Work, reimagined: Detroit gets creative
For nearly a decade, Gloria Lowe was a final-line inspector for Ford Motor Company, checking new Mustangs as they rolled off an assembly line in Dearborn, Mich. She worked at the River Rouge Complex, a hulking, mile-long structure that, back in the 1930s, employed as many as 100,000 people.
By the time Gloria started working there, just a fraction of the workers remained. (Since the year 2000, metropolitan Detroit has lost about 200,000 manufacturing jobs, despite experiencing a slight gain since 2009.)
Then one day, in 1999, Gloria was on her way back into the plant after parking yet another Mustang when an automated, two-thousand pound metal door came loose and crashed down on her head. She was diagnosed with left-side nerve damage from the top of her brain down through her feet, and later, with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.
鈥淲hat image do you have in your mind about Detroit? Do you see only empty lots and abandoned buildings, and trash all over the place? Or do you see the empty lots as we who live there see them 鈥� as opportunities?"
鈥淚 was told by my doctors that I would never work again. I was only 50 years old. I didn鈥檛 know what it meant not to work,鈥� Gloria recalls.
She was able to find a part-time job at a law firm, helping military veterans apply for aid and benefits. During those consultations, she listened to the stories of dozens of veterans, most of them men, who 鈥渨ere lost and didn鈥檛 know what to do,鈥� says Gloria.
So she started asking herself what she could do to help. Over and over, Gloria asked them, 鈥淲hat kinds of skills do you have?鈥� More often than not, they鈥檇 tell her they used to be carpenters in their former lives, or woodworkers, roofers, plumbers, electricians.
When she heard this, Gloria began looking at Detroit with new eyes. These men, she thought, were like the more than 33,000 vacant, sometimes blighted, homes in her city. They have good foundations; they just needed some fixing up. And maybe they could help each other.
And so began We Want Green Too, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to 鈥渞e-educate, re-train, and re-build a 21st century, sustainable Detroit.鈥� Gloria is working to assemble various teams with all the basic skills to make crumbling homes liveable: dry walling, painting, floor repair, and so on.
In addition to veterans, she鈥檚 finding craftsmen among former prison inmates, recovering addicts, and other un- or underemployed Detroiters.
鈥淵ou have people who are challenged, they don鈥檛 have jobs. Why not make their jobs re-structuring their own communities?鈥� says Gloria.
Hey, it鈥檚 not over'
We Want Green Too is just one of many ways that Detroiters are working to 鈥� to create livelihoods more sustainable than those that have disappeared. As Gloria continues to work on the housing end, her friends and neighbors are busy growing a local, sustainable food system (there are now over 1,600 farms and gardens in Detroit, producing over three tons of food annually, nurturing a new education paradigm, and creating social enterprises that build community and capital).聽
When pieced together, these projects aren鈥檛 merely aimed at figuring out ways for people to make a living; they鈥檙e about neighbors helping neighbors to build new lives. The city is becoming a place, in certain pockets, where citizenship isn鈥檛 defined by voting and paying taxes. It鈥檚 thought of more broadly 鈥� creative collaboration to create new ways of living out of necessity.
Nearly seven years ago, Brother Ray Stadmeyer, a Capuchin monk, realized something had to change. He was working at a soup kitchen on the east side of Detroit. Over several years, he served thousands of meals and got to know hundreds of men and woman. And a lot of them were just stuck.
He remembers seeing his clients at the soup kitchen 鈥済o through treatment and come back real excited about their sobriety, or they鈥檇 come out of prison and be real excited about getting a new life, and there was no place for them. Our sense was that we had to counteract that.鈥�
That idea became On the Rise, an east side Detroit bakery operated by a dozen men who have recently been released from prison or drug rehab programs. The bakers also live together in a house a half-mile from the bakery.
Sixty-two-year-old Edward Collins, a supervisor at On the Rise, was one of the original participants in the enterprise. He spent 30 years moving in and out of prison; while on the inside, learned how to bake. Today he trains the new hires. He wants to show them, he says, 鈥渢hat a person can be incarcerated, and can be old, and also be on the bottom of the barrel and be able to bounce back.... Hey, it鈥檚 not over.鈥�
The formerly incarcerated, the homeless, the unemployed, the young, the recovering addicts, these are segments of society often deemed burdens, or hopeless, or victims. But looked at in a different way, many of these people also have the potential to be assets to their communities, with the ability, experience, and time to directly impact their neighborhoods in meaningful ways.
On the Rise isn鈥檛 an anomaly. The bakery was hatched by one of several organizations that see themselves not as charities, but as regenerative and sustainable incubators of ideas and human capital. The Sunday Dinner Company and Cornerstone Bistro 鈥� and more recently, -Detroit 鈥� have programs similar to On the Rise, training homeless and unemployed Detroiters to become waiters, cooks, bartenders, and bakers.
And, of course, beyond the institutional projects, countless individuals, like Gloria Lowe, are figuring out ways for Detroiters to re-think their role in their city.
Take Carlos Nielbock, for example. He was born in 1959 to a German mother and an African-American GI father in Celle, Germany. Trained in Germany鈥檚 guild system as an architectural, ornamental metal worker, Mr. Nielbock came to Detroit in 1984 to find his father and immediately fell in love with the city.
Today he builds ornate and beautiful, fences, gazebos, bike racks, and windmills. He鈥檚 teaching an apprentice, 23-year-old Sharay Kodihem, who never imagined spending his days as a metal worker.
Formerly into, as he puts it, 鈥済ang-bangin鈥� and all that,鈥� Mr. Sharay met Carlos through his cousin; he鈥檚 since fallen in love with metal work, and has been welding, grinding, and riveting ever since. Sharay told me that he tries to talk to his friends about what he鈥檚 doing, but they鈥檙e just not interested. 鈥漌hen I tell 鈥榚m it sounds like it鈥檚 going in one ear out the other. They think selling drugs is the way to go and there鈥檚 more than that out here.鈥�
Seeing opportunity in a new Detroit
The founders of the Boggs Educational Center 鈥� a Detroit school set to open its doors next fall 鈥� understand where Sharay Kodihem鈥檚 friends are coming from. They understand Detroit鈥檚 education issues run much deeper than budget deficits and the debate between public and charter schools.
鈥淭oday we need to combine learning with work, political struggle, community service, and even play.鈥� Those words, painted across the center of a mural on the back of an empty building in Detroit鈥檚 Cass Corridor, come from the school鈥檚 namesake, 96-year-old philosopher, writer, and activist Grace Lee Boggs.
Two years ago (in the ), Julia Putnam, who will be the Boggs Educational Center鈥檚 first principal, of the new school: 鈥淲e will provide a response to Grace鈥檚 observation that 鈥榯he reason why so many young people drop out from inner-city schools is because they are voting with their feet against an educational system that sorts, tracks, tests, and rejects or certifies them like products of a factory. They are crying out for another kind of education that gives them opportunities to exercise their creative energies because it values them as whole human beings.鈥欌��
Julia and her partners want to convey to their students that they don't have to wait until they鈥檙e older to contribute to society.
鈥淵ou can do it right now, at six, at eight, at 10, at 12, whatever. I think kids are way more impressive and way more cool, and way more fun to be around, when they feel of use,鈥� she told me.
The big difference between most other schools and the Boggs Educational paradigm is that theirs is not a standards-based education model. Their objective isn鈥檛 necessarily to prepare students for the global workforce. It鈥檚 much deeper, and likely more practical.
鈥淚 wouldn't say that I'm not worried about jobs in that I don't think people need them, and need to make a living. I certainly want every student that we have in our school to be a success. But for some students that means starting a plumbing business. It doesn't mean being a lawyer or doctor or engineer. It means doing something very specific, very local,鈥� Julia said.
Speaking at a recent , Boggs asked her audience, 鈥淲hat image do you have in your mind about Detroit? Do you see only empty lots and abandoned buildings, and trash all over the place? Or do you see the empty lots as we who live there see them 鈥� as opportunities? To grow food for the community, to become more self-reliant, to begin anew, to bring the neighbor back into the 鈥榟ood?鈥�
And therein lies the possible future for Detroit, a place where people are undergoing, slowly but deliberately, a revolution of values: reimagining the meanings of work, of wealth, of community. It鈥檚 cultural evolution 鈥� or, as Boggs titles it in her most recent book, the next American revolution.
鈥� Zak Rosen wrote this article for , a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Zak is an independent public radio producer. This story was based on his recent documentary, Work in Progress. You can
鈥� originally appeared in .
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