Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice for All Families
Skip other details (including permanent urls, DOI, citation information)
: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.
For more information, read Michigan Publishing's access and usage policy.
Chapter 6: Re-spiriting the City: Grassroots Activists and Social Justice Struggles in Detroit
Detroit today is in the midst of an extraordinary crisis. The destructive dynamics of racism, segregation, and white flight, folded within a post-industrial landscape of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, and crime, continue to tear apart the social fabric of a city that once boasted over two million residents during its heyday (U.S. Census, 2000). In response, grassroots activists are pushing back in an heroic effort of social justice to reclaim and revitalize the city. The purpose of this chapter is to layout the current situation, including historical context, and profile the efforts of Detroit activists Elena Herrada, Gloria Rivera, Rhonda Anderson, and Grace Lee Boggs.
Detroit’s Urban Crisis
The precipitous decline in Detroit’s status, from automobile capital of the world to a city ravaged by poverty, high unemployment rates, and extensive decay of its physical and social environment, was succinctly captured by Sugrue (1996) in his seminal work, The Origins of the Urban Crisis:
Vast areas of the city, once teeming with life, now stand abandoned…Factories that once provided tens of thousands of jobs now stand as hollow shells, windows broken, mute testimony to a lost industrial past. Whole rows of small shops Page 96 and stores are boarded up or burned out….Over a third of the city’s residents live beneath the poverty line, many concentrated in neighborhoods where a majority of their neighbors are also poor. A visit to the city’s welfare offices, hospitals and jails provides abundant evidence of the terrible costs of the city’s persistent unemployment and poverty. (p. 3)
The recent, ongoing recession in the United States has hit Detroit particularly hard, exacerbating the devastation portrayed above. Detroit ranks at or near the top in negative socioeconomic indicators for major urban areas in the U.S. Foreclosure rates among Detroit homeowners are the highest of any major urban city in the United States following the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007, accounting for about one-fourth of the homes that are for sale (Gray, 2009). Many of the foreclosed or abandoned homes are in deserted, decaying neighborhoods. Coupled with an already plummeting population that is less than half its peak from the 1950s (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008), these factors have resulted today in a situation where “one in five houses now stand empty in the city that launched the automobile age…Property prices have fallen 80% or more in large parts of Detroit over the last three years. The average price of a home sold in the city last year has been put at $7,500” (McGreal, 2010, para. 5, 7).
In addition to the foreclosure crisis, Detroit has over 15,000 homeless people of whom 20% are considered chronically homeless. Gerritt (2008) notes that families “make up about a third of the homeless” which also includes many who have “jobs, often temporary or part-time, but don’t earn enough to pay rent or a mortgage” (p. 1C). These twin phenomena of thousands of abandoned homes, many available for as little as $100 for those wealthy enough to rebuild them, existing side-by-side with thousands of poor and homeless residents in Detroit exposes the deep levels of inequality embedded in the social fabric of the city.
The recent bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler corporations have swollen the ranks of the unemployed in the city and surrounding metropolitan area, not only among laid-off autoworkers but also among those in allied and service industries Page 97 that indirectly rely upon the auto industry for their employment. Official unemployment rates in the city, which have hovered around the 25% mark for many years, are expected to rise even further. The erosion of the tax base is partly responsible for a projected accumulated budget deficit by year’s end to be “over a quarter of the total $1.6 billion general fund” (Citizen’s Research Council of Michigan, 2010, p. 11). Annual budgets presented by successive administrations in Detroit have sought to balance these deficits by downsizing and privatization of jobs and social services, further decimating the infrastructure necessary for the economic survival of the city’s poor and working-class sections.
Through all of these travails, the city seems bereft of leadership as the top echelons of city government have lurched from one crisis to another. The mayor’s office has recently been engulfed in perjury and corruption scandals resulting in several indictments of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (Ashenfelter, Elrick, & Dixon, 2010), city council President Monica Conyers (White, 2010), and other city officials. The Detroit police department (DPD) has been operating under two consent decrees since 2003 stemming from U.S. Department of Justice lawsuits that found that the DPD violated Federal civil rights laws in using unwarranted excessive, even lethal force, on numerous occasions, and for the deplorable conditions of the prisons it maintained (King, 2010). Corruption scandals and political struggles for mayorally-controlled versus elected school boards have destroyed hope for the resurrection of a collapsing public school system (Dawsey, 2010), in which the enrollment has declined from 167,000 to 84,600, leaving the district with over a $200 million budget deficit (Gray, 2010).
Detroit’s plight has garnered national, and even international, attention. A steady parade of academically-oriented books and articles has been complemented by hundreds of recent newspaper articles dissecting and analyzing Detroit from multiple angles. All too often, these studies have neglected the personal experiences, challenges, and visions of citizen-activists from the grassroots. Phrases referring to Detroit as a “ghost town” or claiming that residents are “throwing in the towel” (Kellogg, 2010, para. 9) often promote an alienated characterization of the city. Linda Diebel’s Page 98 (1993) stark portrayal of Detroit’s landscape in the Toronto Star serves as an extreme illustration of this point, “[Detroit] has become a post-apocalyptic vision of broken glass, abandoned buildings, wind whistling through empty skyscrapers, jagged metal shapes, burned-out cars, coyotes, and big whirring insects — but few people [emphasis added]” (p. F1). Such distorted portrayals only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes, which in turn results in the disenfranchisement of local neighborhoods and communities. Considering that over 85% of Detroit’s citizens today are Black or Latino/a (U.S. Census, 2000) and largely from poor and low-income backgrounds, these distortions are frequently laden with racial and class prejudices.
Public perceptions notwithstanding, Detroit’s residents are engaged in constant, fierce struggles in neighborhoods and communities to maintain and rebuild the city. However, as Shaw (2006) notes, “[t]hose most in need of being heard over the din of public debate have…the fewest resources to vocalize and defend their needs” (p. 11). Having received little assistance over the years from the city, state, and federal levels to help radically improve the lives of inner-city residents, Detroiters have created a rich historical tapestry of grassroots movements and coalitions to raise their voices and protect their needs. These movements that, at their core, are movements for justice, equality, and a deeper democracy have helped expand the dialog on urban policy studies.
The Case for Grassroots Histories
During and after World War II, Detroit city became an epicenter for the migration of Black and White workers from all across the country who were attracted by wartime jobs and the promise of continued employment at decent wages in the auto industry (Thomson, 2001). Over three million Blacks migrated North in the two decades from 1940 to 1960. Thomson notes that migration to Detroit, in particular, “fundamentally altered the city’s geography, dramatically recomposed its working class, and unwittingly unsettled both the civic and labor order” (p. 12). That the topography of upheavals that “unsettled” the existing social order in the city centered around racial and class confrontations is documented in Page 99 numerous studies of Detroit’s socio-economic history (Boyle, 2004; Sugrue, 1996; Mirel, 1998). Much attention (Spreen & Holloway, 2005; Thomas, 1997; Thomson, 2001) has been paid to the role of multiple, interrelated social forces—racial segregation and conflict, racial and class discrimination in housing, jobs and social services, capital flight out of Detroit in the form of manufacturing jobs and other investments, suburbanization and sprawl, urban redevelopment policies, corruption and crisis in the city’s political leadership—as causative factors in the social and political turmoil that accompanied the postwar decline of Detroit.
One of the central issues in studies of Detroit and other major urban centers is the question of agency attributed to inner-city residents in relation to the continuing degradation of their living standards and the physical environment they inhabit. Considering that most inner cities tend to be overwhelmingly populated by poor or low-income minority groups, this question necessitates paying close attention to the racial and class dimensions of the issue. Broadly speaking, there are two prevalent models that address the role of inner-city residents in analyses of urban decay (Bates, Bates, & Boggs, 2000). One set of studies attributes the origins of poverty to the inherent deficiencies of individuals. Characteristics such as laziness, fl awed culture, criminal tendencies, and genetic inadequacies are used to describe black or Hispanic residents. In other words, inner-city communities are perpetrators of their own misery. In contrast, studies that employ a structural analysis view racism and discrimination that bias employment practices or educational opportunities and practices, for example, as the root causes for victimization of inner-city communities. The supremacy of structural analyses, such as that exemplified by Thomas Surge’s (1996) study of Detroit over cultural explanations owe much to well-documented historical narratives that support the thesis of inner-city residents as victims. Yet, these studies are not without their flaws.
In their review of Sugrue’s study, Beth Bates and her co-authors raise what they consider as a significant weakness in “much of the recent social science research exploring America’s urban racial crisis. [As an example, the authors note that Sugrue] separates the dynamics of the economic and political structure from the political Page 100 and social struggles of many African Americans who were its victims. He sees them only as victims reacting to and not as historical actors challenging the system and ushering in movements that not only helped Black Detroiters but also represented the cutting edge in broader social movements struggling to create a better society” (Bates, Bates & Boggs, 2000, p. 13).
Critiques such as these effectively issue a clarion call for re-theorizing the role of grassroots movements and citizen-activists as agents for a radical transformation of society. For example, what is the role of Black grassroots activism and dissent (Shaw, 2006)?
From a theoretical perspective (Rubin, 1994), grassroots activism can be viewed as a form of organic theory, which emerges through daily resistance and provides guidance on how to make choices that bring positive social change. This is in contrast to academic theory, where explanations are created by individuals outside the efforts. Shaw (2006) considers grassroots activism to be a political act organized by ordinary citizens who use their ascriptive identities and indigenous competencies to confront inequities of power. These definitions indicate that activist histories might be better able to capture the sense of urgency and emotionality encompassed in individual and community narratives of crises.
Studies that incorporate such perspectives as essential ingredients in developing “explanatory systems” (Rubin, 1994) have been shown to produce useful frameworks that challenge predominantly analytical studies of social problems (Oliver, 1994; Orr, 2007; Shaw, 2009; Shaw & Spence, 2004). Oral narratives based on the experiences of long-term activists and leaders in the community form an important facet of these histories, which, despite their seemingly disjointed, immediate, urgent and personal nature, can provide clear frameworks for discussion of comprehensive, long-term challenges and solutions. In the case of Detroit, dialogue and activism at the grassroots are essential to community-based efforts to rebuild, redefine, and re-spirit the city (Boggs, 2007).
Grassroots Heroines of Detroit
The need to incorporate such alternate, activist perspectives of Detroit’s history provided the impetus for presenting the oral histories of four Detroit-based activists and leaders of grassroots organizations and coalitions working at individual, neighborhood, and community levels on multiple issues facing urban and immigrant communities in the city. These women activists, including two Mexican Americans, one Chinese American, and one African American, who spoke at the plenary session on “Social Activism in Detroit” at the 2007 Groves Conference on Marriage and Family exemplified the conference theme of speaking out and standing up for families on social, economic, and environmental justice issues (Anderson, 2007; Boggs, 2007; Herrada, 2007; Rivera, 2007). Each of these Detroit-based activists has significant and longstanding ties to the city, with a wealth of experience in social justice movements at the grassroots. Each has traversed a unique path to their present leadership and activism.
Elena Herrada and Gloria Rivera champion the challenges faced by immigrants and immigrant communities, regardless of whether they arrive for economic reasons, as in the case of the Chicano community in Detroit, or socio-political ones, as illustrated by asylum seekers and refugees who come to Detroit fleeing from religious, ethnic, or political persecution in their home countries. Two common threads characterize their activism: (a) the important yet delicate nature of family and community relationships; and (b) the constant, if sometimes harrowing, encounters with law enforcement and other mechanisms of the state that form an integral part of immigrant experiences in vulnerable communities.
Rhonda Anderson’s personal journey as a single mother and grandmother, and a lifelong native of Detroit, serves as a microcosm of the challenges faced by the city and its residents over many decades. Her leadership in economic and environmental justice issues stems from the challenges she has faced as a citizen-activist in Detroit. Grace Lee Boggs, also a Detroiter for many decades, complements Anderson’s narrative by framing their experiences within a Page 102 communal context. Both Boggs and Anderson emphasize the crucial importance of intergenerational relationships in maintaining a viable social fabric in the city, as well as a catalyst for radically transforming Detroit. Included in the following sections are descriptions of each activists work and excerpts from their presentations.
Elena Herrada
Elena Herrada was born into a family of four children of a Mexican American father and an Irish American mother. She is a third-generation Detroiter, the daughter and granddaughter of autoworkers. She has worked as a union organizer for local Detroit area unions, including as International Representative for a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local, and as President of the United Catering, Restaurant, Bar and Hotel Workers Local 1064.
During the late 1990s, Herrada was the Director of the Oral History project of Fronteras Norteñas, a Detroit nonprofit organization established in 2000 to record the oral histories of older generations of Mexican immigrants and citizens in the metropolitan Detroit area. In this capacity, Herrada worked with the Repatriation Project, a multigenerational Mexican American organization (Ruiz & Korrol, 2006). The committee produced a documentary in 2001, titled Los Repatriados: Exiles from the Promised Land (Balderrama & Rodriguez, 2006) about the forced and voluntary deportation of Detroit area Mexican Americans from the United States in the 1930s. The documentary, supported by a grant from a Detroit-based foundation, was initially screened to enthusiastic and emotional audiences in the city. Subsequently, it was shown in numerous cities nationwide with accompanying panel discussions involving the producers and participants in the documentary (Herrada, 2002).
Los Repatriados documents the oral histories of U.S. citizens and immigrants who were among approximately one million residents of Mexican ancestry unconstitutionally repatriated or deported to Mexico during the Depression years of the 1930s (Valenciana, 2006). Although the term “repatriation” is commonly used to describe these incidents in U.S. history, it does not accurately reflect the reality of the situation. Many of those deported were born in Page 103 the United States, with their U.S. citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Approximately 60 percent of those deported fell into this category (Johnson, 2005).
Balderrama and Rodriguez (2006) describe the inhumane nature of the deportations which were commonplace in the 1930s: “Mass raids and arrests were often conducted without benefit t of warrants. Individuals were often held incommunicado and not allowed to see anyone. Without the opportunity to post bail, deportees languished in jail until the next deportation train was formed” (p. 67).
Herrada’s grandparents and their children were among an estimated 15,000 Mexicans who were repatriated or deported to Mexico from southwest Detroit (Balderrama & Rodriguez, 2006). Consequently, Herrada self-identifies as a member of the “second and half” generation of Chicanos in Southwest Detroit, whose grandparents returned many years later to the Detroit area to rebuild their lives and communities. Herrada’s grandfather had previously moved with his family from Texas to Detroit to work in the automobile industry. As Herrada explains, Mexicans of her grandfather’s generation believed that...
Detroit was a place where you could come and change your life without changing your class. Anybody could come here and work and there were jobs for everybody and it did not matter who you were or where you came from. [Many of the deported had originally immigrated to the United States during the 1920s, having left] post-revolutionary Mexico, which didn’t have much for most of the people and was devastated economically.
The forced repatriations and deportations documented by Herrada’s Fronteras Norteñas organization represent one chapter in a long and contradictory history of Mexican immigration to the U.S. (Cárdenas, 1975; Samora, 1971). Economic crises in Mexico or increased demands for cheap labor in the United States precipitated waves of Mexican immigration, including the establishment of the bracero or guest worker program in 1942, the maquiladora programs of the 1960s, and the more recent North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in 1994. Various studies (Hufbauer & Schott, 2005; Martin, 2004) document Page 104 that each of these waves resulted in an increased migration of legal as well as undocumented workers from Mexico into the U.S.
Increased migration has brought with it a host of challenges, not only for immigrant workers but also for the broader Mexican communities in which they reside. Following numerous incidences of job discrimination, racial harassment, police brutality, unexplained disappearances, and mass deportations without due process, Mexican communities in many states have responded by establishing workers centers to address the social injustices against migrant workers (Herrada, 2006). On May Day in 2006, Elena Herrada, along with a group of Chicano activists, established a workers’ center called Centro Obrero in southwest Detroit with support from the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO and other local labor and social justice organizations. The center was formed to respond to job related and social discrimination faced by many of these immigrant workers, and to advocate for social justice on their behalf. Herrada (2006) explains one of the underlying motivations for starting Centro Obrero:
We have heard stories of people who go to work and don’t get paid, or don’t get paid the overtime to which they are entitled. We hear of countless injuries sustained by workers who work for contractors who then disappear or refuse to take responsibility for the workers who make them rich.
Undocumented immigrants are particularly vulnerable, since any attempts to complain about these violations of labor policy are met with threats of deportation. In experiences reminiscent of the repatriation years, Herrada also describes recent incidents in which “there would be raids, and people would just disappear in the middle of the night.”
Herrada views the role of Centro Obrero as a grassroots project to empower migrant workers and communities by providing them a space to understand their rights on health and safety, wages, and non-discrimination policies at the workplace. The center conducts legal clinics, ESL classes for those desiring to learn English (LaBumbard, 2007), and holds discussions and dialogues about the Page 105 rights and responsibilities of both employees and employers as well as members of the community (Herrada, 2006). But the volunteer organization has also worked diligently to build cross-racial and class solidarity between Chicano workers and other working-class communities, including African Americans, in trying to overcome cultural and language barriers that have contributed to and exacerbated interracial problems between minority groups. As an example, Herrada describes a series of important conversations on racial relationships that arose during the ESL classes conducted by Centro Obrero:
Mexican workers were coming into the English classes and talking about conflicts that they were having on the jobs. They would say, “Black people don’t like us.” I would ask them why they thought that. They responded, “[we were] doing this job and they told us [we] shouldn’t be doing that.”
As Herrada explains, many of the Mexican workers complained that they did not understand what they were being told by their coworkers since they did not understand the African American dialect. In turn, their Black co-workers complained about Mexican workers working through lunch and other breaks which was interpreted as actions of a community intent on becoming the preferred minority. Centro Obrero’s creation of an ongoing “black-brown dialogue” to respond to this challenge has created new opportunities to enhance and improve inter-racial relationships in Detroit.
Workers at Centro Obrero have also worked to rehabilitate and transform the neighborhood, originally an industrial dumpsite around the UAW Cadillac local where the building and center are located, by building a community garden. The work of Centro Obrero and other community-based organizations in southwest Detroit has resulted in the growth of the Mexican community in Detroit, transforming their experience from being an invisible minority within a Black and White binary to a vibrant, self-sustaining community (Rodriguez, 2007; Williams, 2008).
Herrada’s activism and struggles for social justice continue in many spheres of Detroit life. She currently teaches in the Social Justice Page 106 Master’s program at Marygrove College in Detroit. She also served on the national planning committee of the recently concluded United States Social Forum held in Detroit in June 2010, which attracted thousands of grassroots organizers and community activists from all across the country.
Gloria Rivera
In 1983, activists in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario who were outraged by unjust and anti-democratic U.S. policies in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and other Central American countries that created an exodus of political refugees to the area, banded together to form an organization that was originally called the Detroit/Windsor Refugee Coalition. Later, it changed its name to Freedom House to better reflect its philosophical mission. Many refugees who were seeking asylum in Canada, due to that country’s friendlier policies towards refugees at that time, landed in Detroit and received legal, financial, and housing assistance for crossing the U.S.-Canada border from the activists at Freedom House. From Salvadoran refugees in the early years, Freedom House has grown to serve refugees and asylum seekers primarily from about a dozen countries in Africa and the Middle East (Freedom House, 2010).
One of the key activists in this struggle to repatriate and resettle refugees coming to the U.S. or Canada with dignity and compassion is Sr. Gloria Rivera, a Mexican-born Catholic nun affiliated with the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) denomination in Monroe, Michigan. Rivera moved to the United States at the age of 18 to attend school, first living in Iowa and then moving to Detroit in 1994 as a member of the IHM Sisters. Rivera served as an activist with Freedom House for 11 years, seven years as a Board member and four as the Executive Director of the organization. During Rivera’s tenure as the Director, Freedom House served approximately 300 to 500 people through the shelter every year, and an additional 400 to 600 people received legal services for asylum application to either Canada or the United States.
Rivera and other activists in Freedom House are part of a decades long struggle to change U.S. policy towards refugees and asylum Page 107 seekers into a more humane, just, and compassionate policy. This challenge has grown more difficult in recent years as policies in the United States towards refugees and asylum seekers have been closely linked to overall U.S. immigration policy.
Globally, approximately 15.2 million refugees and nearly one million asylum-seekers remained displaced from their homes and countries due to conflicts, civil wars, and persecutions (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2010). The U.S. continues to receive the highest number of applications for asylum, a four-year trend. It has also remained one of the main resettlement destinations for global refugees over many years. However, changes to immigration policies in the United States and Canada following the incidents of 9/11, such as the Safe Third Country Agreement between the two countries, which came into effect on December 29, 2004 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada [CIC], 2009), have made the asylum process significantly more difficult. In particular, the agreement curtailed the ability of asylum-seekers and refugees to cross the border from the United States into Canada, where asylum had been easier to obtain in prior years. Individuals going through the immigration process have also found the process to be extremely dehumanizing.
Rivera (2007) illustrates the challenges facing refugees and asylum seekers, and activists working on their behalf, by describing the experiences of Fransua (not his real name), a young political refugee from Cameroon:
Rivera explained that Freedom House employees and volunteers work with asylum seekers, such as Fransua, in multiple ways. First, they “provide a haven” assisting asylum seekers in all their needs, including “shelter, food, legal and medical and mental health services, and eventually education and job training.” They also guide them through an immigration process that Rivera describes as “a long and inhumane immigration process,” and “another form of psychological abuse.” Having accompanied Fransua to many of his hearings, Rivera found some of the attitudes of prosecutors and judges of the Department of Homeland Security towards asylum seekers to be “really inhumane” and “shameful.”
Not all asylum seekers are fortunate enough to actively reach out to groups such as Freedom House. Many end up in detention if they are arrested upon entering the U.S., since they arrive without proper documentation. Sometimes, “children and families are separated” or “[seekers] are detained in jails with other people who are criminals who are serving sentences for other reasons.” Once in detention, they are sometimes abused and at the mercy of a kind NGO or lawyer who assist with an asylum application pro bono since most have no money (Acer, 2002; Acer & Pyati, 2004).
Families of asylum seekers, who remain in their home countries, face unique problems of their own. In many instances, the fleeing individual is the sole financial supporter of the family, and families feel abandoned by their spouse or parent and are often angry with the person who left. Sometimes, said Rivera, “families left behind suffer further persecution and even incarceration and torture” to force them to reveal the whereabouts of their “fugitive relative.” Rivera recounts a particular incident in Fransua’s story to illuminate the problems arising from this separation:
As he waited Fransua eventually got a temporary work permit so he could send money to his family, but his wife could not understand why he was not sending them money for her and for her children to travel. She suspected that he was cheating on her. And a friend of mine, a Sister who worked for Freedom House, had to write a letter to the wife to say this [process] is taking so long and your husband is not cheating on you.
The journeys of asylum seekers and their families are far from over once they receive their valid documentation and are reunited in the U.S. Social challenges including food, housing, education, employment, and language issues require significant adjustments for each family member as well as for the family unit as a whole. Rivera decries the lack of social agencies prepared to assist the unique needs of this population:
These individuals, like many others in Detroit, face job shortage, lack of adequate transportation; adequate, affordable, and decent housing; good and affordable food; good schools, etc. Like other minorities or people who are poor, asylum seekers are relegated to live in a society that often acts out of prejudice, out of racism, out of ignorance, out of fear and suspicion and even hatred. Not all mental health and medical workers understand how to assist asylum seekers. [W]estern methods of therapy do not work in many instances. Asylum seekers often have chronic medical issues derived from the torture that they underwent and of course they have no medical coverage. Finally, organizations suffer without sufficient funding that allow for comprehensive services for healing and permanent resettlement.
Following her activism for immigrant rights as director of Freedom House, Rivera also served for over three years as the Executive Director of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR), a Detroit Metropolitan area nonprofit (MCHR, 2010). She currently serves as coordinator of the Detroit chapter of the Great Lakes Bioneers (GLBD), an organization that promotes restoration and healing of communities (GLBD, 2010). For Rivera, one of the main challenges facing social and human rights organizations is the need...
to educate, advocate, and organize for systemic change concerning human rights and justice issues. Our society will not change really until we get to the root causes of poverty, racism, torture and persecution, and all the other human ills. If our work stops at direct services, it will serve to provide solace for people in need but it must be accompanied by efforts to bring about systemic change.
Page 110Rhonda Anderson
The June 20, 2010 edition of the Detroit Free Press profiled the struggles of area residents in what the article referred to as “Michigan’s most polluted zip code” (Lam, 2010, para. 5). Residents in these predominantly Black, working-class neighborhoods in the 48217 zip code have been fighting for years to hold industrial facilities responsible for polluting the air and water in their communities through toxic emissions and effluents into the air and groundwater. Spearheading the struggle with these residents is Rhonda Anderson, environmental justice coordinator for the Detroit chapter of the Sierra Club and longtime activist in grassroots struggles for environmental and economic justice in the city.
Having grown up in a family of southern sharecropper parents who moved to Detroit in search of better opportunities, Anderson went to work as a union organizer for the Service Employees International Unions (SEIU) Local 79 in Detroit, fighting for better working conditions for service sector workers in the city. After a ten-year stint at Local 79, she worked briefly with Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ) and the Warren/Connor Development Coalition, community organizations that exposed her to environmental and economic justice issues in Detroit neighborhoods.
Anderson’s experience in the union and environmental justice movements informs her activist work on behalf of Detroit residents. At the core of the struggle in the 48217 area is an inherent contradiction between demands for a moratorium on polluting industries, such as oil refineries and steel plants, versus the dire need for jobs in Detroit. For Anderson, the resolution of this contradiction lies in the struggle for a better “quality of life” in these neighborhoods, which she poses through the question, “Why can’t we have both clean air and jobs?” (Lam, 2010, para. 8).
In her professional and personal life, Anderson has worked closely with Detroit youth in their struggles to overcome a life of poverty, crime, and desperation. She worked for a number of years as a youth specialist in employment and education at the locally Page 111 well-known non-profit, Alternatives for Girls (2010) that delivers life-changing services and resources to homeless and high-risk girls and young women. Prior to her current position, Anderson was also employed as a detention specialist at the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center for nine months. Anderson describes this period as “the most emotionally stressful times” in her career, illustrating it through a particularly difficult incident during her tenure working at the prison:
It was time to lock up some of the children back again. There were 20 units, 10 on the top and 10 at the bottom. Four of these young ladies took off running to the end of a hallway, and they were running to the end of a hallway and scared me to death because every door is locked and there are hundreds of cameras…I was trying my best to figure out what they were doing. Each one of them took a turn to jump up at a window…and they turned around and said, ’Ms. Anderson, isn’t it beautiful?’ What they could see [was] the sky, the stars and that’s it…
The dehumanizing nature of the detentions of these predominantly poor Black and Latino/a youth is manifested through the length and severity of their incarceration, often for petty crimes, drug use, and other less severe offenses:
Once those children go into that community, they don’t come out. They don’t see the ground, they don’t see the sky. They can be in there for as long as a year and they never set foot outside [during that time]. This is where we put our children—our children that are challenged, that are neglected.
Anderson’s observations of Detroit’s youth and children as being “neglected” and “challenged” are buttressed by her experiences living in what she describes as a once “strong, thriving, blue-collar, mixed community in the northwest area of Detroit.” In 1979, Chrysler Corporation’s imminent bankruptcy and subsequent rescue by the U.S. government (H.R. 5680, 1979) resulted in the layoffs of nearly 60,000 Chrysler workers (Hickel, 1983). Anderson describes the dramatic changes in her community, which she attributes to these layoffs, during this period:
Page 112They laid off so many men that [had] seniority [of] between 10 and 15 years. These men had no other skills, they did not go back to school. What happened was a domino effect. Their families broke up, they lost their insurance and then, with the introduction of crack/cocaine, it just devastated my community. I literally saw house after house after house go down.
A generation later, the neighborhood continues to suffer from the social and economic effects wrought by these layoffs, with psychologically-scarred families and youth living in a devastated community surrounded by abandoned houses and vacant lots:
If we had had a tornado in my neighborhood, we would have received assistance, but, to this day, there has been no investment in my community. We have children over there in my neighborhood that feel totally hopeless, that is so scary… No one says anything about [the] mental depression in our homes. Many of these homes are headed by women who are depressed. I would ask someone to throw up some tents in these corners so that we can bring some counseling to them because they need it so desperately back there.
Anderson’s activism embodies the grassroots work of citizen activists who have a critical awareness of the causes of their oppression and of the many hidden and visible acts of resistance inherent within struggles for social justice.
Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs is an American icon and legend—an activist, author and powerful orator with more than six decades of involvement in the civil rights, labor, and women’s movements in the United States and beyond. Born into a Chinese immigrant family from Rhode Island in 1915, Boggs received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1935, and subsequently received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College before moving to Detroit with her spouse and activist-partner James Boggs in 1953 (Boggs, 1998).
For over five decades, Boggs has been at the forefront of struggles for economic and social justice in the city. These struggles Page 113 have challenged and shaped her vision for the rebuilding and transformation of Detroit. Her activism at the intersection of multiple social struggles has convinced her of the need for new and radical approaches to the problems of Detroit, based on rediscovering and sustaining cultural and intergenerational relationships as the foundation needed “to rebuild and redefine and re-spirit the city.” For decades, Boggs has also served as the intellectual godmother of community activism in Detroit through her books and regular articles for the Detroit-based Michigan Citizen, one of the oldest Black newspapers in the state. Her theoretical conceptualizations of the radical transformations needed for rebuilding Detroit often focus on two issues: intergenerational relationships and the need to reinterpret the nature of work in a post-industrial economy.
Boggs posits the disintegration of intergenerational relationships as a causative factor in the decline in the quality of life in Detroit neighborhoods. She compares the cultural roots of the predominantly Black population in the city in the post-war period with the current generation to explain the phenomenon:
[Fifty] some years ago, we still had people living here who came from the south and people who came from the country-side. They brought with them the kind of culture that comes from doing things for oneself. During the summer time, young people used to go down south and stay with their relatives. They learned about another culture besides the jungles of our cities. But during the last 40 years, most of those old folks have died out and most of our young folks know nothing but city life. And this is happening at time when our communities, our neighborhoods, have become abandoned.
While Boggs’ culturally-oriented explanations of the dislocations and discontinuities in intergenerational relationships might engender disagreement in studies of the urban migration of rural black communities during the twentieth century (e.g., Allen & Farley, 1986; Oliver, 1998), her focus on rebuilding intergenerational relationships at the grassroots level in Detroit has received widespread acclaim and enthusiastic involvement for nearly two decades.
Page 114Boggs co-founded Detroit Summer in 1992, an organization that identifies itself as a “multi-racial, intergenerational collective in Detroit, working to transform ourselves and our communities by confronting the problems we face with creativity and critical thinking” (Boggs Center, 2010). Boggs and her co-activists organized a series of founding activities, which included designing and planting community gardens, creating murals in public places, and engaging youth and elders in intergenerational and peer-to-peer dialogues about social issues. In subsequent years up to the present, these have been supplemented with youth-led neighborhood remediation projects, poetry workshops and an independent media center, among other activities.
Based on the successful model of Detroit Summer, Boggs helped organize the Beloved Communities initiative in Detroit in 2004, an organization taking its name from the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. that seeks to form “a network of communities committed to and practicing the profound pursuit of justice, racial inclusivity, democratic governance, health and wholeness, and social/individual transformation” (Building Beloved Communities, 2010). She also has helped establish the Detroit: City of Hope campaign in 2007 as a collaborative and collective vehicle for artists, writers, poets, community organizers, entrepreneurs and others “to see, to participate, to invigorate, to create the ground of peace where people find ways to share their highest selves” (Detroit City of Hope, 2010).
Boggs also ascribes significant importance to the need to reinterpret the role of work as an essential ingredient in rebuilding post-industrial cities such as Detroit. The concept of work needs to be redefined away from that which is done “just for a paycheck” to one that is done “in order to take care of our communities.” She contends that “industrial age” thinking is partly responsible for the crisis in Detroit schools. Rather than founding schools for “kids to go into the factory [as was done] a 100 years ago,” there needs to be a greater emphasis on schooling in ways that “are much more in terms of community.” Boggs highlights the need that young people have for “direct-action projects, whereby they can transform themselves and their community at the same time.”
Page 115Boggs’ activism in grassroots “direct-action projects” is linked to her indictment of the political leadership in Detroit, and the prevalence of a “very binary way” of thinking about racial issues:
The other thing that we have to understand is that Blacks have been running this city for 40 years, and so we have to think about that too. What has happened in the 40 years that the Blacks have been running this city? Did they run the city in any different way the Whites would have done? … Blacks also ought to understand that this city is no longer Black and White. There is a very large Latino population. There is a very large Arab-American population. It is a very multi-ethnic city. But all of our reactions are still in terms of Black and White.
As Boggs’ comments emphasize, the impact of the deep racial segregation in Detroit, even between oppressed social groups, should be of concern to scholars seeking to understand generational dynamics within each of these communities. She suggests that what Detroit and other cities need is “some sort of truth and reconciliation process like that which took place in South Africa.”
Theoretical Issues
From the activist narratives presented here emerge important themes that could help build conceptual frameworks for analyzing the challenges and opportunities within grassroots movements in Detroit. While the narratives raise multiple, interlinked issues, two common threads are significant: stress-resilience issues and the question of intergenerational relationships.
The constant, negative impact of socioeconomic, political, and legal stresses on individuals and families within the vulnerable and oppressed communities in Detroit is highlighted by each of these women activists. Their work in the community organizations they helped found or lead establishes a framework for community-based resilient responses to inequality and injustice. Traditionally, stress resilience response studies have focused on individuals, particularly youth and children (see, for example, Hopps, Tourse, & Christian, Page 116 2002). Where the conversation has extended to studies of oppressed groups, the dominant analysis has focused on negative and pathological outcomes (Sonn & Fisher, 1998) of this dialectic. Directaction projects, such as Centro Obrero, Freedom House, or Detroit Summer that were established to respond to immediate and urgent problems in Detroit, do not fit into these paradigms. Despite the difficult conditions under which they operate at the grassroots, these organizations must be viewed as enabling stressed communities to thrive under adverse circumstances. Many such projects begin as spontaneous responses to local injustices. However, their long-term sustainability is related to their ability to mobilize the community to respond to these injustices by creating positive self-images within a democratic, egalitarian model. Understanding this dialectic could help us expand our understanding of stress-resilience issues in urban contexts such as Detroit.
All four activists touched upon issues of intergenerational continuity and dislocation. Traditional research on intergenerational relationships involving immigrant communities (Aldous, 1965; Ishii-Kuntz, 1997; Zhou, 1997) have typically focused on cultural issues related to the transmission of social values, traditions, language and educational attainment. Research (Moynihan, 1965; Oliver, 1988; Taylor, 1979) on the organization of urban Black communities, including the effects of urban migration from the rural south, has often suffered from its neglect of human agency in promoting intergenerational continuity.
The decline of a city such as Detroit destroys much of the sociohistorical fabric that is necessary for its renewal. Abandoned or demolished Detroit neighborhoods lose the intergenerational histories of the residents that created and sustained them. Yet urban renewal policies aimed at uplifting poor or low-income residents, as opposed to gentrification models, cannot succeed without reclaiming these lost histories. Grassroots organizations like Centro Obrero and Detroit Summer uniquely understand these contradictions. Their daily acts of resistance in fighting against injustices are aimed at preventing the further deterioration of the existing social condition. In addition, youth-oriented direct-action projects—community art, urban gardening, and environmental remediation, for example— Page 117 seek to transform a decaying social fabric into a vibrant one. Intergenerational relationships both enable and are enhanced by these projects.
Conclusion
Detroit occupies a unique position in American social consciousness and history. The dynamics of its continuing decline in a post-industrial capitalist society riven by class and racial divisionsremains an object of intense study. Grassroots narratives of struggles for social, economic, and environmental justice actively incorporate questions of human agency in their attempts to understand these dynamics. Urban renewal models for Detroit that project a progressive, democratic future for the city will have to continue to engage the citizen-activism and grassroots leadership of women like Elena Herrada, Gloria Rivera, Rhonda Anderson, and Grace Lee Boggs as agents of that radical transformation.
References
Acer, E. (2002). Refugee women at risk: Unfair U.S. laws hurt asylum seekers. Human Rights First. Retrieved from http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/
Acer, E., & Pyati, A. (2004). In Liberty’s shadow: U.S. detention of asylum seekers in the era of homeland security. Human Rights First. Retrieved from http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/
Aldous, J. (1965). The consequences of intergenerational continuity. Journal of Marriage and Family, 27(4), 462-468.
Alexander, J. T. (1998). The great migration in comparative perspective: Interpreting the urban origins of southern black migrants to depression era Pittsburgh. Social Science History, 22(3), 349-376.
Allen, W. R., & Farley, R. (1986). The shifting social and economic tides of black America, 1950-1980. Annual Review of Sociology, 12, 277-306.
Page 118Alternatives for Girls. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.alternativesforgirls.org
Anderson, R. (2007, May). Panel presentation. In E. P. Venugopal (Chair), Social activism in Detroit. Plenary session conducted at the 2007 Groves Conference on Marriage and Family, Detroit, MI.
Ashenfelter, D., Elrick, M. L., & Dixon, J. (2010, June 24). Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick indicted by feds on 19 mail fraud, tax counts. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/article/20100624/NEWS01/6240430/
Balderrama, F. E., & Rodriguez, R. (2006). Decade of betrayal: Mexican repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
Bates, B., Bates, T., & Boggs, G. L. Where are the people? Review essay on Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis. The Review of Black Political Economy, 27(4), 13.
Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611-639.
Boggs, G. L. (1998). Living for change: An autobiography. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Boggs, G. L. (2007, May). Panel presentation. In E. P. Venugopal (Chair), Social activism in Detroit. Plenary session conducted at the 2007 Groves Conference on Marriage and Family, Detroit, MI.
Boggs, J., & Boggs, G. L. (1974). Revolution and evolution in the twentieth century. New York, NY: Monthly Review.
Boggs Center, The. (2010). Detroit Summer. Retrieved from http://www.boggscenter.org
Boyle, K. (2004). Arc of justice: A saga of race, civil rights, and murder in the Jazz Age. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Building Beloved Communities. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.racedemocracy.org
Page 119Cárdenas, G. (1975). U.S. immigration policy towards Mexico: An historical perspective. Chicano Law Review, 2, 66-91.
Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979, H.R. 5860, 96th Congress (1979 - 1980).
Citizenship and Immigration Canada. (2009). Canada–U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. Ottawa, Canada: Author. Retrieved from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-policy/menu-safethird.asp
Citizens Research Council of Michigan (2010, April). Fiscal condition of the city of Detroit. Retrieved from http://www.crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/2010s/2010/rpt361.html
Dawsey, C. P., Erb, R., & Trammel, T. (2010, July 28). Vote on Detroit Public Schools to be discussed by City Council, again. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100728/NEWS06/7280355/1318/
Detroit City of Hope. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.dcoh.org
Diebel, L. (1993, July 11). Devolution of Detroit. Toronto Star, p. F1.
Freedom House. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.freedomhousedetroit.org
Gerritt, J. (2008, February 17). With help, Detroit’s homeless can turn their lives around. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/article/20080217/OPINION01/802170551/
Gray, S. (2009, October 13). Luring buyers on Detroit’s ‘Lonely Homes’ tour. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1930006,00.html
Gray, S. (2010, January 25). Can Robert Bobb fix Detroit’s public schools? Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1953694,00.html
Great Lakes Bioneers. (2010). Retrieved from http://glbd.org/
Herrada, E. (2002). The hidden story of “Los Repatriados.” Solidarity Webzine. Retrieved from http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1061
Page 120Herrada, E. (2006). Centro Obrero. Critical Moment, 16, 20.
Herrada, E. (2007, May). Panel presentation. In E. P. Venugopal (Chair), Social activism in Detroit. Plenary session conducted at the 2007 Groves Conference on Marriage and Family, Detroit, MI.
Hickel, J. K. (1983). The Chrysler bail-out bust. Backgrounder #276. Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/1983/07/The-Chrysler-Bail-Out-Bust
Hopps, J. G., Tourse, R. W. C., & Christian, O. (2002). From problems to personal resilience: Challenges and opportunities in practice with African American youth. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 11(1/2), 55-77.
Hufbauer, G. C., & Schott, J. J. (2005). NAFTA revisited: Achievements and challenges. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.
Ishii-Kuntz, M. (1997). Intergenerational relationships among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans. Family Relations, 46(1), 23-32.
Johnson, K. (2005). The forgotten “repatriation” of persons of Mexican ancestry and lessons for the “War on Terror.” Pace Law Review, 26(1),1-26.
Kellogg, A. P. (2010, June 5). Black flight hits Detroit. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704292004575230532248715858.html
King, J. (2010, May 20). Detroit Police Department’s troubled past and present. Colorlines: News for Action. Retrieved from http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/05/detroit_police_departments_long_troubled_history.html
LaBumbard, J. (2007). Power in the hands of the workers. Critical Moment, 20, 5.
Lam, T. (2010, June 20). 48217: Life in Michigan’s most polluted ZIP code. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/article/20100620/NEWS05/6200555/
Page 121Martin, P. (2004). New NAFTA and Mexico-U.S. migration: The 2004 policy options. Agriculture and Resource Economics Update, 8(2), 1-4.
McCann, H. W. (1996, May). Victory ‘garden’: Manufacturing firms mutate, mushroom as makers of munitions, other war material. Ward’s AutoWorld. Retrieved from http://wardsautoworld.com/ar/auto_victory_garden_manufacturing/
McGreal, C. (2010, March 2). Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/02/detroit-homes-mortgageforeclosures-80
Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR). (2010). Retrieved from http://www.mchr.org
Mirel, J. (1998). After the fall: Continuity and change in Detroit, 1981-1995. History of Education Quarterly, 38(3), 237-267.
Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The Negro family: The case for national action. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor.
Okrent, D. (2009, September 24). Detroit: The death — and possible life —of a great city. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1925796,00.html
Oliver, M. L. (1998). The urban black community as network: Toward a social network perspective. The Sociological Quarterly, 29(4), 623-645.
Oliver, P. (1994). “If you don’t do it, nobody else will”: Active and token contributors to local collective action. American Sociological Review, 49(5), 601-610.
Orr, M. (2007). Transforming the city: Community organizing and the challenge of political change. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Rivera, G. (2007, May). Panel presentation. In E. P. Venugopal (Chair), Social activism in Detroit. Plenary session conducted at the 2007 Groves Conference on Marriage and Family, Detroit, MI.
Rodriguez, C. (2007, May 23). A Detroit success story: Can-do spirit revives southwest neighborhood. The Detroit News. Retrieved from 122 Groves Monographs on Marriage & Family Page 122 http://teamowens313.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/detroit-styleneighborhood-revival/
Rubin, H. J. (1994). There aren’t going to be any bakeries here if there is no money to afford jellyrolls: The organic theory of community based development. Social Problems, 41(3), 401-424.
Ruíz, V., & Korrol, V.S. (2006). Latinas in the United States: A historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Samora, J., Bustamante, J., & Cárdenas, G. (1971). Los Mojados: The wetback story. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Shaw, T. C. (2009). Now is the time! Detroit black politics and grassroots activism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shaw, T. C., & Spence, L. K. (2004). Race and representation in Detroit’s community development coalitions. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 594, Race, Politics, and Community Development in U.S. Cities, 125-142.
Snow, D. A., Rochford, Jr., E. B., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51(4), 464-481.
Sonn, C. C., & Fisher, A. T. (1998). Sense of community: Community resilient responses to oppression and change. Journal of Community Psychology, 26(5), 457–472.
Spreen, J. F., & Holloway, D. (2005). Who killed Detroit: Other cities beware. New York, NY: iUniverse.
Sugrue, T. J. (1996). The origins of the urban crisis: Race and inequality in postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, R L. (1979). Black ethnicity and the persistence of ethno-genesis. The American Journal of Sociology, 84(6), 1401-1423.
Thomas, J. M. (1997). Redevelopment and race: Planning a finer city in postwar Detroit. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Page 123Thomson, H. A. (2001). Whose Detroit?: Politics, labor, and race in a modern American city. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2010). 2009 Global trends: Refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, internally displaced and stateless persons. Geneva, Switzerland: Author.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). DP-1. Profile of general demographic characteristics: 2000. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2008). 2006-2008 American community survey: Detroit City, Michigan - Population and housing narrative profile: 2006-2008. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Valenciana, C. (2006). Unconstitutional deportation of Mexican Americans during the 1930s: A family history & oral history. Multicultural Education, 13(3), 4-10.
White, E. (2010, March 10). Monica Conyers gets 37 months in prison. Crain’s Detroit Business. Retrieved from http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20100310/FREE/100319981
Williams, C. (2008, February 28). New Latino wave helps revitalize Detroit. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-28-2962316916_x.htm
Zhou, M. (1997). The challenge confronting immigrant children and children of immigrants. Annual Review of Sociology, 23, 63-95.
Page 124