More Scary than Halloween is How Little the Institutions and Leaders in Flint Care about Children of Limited Resources

 

“This is an opportunity to increase public safety in our community. This millage could pay for the equivalent of 50 officers and add – yes, add – to our police and fire departments.

Mayor of Flint

Once upon a time there was this idea that children in Flint had no value, so they would go to school and come home without back pack or homework…there were be no expectations for them to be or do anything of value in their day to day life and for their future. There were be not a solid plan of what would happen when they graduate, and if they graduate, for the curriculum at school is useless at best, and the opportunities in the city thanks to the present leaders equal to zero. So these children would wonder the streets of Flint with no direction and a lot of anger.

And there were be election time and the Mayor of Flint would plead for more money from fearful residents of Flint to put more of those angry children in jail with a mileage, that if it pass will bring more police officers and fire fighters in the streets. The  Mayor presenting his argument that incarceration is the brilliant Rhode Scholar solution to control the unruly, the angry, the ignorant, the adolescent that has lost any direction and hope, nor the desire to belong to a city that reject him or her because she is poor and uneducated.

Like Ansel and Greatel, the set up is to make them to waste their time while tempting them with easy money from drug dealing jobs, stealing for pawnshops or taking siding for metal scraping sites, to end up as criminals that feed the Flint industry of crime- the official one of lawyers,  parole officers, and all the insular industry of food, clothing that support the functioning of jails, or in the official language “Law enforcement and Public Safety, and the untrue name of correctional facilities…”

This system starts in the neighborhoods of Flint creepily ends up at the door steps of the City Hall building which houses the Flint Police Department and in front of the City Hall, the Jail…and how creepy it is that the most important buildings that surrounds the executive branch of government in the city of Flint are related to crime….

It is so, so scary for children of limited resources to live in Flint that a father (a neighbor on one of the properties I bought in MP) abandoned his home which has been paying for more than seventeen years to move and start a new life (as a renter) for his younger daughter in Grand Blanc. Having seen enough of the demise of lives of children in Flint, this father’s hope is that something better could happen to his younger daughter. After so much despair, cool selfishness from adults toward children, he had the courage to say no thanks to the city of Flint, not thanks to the schools in Flint, not thanks to the politician in Flint. He knew that by moving to Grand Blanc, his daughter would be out of danger of being killed not only physically but mentally and emotionally.

In Grand Blanc, she would encounter another type of people, people that would expect great things from her- she would have a future. The same child that in Flint, as African American of limited resources, was founded incapable of reading, and was giving an exercise class instead of extra help in reading, is considered in Grand Blanc intelligent and full of potential.

And like a great story, this child that had problems reading and that was receiving poor education in Flint schools moved to the Grand Blanc district and she has special classes and teachers that care and a backpack full of homework to do at home. Of course, she does not want to come back ever again to Flint, the city where the Mayor and all the other officials eat the children’s future. She knows better that Flint is a very scary place for poor children…UHHHHHHH

If you already connected in the neighborhood..

You already know who will be willing to make a little money

On the side dealing dope. You know in the ghetto there always be a whole bunch of young guys without work and without much to do looking for opportunities like this. They see the fancy clothes, fast cars, new sneaker and all that, and they want it. Many of them ain’t got much going on for them at home. If the police rolls up on them they face little penalties because they minors..

 Interviewed with Cash Money Pockets of Crime by Peter K. B. St. Jean

 

So when people in Flint tell you that Devil nights is dangerous and that houses are burning…you will know why… It is because angry adults one time were children in Flint and, nobody,       nobody cared for them, nor the teachers, nor the Mayor of Flint, nor their parents. And now they are burning deteriorated houses to take revenge, to burn their frustrations…

So, it is not Halloween that is scary in Flint. It is the Mayor and his political allies who are the scariest of them all! And from the children of limited resources with no parental supervision.. Flint is a very, very dark hole…a dungeon of not return…

“If you see a bunch of young kids hanging out on the corner when they

 should be in school or when it is too late for them to be out anyway, you know that they done gone wild. You know that they up to no good. At least that is how many drug dealers think. You need bodies to peddle the stuff so here is your opportunity. Sometimes you see them hanging on the corner like in front of a liquor store, a vacant lot or a house, and you already know that they be dealing there. But you see not all of them already be involved. Some of them are looking for that chance….In the same way, a drug dealer can pick young guys on the street corners because they be standing there waiting for something to happen, waiting for an opportunity. So that is how you get them….”

Interviewed with Cash Money  for Pockets of Crime by Peter K. B. St. Jean

UHHHHH, Halloween is not scary, what it is truly scary, it to be poor in Flint..UHHHH…and with no place to go than the liquor stores, dangerous parks, broken sidewalks, slam rental owners, police in big cars that patrolled the streets and find you a suspect…UH HHH Halloween is not scary, it is the politicians that blame your poverty for not making their job and so it goes…. You end up in jail and they end up in Washington feeling very proud of themselves….UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

To Empower Teenagers in Flint is Very Simple.. Just Listen to Them.. Little Free Library in Mott Park- Flint MI for Teenagers

 

The new Mott Park Teenagers Little Free Library (Number- 2867)  is coming to 919 Frank St.

After observing that several of the teenagers in the neighborhood rarely used the FLL, a series of conversations conducted randomly during summer on Cadillac, Perry, Joliet, Norbert, Nolen and Frank and Dougherty brought to the attention that the FLL around MP do not have much books/magazines that are of interests of teenagers.

And so a group of teenagers decided to organize a FLL and started collecting magazines. If neighbors want to donate, the magazines could be dropped at 907 Frank.

List of Magazines Teenagers want to have in the FLL are:

Discovery Girls

Slam

Sport Illustrated

Baseball America

Teenagers’ graphic novels

Girl’s Life

Skateboarding

GamePro

Nintendo Power

Play station

Popular science

Popular Mechanics

Computer Gaming World

BMX Plus-

Comics- Batman, Spider Man, Wonder Woman, Captain America

Teen Graffiti

 

Thank you for helping this project!

Omid, Arezu, Erick, Nykoreyan

http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/

There is so many interesting pictures …take a pic at http://www.google.com/search?q=public+pictures&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1RFmUOSJLIuCyAHPoYFw&ved=0CFYQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=600#hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=free+little+library&oq=free+little+l&gs_l=img.1.0.0j0i24l9.10966.15802.0.17479.17.13.2.2.2.0.177.1502.5j8.13.0…0.0…1c.1.OoqwdHfjYaw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=fa0843734d2fc98e&biw=1366&bih=600

Changing Mott Park, One NO at the Time

Flint MI, August 18, 2012

….

Dear Ms:

In response to our phone conversation, I want to educate you in one of the reasons why Flint is in the state of decay that it is.

Yes, there are mountains of challenges, but one of them and maybe one of the most important is that leaders like you always say no. They do not lead, they demoralize us.

No, poor children can not learn (this is what public school educators expect from kids from poor families in Flint).

No, poor families can not live in peace (this is what social worker expect from kids and families from chaotic backgrounds in Flint).

No, poor children can not evade violence and crime (this is what police expect from poor teenagers in the poor areas of the city of Flint).

No, neighborhoods can not improve (this is what City Hall expect from changing neighborhood in Flints, like our Mott Park).

Why is that No is the most preeminent word in Flint? It is a long story, but because in our particular case I am caring about my chaining neighborhood, I will tell you few things.

 

In our conversation you dismissed me completely without knowing at thing about me…why because in Flint we have very low expectations for people, and things are in a certain way even if we are sinking.

In reality, probably I have more experience in things related to my neighborhood than you, and surely, more education and ideas how to improve Mott Park than you. Why? because I have high expectations about Mott Park than you.

See, what you do not know is that

1)  I come from Tucuman, a city in Argentina, so I know to languages.

2)  I travel around the world, so I visit cities and always learn what work and does not.

3)  I have a Master’s in Architecture from the University of Tucuman.

4)  I have a Master’s in Education from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

5)   I worked with “Architecto Sacriste,” who was a very well regarded architect in Argentina.

6)  I was the student assistant for the class History of Architecture in the University of Tucuman, so probably I know more about old cities than you.

7)  I worked in Atlanta in different architectural offices.

8)  But the most telling, is when living in Atlanta, my best friend from Peru was an urban planner and was working at City Hall. I learned thru our multiple conversations what good leaders do. In a few years, with a great number of leaders Atlanta moved from the sleepy Southern town that nobody expected much to a great town that everybody wants move and live there. Why? Because they dare to say YES…

 

But that is not all, in reference of Mott Park, I was the president of the neighborhood for three years, and now, I buy houses and try to find good neighbors. I also clean the streets and take the weeds, and care for the park, and try to convince neighbors to stay and now I am working in stabilizing the neighborhood, so when somebody like you in a simple phone conversation reply: “ Don’t even think about it..”

I want to say to you and to all the leaders in Flint that I will change my neighborhood and the children in my neighborhood “one NO at the time.”

 

Until next time, reflect on how your negativity and lack of imagination to solve problems and you attitudes that are more negative than positive are hurting Flint.

 

Sincerely,

 

Marta

To All The Yes.. But People of Flint,The Little Library is a success in our neighborhood- Mott Park

 

After reading so many of the comments about the little library in Mott Park, I want to explain to the people   why the library is such a success. And since people in favor or against the library give attributes to the event based on their limited experience, may be a neighbor that has observed the event unfolded in front of her eyes could tell you the real story.

I live two houses from the little library and I have seen the effect it has on people. Yes , it is a simple little library with no more than fifty books, and so, it is not the books what is at the center of the debate, for books can be bought from internet places to bookstores to take them from the library.

The truth of the little library is that has created an excuse to be engaged in a community activity. It is like being invited to play a game if you want. And so, day after day, families stroll to the little library and take some books and put some books.

And so, the little library has become what in the architectural language means  a node or a point of reference. People walk to and from the little library. People have an objective to stop there and sure they do it. Some stop and take pictures next to the little library, some go for the hunt to find a nice magazine or book, some go to put the last great American novel to share with somebody else. And so in the best participatory event is proven like Wikipedia that people can be generous, interesting, adventurous and curious and raise to the occasion when the right environment is there to make it grow.

And so, what started as a wish (from Sara and her family) has transformed a corner of Flint because people likes to be involved in things that are successful. Everybody care about the little library because is part of everybody. My children take books and put books despite that we drive to the libraries at least two time a week, and yes we  homeschool via internet.

 The little library is our little miracle that tell us, people in Flint are good if you give them high expectation and confidence that they could do something good for the community.

You will be amazed at the selection of books, and magazines, for they are rather varied and interesting. So to the ones that think that library is only books, I have to say the little library is an space that allows us neighbors to express all the good have in our hearts.

And for the naysayers I have to say: movements are always made by yes people.

Marta Wyngaard

Flint Has Always Been a Poor Town, Even When Tens of GM Factories were around. Poverty is Lack of Choices and that Abounds in Flint.

Flint is per excellence the definition of poverty

You have heard about the terrible things that happen in Flint when no hope, anger, ignorance and humiliation get combusted in the mind of young men? They kill themselves for pennies or phrases or honor…And now that summer has started Flint, and is hot and no money for anything…well you get the picture.

But please, do not get nostalgic thinking that Flint was before in the past because the truth is that has never being. Flint has always been a poor city and that make everybody very very angry.

Poverty is always equated with money because money gives you option, is the currency of choice. But also poverty is the lack of and in town the lack of voice and choices is monumental. People here are still treated like less than or in other words like poor.

When I came here from Atlanta several moons ago, I was amazed at how much Flint had in terms of services like two library systems, a cultural center, universities like Kettering University, University of Michigan, Mott Community College, Baker College, etc. parks, the Flint River in the center of the town, etc.

So why Flint feels and looks like a poor town?  Why Flint looks like things are patched with tape and ready to break into pieces at any moment?

I know, I know people will get offended by this but Flint has two things that makes it a poor town. It has a mono industry that is controlled by few hands. And it has not diversification. It is the same that happen in towns that have gold or copper and a group extracting the material and people with very few options that to work in the mines or nothing.

In Flint, even in the boom times, Flint was like a mine town, and worse because it has all the pretensions of a great city. Flint has a car to build disposable hands to work. Yes, it pays good, but it treat people like disposable and that is why in Flint  you have so many factories and next to the factories bars and bars and bars like the wild west.

So, although people had worked they knew and the managers of the factories knew and the managers of banks knew that people did not have choices. They were poor. Or you work in the factories for a good pay or you languish in the streets because nobody will hire a person that does not know how to read or write or know only to put tires in cars because that is what has done all his life….So, people like all poor people are trapped and that is why in Flint that sense that there is no escape is something it enters in your breathing like the humidity of a basement. That is why you see the comments of people in the Flint Live that feel more like old lions in a circus- they could do is make noise.

Poverty is the lack of choices and Flintonians have very few choices available, and being a democratic demagogic town, in the name of public good, Flintonians have less options than other places.  Schools are bad and waste children’s time. School designed in the industrial revolution to keep children out of the streets, pass them and graduated them to work in the factories, when reading or math was not a necessity. Schools tracked few children and that that is why Mr. Walling was selected to receive all the goods, he was going to college while the other kids NO.

So now, with an industry that is not a mono industry that controls all the sources, and a populations that is passive aggressive and that has learned to be caged in a corner, and a few businesses that want to continue making all the decisions and treating people like discarded items, we have a long way to go.

It seems very difficult for the few business to understand the we are all in this together and when the poverty of Flitnt get to them, they want to build gates like is happening at Kettering University and Hurley Hospital

What is so degrading about poverty is that carries a sense of a plague and nobody wants to be close to poverty just in case the hole eat them too.

But poverty and the lack of choices in Flint is eating all of us because like I say poverty is the lack of and in Flint we have lack of so many thing it “produces more “lack of.”

So I hope that makes you think, for to change Flint we need a new definition of poverty and a new acceptance that to change this town we need more than tracked bright kids (who are completely disconnected of poverty….they were the lucky one that scape the fate of the town), and charity and the good intentions of people that want to help the poor by making sure the poor continue being poor and not become an economic force…

Until them think in all they ways you also are poor, just because you were born in Flint.

Marta

In Flint, we want the “other child,” that killed Antonio Bell Jr to get looked in jail, so we could forget about this nightmare…and soon.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mahatma Gandhi

When a child choose death over life at a young age of 14, what does it say about us society?

When and how are we passing this child the information that life is so cheap? Where has this child learned that disagreements are solved with blowing the brain of another child in few seconds?

When and how this child has understood that he was alone in this world and that his life hanged from the power and inexperience of another 14 year old teenager?

When society closes the loop with a simple equation of A+B+gun= death, then there is very little to add. The A+B+ gun becomes a given, something that we are not planning to analyze, nor ask the important questions that need to be answered. And so blame take a live into itself.

“He was not from Mott Park, maybe he was in drugs, maybe he was in something bad, maybe was his fault to listen to the other boy..”

The reality that nobody wants to uncover in Flint is much more complex. This child is dead because a mountain of little things that were supposed to go well went wrong and so, all this things added to a turning point  moving in a  direction that ended in an abysm.

So, I will, like I did today, keep searching for answers because this is what I have …his name, my park, his death, my sorrow, the unfairness of violence, and a desire to stop it forever!

Until next time, start seeing yourself as part of the solution, if not we will have a very sorrowful summer…

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