At the Drive-In - One Armed Scissor
“Lottie Spady, a community activist with the East Michigan Environmental Action Council, said displacing seniors for market-rate housing was unfair. “For too long we have allowed an economic rationale that disappears elders, families, children, the poor,” she said in an e-mail to the Free Press. George W. Jackson Jr., president of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., said relocating low-income residents must be done with sensitivity. But he added that projects like the 1214 Griswold conversion are needed to grow the market for downtown living and to boost the city’s tax base. And there is other housing available for low-income residents, he added.”
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Griswold Apartments low-income housing to be redeveloped | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
o, RLY. there is “OTHER HOUSING AVAILABLE.’ well, thanks for that. i guess all the elders who have lived in community with each other for the last 29 years can just go find that “OTHER HOUSING.” and all those YOUNG PEOPLE WITH JOBS AND EXCELLENT INCOMES can take their homes.
do you SEE how fucked up this is???? elders NEED community more than young professionals do—they take care of each other and check in on each other and make sure that everybody has had something to eat that day and that ms. smith is doing ok after her husband died and mr. jones is making it up the stairs ok—they NEED community for safety—they bring something to the Cass Corridor area, they have helped to make this area desirable and family oriented. and now their job is done and let’s “sensitively” kick them out to “OTHER” housing????
this is STRAIGHT UP DISPLACEMENT. poor black elders are being straight up DISPLACED in Detroit to make way for gentrifying “young professionals.”
#OpportunityDetroit, y’all.
(via iinventedeverything)
(via iinventedeverything)
i’m a unicorn!
“Zardozi – a style of embroidery, popular in India and Pakistan, which had existed since the time of the Rig Veda, but the heyday of this style – the era of Mughal Emperor Akbar and the board …This embroidery began to decorate clothing, weapons, walls, the imperial apartments, bedspread for horses and elephants, etc.Literally translated from Farsi as gold embroidery …”
(Source: make-handmade.com)
“My cell phone was blowing up. It was 7:30 in the morning, two hours before I usually get up. It kept ringing, buzzing. I finally checked it. People were sending me pictures of the place I bought, the Imagination Station, on fire. Mary and I got in the car and drove over. It’s two blocks from where I live, and a small crowd was standing around, watching it burn. I didn’t know what to think. Someone suggested it was started by kids shooting off fireworks. I don’t know. We didn’t have any enemies.
“I had a ‘95 Ford Explorer that was stolen the morning after the Super Bowl. So Mary called her family—they live downriver—to see if we could borrow the Suburban. We had that for three weeks before it got stolen.
“Things like this happen in Detroit. The neighborhood doesn’t rally around to stop it. They just do their thing, not wanting to go digging into some hornet’s nest. When I tried to report the first car, it took me three days. I was calling the crime-reporting line, and I kept getting put on hold. It’s just a quagmire of red tape here. So finally I recorded a message and sent it to a DJ I found online, a guy in Croatia. He turned it into a great little techno song that I posted on SoundCloud, ‘Detroit Police Department Stolen Car.’ I was a local hero for a hot moment.
“My friend Zak Meers came by after the fire. We had planned a mural for the Station. I said we should speed the mural up, do something. We painted two words, real big, on what was left of the building: it’s ok! That’s what it says now—just a big two-word press release.”
Reporting by Chuck Salter. Photos by Corine Vermeulen.
