Yesterday the community was made aware of some disheartening news. Demolition had started on part of Building 101 of the Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum at 6559 Grand River. This was in accordance with a decision from the Department of Appeals that the building was structurally unsafe.
Community members had expressed the building’s cultural significance in a hearing some days ago, but it seems the demolition order took precedence over these sentiments. Detroit city council president Mary Sheffield took to Twitter yesterday afternoon to express her thoughts on the matter.
“Disappointed to hear about the demolition today. The Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum has been an arts and cultural icon in the heart of District 5 over the last three decades. Over the last week, I personally intervened to try to save the structure and began talks about raising the funds necessary for it to meet the vision the owner and art community had for it.
Unfortunately due to safety concerns and after an unsuccessful appeal, the City moved forward and proceeded with the demolition today. While it’s a sad day for the museum and the art community, in general, I am hopeful that today’s demolition can be the start of developing a new vision for the site that honors its history and lays the foundation for an even better art installation.”
Council President Mary Sheffield
At face value, the museum still stands and will still be available to Detroiters. But the demolition itself signals an undercurrent issue that’s consistent with other recent events this summer. As stated by CP Sheffield, Olayomi Davis had visionary plans to renovate the building and expand the community engagement opportunities of the museum. The city’s unilateral decision to take matters into their own hands signals a clear message on what types of projects hold priority. It suggests that slow and neighborhood-built development is less preferable than broadscale projects facilitated by more corporate actors.
Such is consistent with recent enforcements of what we could call contingent-space—areas that were once public spaces but now are only accessible contingent upon who owns them. Such has led to decisions such as the City of Detroit closing off local parks for the annual fireworks in fear that crime would populate there. Additionally, Organizers and community members recently converged in Southwest Detroit for a community hearing to push back upon police shut down of both the Cinco de Mayo parade and Southwest Fest auditions. Both events were community-led expressions of joy shut down by law enforcement. These events are in contrast to large scale productions sponsored by major corporations such as the NFL Draft and Michigan Central Station, two events the drew lots of attention regionally.
While, Detroit must inevitably showcase its ability to accommodate large productions to contend with other major cities, the city’s misleadership class is shortsighted in the ways that they are placing a stranglehold on community-led projects. It is because of visionaries that our communities are more interesting, more engaging, and reflective of Detroit’s rich history and present. After all, what makes highly sought after cities so enticing is in their specificity, not their homogeneity. In my honest opinion, homogenizing a city is like stripping it to only the elements needed to profit from It. And I wonder if the longterm impacts are more trouble than they're worth. Does fostering a city with little to no distinction between cultures and neighborhoods actually help or harm it's marketability longterm?
Detroiters and urban planners alike often argue that city government should invest directly into neighborhoods to improve the quality of life of Black & Brown people. Wether or not the city is actually doing that is a subject of frequent debate.
But what is the response to the city of Detroit's displays of repression? How do we identify them? And furthermore, how do we support them? I look to some recent shining examples of what that resistance can look like, both major developments and the actions of people.
The Detroit Food Co-op is a major development that took 14 years of intentional community work to build. Aside from just its rich catalog of products, there’s so much to be learned about the utilization of space and how it can be a vehicle for developing self determination. The Coop is already creating programming, opportunities for political activation, and a membership model that is sensitive to the varied socio-economic needs of Detroiters. These actions build community because they suggest that patrons can have greater stake in the places they frequent; they can be meeting other like minded folk to collaborate with on other community projects via membership meetings and other social opportunities.
Amidst these broadscale decisions from the city of Detroit, we residents can be thinking about the spaces we occupy, develop, and nurture. They can be more than just instruments of individualism.
I had the pleasure of buying my first home in August 2023, and so much of what I’ve learned is that my home can’t just be the place where I check out after work. There’s actually a need to build community via it but also advocate for myself within my community. Such has not been an easy process because of economic limitations, but there have been some really clear highlights that show me there are ways to work around those limitations. Whether its opening my doors & backyard to friends for shared activity or making friends within the neighborhood, there is still plenty of promise! In the micro, these are the ways many community projects start. From a need self-identified by people with shared values.
This past weekend, my neighborhood, East English Village, collaborated with Morningside on a BBQ called the Summer Sizzler at Three Mile Drive-Munich Park. There two communities converged upon a park built five years ago where demolished homes once stood. Folks enjoyed food, games, and plenty of activities for young people for a few hours. And best of all, there was no resounding police presence. This is something I deeply appreciated as a young person with a more abolitionist lens on safety. I can even remember the intentional conversation with neighbors on the planning committee about whether we should pull in the local officers to facilitate traffic at the event. Ultimately we worked with the Motor City Grounds Crew to get sawhorses instead–something that was incredibly effective. While small, this was a decision that was affirming for me and likely others.
I have my own critiques of our event, but something I deeply appreciated was the decision to beautify the mundane. To think about what local programs we could take advantage of to build a compelling experience for families. Whether it was providing book giveaways from Next Chapter Books or featuring arts & crafts from Brilliant Detroit & Habitat for Humanity, we were thoughtful about what community partnerships could nurture this neighborhood park. In some sense, it trains residents to take on the responsibility to nurture their community themselves.
But not all communities have this privilege to pull off events like this. Such a fact means that we should be very thoughtful about how we can start to model, teach, and practice with folk across communities. These are decisions I’m seeing occur in the urban agriculture space where the stakeholders are folk from that community that utilize those particular spaces–not investors.
The proliferation of black & brown folk purchasing land signals the innate promise of community when they are generative stewards to this land. For me, I have gotten to watch firsthand as a lover of mine has taken it upon themselves to restore and reimagine land in their childhood neighborhood. What’s really stuck with me is their consistent invitation to folk to be a part of shaping it. Not only convening with the residents surrounding the land, but also with values-aligned folk curious about land development. The more we are reimagining our communities with eachother, the more we spark imagination. We get folk thinking about climate remediation and community engagement. We get them thinking about ownership and how to democratize such. We furthermore get them thinking about resistance and the organized practice of it. After all, the word solidarity signals action, not just a state of being.
So while recent events have been deeply repressive and in conflict with the values of Detroiters, folk still resist. The conversations folk had very recently about park closures for the city fireworks suggest that there is still plenty of fight in our city. There is still a desire for communities that we have structural and meaningful stake in. There is still hope that we will see ourselves as a part of shaping it.
Here are a few examples of emergent Place-Based Projects that excite me lately
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