Abandonment destroys the future of everything it touches: people, families, cities, states, countries. There is perhaps no city in our country that is living an abandonment fantasy nightmare more than Detroit, MI.
In light of this, GLUE (Great Lakes Urban Exchange) did a project where they asked Detroiters of all ages, shapes and sizes what it would take to keep them in the city called I Will Stay If…
The project asked people to complete the sentence “I will stay [in Detroit] if…” What a simple, elegant, brilliant concept. Some of the answers were very interesting.
This has been on my mind a lot over the past couple of days of bad news about GM and negatively framed analysis on the future of Detroit, of Michigan, and of the entire Midwest. For example, my fiancée & I heard an NPR BBC broadcast Monday night that had someone from Detroit’s Capuchin Soup Kitchen (incidentally, a place I worked in 2001) talking about how Detroit resembled a 3rd world country. His arguments were too ridiculous to repeat. Suffice it to say that this guy was not a good advocate neither for the disadvantaged nor the city.
As someone who, frankly, is a prototypical example of Southeastern Michigan brain drain, this troubles me. Not only does my home need people like me to stay & not leave in the first place, or come back home] we also need present ourselves in a positive way and share our vision for a future brighter than the present.
Finishing the “I Will Stay If…” sentence is a great way of beginning that.
One Love. One II.
Video credit: Model D
