Pathways Out of Poverty with Veronika Scott and Cheryl P. Johnson

In this episode, Donna and Sam welcomed Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Empowerment Plan, Veronika Scott, plus Chief Executive Officer of COTS Detroit, Cheryl P. Johnson, to discuss their 16-year partnership - centering a shared mission of providing emergency help for people experiencing homelessness and providing pathways out of generational poverty.

The Coalition On Temporary Shelter’s (COTS) dedication to the needs of homeless men, women, and children grew out of a meeting in 1981 between a group of church leaders and human service providers in downtown Detroit. Officially formed in 1982, they have a mission to address Detroit’s homelessness crisis by providing shelter and essential services that help participants achieve self-sufficiency.

On March 17th, Empowerment Plan - a Detroit-based, workforce development organization that produces sleeping bag coats for people experiencing homelessness - distributed its milestone 100,000th coat to COTS Detroit, its longest-running partner. 

Started by Veronika Scott in 2015, The Empowerment Plan creates significant economic impact by serving as a stepping stone out of poverty into a state of stability. The core of their work stems from an intensive 2-year employment model focused on providing job readiness training and support services to their workforce. 

To stay up to date on all things Authentically Detroit, click here. 

THIS WEEK IN THE MICHIGAN CHRONICLE:

SUPREME COURT GUTTING OF VOTING RIGHTS ACT STRIPS BLACK POLITICAL POWER, EXPERTS SAY

BERNIE SANDERS DRAWS HUNDREDS IN DETROIT AS PROGRESSIVES PICK BETWEEN EL-SAYED, MCMORROW

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Up next, Authentically Detroit welcomes founder and CEO of Empowerment Plan Veronica Scott, plus Cheryl P. Johnson, the CEO of COTS Detroit, to discuss their efforts to alleviate homelessness in the city of Detroit. But first, what we're reading from the Michigan Chronicle. Supreme Court gutting a voting rights act strips black political power, experts say. Bernie Sanders drew hundreds in Detroit this weekend as progressives pick between Abdul Al-Sayed and Mallory McMurrow. Listen up, everyone. The thoughts and opinions expressed on this podcast belong to its hosts and do not represent the East Side Community Network or its sponsoring organizations. Keep it locked. Authentically Detroit starts after these messages.

Donna Givens Davidson 0:41

Spring classes have started at the Staudemeyer Wellness Hub from chair yoga and strength-based fitness to nutrition, cooking, and wellness focused classes. There's something for every person and every starting point. At the Staudemeyer, our hope is to offer movement, nourishment, and community to support you throughout the spring season. Learn more at ecn-detroit.org slash classes or give us a call at 313-571-2800.

SPEAKER_05 1:29

What's up, Detroit? Welcome to another episode of Authentically Detroit. We're broadcasting live from Detroit's East Side, the Stademeyer, inside the East Side Community Network. I'm Sam Robinson. And I'm Dinah Gibbons-Davidson. Thank you so much for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people here in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. Today we're joined by the founder and chief executive officer of Empowerment Plan, Veronica Scott, plus Cheryl P. Johnson, the Chief Executive Officer of COTS Detroit, who are here to talk about their 16-year partnership centering a shared mission of providing emergency help for people experiencing homelessness and providing pathways out of generational poverty. Cheryl, Veronica, welcome to Authentically Detroit.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Thank you. How are you guys doing? Glad to be here. Thank you. Excited to be here, especially with this one.

SPEAKER_05 2:17

Awesome. First, we are going to run down some of this week's top headlines. If you guys want to chime in with any of your thoughts or commentary on some of these stories, go right ahead. But let's dive in. Um, it was something that I heard former Vice President Kamala Harris say that she was not surprised to have seen happen. The Supreme Court last week uh officially sort of gutted that section two of uh the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark uh uh law as a result of the civil rights movement in a 6-3 decision along party lines. The Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana's 2024 election maps were uh unconstitutional. Uh they called it a racial gerrymander. President Trump on social media praised the decision. Uh, Democrats, uh, black uh legacy institutions like the NAACP and others really slammed the court, slammed Republicans. Trump told reporters earlier this year that white people were treated very badly as a result of the civil rights movement. Um, Donna, we are still feeling the effects of the civil rights movement.

Donna Givens Davidson 3:33

Well, I mean, racism is not a flaw, it's a feature of the U.S. government. So when you understand that our government is founded on racial supremacy, on white supremacy, that everything that has happened since our founding has been built on white supremacy, then you don't get shocked that the minimal efforts to reverse things get you know turned around. I think if you look at the, I remember um learning about the Dred Scott versus Sanford decision and the disgusting, if you've ever read the whole decision, it's even worse than the line that a white man has no, a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect. That's not even the worst part of it because it said in that decision that a black person, whether whether they were enslaved or not, however they got here, was not fully human. And so that's the basis. That's the basis for um, you know, eradicating or killing so many um Native Americans, the genocide committed against Native American people, pushing them out of their land, taking their land, and then accusing them of being savages, right? As we take your stuff, we blame it on you. That's the reason why you had Chinese laborers come here and build railroads and then they get treated like they don't belong here. That's the reason why people come from Mexico and they build and they farm and then they get kicked out because you know Operation Wetback happened in the 1950s. It's not recent history. So let's not get surprised and let's not blame Donald Trump without acknowledging the fact that he would not be president if a whole lot of people were not super comfortable with white supremacy because he was very clear the white supremacy. And shockingly, not just white people are comfortable with white supremacy, some of us black people, Hispanic people, Haitian people, African people, white supremacy is the kind of logic that poisons the way that people think and poisons our culture. And so, um, you know, some of us used to talk about sure. I remember, you know, we used to talk about how you the the idea of racism being blatant versus racism being hidden in the code. And sometimes when you you don't see racism, it makes it harder to fight it. That's right. Well, when they come out and they tell you exactly what they think and exactly what they want, I think actually this is going to um garner more activism in our community because we know that we have an enemy.

SPEAKER_04 5:48

I I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that that happens because the idea what saddens me uh most is it's just a little bit too quiet right now. And I don't feel the outrage of what has happened over the last few days, like I'm not seeing it, feeling it, or or hearing it. And so that that's scary to me.

SPEAKER_05 6:09

I'm not either. And I I feel when I was in high school, you know, we we made a big deal out of Supreme Court decisions in like 2013, 14, 15. Even in in college, like this happening would have been all over our Instagram stories and Facebook reels and everything.

Donna Givens Davidson 6:25

But the Supreme Court has no more legitimacy, right? So when the Supreme Court does something, everybody's like, okay, we are numb. We're numb because numbness is a protective feature for our psyches. If we reacted every time that um Trump did something to offend us, this is a man who has done nothing but um just disrespect us, anti-DEI. You look at the ads that are coming out and everything that's happening. I don't want us to be so caught up every time they do something racist that we forget to strategize, that we forget to plan. We are hopefully, many of us, I believe, are behind the scenes actually trying to build and create things. You know, you mentioned something, Cheryl, when you came in, you talked about because you know I completed my book, but there's so many people completing their books. Yes. And what is that? Yeah. It is us taking back our voices, it is us really claiming it. Think about the Harlem Renaissance. I think every day when I hear about black authors and black filmmakers and people doing things on their own, that when you know our government your government does not love you, then you have to love yourself. That's right. And so I don't think our biggest fight has to be through protest. I think our biggest fight has to be through communal healing and building something separate and different and showing love to each other because what they want us to do is be so upset all of the time. Um, and I I want to say this because it's important for me to say this. I went to the doctor last week because um I was feeling I was in almost chronic pain. And so I've been tested, and I don't know where I stand for an autoimmune disorder because how is it that you're always in pain? And so we're going through my symptoms and I have been in daily, constant distress. So when I say what I say, I'm speaking to people and say, we've got to take care of ourselves because they will kill us, having us be so upset all the time. Our bodies cannot take that kind of cortisone release all of the time that we're depleting our healthy reserves. That's right. And so if I'm not seeing anger and I'm not seeing outrage, hopefully what I am seeing is people coming together and loving each other and finding ways to take care of ourselves.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

So that's making me smile. Go ahead, Veronica. But that is making me smile, and I'll come back with it.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Uh, I just think there's there's a lot what you're talking about. I think there's a level of burnout we all have collectively. I think it's a strategy of just constant bombardment of stuff that you can't when it is all happening constantly, you can't keep reacting. Your body just can't keep reacting. And I think that's a lot of the silence. I think it's collective burnout from just what's happening in the world right now, and that is on purpose. Yeah. And I think that's I'm hopeful for the individual because I believe that like true actual change doesn't come in when one person is coming in and doing the grand big superhero things. I don't think that's how change happens. I believe it is at the individual level. Like that's where real change and we can't just wait for a hero. There isn't somebody sweeping in with a grand cape.

Donna Givens Davidson 9:24

Well, I think it's collective, right? Yeah, I think that's what I mean. And I think change really happens. If you go through history, change really happens when women come together and say, Let's stop this. No offense, brothers, but when when women come together and say, Let's stop this, because the way we lead is different.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 9:41

We lead collectively. We lead by bringing people together. And again, not just so many people writing books, but so many women writing books. Yeah. So many women claiming our voices. The first thing you have to do is claim your voice. The first thing you have to do is figure out I'm disconnecting from this establishment system that keeps telling my people that we're less. And, you know, and I'm not trying to prove myself to them anymore. I now know I can't prove myself. And then the next step is coalitions and the formation of partnerships like you have, quietly in the background, because keeping in mind that this Supreme Court decision is not the first time that the Voting Rights Act has been attacked. It's been under attack for over a decade. This is the final death nail. And so, in that process, when I see people coming together and coming up with solutions, I love what you all do. And I can't wait to talk about it because you didn't ask permission.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 10:32

You didn't ask for somebody to tell you what to do. You came together and just did it because you know it's needed to be done. And I believe more of that's going to happen. I um frequently talk about this because I was blessed to be part of a summer leadership institute in 2002. And Professor Evelyn Higginbottom, and I always give her credit for this because we have to acknowledge people who think things of things differently and change the way we think, pointed out that the post-Reconstruction era is always looked at as a time of tremendous loss for our black people. That's the way it was taught to me, that's the way it was passed down. But what in post-Reconstruction, what did we have? We had the formation of the NAACP, we had the black Greek organizations, we had black hospitals, we had black savings and loans organizations, we had black, all of these businesses, and it happened so quickly. That's when you saw what happened in Tulsa, where people were so angry they had to try to take it back because they saw our growth. I think it's important for us to understand that we have power to exist and to do things and to create things outside of what our government, which has been hateful from its formation, does to us. We have the power to love, we have the power to create, and the power to create a vision for what freedom looks like so that when we get past this hateful moment, things will change.

SPEAKER_05 11:48

When I was growing up, there was a narrative or a belief that progress was linear, and I think that has been undone uh in our um, you know, sort of lifetimes through the lens of the civil rights movement. Obviously, Republicans who opposed the heart of these bills in the 1960s are now sort of coming back and and having real victories against what it was perhaps their ancestors or their dad or grandpa or grandma, uncle, aunties, whatever, um, were were opposing at the time.

Donna Givens Davidson 12:32

You know, there's there's been more than one civil rights movement, though. And the challenge is most of us think civil rights movement happened in the 1960s, but the civil rights movement went all the way back to the founding of this nation. People were fighting for their rights, fighting for their freedom from the very beginning. And it does go encourage, you have up and down, back and forth, but the history, you know, somebody's the arc of the universe may bend towards justice. And, you know, I'm still an optimist, but it doesn't bend in a straight line, as you were pointing out, Sam. There's a lot of, you know, fluctuations in that bend. We know that the administration right now is wildly unpopular with American people. A lot of American people really got used to living in a multicultural society and really thought, well, you know, we're gonna stop this, we're gonna stop this. But again, my optimism makes me believe in the human spirit. And I believe that a whole lot of people, when they take away the rights of black people to vote, are gonna vote against this simply because it's repugnant to many people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

Some of those those um the provisions within the voting rights act, talking about section two, the tension between uh section two of the voting rights act and the US Constitution, which uh prohibits laws being out of uh being considered with with race. And so that's always been a natural tension that exists. We felt it while I was reporting on Michigan's independent redistricting commission in 2018 through like 22 that went on forever. Um you cannot use race to create districts, however, you must consider race to create districts, said the rules of the of the commission. And so there was a natural thing there. I talked to Anthony Eid, he's actually running in the house district, which is kind of like this Detroit House candidate wants to wants to run in the district that he drew. Questionable. You know, that's that's like a Detroit news headline. I would expect Craig Mauger to push out pretty soon here. But Anthony told me um as it relates to this um court ruling last week that you know it could affect, you know, if you're a Republican, there's nothing stopping you from suing the state's maps at this point out of exactly the same thing that the state of Louisiana did. The state of Louisiana, I'm sure the state of Florida, yeah, Republican lawmakers are going to be actively looking to sue the redistricting commissions or the whoever put together the maps, the states that made those maps into law. Um and so yeah, it it it's it's really interesting. And black voters, black uh majority uh political districts, which of course Detroit had several sort of taken away as a result of the most recent redistricting process.

Donna Givens Davidson 15:39

Well, the I I want to talk about the most recent redistricting process because I think a lot of times it's widely misunderstood. Um there's gerrymandering in Michigan is longstanding, and the way that gerrymandering has worked or the districting has worked is that Republicans have um been in control of drawing the maps. And so one way to weaken black political power is to put all the black people in one district, and then you only have one representative. When you reduce the diversity within districts, what you do is you reduce the ability of black people to weigh in in multiple districts. And so a lot of people say the maps have been drawn and in in ways that have actually given us representation, but minority representation, as opposed to giving us racial inclusion gives us better representation. And so I think the intent was to create districts that were not, you know, looking like snakes with a specific intent. And so the redistricting commission, it was voted by Michigan voters, right? Voters not politicians, and I'm on the board of this organization, so I got to speak up for it, right? Voters not politicians is intending to have race neutral policies that say, let's look at districts and let's look at bringing people together by affinity groups, but not letting you know politicians draw these lines.

SPEAKER_04 16:55

But Donna, how do you think the average Detroiter needs to know that information?

Donna Givens Davidson 17:01

I think we need to I think we need to re-educate Detroiters. I think that we need to acknowledge the fact that Detroit now is not the Detroit I grew up in. Yes. Okay. Most black people in Detroit don't live in the city of Detroit, they live in Metro Detroit. That's right. So this idea that you're going to have two congressional representatives representing a city that's shrinking is not realistic. Okay. The reality is that you've seen some black politicians be successful in Michigan, even under these new lines. Donovan McKinney is an example of somebody who got voted to the state house. And he didn't get there because he was cool with the people. He got there because he was running on issues that matter to the people, to his constituents. I want black politicians to understand that if you're going to run in a district that includes more than just Detroit, you can't just run on your endorsements by the right people, annoying the right people because people outside Detroit don't care about the past the Baptist Pastors Council. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 17:58

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 17:59

They care about issues that you better be in front of. Most white people who are voting in democratic races are going to be more progressive than black people in those democratic races because if they weren't progressive, they would be Republicans. That's my take on it. And so I want to train people to vote on issues around justice, which means we've got to bring environmental justice into the conversation. We've got to talk about poverty. We cannot keep on talking about black capitalism like that's going to attract the votes of many people. Um, so I I think it's a matter of re-educating. I think young Democrats, young voters are actually more multicultural. We saw that happen at the Michigan convention, where you saw a multicultural group of people just standing for justice and the establishment is mad. And I think that takes us to the next story.

SPEAKER_05 18:47

It does. I want to I want to say uh talking about the redistrict or the the section two, the issue that experts are screaming and yelling about is that they're take they're doing away with source the so-called racial gerrymander, but nothing about the partisan gerrymander, southern states are gonna want to get rid of their minority representation, which just so happens to be democratic representation. Most black voters vote for Democrats.

Donna Givens Davidson 19:12

Right. They are bringing back racial gerrymander, but to promote white power as opposed to provide promoting equity. The idea now is, according to what you know, Donald Trump said, is that we've got to make sure that we protect these um persecuted white folks from the entrench the the movement of black people.

SPEAKER_05 19:30

They were treated really badly after the civil rights movement. Mumford High School uh played host to Bernie Sanders today. I don't know if the white people of Mumford were treated very badly and they stopped going there, or they just decided to stop going there on their own. But um It's a completely black neighborhood today. It used to be all white people.

Donna Givens Davidson 19:48

I grew up in I grew up in that neighborhood. I grew up in the Bagley community. My sister went to Mumford. My grandmother taught at Mumford, so I have so many family ties to Mumf. And um, what do you go ahead? Well, I mean, you know, if you grew up in Detroit, you know that um block busting happened, you know, black people moved into neighborhoods and all the white people left. There was one, my sister had a friend, um, and her her little sister went to school with me. Um, there's like a few white people left. And so my when my grandmother taught there, black white people were not pushed out, they left. And when they left, we were able to move into beautiful brick home neighborhoods. And I Bagley Elementary was my school. I have beautiful memories of that, but there was absolutely no pushing out. There was absolutely blockbusting, redlining, and desire to move out of the city. And black people were missing. And black people could not move where they were going because we couldn't get FHA loans. And so there was a lot of intentionality around that. To rewrite history and say black people ran white people out is not it's ridiculous. And mind you, there were some neighborhoods that remained all white. Um, I went to Mercy High School and I taught, I my my mother owned, had a friend who owned a baskin rabbins on Grand River in North Rosedale, right outside of North Rosedale or Rosedale Park. And um, when I went there, one time I was my boyfriend at the time picked me up, and we were um chased by some white people. They were throwing things at our car, threatening to shoot us. I mean, I was laying on the floor of the car. There was so much racist.

SPEAKER_04 21:13

This is on Grand River.

Donna Givens Davidson 21:14

In in North Rosedale. In North Rosedale, there was extreme violence by white people, to black people when I was a kid. If you look at the history of Detroit Public Schools, and by the way, we are having an event on Wednesday where we're going to be talking about this book, The Containment, written by um Michelle Adams, who's a law professor at U of M. I believe she's on loan to NYU right now. A brilliant book, because she talks about the Millikan versus, I always forget the who was versus the decision on busing in the city of Detroit. And she outlines the amount of racial violence that was going on in Detroit at that time in the 1970s. It was not black people committing violence against white people, it was white people committing violence when black people were allowed in their schools. Yeah, that's Millican versus Bradley. Thank you. Bradley, I always forget you. Sorry, Bradley. Um, but Millican versus Bradley. It was there was a whole we had a recall. Um, school board members who promoted busing were recalled. There was a recall campaign. And so when I was going to school in the 19 um 60s, late 1960s, early 70s, there were a couple of school strikes where there was so much tension going on. And so um, my book, I tried to outline some of this. I can't get into all of it. Um, the issues that we dealt with around racial persecution in the city of Detroit, but racism has gone one way in America.

SPEAKER_05 22:32

And yeah, I I wanna I bring that up that way because a part of um what didn't make it all the way into my story, sort of mentioned, was the fact that a lot of Detroiters who um, you know, even those who are supporting Abdul Al-Sayed, uh, who are two-time Bernie Sanders voters in Democratic presidential primaries, they felt like, you know, why is there a smattering handful of black faces in this gymnasium? Could you guys not have done better community outreach or just, you know, knock on the neighbors' doors and say, hey, there's gonna be a ton of cars parked here on a Sunday. Uh, this is what we're doing. Here's how to come. Uh I did talk to James Aldres. He brought his wife and daughter, Taylor Renee. His wife's name is Vanessa. Um, you can see a photo of them on uh MichiganCronicle.com, put them into my story. Uh James told me that he feels like all politics is local. He feels like Abdul Al Sayed has done the most locally here in Detroit, mentioned his time as Detroit Health Director and Wynne County uh health director as well. Um Taylor Renee and her mom, Vanessa, uh, before the rally began, weren't convinced. They were still considering Mallory McMurrill, they told me, and they said after the rally um they were convinced and they're going to be voting for Abdul al-Sayed in the uh Senate primary. That's August 4th. Haley Stevens, she is the United States Senator, or excuse me, United States representative from Birmingham. Uh she represents sort of the more moderate Democratic forces. She is the only candidate in this race who is openly pro-Israel. That issue has been at really the the central of the conversation. At the heart is whether progressives are going to stand with Mallory McMurrow. She is a state senator from Royal Oak. You may remember that she um, because of the redistricting effort, actually does represent part of the city of Detroit in her state Senate uh district that was redrawn. She got rid of Marshall Bullock. Uh Mallory and Abdul, from based on my reporting, have a uh uh uh on the ground right now advantage over Haley Stevens. I'm pretty confident in saying that uh because I I have been going to these political events every weekend for a few months now, and we saw it at the Michigan Democratic Party con uh convention. Obviously, that's sort of a skewed, doesn't represent the entire state uh voters. However, I mean it was pretty interesting to see her how uh riled up people were of all stripes, of all backgrounds, against her um and against the largest and most influential, one of the most influential uh super PAC groups, APAC, which Haley has um been a part of and has received millions of dollars from through her past campaigns. It does seem like El Said and Mallory McMurrow are at least from the perspective of a Detroit reporter, uh the two favorites in this Democratic primary race.

Donna Givens Davidson 25:58

And yet, most black leaders, elected leaders in Michigan who declared a candidate are in support of Ailey Stevens. And um, so you have Joe Tate, Brenda Lawrence, Helena Scott, Keith Williams, Tyrone Carter, Brenda Carter, Dave Bean, Kelly Garrett, um I mean I can go down the list, all in favor of a candidate who a lot of people who are um really appalled by what's happening in Gaza are opposing because of their concerns around the affiliation with AIPAC. And so you have this um black Jewish coalition among traditional politicians that has remained intact, even despite everything that's happening for older politicians and then younger people are coming out because Donovan McKinney actually was the person who introduced Abdul at the rally, who then introduced um um Bernie. Bernie. Donovan McKinney went to high school with my children, his wife went to high school with my children. Um, and so I had a conversation with him, and he is definitely grassroots Detroit, born and raised, representing our community, but he's running on issues that are very different than the issues that um other um Democrats that are more establishment are running. And so I think we're seeing that black people don't vote as monoliths, number one, that there's a generational division, and I'm, you know, kind of with the young folks, but it's a stark divide. It's a stark divide, and it shows up at the convention. You know, I think Sylvia Santana is now suing and um demanding a recount of the vote, saying that she should have been there. Um, and so we're in an interesting political moment. I think political conflict or political activism is good, and it's okay for people to be on both sides of the issue. Um, but that's where I see people coming out. We had more people showing up at the Michigan Democratic Convention who are young than any time in my lifetime, I think.

SPEAKER_05 27:59

That's what Curtis Hertel told me. Um, one thing that Joe Tate told me about his support for Haley Stevens, he talked about uh his past as a football player at Michigan State. He talked about being part of a team and how important it was to be a part of the Democratic team, he told me. This was in Fixon's restaurant downtown Paradise Valley in September of last year. Haley did an event with Tyrone Carter and Michael Howard and Shri Tanadar and Joe and um who else was in there? Amos O'Neill was in there, Madison Heights Councilperson Quinn Wright, Detroit Fire Chief James Harris. I don't know if all these people are supporting uh Haley. Justin Anwene was there, was there too.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:54

Um I don't know if all those people are supporting Haley, but uh there's this idea, and I think it has to do with people's refusal to push away power. Haley is in office right now. She is a congressperson already. He Joe told uh me, we need people who are gonna fight. We also need people that are going to be a part of the team and are going to look out for our best interests.

Donna Givens Davidson 29:24

That's what that's what all gangs say, you know. And so I think you have these coalitions, you have these machines that get built. And the machines, irrespective of whether they're Democratic, Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Arab, the machines become a thing unto themselves. Loyalty is more important than ideas. Um, tradition is more important than anything. And so when we favor loyalty and tradition over, you know, ideas over policies, then we get stuck because the people who are beneficiaries of that loyalty and tradition are people within the machine. Right. And the people outside the machine suffer. Machine politics are always bad. And I think that what we're seeing is that there has been a machine that has driven the Democratic Party. But I want to point out there's chinks in that machine, right? Because if not, then you would have Jonathan Kenlock's brother as mayor of Detroit. Correct. Okay, but that's not what happened.

SPEAKER_05 30:20

Well, you'd have Fred Durhaal, right? If it was the true machine.

Donna Givens Davidson 30:23

No, the true machine was the true machine. You had the 13th congressional districts, you had the UAW, and you had many, many people supporting Solomon Kenlock. Fred Durhaal was supported by the business community. I'm talking about the people who supported the political machine that has been in office. And I think that machine also um showed a lack of power in the congress the congressional um that the Michigan Democratic cause that's the reason why you heard fat meat is still greasy, right? It's greasy.

SPEAKER_05 30:53

That's what Do you think it's loyalty is more important than ideas, or that they just agree with the ideas being presented by the candidates in their loyalty. Because like Joe Tate and Haley Stevens, I don't know that they differ on anything.

Donna Givens Davidson 31:04

But because the loyalty becomes you're loyal and you're going to accept this package of ideas. You're not going to break ranks, okay? So there is this traditional thinking around what justice looks like. And we have got to look differently. You know, we talk about the middle class. They're I'm so glad and I can't wait to get to this conversation because when I'm talking to two women who have been trying to address poverty.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 31:25

And the term poverty went out of vogue. You remember what I'm talking about, Cheryl. You remember when you couldn't say you couldn't use low income. Yeah. It was gauche to talk about poverty in Ms. Company, right? And so you silence the needs of the poor. You know, if you really look at what the Detroit Democratic Party is, you don't even want to talk about women's reproductive rights too much because you got the church coming in there saying, hey, wait a minute, we don't like that. You don't really have this coalition that's supporting LGBTQ rights, right? So we have a very conservative Detroit Democratic group. We're not dealing with poverty, we're not dealing with environmental justice, and you're saying that, and and Keith Williams, as the chair of the Black Democratic caucus, is defining what black people want. And the beautiful thing about people is that people have a way of speaking for themselves, and young folks have been speaking out, and I'm proud of you, young people, because you have been demanding things that have not been demanded in a long time, and that is absolutely what justice should look like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

And calling it what it is. That's what that's everything that you said. If you sum it sum it up, it's about calling it what it is and not being afraid to use those words.

SPEAKER_05 32:35

Yeah, and words like words that are um, you know, that we don't use, so we don't get an explicit tag on our thing. Mallory McMurrow and Abdul both like to use curse words.

Donna Givens Davidson 32:48

Um, so do I.

SPEAKER_05 32:50

They were shouting curse words at Haley Stevens on Friday at the May Day at Michigan Central. Um yeah, they there is, yeah, they there is a large and in and you know, Abdul will uh not condone that behavior. I talked to a number of people at Mallory McMurro events that told me that they weren't decided either. Now, these are people that are going, showing up to Mallory's events at Starters in Southfield or at the Motor City Java House near the Redford Theater. Um, one of them was Noah Farris. He came with his mom, Katya Monfortin. Neither of them left the Mallory McMurro event, um, certain that they were gonna vote for Mallory. Noah had asked her about ice, and Mallory told him uh Mallory told the this um high school senior from Lavonia Churchill High School that while abolish ice might sound good, Democrats don't hold power to do that. Umah and another person I talked to, his name was John Batherspoon, 39-year-old guy with a western Michigan hat on. I said, Hey, go Broncos. And he told me that uh Democrats, you know, he he's looking for the Democrat that he believes can win. A lot has been talked about Abdul Alsay's chances against uh uh Mike Rogers. He says Democrats must win and they must go all the way when they do. He says, I'm looking for for who's going to be able to get in there and shake it up the most. Um yeah, you know, it's it's really interesting. I think Mallory and Abdul, they say a lot of the same things, they differ on certain issues. There is a report from Ryan Grimm, he's the editor of Dropsite News. Um he obtained audio of a Mallory McMurrow staffer saying that she had drafted a position paper and sent it seeking support to APAC. Mallory told me when I asked her at her event that no, I never sought the support of APAC. Um she said that she has met with individuals because there's a large number of people that uh represent APAC or are APAC adjacent or support the organization or who have worked at the organization. Her husband, uh I believe when he was in college, uh Ray Wert is his name, interned for APAC. She said on stage at the Council of Baptist Pastors debate a couple weekends ago. That was the first time that all of the candidates had been on stage together this past weekend. They also were doing a labor event together. And it is really interesting when you get to see all three of these folks who you know, they'll ask, and they were asking about Israel and Gaza at the Council of Baptist Pastors event. Haley won't even like acknowledge the topic at all. She'll go into when asked about that issue. It's kind of like what happened. Right with Kamala. With Kamala.

Donna Givens Davidson 36:02

You know, nobody's gonna talk about Palestinian people as people, right?

SPEAKER_05 36:06

And so she'll go into her uh sort of, you know, we should have campaign finance reform. And I think she'll go. I think everybody on stage can agree that we need campaign finance reform. She will not engage in the actual question because she does not uh agree with what polling has shown that a majority of Democratic voters are now uh this has not always been, historically has been the opposite, but are now more sympathetic to Palestinians than they are to uh the government of Israel.

Donna Givens Davidson 36:40

I mean, you know, why are we either things are right and humane or they aren't, right? And it doesn't matter who the government is. I mean, governments are inhumane by by function, okay? It's they're they're the governments are just bad, okay? Governments are not sh power-sharing entities. So as far as I'm concerned, the people always have to have the ability to fight the government. And actually, that's built into the US Constitution, other than slavery and all the other bad things. But when I think about ICE, I think that this idea to try to justify people walking around masks, not following the laws, and just going into places and deporting people and harassing people, all I can think about is slave catchers. And then when you can think of slave catchers and you ask yourself, is slavery a good thing? What were slave catchers there to do? They were there to dispossess people of their humanity and their right to themselves. And so I'm not interested in having conversations to debate the practicality of getting rid of ice. I'm interested in having conversations with people who are willing to talk about what justice looks like. And we know that once you become a politician, you may have to negotiate on some things. But if you're not even going into the job with an understanding that right is right and wrong is wrong, and I care about human beings, not because they're black, not because they're Hispanic, not because they're Jewish, not because they're Palestinian, but because they are God's children. And I have, if I have a faith belief, I have to have a faith belief in human rights. Yeah. And that's what gets me about these conversations. And that's why I'm excited because I see coalitions building. I see people really coming together around justice in ways that we have not before. And so I get where Hellie Stevens is coming from. She is that old school politician who thinks I'm just gonna get away with not talking about it. But we saw what happened last presidential election. We see what's happening in a lot of congressional districts. People want change. It happened in New York, it happened in Detroit, it happened at the convention, and I think it's gonna keep on happening. So I am going to not pay so much attention to the Supreme Court that I forget to pay attention to what's happening on the ground because that's where change is going to happen. And it's going to happen because young people make it happen because young people have always been at the forefront of change. Amen to that.

SPEAKER_05 38:53

Let's talk more about what is going on on the ground after we come back. Uh keep it locked. This is Authentically Detroit. Applications have opened for the Eastside Community Network Summer Discovery Program. Designed for students entering seventh, eighth, and ninth grade in the fall of 26. This summer experience is a full-day in-person program that combines structured academic learning, hands-on enrichment experiences, and creativity to guide youth in developing life skills related to political and civic engagement, climate change, and environmental justice using art-based expression as a tool for learning and empowerment. The program runs from June 29th to July 31st from 8 30 a.m. to 5 o'clock p.m. Applications close on April 30th. For more details on how to apply, visit ecn-detroit.org slash youth. Welcome back, everyone. The Coalition on Temporary Shelters, known as COTS, dedicated to the needs of homeless men, women, and children, grew out of a meeting in 1981 between a group of church leaders and human service providers in downtown Detroit. Officially formed in 1982, they have a mission to address Detroit's homelessness crisis by providing shelter and essential services that help participants achieve self-sufficiency. On March 17, Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based workforce development organization that produces sleeping bag coats for people experiencing homelessness, distributed its milestone 100,000th coat to Cotts Detroit, its longest-running partner. Started by Veronica Scott in 2015, the empowerment plan creates significant economic impact by serving as a stepping stone out of poverty into a state of stability. The core of their work stems from an intensive two-year employment meal focused on providing job readiness training and support services to their workforce. Honestly, what's going on is I need new glasses and I'm not reading words correctly.

Donna Givens Davidson 40:59

Yeah, I had to get new glasses last year. So crazy. All my eyes are different, so they do change. Welcome to Authentically Detroit. I'm so excited to talk to people. I I get excited about a lot of conversations, but when you have people who are just coming up with new solutions and thinking, how can we do this differently? And both of you have, um, and then you come together, um, it just gives me once again joy to know that you're out there and that you're thinking about that. Veronica, what this this coat sleeping bag thing, talk about it. That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Uh thank you for having me and excited to talk about it, but also excited to be here with Sherot because that was my first meeting.

SPEAKER_04 41:35

And but um by the way, Sherot is Cheryl.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

Oh, sorry, sorry.

Donna Givens Davidson 41:41

Oh, it's all good. I know. And I I love both names, right? Right.

SPEAKER_04 41:45

But Sheryl, yes. Do you prefer which do you prefer? No, no, no, no, no. I just want the audience to know we are the one in the so good.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Uh yeah, so one of the first meetings I ever had. And so Empowerment Plan began as a class project of mine at College for Creative Studies. But it really comes from a deeply personal place. Like I grew up in Detroit. I bounced around constantly. My parents struggled with homelessness, poverty, addiction. That's actually how they met was through NA and AA. Uh so that was my entire upbringing. And just spending the entire day with my mom in the car driving from one place to go because she was also diabetic and bipolar. And so you go from one place and you have and you meet with a case manager and you sit in the waiting room and you talk to somebody, and they're like, Okay, I can help you with this, but you're gonna have to go over there to talk to somebody else that will help you with that. And you just spend most of your time just getting ping-ponged around by people across many, like multiple cities, to address some of these things. And so, empowerment plans started off initially around designing the coat for individuals that couldn't get a shelter bed if it like there wasn't enough at the time, and now we're seeing it again. Uh, but when it began was in 2010 as a class project, and there just wasn't enough beds. And so, how for me creating an opportunity is like, okay, how can we help somebody from frostbite or hypothermia or losing a limb or or something even worse? And how do we help them in that moment so that hopefully they can get into that shelter bed next? They can be next. And then empowerment plan grew into something much more, which I can get into as we talk more, but that's it has grown into more of that holistic workforce development. So hopefully people may not need the coat. So hopefully we can continue to hire individuals experiencing homelessness so that they may not need the product, and generations after them won't need it as well.

Donna Givens Davidson 43:40

But you know, um, having worked with um, we started to support um unhouse people in our community.

unknown 43:47

Okay.

Donna Givens Davidson 43:48

And some of them are just going to need it, right? And some people are just not going to be people who can function in society because of um mental health reasons and And and they deserve to be warm too. They deserve humanity too. And so, you know, um, there's this idea that we're gonna eliminate poverty and we won't, not in this society. And so, how do we poverty should not mean that you're suffering or you're dying or you you know you're homeless. Ideally, we can create a society where being poor means that you just have less of some things, but you have your basic needs met. So when you created that sleeping bag coat, you created something that allowed people who maybe would not be 100% what we consider functional to be safe and warm. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

And what's wild, and you're talking about politics and some of the responses to our work is pretty dark, is surprising. Like there's a lot of amazing support out there. But I can tell you when I began, the story went viral and I got hate mail. Tell me about that.

Donna Givens Davidson 44:53

And and what was the hate mail? What were they saying?

SPEAKER_00 44:56

A lot of people thought, you know, like, well, you're making it too easy for somebody. You're making uh you're making you're encouraging them to be on the street, you're encouraging them to sleep out. And it's a similar reaction. We work with a lot of harm reduction teams and street outreach and street medicine, and you know, I like I I can talk about those those teams endlessly. We work with them across the country, and I'm just such big fans. But that same idea is like that person isn't worth it. And so that is that is the idea. And we've been told bluntly by certain people that it's like, oh, well, then just let them let them die.

Donna Givens Davidson 45:32

Do any of these people consider themselves Christian?

SPEAKER_00 45:35

I I don't know. Not sure.

Donna Givens Davidson 45:38

I'm Donna, why? Well, because it's always interesting to me. It's always interesting to me that people who say they're Christian um have never read the New Testament or don't believe in anything in red. It's like, okay, because it's not none of that is reflected in the world. Of loving humanity. You imagine Jesus saying, you know what, you deserve to starve.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

You know that you deserve to freeze. Stone her and leave it. Leave you there. Yeah. You just deserve that. The worst. Um making it too, we're making it too comfortable for people. I'm like, have you ever like, can you imagine what like what could you actually think about what you're saying? I mean, there's there's hate in people's hearts. Oh, absolutely. And especially when I I just remember being the most shocked about that. You know, I know that from how people treated me and my siblings growing up in homelessness and poverty, and like how you were just treated as worthless by default, that you were you were gonna have the same life no matter what. No matter what you did, people. I have family members that looked at us and were just like, okay, your your parents are both unemployed, they both struggle with addiction. You're not you're not gonna finish high school, you're not gonna go to college. That was the default idea of like that we were gonna have the same life. But look at you. And it's it's very fun to prove people wrong. It's it's really fun. And my siblings and I, and that's part of what has brought us together. But it's also your siblings are doing well. Yes. I'm very proud of them. I love them both so much. And it's it's like inheriting teenagers. A couple have lived with me in COVID, so it's fun times. Um, but I think for for me, that idea of no, like this. I know that everybody's worth it. You think about like my parents going through it, and it can it can happen to anyone at any time, as you know from the work that you're doing. And right now, people are incredibly, incredibly vulnerable. Everybody is, not just people in poverty. Like everybody is incredibly vulnerable. You work three jobs and still struggle to pay. I went we did a pit count recently in an outreach, and I gave codes to guy, the guy that was sleeping outside of a strip mall in his car who works multiple jobs.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

Right.

Donna Givens Davidson 47:42

So let me ask you a question. Your parents, how many siblings do you have? I have two siblings. Two siblings. And so your parents raised all three of you?

SPEAKER_00 47:50

Yeah, and I was really brought up by my grandparents. I owe them, I owe them everything. I love them dearly. Amazing.

Donna Givens Davidson 47:55

All right, so Cheryl, you have been at this for a minute. And I know why they call you a minute. Because you're a hero, right? To many people. Oh, I love that. Yes, and so that's that's gotta be a Shiro, which is even better than just a hero, right? It's a Shiro, and we need more of you. You know, we masculinize um that kind of salvation, but we know who you are. Um, can you talk about what you're seeing now and how you actually got connected with this project?

SPEAKER_04 48:25

Yeah, um, so let me separate uh a couple of things with what's happening now. Um, we're not even seeing like what we what's gonna happen within the next like year. And I don't know if you've heard about the uh changes with um supportive housing, that is substantial. That literally means hundreds of thousands of people who are currently housed, by the way, and housed well, will be unhoused. And we've not got today. Um our COC, which is the body that where the funding from HUD comes through, basically there's a what we call a 30-70 split. The majority of those dollars go over to support permanent supportive housing. The other 30% will support transitional housing and some other supportive services. What's happening with the government is there's a total switch where funding will now all go over to the pot of transitional housing and only 30 percent, 30 percent will go to permanent supportive housing. And we all know that permanent supportive housing is one of the best tools to tackle poverty. Like we know this.

Donna Givens Davidson 49:47

Can you talk about what permanent supportive housing is?

SPEAKER_04 49:49

So it is housing that is linked with supportive services, and so people who um are struggling with uh mental illness and other types of challenges and meet the income guidelines can apply for this housing through various programs. COTS has a portfolio of about 200 of those units, and there are other organizations, but across the country, um, this has been one of the best tools to address poverty and specific. So I don't you'll rarely hear me talk about homelessness because that's to me is a symptom of poverty. Right let's address poverty and and use that word. But this has been a way to help get people out. I also am aware that there is this total disconnect with government and the reality in in folks' homes. And thinking that the idea that if you give a person, give them a house, then this is the thought, that in fact they should resolve their poverty within a year or two and and should be fine. We also know that for most people that are in that situation, when when we're encouraging them through workforce development, get a job, they get a job, and then time they make a dollar more, say they're making $15 and they make $15 and 50 cents, that all of the benefits, which we call the Cliff effect, those get torn away. And in fact, now the person is at a net deficit. It's a net deficit, right? And so this idea that let's just move them out of permanent supportive housing, because now they will have to go into another place of housing. So the question is, and I did ask Dr. Robert Um Morbutt, who was in town, he's works for the government, and I said, What's the solution for that? And his response was I we haven't figured that out. Yeah, right, and so people will be unhoused.

Donna Givens Davidson 51:55

And they're not trying. Let's let's just let's not acknowledge the fact that the city of Detroit's housing policy until Mayor She Mary Sheffield was elected mayor has been pretty bad. We've been building homes that are too expensive, that don't accommodate families, that um, you know, the unit sizes are too small, and then you know, this it inclusionary housing sounds great because it's always sounds great to be inclusive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:22

But you're when you're including a so-called affordable studio apartment in an upscale building, then you are not I am so glad someone is calling that out because it's outrageous. It is, and the fact that we've redefined homelessness. Like so before, you could be on somebody's if you're on somebody's couch, you're homeless. Yes, right? And you're vulnerable at any moment, they could say get out, you're out on the street. So we took that definition away. As long as you are somewhere, sleeping somewhere.

Donna Givens Davidson 52:56

Who took that definition away?

SPEAKER_04 52:58

Our city did that. We redefined it. Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 53:01

Which point was that, Don?

SPEAKER_04 53:02

Oh, that's been some that's been some years now.

Donna Givens Davidson 53:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:05

That's been some years. Was it um before Duggan? No, during during that time. Of course. Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 53:10

Um because I and I think people need to know this. Um, and I'm not trying to, I think people need to know what the housing policy was while um the candidate for governor was mayor.

SPEAKER_04 53:23

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 53:24

So they can understand what the policy might be if under this current MAGA administration he were to become govern governor. Because I would like to know where there is sunlight between his beliefs and the beliefs that are in DC. It felt it felt like we were um radically changing how Detroit was addressing social needs in during his administration. And this is just an example.

SPEAKER_04 53:51

Yeah, this is an example, and the fact that when those two um children passed away in that that car, yeah. So what are we talking about? Like when there was this outcry, remember?

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:08

And and and I said, I I would never receive so many calls in my life, like, what should we be doing? And the next thing, and I said, so here's the thing that I want you to pay attention to. Within a month, I guarantee you, we won't be talking about this. And and that happened. There was a seven-point uh plan from the city uh to address, and now we're looking at that because that plan. But one thing I will say that our mayor, our new mayor, is doing. I want you to pay attention who she's put in chief seats.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

Because when you bring a Luke Schaefer on, now you know you're gonna address poverty.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:46

I mean, I'm I'm fangirling over the whole thing. So excited. It's and it's you know, you know what makes me excited. Little things like the teens when they were having those things and they're all this anti-teen, and then she and her administration organize activities to show teens in a positive light because so much of what we have to do is narrative shifts. And you know, when you have certain politicians or certain people in elected office, what they do is they make suffering invisible. And as long as I can make suffering invisible and I can tell these great stories during my state at the state.

SPEAKER_05 55:22

We don't have any homeless encampment tents. That was one of the things that he would like to talk about a lot. However, when I walk down Woodworth, you remove them. Right. And they're all sprawled out across downtown now.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

We do sweeps, we have people in abandoned buildings, and it's unsafe. There are people that are double up. Like you can't say that that does not count. And I think it's a game of cups. You're just hiding data and hiding numbers that dramatically impact all of these organizations and how we can do our work. Oh, you cut homelessness and these these numbers, these critical numbers in half.

SPEAKER_04 55:53

And can we not forget about the number of youth in our school system? Yeah, right. That we don't even consider until issues come up. Um, and I Donna and Sam, uh you could pick up the phone and call any uh official and ask them in school, at school, and in our system, what like what's happening around the homeless population? And they will give you countless stories of how many homeless kids are attending our schools.

Donna Givens Davidson 56:25

But we have to decide to care. Yeah, we have to decide to care and that we're not going to want to see seem great. We're gonna have to work because being great is hard work, and being great means that you're willing to acknowledge those things about you that need to change, and you're willing to put money and energy behind it. When what you're trying to do is change the city from what it has been to something new, and you've decided it's no longer going to be a city of poor people, then you will have policies that inadvertently push them out of the city, and then you claim victory because you have fewer poor people. Um, but what's happening is we're shifting them into invisible spaces, and it's happening all over the United States. Um, and the work that we do has got to be making the invisible visible. We've got to acknowledge the needs, and so I think it's important that people understand everything you said, Cheryl. I think it's important that people understand this policy, what the 70-30 split is, what the reversal of that is. And I have a couple questions about that still. So this is for new housing development, or is this for existing housing for existing permanent permanent supportive housing?

SPEAKER_04 57:36

We call it PSH. Yes.

Donna Givens Davidson 57:38

That's that's what was PASA PSH. That means that you will have fewer, because I remember we were trying to do a Litech project and we reached out to you last year. Remember that? And we were told that it was going to be really hard to get the PS PSH um support, and nobody was willing to work with us because nobody knew where they were gonna get that money from. Explain the change.

SPEAKER_04 58:01

So the the funding, the the part where if you go in for a light deal, right, and you you make it through one of the rounds and you are awarded those tax credits, right? You get the deal. But and people look at it as a very simple, it's very it's um uh layered financially. So it's not like, oh, I get uh $10 million, and we know that the whole project is gonna do nine be costs $19 million. So that was our last project with Peterborough Arms. So now you're you're layering that, and say you get that done, but now you have to look at where is the money for the support. And support isn't a one-time hit, that support has to go on for the life of that project, and that's what makes it work. It's one thing to take people who are struggling from trauma and give them a house. So this is why we made the shift to families only. Um, I was listening to stories of folk that I remember who came to COTS and they were kids. And now they're saying at this point they're an adult with their own kids and they're back in the shelter. Right? Now, I remember we gave we got them into housing. The fact is they didn't have the supports to help them transition and move and become thriving people in the community. That's your bridges to self-sufficiency. And that's our passport to self-free. Um, and you know, uh certainly an empowerment plan, even though you give a person um employment, that there are all kinds of other issues that come to play, and it's simply not childcare. Yeah, I think childcare is another issue, or or this. There is this mindset. We all know that if you live in poverty for a very long time, it literally changes the way you are able to think. That's your capacity, right? And so, what may seem uh a simple decision like Sam, what why don't you do and Sam can't. Right, he literally it's impossible for him to do that. And so this is a learning, and it takes time to help people to work through that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

And then it and that could even be for a night. Yes, you can have that impact from a trauma of just being displaced for a night. That does not have to happen over years.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:35

I had that happen to me when I was in college. I didn't have a place to go for like a long ass time. It was like May 1 to like August 18. I was just sleeping on people's couches. And then I I was working for the on-campus Methodist church at the time, and the director hated me for this, but I was just like, I'm just gonna sleep in here and use your shower, and she was like, whatever. And like two, three weeks went by. She's like, uh, okay, Sam, like, are you gonna are you moving into your next apartment? And uh I had to be like, uh, no, didn't really, it was so weird because I had graduated Western and my on-campus student housing had ended.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:11

And um, there was no like affordable month-to-month apartment in Kalamazoo at the time. And so I literally was just like sleeping on my friends' couches and and doing M Live as an intern. Um before we take our last break, I want to ask you guys two questions, um, completely separate, but I guess from my perspective as a renter in Cas Corridor for six years. Do you know George Roberts?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:41

Of George is the reason why I don't live in Cas Corridor anymore. You remember this at Babo conversation yes. Yeah, so George um took this lot, this portfolio that was owned by a mechanic named Joel Landy. Joel Landy and he tore up Joel's railroad tracks and he painted over his partner's mural in the building, and he removed all of the regular working class people that used to live in Cass Corridor and replaced them with you know white men in their mid to late 20s with you Mish medicine t-shirts being moved in by their parents in their mid to late 20s. Um I was there right across the street. Yes, you saw Kong Witten of Fullucky no longer has a parking lot. But George will say, you know, Sam, I'm doing great, and we're gonna get affordable housing and we're gonna build this five-story mixed use. You've just seen the latest JC Reitel article about that, which, you know, I ask George, where do you get this money from? And he's like, Man, if you got an idea, money will come. I say, It's that easy, huh? He says, Wow, it's not that easy. George is a part of a group, uh, well, not a group, but he is emblematic of a new of the this current generation of Detroit development where people from West Bloomfield and Birmingham and elsewhere are getting money from New York and Israel and elsewhere to be local developers, right? George views himself as a local developer in Cass Corridor somehow, you know, upcharging, you know, my my my $950 apartment that I rented for three and a half years is now twenty six hundred dollars. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:17

You know, probably about that big.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:03:18

And you know, this is this is um you know this is Madison, then I live in the James Gown. This is what internal colonization looks like. Exactly. Where people who are not from here come in and extract resources from us um because it's all about wealth extraction. So many of our policies are about wealth extraction. We don't have time to have that conversation, but I do want to go back to the conversation about trauma because people don't understand how trauma works. Trauma is not just something that happens to you, it reshapes who you are. Absolutely. And when you have generational, intergenerational poverty, then you have intergenerational trauma.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:52

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:03:52

So yes, it can happen in one day. When it happens across generations, then it's shapes you in ways that are even harder and more resistant to that kind of change. So I really um thank you for the work that you do, first of all. And giving people jobs, right? So that the work that we're the things we're purchasing from you actually employ people who've gone through that is that extra step. Um last this past winter, we had 26 days of extreme cold weather and we opened our doors and we were trying to figure out how to accommodate the people when they left because we are not an approved shelter. So we were open on um until 8 p.m. four days a week, and um, you know, we were open on Saturdays and Sundays. But I have a question. How do we purchase the coat sleeping bags? Do you make those available to organizations like mine to help people?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:45

Oh, yeah, we absolutely do. So there's ways you can go on our website, empowermentplan.org, purchase a coat or request a coat. We work with a lot of organizations do because of this this last year and because of the environment that we're in politically, whose budgets have been slashed, but the need has only doubled. A lot of organizations, you see it across the country, a lot of rural communities that is new for them. People that are sleeping in their cars, doubled up with friends or family, sleeping on couches, or rough sleeping in the woods in cities where there are no shelters, where they're an hour away from a hospital. So Kalamazoo is one of those cities. Yeah, that go on a request list because we have we've over the last since COVID, we have consistently had six to eight thousand units requested of codes. Six to eight thousand people.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:05:32

How many can you how many can you produce in one year?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:34

We're producing, we're doing about thirteen thousand codes this year alone. Oh my gosh. And so we do distribution across the US and 20 other countries. You are amazing.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:42

My question was about CCS. I mean, uh my our friends that you know want to be design fashion people and everything, uh perhaps they should go into what you're doing and design something that's actually useful for the world.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:54

I I will say this what's very unique about Veronica is that you You tap, and then this is the truth. You you tapped into a heart thing, right? Because you now, those coats, by the way, I don't know if you've seen them. They look cool. We're very proud of that. They're very nice. I would wear it too. Like they look cool. Very nice coats. And so, but it it wasn't the idea that I'm going to do something for me. Yes. This was your your you go back to the term, what I love to see say about humanity. You saw humanity, right? And that you could do something for humanity.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

Well, and I think even smaller, like on a smaller scale, I saw it as like this is something I can do for my family. This is somebody I can do for the person that lives literally because I also lived in Cass Quarter, and I was going to NSO, and it was down the street from where I lived. And I think there's I think a lot of people don't start. Oh, uh name of the Barlum, the Verona. Like they all have names. I know I've been to Charlotte Peterborough. They all had names. One of those buildings got there was a fire.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:06

The Barlam, I think. There was a fire in there in like 2023. And uh yeah, a lot of the people that were in there got displaced. It was and now Illich is trying to redo them as part of the ODM. That whole area.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:21

And this has been on my mind this has nothing to do with um homelessness per se. But this idea, I would love at some point to have a conversation about the fact that we have all these wonderful stadiums downtown. People are coming downtown, but now you can't afford to park. So I just want to put that as and this is a typical. So for our community where we still have substantial poverty, for a family to want to come to a game.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:55

Just a game. That you would have to think about the cost of a ticket. Think of the cost of now our gas is five dollars, right? And think on top of that about how the upcharge will go from $15 to $90 to park. And now you just park on the street.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:15

You park on the street on second Charlotte. You can park on the street. That's there's but that's it's no, it's gas out. Why?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:21

That's it, it's not enough of this.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:22

Oh, there is just not no, there's not enough. It's not enough.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:27

I live down there. I live there and I live there.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:34

There's yes, you can park. Yes, you can.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:37

This is a generational debate. It's happening right now.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:39

It's not a generational debate.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:40

It's not a mile. It's great.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:42

But Sam, but Sam, here's the thing. But let me just say this. You are pushing up.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:45

You're pushing people out. We're in Michigan. No.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:49

People want to park in parking lots.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:51

Detroiters need to talk about it.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:08:55

I feel like I feel like you're minimizing the issue. And I just want to say this there are people who can figure out how to park on the street. But there are when you look at the volume of cars that are not 40,000 parking spaces on the street. No. And so you have to park somewhere. And the reality is that the people who own these parking lots got those parking lots because the illages own a lot of those lots, and they were supposed to put buildings on them. And that's what they are doing, is they're using them to make money at usurious rates. And our tax dollars paid for Detroiters should be outraged. I just think we still have to do that.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:31

You know who owned one of the parking lots at one point? He sold it to Parker at George.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:35

Oh, yeah, next door. Put a gap in that.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:38

Yeah, the parking lot situation is terrible. And there used to be free parking there because cat should be bow lucky parking lot used to be public, wasn't it? Yeah, it's a principal.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:09:46

And speaking with somebody speaking as somebody with I mean, you you can disagree all you want, but speaking as somebody with two arthritic knees, sure, having to walk any distance is hard. I went to a pistons game, those a pistons game not too long ago, and the amount of walking we had to do, and there was no street parking where we were, the amount of walking we had to do to get to a lot was ridiculous, and it's hard on me because it's cold outside, and these people are making all of this. So we were not going to pay $60, so we paid $40 and we parked a few blocks away. And then, you know, so so we need to look at all of this adjustment.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

The average Detroiter cannot afford to participate there. That's all I'm saying.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:10:32

And yet, if you're a Detroiter, you're paying income taxes if you're working here. If you're a Detroiter, you're paying um, you know, property taxes if you own property here. And so when you look at the cost of being a Detroiter, because it's expensive to be a Detroiter.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:49

Make business sense of it. Someone told me that. Make business sense of it.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:10:53

You know what you can't make business sense out of? We lost population, more population. We couldn't grow our population because poor people had to leave even as we were bringing temporary people in from the suburbs. Poor people had to leave. We lost populations. Our neighborhoods continue to leak population even as we're building up downtown. And then you have census, and everybody, remember all that census push, you know, fill out these census, and if you don't fill out the census forms, the city's gonna lose money. And we had such a low participation rate, and it's part because some people said, Who cares? It's not coming to me anyway. And also, if losing that census money is a problem, if losing population is a problem in terms of your city being able to attract people, then you should be able to you should work harder to attract the least of us. But there's a reason we don't, and we can talk about it in another conversation, and that is because we we are all trying to get our bond rating up. And when people look at Standard and Poor's and Moody's look at bonds in Detroit and they decided Detroit is credit worthy, one of the things they want to see is a reduction in poor people, uh reduction in poverty. But you know, the easiest way to reduce poverty is to push poor folks out.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:04

That's right.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:12:05

They want to see an increase in average wage, an increase in average housing cost, and that is success to the people who judge whether our city is credit worthy. There's so much that we have to do to restructure how things are done. And I am so glad to be having this conversation with women who want to and a man who wants to. I do.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:26

I could literally talk about Cascord all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:29

I do too. I still have a deck.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:33

But here's my deal is Cass Corridor was like what the mayor on stage at the soundboard one year at the policy conference talking about. I dream of a Detroit in which the janders live in the same building as the doctors at DMC. And like literally, that's the same. What was that? George Roberts and the 90s.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:54

I was there in the 90s.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:55

I saw and I also saw the implosion of Companies is the company that George Roberts works for. He is a developer uh who used to call the police on Dre of Paramita Sound because he lived above there. Yeah. Moved his one-year-old child above a bar and record store. And so you can imagine the type of person uh that George is. I love you, George. I know you're listening to me because you're obsessed with me. Um I feel bad for everybody that got pushed out and moved out. I know that there are active um discussions with the neighbors about the parking. No, because there's now is like a uh sticker or something. I don't know if it's made it to that side of Woodward, but on Brush Brush Park, there they're there is that's that's a whole nother signs. And I see that that on park, there it's no longer a one-way. And I think that one way was in preparation for the parking sort of to be on one side of the street or the other. That's correct. And so they got rid of that, and now it's a two-way again. And so I'm just like, what is going on here?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:55

We had to advocate to remove, they made Peter Burrow um a meter parking. And we know that there are residents, their cars are out there. Yeah, right?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:14:05

We have to advocate to get that out of there.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:07

That's crazy.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:14:08

I'm gonna say this. Um, I I said earlier that um that racism was not a flaw, it's a feature. Gentrification is not a flaw, it's a feature. That right is what we want to do. We can point out how it's unfair and how it squeezes people out, and we can act as though it's an accident. It is the intentionality of planners to come in and decide how do we design a downtown that looks prosperous. And you can't look prosperous when you have poor folks. I remember a cast story. My mother, my sister used to work at Harvard Light on Cass. My mother went to Wayne State when I was a kid, and I'm I remember how Wayne State used to look.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:43

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:14:44

It's nothing like it looks right now. You have kids who go to Wayne who can't live on campus because housing is so expensive. But I remember inexpensive housing being around there and and what it was like. Um it's unfortunate, but I also know that Sue Mosey, she's no longer with Midtown Inc., but Sue Mosley was opposed to having um developments for low-income people in downtown. And so you have nonprofits like hers that were established to be um policing. Police poverty.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:13

You know who didn't like Sue Mosey was Joel Landy, who hated the term midtown.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:19

I will say this uh in Sue Mosley's defense, this one thing when we were doing the project, um, the permanent supportive housing and doing that whole turnaround, she supported it. I couldn't figure out why, but she signed off on it. And I needed her sign off.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:15:36

And so I'm glad that she did that. And I'm sure she has done one or two other good things. Um, but she put the trash cans out there.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:44

I like those Midtown Inc. trash cans that are all around.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:15:46

Listen, all I'm saying is that Midtown Inc. exists for one reason, and that was to gentrify that whole area and call it Midtown. There was no Midtown Inc. I remember there was the Cultural Center. Remember when there was the News Center, and they took News Center, but it's no longer functioning in the way that it was News Center Association. Um, what's the guy's oh my god, over um Northern Lights Lounge? Mike Solaka. Yeah, they just reopened. Mike Solaka was over. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm um when you're moving north.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:23

So you watched as it's moving down to the north end.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:16:26

Yes, well, you know, I I was over at Vanguard for seven years. I was the first executive director there, and I remember when the North End Northern Area Association stopped at Woodward. I remember the North End was different, and you see it moving and changing. And I think there are those of us who have to be guardians for justice inside of neighborhoods. And um, so those people who are facilitating something else are doing the job they're paid to do. And I'm not trying to condemn them, but we just need to differentiate that from the work that people like my organization and and hold people accountable, and hold people accountable.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:00

That's right. Because the other at the end of the day, I I will I'll say this that um all housing is affordable, right? To somebody. It's if you're a millionaire, it's only so much housing you can afford, right? And so this idea that the housing that the new developments that are going up and saying we're gonna set aside, because they call them now, set aside 10% for affordability. Always ask the question, you have to ask this, what is that number?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

Affordability.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:30

And normally it's at 80%. That is not for the population of folk that need housing in Detroit, which is 30 and below.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:17:38

And normally the 80% of the AMI is a studio.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:42

That's right.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:17:43

It's not a family-sized unit. Correct. You have 10 studios, and those are your affordable units at 80%, and you know that a certain kind of person is gonna spend that much money, and it's either a recent college graduate or a retiree who wants to live in the city, your average family is just gonna say, that's not for me. Hats off to Mary Sheffield for 1,000 homes built in neighborhoods. That's a good ambitious goal, but I'm I'm I'm in in favor of that.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:08

We are going to take a break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk about who and what we are grateful for. Keep it locked. You are listening to Authentically Detroit.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:22

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SPEAKER_05 1:18:59

Welcome back. We want to thank you so much for listening to Authentically Detroit. If you have topics that you want discussed on our program, please do hit us up on our socials at Authentically Detroit on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or you can visit our website authentically-detroit.com. Now it is time where we give our weekly shout outs to the people. Uh Veronica and Cheryl, uh, we want to include you if you guys put me on the spot. But if you have any person or thing you want to shout out, let's start with you, Donna. What who do you want to shout out this week?

Donna Givens Davidson 1:19:36

My oldest daughter, Camille, just got her master's in urban planning from U of M. We went to the celebration yesterday. Um, she is a mother with a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and she was a Dow fellow and just doing so much, and um really had a lot of. She was hospitalized twice last year. So to see her thriving and to see her um graduate with a 4.0 U of M school.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:59

Congratulations!

SPEAKER_05 1:20:00

Smart.

Donna Givens Davidson 1:20:01

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:02

I want to shout out my time in the Cast Corridor. There was a Tina Faye, Timothy Charlemagne and um Kylie Jenner meme. I don't know if you guys have seen these meme formats, but some people listening will have. Um Tina Faye was Brush Park, Timothy Chalamet was was Cass Corridor, and then uh what was the other one? Was Corktown or something was um was was uh Kylie Jenner. Um my time at Cass Corridor was really fun. Like I, you know, got to meet Joel a couple times, just odd. Um Leonard was a guy that was living there for a long, long time. Um Joel's old tax attorney, his name was Joe Kopitz, was sort of transitioning the portfolio. He he sold the portfolio, and you remember the whole legal battle over. So he was at the heart of that legal battle. Um, there was a trust that Gary Torga was actually on. That's about this carry up. That's what I think. And so um Joe Kopitz, the sort of uh you know, I don't want to say lowly tax attorney, because I think he's you know got whatever he's got elsewhere in suburban Michigan. Um but you know, he he took on this trust of dignitaries and won in court and was able to sort of uh make away with I think it was like 18 million dollars was the portfolio the sale of the portfolio. Um so it was not, you know, there was it, it was small. It was not you remember the the Metro Times was like it's gonna be a billion dollars. Yeah, it was less than 20 million dollars, was the entire portfolio was sold. And there's actually stories uh I think this the school up there just got sold. Yeah, um, so shout out to Cass Corridor, all of the people that I met and loved, Kong Wynn of Faux Lucky. Um, yeah, loved you guys. That's some of the best years of my life were spent on Charlotte Park and Peterborough, that block.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:59

Well, I'm gonna give two shout-outs. One is to what I'm seeing already with um our mayor. I I love it. I'm gonna hold you accountable, but I love what I'm saying. The other is um to our amazing, thriving families who are pushing through this, learning to advocate and elevate their voices, especially doing this particular area era. I'm really proud of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:25

Uh I was I I have to say I agree. I'm I'm grateful for my Detroit cast chord or time in my life because I wouldn't be who I am without it. And it's just such a magical special thing to talk about. Uh, but it really is. Like we could have a whole episode topic. We're gonna have a whole we have to have a whole conversation about this. It's a whole other story. Um, but really, my sister is about to finish uh her semester back at Wayne State. She she struggled with COVID, so I'm really excited to see her back. I'm very, very proud that she's back at Wayne State. Congratulations. I know. I'm so I'm so she's about to she's finishing her finals right now. Um, and then also to my team at Empowerment Plan. Like, it is a hard time out there. It is. You're seeing so much and stuff and that you've never like you're seeing it all at once, all at the same time, and the needs are so high, and the needs are so extreme. And I just the fact that they're doing it every day and they're facing it day in and day out, and they get love and joy from it, and they've they feel energized by it is incredible. So just shout out to them too.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:29

Veronica Scott of Cots Detroit. No, no, right. You see, I'm paused.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:36

It was good.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:37

No, because I'm like, why am I I just can't read today. Sorry, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:43

I just are nice.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:44

I just agreed to to um do the audio for her book, so I'm like actively like you need to get those glasses.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:51

I'm good.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:52

I I spent three years of radio readouts, so like I'm good at this, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:56

She's so nervous now.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:57

Do it again. Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Because this is just the out, this is just the end bit, so it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:04

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:05

I say as he stresses. We want to thank uh Veronica Scott of Empowerment Plan and Cheryl P. Johnson of Cotts Detroit. We want to thank you for listening in. We will talk to you guys, see, and hear from you next week. But I expect to hear from some of you guys uh throughout my neighborhood and downtown. Uh I want to say too everybody that I saw this weekend at the Workers' Day uh on Friday at the train station, everybody that I saw at the Mallory McMurro and the Abdul Al-Saeged events that come up and say hello to me. Thank you so much for supporting black journalism. Thank you so much for supporting Detroit One Million and my work at Michigan Chronicle. And thank you for supporting Authentically Detroit, a platform for real people, real voices. We'll talk to you guys next week.