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….
FlintMichiganchangingneighborhoodspovertyandcrime 