Allison B's List: Detroit

• he network of freeways that permanently scarred the city in the 1950s and '60s (and simultaneously sucked the life out of it) were another era's idea of urban redevelopment
• e spirit-deadening public-housing projects that replaced paved-over neighborhoods

• longstanding bias among some residents against large commercial farms
• tate law that makes it tough to regulate urban farms
• "Many families were immigrants from the rural South, where sharecropping was the rule of the day
• retool ordinances to better regulate farms.
• Michigan Right to Farm Act, a 1981 law designed to prevent rural farms from being gobbled by suburban development. It allows farmers to choose their own crops and types of agriculture. That means Detroit officials would have no say in regulating activities on commerical farms that some may deem objectionable — like pig farming.
• "It's very intimidating for such a large organization coming in and making decisions on how my neighborhood looks,

4 more annotations...

• represents a large playing field where differing models of agriculture and development can be explored and evaluated.
• with a proposed $4.2 million in tax credits, pricing that makes their food inaccessible to most Detroiters and their role in gentrification, Whole Foods is already playing unfair and unjust.
• many Midtown developers and business owners have read gentrification as an unavoidable natural process at best or, at its most dubious, as a mandate and means to increase property values and move low income residents out of desirable areas.
• the perceived, media-driven “plight” of Detroit makes it challenging to question any proposal with potential to generate revenue, create jobs and increase food options
• principles of food justice, particularly as they pertain to community access to fresh, nutritious, affordable and culturally-rooted food are fundamental in growing a truly sustainable food system in Detroit.

3 more annotations...

• When Detroit sits right in the middle of the best local and regional foodshed in the United States after the central valley of California!” Dan points out that Michigan is second only to California in the diversity of crops grown, and besides it has immediate proximity to Canada’s “sun belt” in Southwest Ontario (where excellent hydroponic tomatoes and other fresh vegetables are grown year-round in nearby Leamington, home the largest number of commercial greenhouses in all of North America) as well as the Amish/Mennonite belt that stretches from Pennsylvania to Indiana.

• 1940s Detroit is the reason that we should all care about what is going on in Detroit right now–and I would argue that it’s the reason we should all care about post-industrialization, globalization, heavy industry, the Rust Belt–and what Detroiters specifically and Michiganders in general are doing to confront the mess the corporations left behind

• if capitalism is a system of distribution that normalizes the idea that some have more resources than others (i.e. it’s an unequal distribution system)–then white supremacist heteropatriarchal nationalism is the method that capitalism uses to *enforce* that unequal distribution system.
• Did the corporations bringing workers in have any accountability to the cities they were growing?
• . Or: a static two gender system acts as an effective method to control who has access to resources and the idea that some jobs are worth more than others.
• It becomes normal and natural to expect men to “protect,” unstated: what is theirs.
• acts like starting riots when black families move in up the street can actually stem from a place of love.
• by enforcing white supremacy *through* heteropatriarchal violence

4 more annotations...

• Or: when you know the historical reality of an area, then you can see more clearly that pictures like ruin porn don’t reflect the city–they reflect the violence done to a city.
• Rust Belt towns like Detroit and Flint were built with the specific intention of mobilizing resources for corporations. Their foundations were built on lack of accountability, as the corporations that supported them needed them to be.
• But if you set these arguments within the way we fetishize the withdrawal of resources–the way we admire and elegantly frame the violence of neglect, it becomes more obvious that “practicality” and “realistic” and “reasonable” are values of the same white supremacist heteropatriarchy that uses white supremacy to make globalization, free trade agreements and etc make sense. These are not values that have sprung out of the needs of the communities we live in.

1 more annotation...

• t’s not really mentioned that the specific group of people that this documentarian/reporter/explorer is usually talking is made up of the very people who have moved into Detroit after hearing from other reporters that things aren’t that bad
• you don’t have to scratch too far to see how closely related hope porn is to the narratives of colonialism
• You don’t have to stay where ever you are and deal with the fucked up bullshit that you’re dealing with right now
• You could move to the New World!
• When you move to a city in hopes of mobilizing the economic potential without recognizing that it was that same mobilization of economic potential that ravaged the city to begin with all while continuously invisibilizing the people who existed on that land long before you got there (i.e. ruin porn), you get what you have now in Detroit.
• Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.

4 more annotations...

• But if you look at cities like Detroit and Flint–that system only worked well for the people for a total of about 20-30 years–and that only came after unions forced the relationship between the government and corporations to shift.
• And when you really start digging around, you start to notice things like corporations murdering union leaders in non-US countries and other horrific worker/environmental abuses. So really, that 20-30 year span only “worked” for a certain segment of people.
• It means demanding the right to decide our own future in a way that centers *our* needs and values. It is making our needs and values the new
• ormal.

•  

  re: not self-evidently descriptive. point taken. I guess I will emphasiz

3 more annotations...

• When people say “Detroit is dying…” what they really mean is that “Capitalism” is killing us. But because “Capitalism” uses white supremacist heteropatriarchal nationalism to enforce itself–to make itself make sense–the people it kills first are the people nobody else cares about.
• Which is why we organize and sing, and write, and think, and dance, and rethink walking and learn how to cook.