Flint Michigan Needs a City 2.0 Makeover -TED Prize

For the first time in the history of the prize, it is being awarded not to an individual,

but to an idea. It is an idea upon which our planet’s future depends.

The 2012 TED Prize is awarded to….the City 2.0.

The City 2.0 is the city of the future… a future in which more than ten billion people on planet Earth must somehow live sustainably.

The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom.

The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.

The City 2.0 reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants, facilitates smaller families, and eases the environmental pressure on the world’s rural areas.

The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life.

The City 2.0 is the city that works

 

Announcing the 2012 TED Prize Winner – The City 2.0

http://www.tedprize.org/announcing-the-2012-ted-prize-winner/

In a few hours the group that convenes for the TED conference will have the opportunity to discuss the City 2.0.

My wish is that TED prize takes a real city (my city) Flint Michigan which is the antithesis of the city 2.0 and brainstorm solutions to brake an old rusty system to ignite problem solving, change and innovation.

We assume that the city 2.0 with its participatory essence will bring the best thinker and innovators to address the challenges of cities around the world, but before we start moving in that direction, we have to understand the system in which such cities rest.

And before any conversation, we have to understand that cities are people that come together to conduct a series of transactions. From that transactions, the space (real and virtual as internet connections) get organized.

And so what defines that city is the quality of the transaction. In a city like Flint were the organizing factor was the auto- industry, it created an unbalanced of power by a mono industry.

We tend to assume that cities are democratic entities, but cities built over one industry that control all the resources, are not. Monopolies have tremendous power in how the different institutions of the city function, and it affects every aspect of daily live. More importantly, they control the tax base that is the live hood of the city services, and any step that industry takes –like a domino effect, affects the city.

But a monopoly has a more powerful effect on people because all the transactions of daily lives are embedded in the unbalance of power. And despite that GM has few factories left in Flint, its legacy is omnipresent today, as it was in its glorious days.

This is a city were a small group of people makes all the decisions while a population of passive-aggressive obeys.

Adding that the type of industry is based on the assembly line, there is no space for free flowing. Obedience is at the center of the transactions while change, spontaneity, and people participatory innovation are rejected.

That produces a city were silent power struggle is present on daily bases. The problems the city has are a reflection of the lack of cooperation to solve together while segregation is present in issues of race, class, and institutions.

Flint is a city that is trapped in a model of transaction that is paternalistic, controlling and very, very old.

As a system, Flint shows distress in all areas. And its markers show huge challenges in:

• Number of death by violent crime per number of residents
•  Quality of education per number of students completing high school.
• Solvency of the city and debt per number of residents.
• Migration of educated youth to “cool more democratic cities,” per number of residents.
• Ratio of technology use per number of residents.
• Number of foreclosures homes per number of residents.
• Number of burn properties per number of residents.
• Number of children experiencing poverty per number of residents.
• Number of brown fields per number of residents.
• Number of preventable illnesses like diabetes 2
• Number of youth involved in gang groups per number of residents.
• Number of abandoned parks and public places per number of residents.
• Number of foreclosed commercial properties per number of residents.
• Number of seniors experiencing poverty per number of residents.
• Number of youth dropping from school per number of residents.
• Number of youth expelled from schools per number of residents.
• Number of outlets to buy fresh and nutritious food per number of residents.
• Number of outlets to buy liquor, and illicit drugs per number of residents.
• Number of children with lead in their blood per number of residents.
• Number of mental illness individuals per number of residents.
• Number of people on disability per number of residents.
• Number of adults and children involved in substance abuse like methamphetamines, prescription drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and inhaled solvents
• Number of people that are illiterate per number of residents.
• Number of people with sexually transmitted infections.

Flint is a city with a high level of contempt, shame and a tremendous disinvestment. Most people want to move out than to move into Flint. Everybody feel helpless toward the issues of poverty which brings emotions of anger, depression, frustration and extreme stress which increase the cycle of abuse that is already high.

The entire system of the city lacks transparency, reliability, honesty, and life seems a series of victimhood events, one after another (please read the front page of the newspapers and the anonymous comments on such newspapers too.)

But what makes the system of the city of Flint difficult to change is that the feedback loop for correction is indirect, distant and broken. With unions and its collective bargaining power that protects is territories at all cost (example despite schools failing poor children), and with organizations that favor strong managing types like the strong Mayoral system, it feed passivity in the population. Their input is not valued, so they stop trying.

Corruption at all levels is the fast road of quick money and the instant gratification of a population that feels it does not have much to offer to the world.

Crime is a parallel economy that is justified as a viable solution between the poor, which feeds a criminal system that is high on incarceration and very low on results of re-education and re-integration of criminals to society.

So, it is my desire that the city 2.0 with is participatory and democratic nature infuses new energy of creative power to address all the challenges of cities like Flint. I invite everybody to choose Flint as the model from which solutions can be envisioned.

And with a new interface of participation- the city 2.0 could bring the best of the human transactions to bear fruits to a world that is getting smaller and more interconnected.

We are at a point on human civilization that we need to value each person as an active participant, a rich resource of knowledge, creativity and talent. A city 2.0 with its new way of understanding human interaction in a context of living together brings hope, respect and true democracy to places.

In the end, we human are social being that build cities to accommodate such needs. I hope the city 2.0 could accommodate such needs in a more justice way.

We could dream of a city where everybody feels included and listened and encouraged.

Sincerely,

Marta

Race Relations between Whites and Blacks are Like a Long Bitter Divorce Going on Forever

 

When I came to the this country, one the most irritating things I had to do is to start filings endless forms for school, work, social security and the like, and they all asked me:” what is your race?”

“What is my race?” Don’t you know that race is a man-made way of classifying people? I never self-classified myself according to race…I do not know..” a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I think.

The authorities would not budge…the box in the form had to be filled for reasons of quote” you are white, or black (they do not  say black- African American), or Hispanic perhaps,” but you have to fill the box about race. In United States race is a big deal. We put you in a box for your own good.

Hispanic…what is that? Does it mean that I am more brown, or less brown, how about a Japanese-Brazilian- what is that? What is a Korean- Argentinean and how about my daughter an American-Argentinean-Iranian is she black, white, brown, yellow? How about a mixing of bloods- does it count?

Nothing will be enough. Black and white behaves likes a long bitter divorce in which both sides have regrets, hurtful emotions, and contempt. And with their attitude, “I’m right, you are wrong,” alienate everybody else. And so, when you come to the United States you inherit their frustration and have to take sides. And like parents in a bitter divorce they have all the power to make you feel helpless and voiceless. People will say, well blacks have being dominated by whites for so long that is your duty to side with them, if you do not do it, you are a racist. Or whites will tell you if you have black friends, we will never talk to you anymore, and here we go. You have to be in one side or the other, but not in the middle.

Why do I have to continue with an issue that was created by power from a group over another other to make money? Why do I have to be forced to be in favor or against one group?

This divorce of a relationship that from the beginning was hurtful- one group using the other has spilled on everything, to the point of obsession of what is to be pure white or pure black.

Do I say…well I have a father that is light, a mother that is dark, a grandmother that is dark, and sister that is light and so on? Could I say that my nickname, my common name, the name for whom I am called by everybody in Argentina is Negra..”Oh no, Negra sound like niger, and it is an offensive word here. You can not be called like that in public, anymore- done.”

The obsession of both parts is relentless, and we are passing this unfinished business to everybody, our kids, the new immigrants, other countries, our taste and stores and dolls and every innuendo of life. The cycle with it is sorrow repeats again, over and over.

The situation is crazy and the behaviors are so distorted by the invention of race in United States that Indians who come from Indian with their dark skin see themselves as white, and South American that in Argentina never question much their colors of skin start seeing that in their family their brother is black but their sister is white.

What make me an Hispanic? What is Hispanic than a way to classify the third biggest group of people living in United States that comes from Latin American…yes because people from Spain (the country that colonized Mexico, Central and South America) see themselves as Europeans that speak Spanish. They see themselves as whites.

After a few months here and listening to both sides, the multicolor group has no voice. And because race between white and blacks dominates the agenda, the rest of us feel pressure to continue their bitter divorce.

There is so much invested in the black-white

Understanding of the problem, that change is not welcome.

Ever!

Suddenly every one of your behaviors will be judged under the lens of race that in itself is maidenly crazy. The truth is when you are with a person for a long time, you stop seeing how they look and relate for who they are. That is normal. If not, men in the military that are dark and light skin would not bond in a platoon, or beautiful women will have eternal approval of their partners by their appearance, and it is not true.

The truth about life which is masked under a White and Black

Simplistic division is that it is Gray,

and it is complicated and has overtones and

has ins and outs, and it is messy and full of mistakes and

regrets.  

That is what makes life so rich and beautiful!

 

Adding to the boxes in Flint the box white or black is a big one. Blacks complain about whites and whites mumble things about whites, and here we go, they continue their bitter divorce that started years ago.

Why in Flint the box of white versus black is so strong?  Why the divorce is still so bitter here that us the new generation that are living in Flint need to carry the grudges of anger and sorrow? It is simple.

In a city like Flint with a factory mentality of assembly line, there is no space for blending. Everything here is sequentially classified and money and GM designed this city with boxes for everybody. There were black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, there were working class neighborhood and upper class neighborhood, etc. And even in neighborhoods like Mott Park the division of classes (was a white neighborhood) is done by street and size of houses (that is for another story).

Segregation made the distrust of each other stronger because we do not know each other. And this distrust has been dumped into future generations that find themselves doing things they do not know why. White children do not like black children and they do not know the reasons and black kids do not like white children for the same situation.

And while other states have grown in number of multiracial families with more tolerance to ambiguity and blending, our cities in Michigan specially Flint and Detroit has stayed stuck. Please take the time to read this article in the economist magazine of February 12, 2012-

Segregation

The dream is getting closer

A report shows that America’s cities are steadily becoming more integrated

….

The ten best cities for black-white equity are mostly in the South and in the West, while the ten worst are in the north-east and in the Midwest. Margery Turner, who compiled the report, hastens to say there are still significant gaps to address.

http://www.economist.com/node/21547270

 

That is one more of the reasons young people do not like to live in Flint, they do not want to carry this segregation in their backs. The new generations are more comfortable in a world where blacks are in powerful positions. They have seen a President of the United States, Secretary of state, popular scientists, military officials, movie actors, politicians, fund managers, all being of dark skin. Technology has given this generations a world where  things are less black and white and more blend..in a chat room, nobody knows what color is your skin, or according to a TED presenter 24% of the population of Tweets are African American, etc.

The challenge in Flint is that race is not only a white thing it is very much a black thing too.

But we can break that walls and see us more than color, because under all of that, what matter more is the quality of our persona.

Seeing us as white a black is a shallow way of separating our self in groups of small and big, tall and shorter and so on.

I condemn slavery, but I do not want to continue being in a world that is simplistically divided in colors. We are more than how we look.

For me the multiracial box is a compromise. It frees my soul from the tyranny of the mirror.  I am who I feel I am inside myself.

And for the people in my neighborhood, I try to see people for who they are, and not for how they look- doing that exercise, every minute of my day, give me power. I behave, and think, and act upon my belief system.

 

You can do it too. You can stop carrying your parents’ ideas of how the world should be. You can stop carrying your school and your teachers, and your city, and your politician’s ideas of how the world should be…

Thanks

 

Marta

The Crazy Lady that Cleans the Streets of Mott Park in Flint on Sunday Clothes

I started cleaning the streets of Mott Park Sunday afternoons while in the process weaving to cars passing by. I saw the faces of surprise of the drivers, and I knew what they were thinking.

Who is this “crazy lady that collects trash on Dupont and Chevrolet Avenue in the middle of a snowy day? It is me. It is Marta. It is a person that is trying to change how we perceive ourselves in Flint, and in Mott Park.

I am truthfully campaigning to convince my neighbors that we, in Flint, deserve better, and while now trash is our trade mark (on everything), it will change to great things.

At the beginning, I was so angry…and said to myself all the things that middle class people say to themselves for whom the values of pride, hard work, neatness are tokens of daily live. Why they do not clean? Why trash is so prevalent in Flint? Why  trash has invaded every street in Mott Park? Why middle class values are only for the “old ladies in my neighborhood and the young/ students artist feel out of the loop?”

I knew better that being angry I would close my creativity. And while collecting trash was my first motivation, understanding why people/ neighbors live around trash was my final destination. So to find solutions to problems, most of the time you have to do exactly the opposite, if not you will end up in the same place like you started…could I mention all the areas we are stuck in Flint…crime solutions, educations solutions, work solutions etc?

So, instead of being angry, In a changing neighborhood and I needed to see the problem from another angle. Yes, I was the crazy lady that clean the trash, but I was more than that. I needed to change the STATUS QUO of how things function in Flint and in a changing neighborhood. I needed to collect trash from another angle.

This is what I did: Following the advice of the book BLINK by Gladwell on how your first impressions marks your relationships (I forced myself to change my demeanor from frustration to sunny disposition). And I did something that will open the doors I was looking for: Every person I encountered, every car I saw, I would relate to them like they were the most “capable, talented persons in the world.” I just happen that I was collecting trash in the front of their rental house and they were looking at me.

So, what happen next was incredible!

• I was not cleaning for them (like a lot of people do feeling sorry for poor people. Long time ago, I had a friend that lived in front of the playground and collected trash in the park  for five years without creating any change of behavior on people. He left the neighborhood an angry man. )
• I was not judging them, and that is what a lot of homeowners/ middle class do…read Mlive annonymous comments and Mott Park Facebook comments.
• I was cleaning for me because  I LOVE THIS NEIGHBORHOOD and I CAN SEE SOMETHING THEY DO NOT.  I SEE BEAUTY, I SEE PRIDE, I SEE POSSIBILITIES, I SEE MY HOME.

In a changing neighborhood, people do not have a feeling of pride about their neighborhood nor themselves.  The ones who stay feel trapped, the ones who come feel lost.

As I changed the way I saw people, and the neighborhood, I free my mind to find solutions. And, as I continued collecting trash, people start talking to me, I become a regular figure in their street – like mother hen- and I started loving teaching people to see BEAUTY IN A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD.

And that takes me to my next entry WHY CHAINGING NEIBORHOODS ARE SO UGLY? (I will post this week)…because..

Until next time, collect the trash in your street and learn to see beauty in the trees, and in the grass, in the possibilities of the human mind. If you weave community connections, you are changing the destiny of your neighborhood, and your well-being.

 

Until next time use your anger to change the world for good.

Thanks,

Marta

Can We Dream of a Flint that is Not Segregated?

 

Of course we can. But first we have to understand why Flint is segregated in the first place.

When I came to Flint from Atlanta- a city that was supposed to be the center of the southern enclave of bigotry and racial inequality, I encountered in Flint something much more sordid, and grotesque- A cold division between white and blacks which move carefully like airplanes in the air in different tunnels, trying never to collapse- very crazy indeed.

See, I am not American by birth; I am from Argentina, from a typical middle class family that has a little of this and a little that in terms of color of skin. My father’s family comes from France and Italy, my mothers’ family comes from Spain and native mix of  South American Indians and Africans. So if you see my family picture, my father is light skin with freckles, my mother is dark and my grandmother looks more like and African American person from here. To add to the mélange, in Argentina your nickname responds to some personal characteristic and since my older sister has light skin blond hair and I was born with darker skin and brown hair, my nickname became NEGRA (or black). In Argentina, I was called by everyone “Negra Wyngaard,” and my brother a prominent lawyer is the “Negro Wyngaard.” So mix colors, black as a nickname was normal to me until I came to USA.

So race in the context of American obsession is something I will write in more detail in other entries, but what I would like to mention is that a mélange of a little of this and a little of that is my way of life, and so, to be forced to be here or there- like Americans want you to be in terms of race is not my cup of tea.

In Atlanta, at least in the city- where I lived there is a great mélange and eclectic neighborhoods and centers of contact between groups. But in Flint, well the story is something else.

I will never forget the first time I was in Flint with my husband who is Iranian and his college friend from Ohio State University at Olive Garden on Miller Rd. We have just moved from Atlanta and were getting acquainted with Flint ways of doing things. That day, at the same restaurant, there was an African American family in t dining like us. When I went to the bathroom, I passed by them and experienced a very strange behavior…”I was ready to say hello like you do in the South, but they looked at me and yet they did not. It was like they acknowledged and denied my existence…at the same time…”

What is this? I thought to myself, and then with time I understood that segregation teaches you to live with invisible boundaries. You see, but you do not see. You talk, but you do not talk. You care, but you do not care because you are trapped in this invisible walls that you do not even know they exist.

In Flint you learn that there are boxes for everything. If your are Catholic you move inside a box. If you are jew you move inside another box. If you are black you move into another box. If you are student from Kettering University there is a box. If you are student from Mott Community college, or Baker or University of Michigan there is another box…and the story goes nobody mix with other boxes.

It is my take that Flint is tremendously segregated becomes it comes from a mono-industry that tough people to stay in compartment in little boxes.

In a factory town where the most important thing is the assembly line for the survival of the city, people learn obedience, even if that is to repeat the same old same movement for hours, days, months, years, etc. Obedience is well paid and silence is the by-product.

Who will break these invisible lines? I invite you to do it, because Flint needs a new way of relating. We are here to stay, so it is time to relate in a different way. Maybe old people will not change, but I hope you desire a better world for your children than misery of living in boxes.

The world and people are far more interesting that the boxes they have created by fear and obedience.

I invite you to be irreverent and vibrant and embrace change by doing something extraordinary in Flint: Say hello to everybody and break the structure of power. Say hello and weave connections. Say hello and empower you life.

Because under each skin, there is story, there is a life, there is a person, there is a world.

Until next time “use your anger to change the world.”

Marta

 

 

 

 

 

Why a Changing Neighborhood is so Toxic?

 

Because is structure changes from familiarity and cohesion to fear.

Fear when in a temporary stage is useful, but when it sets into a collective situation it creates domino effects that produces stampedes that tend to be destructive.

Adding to the effect that in Flint, changing neighborhoods are fueled primarily by race which turns into a taboo that nobody wants to talk about.

So the combination of shame and fear in a population is recipe for disaster and the changing neighborhood in Flint from white to black has move from the North part of Flint to the center of the city. And like termites this combinations of human behavior are destructive to all us.

But more of all SILENT KILLS AND IS KILLING FLINT…..

If you want to see the effect of changing neighborhood and lack of awareness of politicians while the neighborhoods are deteriorating go and look at areas in town that are in the process of being dismantle. One is the prestigious College Cultural neighborhood where changing neighborhood is coming with destructive behavior thru East Court and Franklin St. and the other is close to Mc Laren Hospital where the public school has been closed, the west Flint Library has been closed (while more liquor stores have been opened)… Ballanger Hwy. and Westcombe Ave.

Silently kills and like with the HIV epidemic is time to talk about changing neighborhoods in a constructive way.

Change is inevitable in life and so, what is important is what we do with change. Are we ready to embrace the challenge or try to scape under fear and contemp?

Like I said “Use your anger to change the world,”

Until then, embrace change as I do,

 

Marta

The Other Side of Flint, Michigan

I started the blog Flint Michigan a great place to live (flintmichiganagreatplacetolive.wordpress.com) because my children were born in Flint Michigan and I wanted to show “to the world,” all the great things that they do on daily bases.

Yet, the picture would not be complete if I do not talk of the challenges of the “other “ Flint,” the Flint who is poor and plagued with the epidemic of crime and ignorance. The Flint that is poor need also need a space where their story are told with respect and dignity.

Yes, I am very critical of all efforts we have done in Flint to reduce the gap in issues of class and education. Crime is at all times high, and we continue wasting the only resource this children have that is time.

I am hoping that my conversations of poverty, crime and changing neighborhoods bring another view on the debate of such subjects. And bring a revolution to its core of how we address poverty in the riches country in the world.

Until then, following as I show you what we could do.

Marta