like I had to prepare myself to basically sandbag my apartment from the rain that would come through. Um, and again, it's we are not receiving biblical rains here. Like we really are climate resilient.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:06:53

Are we seeing they every time it rains like that, they say, This is biblical. It's not this is like a hundred-year rain. Like a hundred year every two years.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:02

Like it's not like Asheville, North Carolina, where the hurricane comes through, you know. We are seeing more rain, absolutely. We are seeing the impacts of climate change, absolutely, but it is manageable here.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:07:13

It reminds me of a trip to New Orleans. Um, and you know, people talk about, well, this was climate, and people in New Orleans say, no, that was not climate, it was man-made. Yes. It was an it was infrastructure neglect. They knew exactly what was going to happen and they let it. And so what I'm hearing from you is that this exaggeration of the rain, these you know, overstatements, and also the failure to invest in or maintain our um our infrastructure is what's placing us at harm, so that we should be protected by being right next to the Detroit River, and yet we're not.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

We're not. We're being denied. Yeah, I you know, I don't I don't dare call it a climate haven anymore. But I will Well, you know, but we are having people.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:07:52

I mean, climate gentrification is real, right? Because other people know we've got water here.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

And that's why it's so urgent for me to thinking about how to connect Detroiters to this like green reality. Uh, I had a solo show and it was called City Wild, and it was all about just connecting Detroit to this broader idea of Michigan's wilderness. You know, Michigan has the Northwoods. We are this gem of green space, and for very good reasons, Detroiters separate ourselves from Michigan as a whole. Well, how many times have you heard? I'm not from Michigan, I'm from Detroit. I've heard that so many times in my life, like we are a separate entity. Um, and it doesn't actually serve us in the context of our resources. And so it's important for us to have this connection to the land because other people are well aware of what we have. We have to be as well, so that we know to go to the table. We know to demand the things from our legislators.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:44

I I love that. I think that we are not environmentalists in Detroit because politically, our politicians have not really connected there. I mean, I I point to the um the building of that horrible incinerator in um was it in 1989, um, when whatever Coleman Young built an incinerator, right? Maybe it was whenever he built it, he built it because he was trying to balance the books. And then you had the Evergreen coalition, white folks coming in from the suburbs saying this is an environmental hazard. And he's like, get out of my city. You this is my city, you can't tell us what to do. And there are Detroiters today who will say, those people tried to tell us what to do, and they can't tell us what to do, so that we found ourselves on the opposite side of our own interesting because of political desperation. And and so I thought growing up, I I we joined this in the inner this national group, um, the Partnership for Resilient Communities, and we're traveling places. And I'm saying ignorant things like, well, black people aren't connected to the environmental movements, and I'm going down south, and they are.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:50

Oh, absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:09:50

And I'm like, oh, school me. I had no idea that there were black people who actually were connected to the environment because my relationship is in Detroit. Do you see that changing at all?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:01

I see it changing, and what's so interesting is when you talk about going down south, I like to talk a lot about the great migration in that context because it happened, that separation happened for many of us in a generation. How many people in Detroit grandparents are from Mississippi, right? Or parents. I I know my mom's parents were both from Mississippi, and my grandfather and my grandmother were huge outdoor recreationists, right? My mom, not at all. Like she it didn't connect to her, and I think that happened for a lot of black communities. I think our families left the South where we were kind of just innately environmentally connected. We had had decades, possibly centuries, in that space stewarding the land. I think that's important to recognize is like we were enslaved, but we were also enslaved stewards. So there was this innate innate connection that we have to this landscape and moving up, obviously escaping the terror of the Jim Crow South, trying to get, you know, economic relief. It made sense, but it was this separation from a sovereignty.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:10:58

Yeah, I think a lot of people cannot um separate um farming from oppression.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

They can't.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:11:05

You know, my husband's people are from Fort DePaz, Alabama. And so I was talking to his aunts. I love his aunts, they're in um in um in Orlando, Florida. And I'm like, you know, what was it like growing up? And you know, you don't get the stories, happy stories, you don't get that. It was hard. They were children working in the fields, they were children. They had an outhouse, they didn't have indoor plumbing, and they dealt with so much oppression that their idea of success is I'm gonna get away from that. Now, when I worked in Brightmore, I remember neighbors building Brightmore, and they have all of the well right by Eliza Howell Park, and they're there were these people who were building these things, they were not black, and they moved into the community and building these farms, and some of the black people are like, you know what, that looks like slavery to me. And they did not support their children being there. So we have generational trauma that we've got to heal from before we can reconnect to the land, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:58

Absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:11:59

And that's one of the reasons why it was so important to me to find a black environmentalist to podcast with us. Yes, because the land is our land, and you cannot have justice without environmental justice, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

Absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:12:12

Can you talk about what you're gonna be doing on the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

Absolutely. So it will be called Amplify Outside. We will be amplifying outside. And what we're gonna do, we're gonna talk about a lot about these environmental issues going on in Detroit. But what we're also going to be doing is telling a more nuanced story of the black environmentalist. I've had this experience that I'm so grateful for, which is being on the journalism side, being in more of the fine art space, being in the local grassroots organizing. And I'm seeing all of these conversations around environmentalism and none of these people really meeting, and none of these conversations really crossing over to each other. And I think like what you're saying in healing that generational trauma and detaching this experience of farming from something like slavery, it happens in re-envisioning ourselves. How do we get a more nuanced, a more clear view of how black people, both in the history, uh, you know, in the past and present, are engaging in the environment? Because I think a lot of people would be surprised about what's happening in Detroit. One, that's it, there's so much happening. It's something happening every single day.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:13:16

And there's amazing black people doing it. Absolutely and whose lives are changing as a result of that. Um, there's some people I'd like to introduce you to, some amazing people who are doing some stuff they never thought they'd do. You know, now they are you know registered black farmers, and who knew I was going to ever do that? So once people get connected, because being an outdoor space is not just about environmental justice. There's what are the other benefits? I don't want to talk about that. What are the other benefits?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:44

I mean, it's it's healing. I mean, that's what really brought me to the space. You know, my mother, uh Dr. Rose Moten, she is a clinical psychologist and also a holistic healer. And one of the things that struck me as I built my relationship to the outdoors, which wasn't from an environmental justice standpoint, I didn't connect outdoors, like I was in DC, you know, reporting, but wasn't connecting politics to, you know, the hikes I do in the woods. Um, for me, it was really this point of not just healing, but suddenly finding this ability to self-actualize. And so that's what really brought me to the community work because I recognized I couldn't put a name to it, but something powerful was happening personally for me as I built this relationship to the outdoors. And I thought, oh my God, if an entire community had could could feel the freedom of what it means to build that relationship to the natural world, to escape from these red-lined infrastructured situations where you really kind of you have to leave the noise to hear yourself sometimes. And so for me, it's like obviously all these environmental justice issues, but also what would it mean if the community had a practice of hearing themselves, had a practice of connecting to the landscape? How would how could that heal us? How could that healing push us forward? Um, how could we gain the energy we need to do all the work that we have to do outside of the green space? You know, I I really look at it as a battery for the community's back, as much as it is, you know, a justice effort.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:10

One way that I've been re-energized is by those sound bath healings on Bell Isle. Like I've been to a couple of those and it's just like so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:18

Yeah, I'm so glad. We're bringing those back this year. Uh, that was like one of the first things Amplify Outside did was host free sound baths uh on Bell Isle because your mom did at least wanted those, right? Oh, yeah, no, it's always a collab with my mom. Uh so it's it's Amplify Outside Bloom Transformation Center.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:15:34

Yeah, can I can I say this? Um we had somebody um drive their car into our building in um August of um 2023. That's when I met Sam actually. Um I met his tweets through my children, but I met Sam in August of 2023. He was a reporter for Axios, and he was uh like the first person to report on this because you know Sam was going to be everywhere. Um that's just his personality. Um and we were traumatized, I mean deeply traumatized. I was really traumatized. I felt like we had been failed by the police. Um and yeah, I was I was I was in a bad place that year. I was really hurt, and so um I'd heard about bloom transformation. I think I actually went to Bloom in 2022 when I lost my mother and a friend lost my mother, and so we went there for sound healing. I said, can we do so? I talked to um Rose and I said we want to do something there. And we brought our staff, and I cannot overstate the the the quiz she gave us where we had to talk about what flower we were. Oh my goodness, and then the combination of I don't remember. I think I was a poppy. I was like whatever I am. Listen, no, I'm this exact same combination as your mom.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:45

Oh, really?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:16:46

So whatever she is, I am, and that's I was like, oh, we're friends, right? Because like we were relating. And so, um, so but as as we were going through it, um there was a senior citizen, she was in her 80s, and she had lost her son that year, and she was barely able to walk. She was on a cane and she worked here by her. We still love her, I miss her. Um and the next Tuesday she came and she says, you know what? I can walk. And she walked without a cane to my office from the reception desk. And it blew my mind. And then she came here and she did another session with the staff, and it was a sound healing, but it's all that naturopathic, the holistic healing, getting in touch with your body. I get so excited by what you're saying, and I'm wondering, do you ever do tours outside Detroit where you take Detroiters on these trips and show them the rest of Michigan?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:35

I do it in like a very unorganized way where it's like, oh, somebody heard about it. Let me let me pull them on onto this trip. You know, every camp, every group camping trip I have has someone that has never done it before. So it's not organized through Amplify Outside, but it is a personal joy of mine to do it. Um, and it blows that's what I mean. I I talked a lot about Detroit's parks, but what started for me was really thinking about Michigan's wilderness because I think it blows a Detroiter's mind the first time that they get to the UP and see those waterfalls and they understand that, like, oh, this is home too. That changes your perspective completely.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:18:13

I'm always trying to get people in new lines of business, but that's a lie. That's not like people would pay for that, really. Yeah, I think that you know, just once once a year, take people on a bus tour and let them see. I would go, my husband would go. I think, you know, I always look at things and it's like you're afraid. First of all, I'm afraid of white people, to be honest. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:32

We did a survey. Most people who responded are it wasn't bears, it wasn't, you know, mosquitoes. It was what are the white people doing up there?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:18:39

I mean, because yeah, I mean, you you you you know that stuff. And I was we went to um where where's Nuego? Um, so in 2020, my husband and I went to Nuego. He's turned 60 that year, and so we were um his daughters wanted to do something, and we were about to get married, and we went to Nuego and we were on the Muskegon River and on canoeing, and that was a great experience. And then, you know, we heard these gunshots, and it's like, what are these guns? Is that the Michigan militia? So then he and I went on a walk to the woods. It's a funny story. So we got and we got lost. So we're in the woods, we're lost, the sun is going down, we have no cell phone reception, and our cell phones, the the the the navigational stuff is not working. But everywhere we walk, somebody has a sign. Private property, keep out, warning, private property, keep out. And so I'm thinking, okay, if we ask for help, we might die. Yeah, and that's the way a lot of us feel about outside. Like I needed, we're like, we need a compass, we need an actual compass. We can't depend on our cell phones. And I was a lot less likely to ever want to do that again. Because you need to be able to know how to get from A to B. You need to know how to not row your boat next to the Michigan militia. That that's no, but see, that same year, or is it that year or the next year when the plot to kidnap the governor came up? Yeah, and they were from Luego.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:03

Yeah. And you know, I say this all the time, and people are very shocked. I feel much safer in the upper peninsula than the lower peninsula as a black person. Um, there is like that's a that's a legitimate concern. Uh Amplify Outside did a survey in 2022. We had over 200 people respond. And most people, what it really showed was most people are concerned about what are white people doing in that space. And they also feel safer if they had a community to go do it with, right? Like, I don't want to go alone. I want to go with a group. I feel safer, but it is a valid concern. And what I've said on a different podcast before, someone uh he was a white man asked me, he was like, So what do we do about the racism? I said, What the hell am I supposed to do? I was like, Well, I was like, I can't do anything about it. I can organize a group of us so that we all feel safe.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:20:47

I I talked you into a podcast, now I'm gonna talk you into amplify outside tours. Oh, I'll work with you on that.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:53

Really? Yes, absolutely.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:20:54

We gotta do it because you know we've gotta if we can't we keep talking about, but sometimes you just have to show people. Yeah, you know, and I look forward to um working with you and in and doing something like that. I mean, I think we could get a lot of people to come, pay some money, put some money in your pocket. Yeah, um, you can buy a new house like um like um Sam.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:12

Congratulations, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:14

You don't have to thank me, thank all the people that gave me money on Substack last year. Like, really thank them. You know, they they brought me a lot of tax trauma, but also gave me the ability to save money in that way for the first time. Like, I don't, you know, I'm from Midland, but like I don't come from money. My mom didn't work at Dow. Like her grandpa was a steel worker at Dow, and her her mom still collects a pension, even though the guy died in 2007. So it's like kind of similar to how some of the generous motors offspring of Detroiters, you know, still sort of but you know, I lived a lower middle class life, and I firmly thought that I was gonna be renting for longer than I'm 28 years old now. So thank you to everyone else, everybody listening, everybody that gave me money for that. Thank you. Uh we have our own, you know, sewage issues uh on Somerset. My neighbor calls it Lake Somerset. My house is currently, you know, because of the flooding or the rain that just happened didn't really result in any flooding, but just you know, I I go down Whittier and Kelly and I see all the streets that are still still have water sitting on them like three, four, five days.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:22:18

No, that's three is so important that we have some of our generals living in the city. Oh my god, I know because that's how these issues become visible. If everybody's living in the same neighborhoods, then people are dealing with that invisibly.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:30

In that neighborhood, where are they living, Donna? Tell them. They're living in that three and a half square mile radius surrounding downtown. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:36

That's all that's all the outside Detroiters are living in. I live in that three and a half mile. I used to live. I lived there for six years. And I and I tried my hardest, and you know, I just moved down the street because I'm like, uh the neighborhoods have some issues. You know what?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:22:52

A few years ago, Kat Stafford, um, the amazing Kat Stafford reached out to me because her parents had some issues on their block, where there was like five demolitions in a row, big holes in the ground, and nobody had bothered to repair them. And so those connections are there, even if you're not doing it. I think just having those connections, but the closer we live and the more often we are connected to people who don't get seen or heard, I think the better democracy works. And I want to bring it back to that point because um, you know, again, we have high hopes for this mayor, and yet we can't put it all on her.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:28

Well, I want to share my own getting lost in the woods story was in Empire, Michigan on the Empire Bluff walking trail. They tell you on the signs do not walk down the dunes because you will not be able to get back up. Well, guess what? I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:44

We walked down those dunes and oh my god, three hours of walking straight along the thing to find like an up ramp that we could like actually walk up. Because you you do that a couple times before you're like, oh my god, am I gonna have to spend the three thousand dollars on the what is it? This the what is group dead that is the Red Cross rescue team. I don't even know who does it. The state of Michigan has the DNR people in the helicopter. Who does that?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:08

It's a national lake shore, so it may actually be a Fed thing at that point.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:12

Yeah, and that's scary. You don't want to get airlifted out of a sand dune on the beach. However, we got out of it, and um, yeah, I mean, it was like a private residence that I drug along. And it was funny because you see a whole family there, you know, this nice white, rich family, and we're like, they're like, You guys lost?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:24:28

We're like, yeah, I did not have keep away signs.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:33

You know, I think there was might have been a private property, but it they were welcoming to people that were you know walking for two hours. We were literally like, Do you have any water bottles? Like, oh my god. Yeah, um, yeah, so that'll happen. Empire uh bluff, that's uh you know, I think Lelanock County Northwest Michigan, Lelanock. Beautiful. I mean, you go up north and it looks like different country. I mean, you talk about the UP pictured rocks, even you know, Mackinac Island, you go up there. Um, I because you know, you I spent 12 years in Midland, Michigan after living in Baltimore, Maryland. Um, I had an outdoor childhood of sorts. You know, that's something that we did would go up north and experience it. Uh open invitation suggestion as the weather gets warmer, guys. Plan that now. Start planning those trips now, right? If you're thinking about going up north this summer, you want to go camping, those campsites get booked up really quick.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:32

But I'll say this is the great part about camping. You actually don't have to plan it now. So go ahead. You know, there's so many times where it's like Tuesday, and it's like, actually, I have Friday through Sunday free, and I can just get in my car. And I I think about people, you know, Detroiters, Detroiters love to travel. Like Detroiters that, you know, have the means to travel love to travel. Um, and I'm always like, why are folks going to Jamaica or what have you during the summer? Save that for the winter. You it's so easy to have a vacation up north. You just kind of have to get in your car and do it. Yeah. Um, and some of those campsites, you know, they do book up, but there are so many campsites in Michigan.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:10

Do you know any off the top of your head that you could just ring off that are like, you know, typically open?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:14

Oh my god. That would that's like an impossible question. I mean, there's just like there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of campgrounds. But what I will say is there's also the Airbnb for campgrounds, which is hip camp, which is as a black person and black community, we often use because one of the things I say about going outdoors as a black person, particularly in Michigan or any white space, is that you are just constantly surveilled. That is the truth. And it's not like people are trying to surveil you, but you stick out in places where people do not expect to see you. And so going to these state campgrounds, which may be really busy, sometimes just doesn't feel comfortable. Where it's just like, I know the music I'm playing, the way I'm laughing, the topics I'm talking about are drawing an attention simply because they are different. Like we are other here. And so what you can do is you can go on this hip camp website and it's like Airbnb, but what they're just renting you is a piece of private property of private land. And so some of them may have like a porta potty on site, or they may have like a you know, a fire pit that they've built, but you can rent it for$30 a night, you and your friends. So, you know, take take 10 people and split$90 over a weekend, right? And you have a place to sleep. Sometimes there's bathrooms, sometimes there's you know amenities you have to do. On this website, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:28

This is like, wow, I did not know this existed. So golly, thank you for telling me about this.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:34

Um, that yeah, this is really interesting. I, you know, can't name the campsite off the top of my head either, but I I know when I was on my high school senior trip or you know, in college with my you know, white western Michigan friends, they wouldn't they would have all kinds of places that they'd go and oh, my family's been coming here for all kinds of years. So interesting to see this. Like this is exactly like Airbnb just for campgrounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:56

Yeah, and it's the best campgrounds I've like ever had. Some of them are oh, just stunning. Like right on the some people have beach property, you can get right on the beach. It's in and it's so private. It's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:06

I have also because I lived in Midland, I was proximate to wealthy people that were like C-suite executives at Dow. And they would always have you know um summer cabins or summer cottages. That was like a big thing in Midland. If you were rich, you would go to up north. You know, you'd go, Oh yeah, my family's going to my family cottage and my cabin. And you know, I bought a house, so that's my first purchase. But like in a future Sam version of myself, that's a that's an aspirational, you know. I don't really plan to be wealthy, but if I were to be, that's the first thing that I would do. I'd go buy a summer cabin and I'd take my children's friends that didn't have the means to do something like that up with them like I was the kid.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:48

Until Mary builds those houses. Um I I I honestly, there is a reality in my head where I buy a house up north before I buy a house in Detroit. Where I where I rent in Detroit and buy and buy up there.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:29:01

Um because it available I'll show you, I'll show you some great neighborhoods to live in Detroit and you show me some great places to hang out in because there are really great neighborhoods in Detroit.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:15

There are. I'm not saying there's not. No, I know, I know.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:29:18

But I think you know that that Detroit has some real hidden gems as well. Yeah. Um, we have got so many amazing neighborhoods, and people don't know about them. And um, so hopefully you can get connected with some of them as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:29

I will say, I'm an Eastside baby through and through. And I'm like, I when I think about buying a house in Detroit, I'm like, I can't get too far from that river. Like I have to, I got, and so I'm like, Mary, build something in Island View, please.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:29:44

Well, Island View has a lot of housing that's being built.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:47

It does, yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:29:48

Um, there's um this new um community land trust that is building housing there. Um, so yeah, let's stay tuned.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:55

Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm I'm like holding out on it.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:57

It's expensive, man. I will tell you, as somebody that just watched the Detroit housing market for like two years, like every day on Zillow, I'd get Zillow notifications about the market. And so I was like really into it. I was probably like in the top percent of people looking at Detroit houses. When I was at Axios, my colleague Joe Gehan did a reoccurring weekly housing feature that was just kind of like shining light on the best house. And so me and him kind of got into like, oh, what's the best value? Oh, what's the best I remember that?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:23

And so it, you know, it's hard to live. I wanted to live on Lakewood, you know, I wanted to live down close to the river, right? But the stock is just not what you can get above 94 in Yorkshire Woods or Outer Drive Hays or or Denby or Morningside, East English Village, which are now those Morningside East English village, those communities are getting gentrified. Yeah, they're white people are buying houses in them and driving up the housing.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:30:45

I moved to East English Village in 2014, and I lived across the street from a vacant house. There's a vacant house next to me and a few vacant houses down the street. Um, the house next to me couldn't sell. Um, and now you look at it and it's like it's completely gentrified. Housing prices have gone way up.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:05

There are 180,000 plus. I could not see anything good for less than 150.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:31:09

Anytime the mayor says we're gonna do a well, the former mayor, oh, I love saying that, um, says we're gonna do a housing study, or we're gonna do, you know, a planning study. You know what's going to follow is investment.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:20

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:31:21

So you got in early in Yorkshire Woods, but I promise you there's going to be some investment because when they do the studies, people start coming in.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:28

Life Remodel is is you know, redoing the the Wynans Dominican high school building. And so that's you know, one thing. There we got one nice restaurant over here, sold to go. Shout out to them. But uh yeah, Whittier and Kelly, uh, it does seem like the the my neighbors are you know prideful. They're oh yeah. You guys put stuff in. I mean, I you know, I know I I could list off a number of people that live over there. I I won't to you know not dox them, but um yeah, there's some folks that work in city government that you guys would would be familiar with that live over by me. There's a lot of potential in that area.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:01

I mean, it's already an area, like there's a good community there.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:05

Yeah, and the commercial quarter right there, you know, the neighbors on Roxbury don't want that Cover Girl Strip Club to open up right there on Whittier. Um, however, uh there's a true value, the you know, the Hammertime value store. Uh and then obviously the Dennis Kalophanos-owned civic theater that uh is is it being uh speculated on, or is he saving and preserving that building from and that's why I say bring up Conrad's name and the demolition stuff. Conrad wants to demolish these blighted commercial buildings.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:32:33

I just want to point out that the um the the city attorney is not the one who does that. Sure. It was public policy, it's the jet team, it is all of those people who decide where the money's going to go. And I only say that because I have I we we don't have time for my stories. I know this is a great conversation, but trying to work with the city and trying to get the city to support an acquisition rehab program where we invest in neighborhoods, um the city will not invest in any corridors outside of the corridors that they the old city. I don't know what's gonna happen because Mayor Sheffield has said she's going to invest in all neighborhoods. But there is a time where we're on MAC Avenue, we've been trying to invest on Mac Avenue for 10 years and got no help at all, no love from the city of Detroit because they were on Warren and they were on Jefferson. And so um, you know, you hire your attorney and your attorney does your bidding. The question is, will this attorney do the bidding of the past mayor or the current mayor?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:28

Well, and last December he says the point that we're at, you know, he sues this uh speculator guy, Dennis Kalafanos. He says the point we're making to the judges is he be these buildings cannot be saved and need to be demolished. He says these buildings have no historic value.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:33:41

Yeah, and I'm not saying he's not, but what I'm saying is that he worked for Mayor Duggan. Yeah. Until January 1st, he had a different boss. When you work for somebody, you advocate for them. Sure. I've had private conversations with him, um, one private conversation with him where there was a discrepancy between what was happening in the city and what he was actually saying. And I want to be hopeful that we're gonna see a difference and that this corporation council is not gonna be doing the former mayor's bidding in office.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:10

We can see, I know obviously Dennis Kalafanos will tell me that no, he doesn't he would he would give those the building up to the city. He would give all these four uh, you know, blighted, abandoned, empty, uh sort of semi-historic, quasi-historic, however you want to say important to some people, um, but not to the state of Michigan or the city of Detroit. Civic Theater on Kellyanne Whittier is one of those, one of those buildings.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:34:31

So I look forward to hearing what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:33

Me too. Hopefully, Outlier Media is gonna have a news scooper Cranes Detroit is gonna be able to do that.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:34:37

Shout out to Orlando Bailey in Outlier.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:39

Yes, uh, they are bringing us some of the best housing and development report. I mean, the best right now in the city. So definitely go check their work out. And shout out to to Kelly and Whittier, man. Um those folks deserve nice things too. So we are going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, we're gonna talk about what and who we're thankful for.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:10

Interested in renting space for corporate events, meetings, conferences, social events, or resource fairs, the Sodomar Wellness Hub and Match Detroit Small Business Hub are available for rental by members, residents, businesses, and organizations. We offer rentals for activities such as corporate events, social events, meetings, conferences, art classes, fitness classes, and more.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:34

To learn more about our rentals and reserve space, visit ecn-detroit.org slash space rental.com. All right now, it's time for shout outs. Let's start with you, Donna. Do you have any person that you want to shout out to?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:36:13

I want to show out um the staff at ECN. Um on Friday, it was um that we celebrated my 10th anniversary here, and there's this amazing video of um people who, you know, were just acknowledging my work and some of it was really surprising. I think, you know, they're trying to make me cry, Mike. I see over there. Because at the very end, my husband is like talking about me and saying all of these things and you know, telling us everybody my pet name. It was very sweet. Um, but no, I really appreciate it. Um, I love the work, I love the people. Um, and um, I felt very honored by that. I actually got a video that's been texted to me while I'm sitting here. They did a call for people to send in little videos that were incorporated, and I got one from a young person. So um thank you, ECM.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:59

I want to shout out a man named Mo's Primus. He's the Yorkshire Woods president. He offered to uh teach me how to cut up Costco meats. His dad was the one of the first, who was the first black butcher inside uh Eastern Market. I think the shop that he used to uh own is currently the RJ's Meat at the Grasshit Market right over there. Uh Mo's is a tireless community advocate for the other side of Whittier than what I live on. And so Moes is trying to help me find out who drove the car through this public square on Kellyan Whittier since we're talking about the civic theater. Um I'm going to make a TikTok video. And that TikTok video is going to show 2007, 8, 9, 10, 11 the degradation and derelict of this city-owned public square on Kellyan Whittier, right across from this historic, not historic to Conrad Mallet, but historic to the neighborhood and the people that remember going to the theater when it was one of the great movie theaters of Detroit. When did it close? Oh, I have no idea. I think it closed in the early 80s or late 70s. Um but the building has sat abandoned for decades. Um and of course, you know, Dennis Kalafinos is the owner. Um I haven't I haven't I've I've sent him an email. Haven't gotten to talk to him or the daughter that owns it, but I say I mentioned this um public square because I want to invite everybody on March 12th, there is a Denby Whittier neighborhood framework plan. Um and then the last neighborhood framework plan community meeting, uh, we talked about this public square and what it could be in the future, what it was in the past. It's like this art deco, like you know, the seating is like in an S like kind of thing. And there was a tree that provided shade, and somebody rammed their car. I mean, it just appears on the Google image past results that somebody hit the tree, hit the brick sort of the actual like infrastructure in this square. And three years later, what do you think happened to the tree? It is no longer there. It's no longer there. Yeah, and this is like a 200-year-old oak tree. You know, it's like, and so not only does the city not think, hey, somebody rammed their car through this and we have to replace the tree. They probably don't even have money to replace the square. The brick masonry is this old, you know, thing.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:39:29

We're talking about a city administration that destroyed the Carter Creek Greenway to build a parking lot and took down all those trees and all those bushes. They weren't 200 years old, but they were trees.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:41

I mean, we struggle with it with the well, maybe I shouldn't say it, but like we struggle with it a little bit with the parks. Sometimes there's just discrepancy. Like I said, there's the stewardship organizations, there's parks and rec department, and then there's GSD. Um, and all these city organizations have different levels of information and knowledge around environment.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:40:00

Didn't we take down every single tree at AB4 Park because of soil contamination? Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:05

It's it's devastating.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:40:06

I I I could talk to you for hours. You're like, you're uh I could talk to you for hours. We gotta let people go. Yeah, Ian.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:13

Who do you want to shout out today? Put you on the spot. I'm shouting out particularly all the black and brown people in Detroit doing the green work. Like you are seen. There are so many of us. I mean, in the summertime, you can throw a rock and hit a black outdoor event in this city. And I don't think people understand that. Like, if so, shout out y'all. Y'all are doing the work. I can't wait to bring you on to this podcast. Um, to yeah, celebrated.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:40:37

When does it start? What's your first podcast?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:38

We're hoping to launch it on Earth Day, so April, April 22nd.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:40:42

All right. So um, you're gonna launch it on Earth Day. We're gonna hold you to that. Um, look forward to um having you come back on um right before the launch so you can tell us what to expect. And this is going to be available on the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network. Um, you'll we'll be you the introductory episodes will be on Authentically Detroit, and then you'll be in your own network after that. Or maybe simultaneously.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:04

So excited.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:05

Yeah, I'm excited for it too. Thank you guys, thank you, Ian and Donna, uh, for joining us today. You are listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. Thank you guys. We will hear from you next week.