The Mott Park Changing Neighborhood is Affecting not Only African American Families. It is Ruining the College Experience for Kettering University Students Too.

As you know, I have been in the quest to educate, to open a dialogue, to inspire good change in a “changing neighborhood –words that by themselves are charged negative connotations.”

And yet, the only thing I have been able to obtain is frustration from part of my neighbors (Mott park Facebook) and cold silence from the part of leadership in Flint, or insulting bogus solutions by arrogant ignorant leaders.

And so, in this blog I would present to you the evidence of how the process of disinvestment in a neighborhood- Mott Park affect children, seniors and Kettering University students that live in our neighborhood.

There is nothing more convincing than images. Imagine for a moment you are a new comer-the kid that come to Kettering University from the most affluent families in Michigan (tuition around 30.000 a year-) and live in the FIJI fraternity. You have two options: walk two blocks between trash and danger to Kettering Buildings  (hoping that Kettering Security is doing their job), OR USE YOUR CAR…

Do you like it? Will you send your son here? The pictures you have seen cover the intersection of Flushing and Dupont Avenue which is the unspoken racial boundary between blacks and whites and if you are white and come to work or study at Kettering somebody will tell you at some point not to go beyond Flushing. On one side of that intersection, it is a beautiful park- Ballenger park which is used only by blacks young men, on the other side is the FIJI fraternities where most of the white rich kids play behind a fenced lawn.

To come to Kettering, the students from FIJI have to walk thru Dupont Avenue that is in total disrepair. Dupont Avenue is experiencing the last stages of a changing neighborhood. It has gone already thru African American families moving in (crossing the Flushing boundary) white families moving out, flippers moving in to make a killer.., rental owners renting to poor people without caring for the homes-yes they rent to poor people who cares, Kettering university students rentals and, finally when the houses can not take more abuse, they are foreclosed or abandoned.

As you could see, some of the houses have been stripped of their dignity and are ignored by the leadership in the city, Kettering University, and the Foundations (who are a parallel government in itself in Flint).

On both ends of the boulevard, rest two beautiful ideas gone sour because the issues-of-race-and-class was excluded from the equation when designing it. Now the bushes are wind catchers of litters and plea from being taken care. Yet, nobody does it because in a changing neighborhood they are also in the process of disinvestment- nobody care for them ( a subject we will cover in the future  blogs of the habit of foundations to never evaluate the effectiveness of their projects pass the pictures of the inaugural day).

As the neighborhood has been progressively deteriorating, and the letters to officials have not bear results, I moved to the next step in re-building the connections in the neighborhood. I go around every Sunday afternoon, clean the streets, take care of medians, maintain foreclosure homes, question teenagers.

As the families that used to live on Dupont Avenue have moved out because the area has deteriorated,  in its place an economy of crime and drug dealing has flourished. The reasons are: The rental properties are owned by people who care only about the money it receives monthly and have little regard who they are renting. Some of the rentals owners do not live in Flint either, and so have contract companies that take care…of their properties.

When the cat’s away, the mice will play

(although the play of this teenagers because they are part of gang groups they play with guns and kill each other destroying neighborhoods)

For drug dealers, that is a perfect location: There is a dark park around the block at night- Ballenger Park, there are abandoned houses few people will be checking on their transactions, they have rich clients next to – the Hurley Hospital, and the  highway, they have Flint Police officers and Kettering security officers that do not go to that area much, they have two liquor stores in the vicinity to conduct business too, and allies around Dupont and Flushing to do the same.

Why this things continue happening if it is obvious that the intervention or measures of control are not working?

Because when things become taboo, it is difficult to break their power and they stay breathing sickness in a neighborhood for a long time. Nobody want to say…well we have an issue of race and class..What are we planning to do?

1)   Kettering  University management strategy has been to pretend we do not have problems trying to move the students out of the corner of Flushing and Dupont Avenue

2)   The city has been demolishing houses on Flushing (at a very expensive cost to tax payers),

3)    Police like ER has been working on after the fact crime and not prevention. In Flint we do not like community policing because police need to walk not drive in their monster cars…they need to relate to people…and that is difficult to do.

Can we do something? Yes, off course. The most important thing is that we sit around a table and discuss the possible solutions to our challenges of race and poverty and class. The silence and the taboo is reinforcing the walls of segregations and fueling the mistrust of students (rich) toward the locals (poor) while keeping in place the prejudge that black are bad and white are goods.

Around 3 pm on Sunday afternoon- yesterday while the white young adults- Kettering University students were playing on their side  and the blacks and poor were playing on Ballenger park (a big group of young adults black men were playing basketball), there was a Flint Police Patrol car parked on the side walk of the lecture building in aisle state position.

Kettering University in respond of the pressure of worried parents of rich children that attend the university is paying for the salaries of five Flint Police officer. Those five police officers are supposedly to monitor the area, and yet it does not happen.

Why is so obvious to me that the police cars should have been around the park or the intersection of Flushing and Ballenger and not University Boulevard on a Sunday afternoon around 3pm where nothing happen in campus- the buildings are closed?

It is because looking at something does not equal that we are seeing the same thing.  I see the neighborhood as a web of relationships and that relationships affect everything. I see prevention and education on how to live in a neighborhood as part of what police should do.

Police, and leaders in this community do not respect community policing as a viable solution to solve the problem of violence in Flint not matter how much data I have shared with leaders via letters and Mott Park Facebook.

I know it works, as I walk around Mott Park cleaning places,  talking to students, putting order, maintaining foreclosed homes, taking signs from posts, and engaging teenagers, I am doing community policing. I already know where the prostitute live and which house has problems, but that for another blog.

If we know that the majority of basketball hoops have been taken from the city of Flint because they are magnets of drug dealing and violent confrontation of gang groups. If we know that poor African American young men solve their disagreements with shootings and fighting, and we know that close to Ballenger park there are two liquor stores that sell hard liquor (the bottles I continue collecting) which are fuels for violence, and If we know that in front of that park there are the rich kids of Kettering university, wouldn’t be more effective to keep an eye on that situation instead of pretending that we do not have violence bubbling in our town?

Who cares if a black poor kid dies? That is Flint

For us, in Flint crime is about prosecuting the young men, not preventing and for rich kids is pretending that we do not have problems…after all, in few years the rich kids from Kettering University will fly away from Flint,

the place where the world Change has a terrible negative connotations…

….As I break into conversation with young people in Mott Park, I ask them…do you like Flint?  So, I ask you too..do you like Flint the way it is?

Until next time follow me in this adventure to change this little part of Flint- Mott Park

for the benefit of all children and rich and poor kids.

With all the challenges, enjoy Flint as we do…

The same day, few hours later, and few blocks from Ballenger and Flushing Rd., I was at the Kettering University pool with my children and a neighbor friend of my son. And there were three Chinese students playing in the water too. I was wondering about them and Flint…and violence and if they will be victims or not….

I tried to post in the Mott Park Facebook Neighborhood My Moving Out of the Group and I could not Post…Another Group in Flint that is Scare of Addressing our Issues of Race, Poverty and Crime…

Farewell to Mott Park Facebook.

Dear neighbors:

All I wanted was to teach you a subject that touches my heart, changing neighborhoods. I ‘m sorry if you feel offended by my comments, I wanted to mobilize us so, we do not end up like College Cultural neighborhood (several deaths under its belt) or Glendale Hills (one death under its belt plus a  meth lab in a house etc.), yet I forgot the first rule of teaching: You can only teach if a student want to learn, if not, it is a power struggle (I am a homechool mom, I should know better).

And in this power struggle I became your mother, or GM or some authority and you became in a passive-aggressive response immobilized to collect even a simple can of coke in front of your lawn, or your neighbors’ lawn. (And yes, I know most where everybody lives. I have been driving, walking, talking to neighbors, thinking, observing, reading, analyzing individual, group behaviors with the goal to find solutions for MP in the past five years).

Yes, you are angry with Flint, a city that is sinking in violence and chaos- we all are. But, it is easy to be angry with me than to feel the tremendous sorrow that we have of seeing people being killed with not regards for a cheap deal, day after day after day, with no hint from part of leaders in this community to deeply care  to make the difficult changes. Yes, it is always the kids, the criminals, the lack of work, poverty, but never, never them.

And yet, I accept and respect your opinions and desires. I am moving out of Mott Park Facebook, for I am in different plateaus. I have been fighting the issue of changing neighborhoods since 2007, and I am out of pleasantries. I have five years. I have a child that will go to Kettering, and I can not risk him walking at night and being attacked at gun point like several Kettering students have been. I need to change this part of town- with you or without you.

You are not the first group that felt shaken that I have broken the code of silence about the taboo of race and class in Flint, MI. See it on my blog the presentation I prepared for the board of trustees of the Ruth Mott Foundation when I was the president of Mott Park- 2007. And  it went sour too because I dare to tell the truth: We are all playing a role and are participants in this bully-go-round of crime, segregation, contempt for poor people, and violence. We are all!

Since that time:

Two complete studies paid by the Land Bank about “revitalizing the neighborhood have failed because we do not want to discuss the forces of race, class, poverty and crime that that shapes a neighborhood.

One grant of 150.000 dollars given by the Ruth Mott Foundation to a teenager program for three city neighborhoods has already failed because we do not want to discuss the forces of race, class, poverty and crime that shape a neighborhood.

One walking path- in front of Mott Park is already a pile of trash next to Mc Laren because we do not want to discuss the forces of race, class, poverty and crime that shape a neighborhood.

Two private schools are losing students- Saint John Vianney and Saint Paul Lutheran because we do not want to discuss the forces of race, class, poverty and crime that shape a neighborhood.

Several seniors have been robbed, one shoot on his leg, bitten from his bicycle  by a group of uncontrollable angry teenagers because we do not want to discuss the forces of race, class, poverty and crime that shape a neighborhood.

This is not about white versus black. Race and class is affecting all of us. It is black against light black or richer black also. Middle class black children more than anybody can not walk alone in the park without being bully by poor black kids or beaten and do not want to say anything to protect the status quo…

You could tell me I am racist, or classist. At this moment, I care very little, this is my quest in life to make Mott Park a truly multicultural neighborhood where blacks, whites, brown and yellow children feel welcome and have pride and ownership in this neighborhood.

As I always said to people, you do not need to like people, they are your neighbors not your friends. If you are black and do not like white and if you are white and do not like black, it is OK. What I want is something more profound. I want you to treat people with respect (and that mean not bashing), dignity, and make them feel part of this place, and have highest expectations for them, even the angry teenagers that walk in group hating everybody including their own lives-that soon will end up wasted in jail for the rest of their days.

I am done writing to leaders and neighborhoods groups, head of universities, and head of foundations. I am done trying to have meeting with city representatives, or suggesting articles or books; they also do not want to learn.

For now, I will devote all my energies to write on my blogs, and to the children of Mott Park.

So long,

Flintmichiganagreatplacetolive.wordpress.com

Flintmichiganagreatplacetohomeschool.wordpress.com

Flintmichiganchangingneighborhoodspovertyandcrime.wordpress.com

Marta

2007 Presentation to the Ruth Mott Foundation Board of Directors Meeting about Mott Park – “a Changing Neighborhood”

Flint, June 29 2007

 

Never doubt

That a small group of thoughtful

Committed citizens can change the world

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has

Margaret Mead

 

 

Good afternoon:

Thank you for giving me a few minutes to share with you all the exciting things we are doing at Mott Park. As you know Flint is one of the most segregated cities in  United States and now Mott Park is considered a “changing neighborhood,” a “transition neighborhood,” an “unstable neighborhood,” but for us who live here, we consider Mott Park the best place in the world.

 

To address the challenges we have framed the problem using the Chinese proverb that says that in times of crises, two possibilities coexist: One, the danger of bankruptcy or second, the opportunity for a quantum leap.

 

We have chosen the second approach. From the crisis, comes the opportunity to re-invent Mott Park into an artsy- college neighborhood, full of activities and interesting people to have as neighbors. In other words, we envision a dynamic, energetic place that is a magnet for art and vitality.

 

Because a neighborhood is basically a group of human beings settled into a place under a certain order, we are using the analogy of the human body as a model to address the lack of homeostasis at Mott Park. So we are providing interventions with different intensities to all the components of the neighborhood with the objective to bring back the equilibrium and to keep at base the “germs,” or problems (please read the list of interventions we are doing to reactivate the neighborhood).

 

The second analogy we are using for a changing neighborhood is one of “the blended families,” In which a great number of participants find themselves in relationships that are not of their choice. The first thing we are doing is to acknowledge the emotions of everybody, and second, we are taking out the secrecy of unhealthy relationships. In this case, I am using the leverage of being the president of the Mott Park Neighborhood Association to model how we will live in an integrated , place where everybody has a sense of participation and responsibilities. I openly bring the subject of race to discuss and find a common ground to move from fear to comfort, from displace to likeness (please read the interventions we are doing regardless of race issues).

 

The third analogy is to reverse the traditional pyramid of the top-down power structure that is prevalent in a GM town like Flint. We are engaging people to be active participants in the decision making process at Mott Park. We encourage, inspire and celebrate their uniqueness, but also raise the expectations to bring the best in everybody (Please read the interventions we are doing to empower neighbors to participate regardless their social status or race or gender).

 

Finally, the fourth analogy is based on the flattening of the world. Using the thoughts of Thomas L. Friedman and his book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty Century, we are starting to learn how to use technology, specifically the power of the internet to activate a series of economical, artistically and participatory elements to improve the quality of life of the neighbors in Mott Park (please read the interventions using internet).

 

We have to remember that more than anything, we are human beings, and that to survive and thrive like children, we have to have strong attachments to other human being. Neighborhoods, good neighborhoods could provide that.

 

We know that we will not eradicate  all the racial tensions or bring the economy to a complete turn over, nor make all the neighbors to buy in our ideas. Yet, we are counting that in moving a lot of them into our side, we will tip the epidemic of “liking Mott Park: in our favor.

 

Finally, we are (I am) ego-free. We are not here for the glory of our names but the success of our projects.

We will be monitoring our decisions and evaluating our outcomes, for what we want more than anything is success in tangible ways. In another words, we want numbers that translate our efforts into reality. We want numbers in our association, more volunteers, more home owners, and more sense of well being.

 

Thank you for inviting me to share all the challenges we have identified with our neighborhood community and how we are working to impact those positive changes. The Ruth Mott Foundation’s involvement would be great opportunity to further strengthen our ability to improve our neighborhood and could potentially open to a “Partnership Model” that could be used to revitalize every neighborhood in Flint.

 

We, at the Mott Park Neighborhood Association welcome any additional input of challenges and solutions that the Foundations identifies.

 

Thank you very much, and I hope we will continue working together,

 

Marta

 

Life is made of vignettes of little moments

That happens in particular places.

Mott Park has embraced our hearts

And we will be grateful forever

MWT

 

 

The Valuable Lesson I learned at the Clearance Section on Macy’s at Summerset Mall, the day of my birthday

 

The day started quite well for my birthday. We have gone to fencing in Troy and to celebrate that special moment, the children have planned some activities at Summerset Mall for me. With the excuse of my birthday, there were the necessary visit to the Lego Store, one to Starbuck cafe, and probably a short visit to Claire, and if time was available, one stop to their all-time favorite store Apple Computers.

The morning started with excitement because my son had a coupon for the Lego store and my daughter knowing how much I like coffee had decided to buy me a coffee cup at Starbuck café as a present.

Simple and ordinary isn’t it? Well, what I did not know is that even in the most expensive mall in Michigan I was about to learn a profound lesson in human behavior and value, and that it was related to Mott Park.

We parked in front of Macy’s and walked the main aisle toward the center of the mall. I have already asked my children which Starbuck café they wanted to go, and they told me off course the one next to the skylights, at the center of the mall. Yet, when we approached the stairs of the first floor of Macy’s I changed my mind and told the children that I wanted to go upstairs. Macy’s has a set of white plates (STAKK) that we use at home, and I wanted to buy the small coffee cups.

As we took the mechanical escalator, we were received to a well manicure place full of beautiful artifacts. Arranged in the way that only Macys know how to, it made your eyes jump from place to place with delight. My children and I wondered from here to there admiring everything.

The first floor of Macy is where affluent housewives and well-to-do girls do their wedding Registry, and so, with big business everything is classy and in the right place meticulously arranged. Diligent employees keep things pristine to encourage good sales. The affluent clients demand beauty, and great customer service. They have power and you can see that Macy’s make everything possible to make them happy.

I love to go to places that appreciate beauty and so going to Summerset is a treat for the architect eye. Macys is one of my favorite stores (probably because when I was in Atlanta the first department store I visited with frequency was Macy’s on Peachtree street in downtown Atlanta). And I love Macy’s because it tries to maintain something of another time that is to slow down and enjoy your experience of shopping one good thing of quality- that is very much the old European education I have from my father.

As we moved from aisle to aisle looking for the plates (we ended-up buying ice cream bowls),  and admiring the chocolates and every possible gadget and toy ready for Easter, I saw something unusual that looked out of place. It was a clearance area of Christmas gift out of place and abandoned or in another words rejected.  The perfect order of Macys made the exhibit more grotesque.

The set of toys, i-phone gadgets combined with chocolates boxes that had the Christmas colors and newly married black-shirts and umbrellas piled in no order looked messy and out-of-place. It bothered me for some reason that I could not ping-point. The items had the same quality as when they were made, and yet something profound has happened.

The kids went around touching every possible toy and because the prices were less expensive, they asked for everything to buy. After all, these were cheap things, good deals. For a moment, I have the notion that the rules have relaxed around us and that the children we allowed to play and touch everything at please, even destroy them. Why did I notice that? Because on the first floor of Macys where the Fine China, stemware, cocktail and whiskey glasses are, the children have to walk carefully, and do not touch things. As a matter of fact, one of those old retired ladies that seem to have been librarians in another life approached my son when he wanted to open a porcelain ceramic tea pot, and in a very controlled soft voice told him NO.

However, in the Clearance section, a place where those “old precise ladies were looking but not looking,” everything counted. Why? The answer was because the objects have lost their value.

Yes, they were cute and attractive, but they were discarded and so, even in Macy’s at Summerset, we humans were behaving badly different. We would take things, look at them, and put them in wherever place with complete disregard of the items, just because those objects, in our mind, have lost appeal.

Just like us, the Summerset mommies that are very proper were as careless as we. And so, the toys or Ipad gadgets, or umbrellas which in their prime time costs between 50 or 60 dollars where just garbage waiting to be discarded.

And so, I decided to do a quick experiment and organized everything in their place, to see if people would behave differently (while I was doing that, I was thinking that the security looking thru the hanging cameras would make of my behavior). And viola, things calmed down. Everybody was more careful. I have restored order and in doing that, I sent the message that the objects were on discount, but have not been abandoned. Somebody was taking care of them. Somebody was telling them that this object have some value.

And that it is exactly what a changing neighborhood is. We have moved to the clearance section in Genesee County, and everything, our streets, our homes, our neighborhood stores have lost the value. On top of that when everything lost value, we humans, behave accordingly with complete disregard of neatness, other neighbors, the park, the houses.

See, Mott Park, in essence is the same, the wonderful houses that are solid and beautiful inside, the park that would be an envy of people in Chicago or Atlanta, the river, and the golf course, the curve streets that give a wonderful appeal have lost value. Everything has changed. Why?

Because in a clearance or change neighborhood, we excuse us to do things that we would not do on other places. If a shirt is on the floor, we do not take the time to put it back on the rack, beside nobody is there to tell us how to behave. And that is us in Mott Park.

And so, when a week or two has passed and the prices have gone done Macys’ will take everything in a bundle and sell it to a discount store for nothing…. Exactly what is happening in Flint. People from California are buying houses in a bundle for nothing, and rent them, to poor people with complete disregard or respect.

I have passed countless times in front of clearance racks, and never thought this way, but the contrast of everything so beautiful while we behaving to our best, and then coming to that corner and became distasteful rude customers with nobody to say a thing. It was incredible!

Our neighborhoods, and Glendale Hills, and every neighborhood North of Flushing and now Mott Park have gone to the same change of behavior.

And when the process is nearly complete, and your value has gone to nothing, you have lost all your rights. Your dignity is out of the door. That is how we treat poor people in Flint and some of them, the angry ones turn around and rob us and kill us.

Poor people in Flint are considered ignorant, incapable, dangerous,  something that we mistrust for even in Macys there is a clearance rack of the unfortunate objects that did not find owners, and are treated like second class citizens.

When the changing neighborhood started, and the devaluation became, little things deteriorating and losing ownership, it was subtle. The landscape outside Tim Horton’s store located on Flushing and Ballenger became dirtier (I wrote letters to the main company asking to treat all of us customers, the ones on Flint like the ones in Flint Township, and Fenton the same, but nothing was done).

Then, came the new pawnshop that replaced the old leather store on Ballenger, and we went one notch down- the neighborhood was free market for crime. Simultaneously, The Orchand Lane Manor that were beautiful brick townhomes became an abandoned looking property exactly the same as the clearance rack. There were not maintenance available and because the rental were poor people, nobody care (I was distributing the route of Orchand Lane street and I would talk to the renters and they would tell me how bad they we treated. Now, that I want to share more information with you about Orchand Lane Manors, I can’t. There is not much information on the city taxes nor on the Piper Management Group, so I could not tell you if the apartment belong to them- the Pipper company).

As the neighborhood deteriorated because more poor people came, the behavior of the rest of the people deteriorated too. Like the clearance rack the rental owners (because the fleeing of the neighborhood created a market for flippers) treated rentals very bad (and it is doing it now), including Orchand Lane Manor owners. The porches were not repaired, or the lights were not changes, or the roofs were not cleaned, and another notched went down in quality. Then, the Golf course closed and the windows of the main house were broken and vandalism started spreading in the neighborhood. And graffiti started to appear on walls.

Now, that we are at the end of the rope, even respectable business like Diplomat Pharmacy treat us like second class citizens. In the Flint store, on Ballenger, there are more cameras and security personnel that vitamins- the environment is of mistrust and negative, and all the things that made that pharmacy a community place has become a dispenser of pills for poor people or chronic ill. But the worst keep coming because the new pharmacy that is in front of Diplomat treat as like poor liquor store customers, and give us the medication thru a protected top to bottom bullet proof glass walls. I went last week and could not believe my eyes!

Are we trash already?

See, I have been fighting the destructive changing neighborhood trends since I became the president of the neighborhood long time ago, and I am out of pleasantries.

I need everybody that care to clean, to put order, to send the message that we are not the clearance rack for Genesee County. Yes, we have African Americans in our neighborhood, and yes, we have a valuable neighborhood because we care to stand the trends, the prejudices, the market, the flippers, the old traditions that die old.

If not, what is left is the cold angry mob of disposed young 18-25 poor most of them males that will kill us for a penny. We will be the conduct of all their brutality turn to us.

I am ready to do whatever it takes to change Genesee County. Did I offend you? I am sorry. This is the future of my children.

Thanks,

Want to work for change? Stop and collect trash and in doing so, you are sending to the world the message that you are more than your circumstances.

 

Thanks,

Marta

If you Could See Flint with my Eyes…

I know that as a dyslexic person, it is very easy for me to see the big pictures..and I wish that I could convey the urgency of what I see, because even the politician in Flint do not get….and

Gill-Roy’s Hardware Closes Flint Location…The say the store had been

suffering from poor sales and deterioration neighborhoods…

Cathy Shafran,

Flint Journal, March

It is easy to assume that poor sales come first and then deterioration, but deterioration always come first because people start ABANDONING THE NEIGHBORHOOD MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALL…and then when everything is bad, they leave with anger that is better than sorrow. That is call the DESINVESTMENT PROCESS.

 

..When I plea for help to collect the trash around Mott Park, it is not because I am a capricious person that wants pristine grass…no, I know what trash does to a

neighborhood: It is the beginning of the deterioration of an area.. In Mott Park Flushing is going bad, and now is Chevrolet Ave., and Woodbridge and Joliet..and Cartier.  The neighborhood has become a gruyere cheese with holes of descending value. I know because I collect the trash in that holes trying to stop the avalanche.

 

Why litter is so important? Because is the sign that a new system is imposing the rules on the rest of us…and if we wait until the good weather,

things will deteriorate sooner and forever.

 

Trash send the message that:

1)    Nobody is in control

2)    Nobody care

3)    That trash is OK

4)    Chaos is welcome

5)    That boundaries have been broken

6)    That low –self stem is prevalent

7)    That the environment does not have values..is abandoned

8)    That people who live there do not respect nature, city, their own lives.

 

This is not invention but sound research, the “Broken Window Therory.”

Please take the time to read the broken window theory- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory,

 

And if you are inspire create a movement of cleaning every Monday an area of Mott Park that you have never been.. http://everymondaymatters.com/movement/

The  trees, and the birds, and the grass, and the little children of Mott Park will be very grateful, and will give you back beauty…after all that is why you came to Mott Park in the first place.

 

Love this little place on earth as I do.

 

Thanks

Marta

Poor and Violent- The Paralyzing Shame of Flint

“Poverty is not a shame,

but the being ashamed of it is.”

English proverb

The shame of being poor and violent percolates like heavy perspiration on a summer day. The suffocating feeling that life is a pressure cooker in the city of Flint can be summoned by one employee of the banks whose job is to photographs foreclosure homes. He told me that one police officer advice him to go early in the morning  to the poor sections of town because in the middle of the day, anger is so high that you could get kill like a fly.

Escaping from Flint to the cabins up North is not only a ritual but a measure of sanity to an environment that is toxic all the way. The media sell front page copies of pictures of coffin – with the same look-alike poses of their friends crying. The variation could be a grandmother or a mother hugging a friend. And TVs follows the same format making the events more sinister interviewing friends or neighbors of the victims.

If having a cabin up North is not a possibility, there is plenty of alcohol to calm the sorrow of living in a place where life is as cheap as it gets, especially if you are poor, and male. Because if you are poor, male, and African-American, the chances to die young or go to prison for life, are your future more sure than finishing high school.

The sorrow of alcohol is present at all corners where liquor stores sell hard liquor for fast effect. In a city with less than 90.000 residents there according to the MLive –  there is 166 active licenses, or one license for every 617 residents http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2012/01/flints_alcohol_problem_per_cap.html

Adding to the misery of poverty and violence, Flint provides countless sources of material for jokes and burlesque comparisons and is ever-present with a derogatory image on comedy circuits and late night talk shows. Flint is the ugly duckling that nobody wants to play with. It is the official bully town by everybody to make fun off. “You are from Flint?” “Why did you move from Atlanta to come here?” people look at me with incredulous eyes while asking the same question.

And so, to stop the suffering of one more killing, or one more failure (poor people have lower marks in education, ability to find jobs, computer literacy, etc), everybody objectified the poor and the violent. All the dialogues are about them like a distant place, so their leprosy does not touch us.

The shame is so deeply embedded because America, after all, is the richest country in the world and …”the land of the free and the home of the brave.”  America who feels the need to intervene in all the broken democracies around the world, is the same country that doesn’t know what to do with poverty.

The masses that voted Obama saw in him the hope that he as an African-American that has arrived to power will do something for poverty in America, something radical that will erase the shame, but it did not happen; not in America not in Flint. And so, what it is left, is this horrible feeling of being a failure, a feeling that is also embedded in all the commercials and all the cool people and cool places that  …. YOU ARE NOT LIKE US PRETTY PEOPLE. YOU ARE POOR, VIOLENT, UGLY, UNEDUCATED, AND FROM FLINT.

So, until we are ready to talk about poverty, to take the shame and see WHY are we as a city in the place we are. Until we accept poverty for what it is, we will never move ahead, and will continue , burning our shame one houses after another, until nothing is left and shame as taken everything.

So, when in conversations  people jokingly mention  “FLINT as the murder capital of the USA” like something that is happening not to them but to others , they have moved to bystander  on bullying the Flint because their shame is enormously big. They do not want to see themselves associated with the Flint that is poor and violent.

Bystanders are the third group of players in the tragedy of bully.

They are the supporting cast who aid and abet the bully through

Acts of omission and commission. They can stand idly by or look away,

Or they can actively encourage the bully or join in and

Become one of a bunch of bullies. Whatever the choice,

There is a price to pay…bystanders  at risk of becoming

Desensitized to cruelty…

The Bully, the bullied, and

The Byestander

by Barbara Coloso

Until next time think of poverty as something that happens, that is not something to shameful about. And that would be a good start!

Marta