Urban Futures

Most of us believe, in fact accept that if urban areas are to survive we must come up with new ways of doing business, with a new way of creating employment and sustaining some level of employment at a liveable and viable wage for the majority sector of the population. Some of us also believe that when there is not enough employment, the collective which we call government (and some do not believe that government is the collective, but rather the errand persons of selective power groups) must provide the means for citizens to maintain their homes and ability to feed, educate and stimulate the creative process of community citizens. Our paradox in Detroit, as in many other urban areas that are largely minority, poor and abandoned industrial/manufacturing centers, is that the power mongers do not wish to see the revitalization of urban areas unless there is an opportunity for them to exploit the new revitalization. Or, as they call it, invest with a reasonable opportunity for a decent return. We, in turn, know that without a strong revitalization, our way of life and our ability to visualize a new world is jeopardized, perhaps to the point of impossibility.

The difficulty is that the creative force of change, of nature's call for change that began with the slaughter of the first European who stood in the way of European exploitation and expansion into what was call the "new world"; that began with the first kidnapped and enslaved African; the first murder of the Native American who only offered to share the space and bounties of this land; the many other lives that were lost and renewed through this long struggle of resistance, has created in fact an engine of resistance that is not merely a voice of protest, a cry for peace and justice, but in fact is the eternal engine and the fire of the engine that is self-renewing and self-sustaining: it cannot be shut down. It enables us to see clearly that the word has been spoken again. And that we must, if humanity, much less any particular continent connected civilization is to survive, make change. From the root, the cure must come. The correction must be made.

There was an error in the calculation of how the universe would emerge into the 21st century. And what is most profound to us is that we know the universe has travelled this path before. It is us who are new. And the spirit that moves us is the spirit that knows, that has travelled and travels, the spirits whose task it is to fire the engine of resistance and progress for peace and a just and righteous balancing of the contradictions we face but yet do not fully understand why they exist or what it is we must do to build into our civilizations, an ability to make these contradictions work for us and not against us.

A working for us that does not translate into a system of exploitations,slaughters and reactionary philosophical, historical analysis to justify the exploitation and slaughters. How do we lose our paranoia around differences? How do we develop out of this paradigm of nation and humanity building that disbelieves in the collective investment of all resources to serve all (sort of like the sun in the sky, the way it shines upon all, the rain how it grows crops for all, the moon how its light enhances, embellishes the love between two lovers). How do we move away from a way of nation building and humanity building that believes and practices as "good mental health and spiritual life applicaition" a system of mutual exploitation, external and internal oppression and greed for the wealth of each others dreams and labors?

The space and opportunity for us to rebuild our city and the lives of the people who live within is before us, waiting patiently. It is the great day we have dreamed of. The hereafter we all seek. The heaven on earth we propose as the best heaven, here and now.

Everywhere we see a problem or a challenge, we have within us the immediate vision to bring about a change. We have the opportunity and the space. That is all that we need, that is the true investment upon which our oppressors, our exploiters have depended upon and upon which they depend today: the space and the opportunity. What must we do, those of us without money or vast wealth to nurture this space and opportunity, to rebuild the collective lives and spirit of what we call Detroit?

In order to rebuild, recreate, resanctify the space, we must work. It will not happen without our labor, our strong and weak backs pushing and pulling the wind, hauling ashes from the earth and water from the sea. Jobs means work to be done. Those are our jobs. What work must be done? Not which business can we get in here to create some jobs, but what businesses can we create that will develop the jobs that will get the work to be done - done?

Community folks know what work there is to be done. Big business is not interested in the work that needs to be done, but in what resources exist for their exploitation, what wealth can be hauled out of the people. That is the hauling of ashes and water that we now call abandonment, disinvestment, disillusionment, dysfunction, displacement, dis-spirited, pollution, crime, addiction, ignorance building, and the denial of youth to the young and wisdom to the aged.

We will only revitalize the community through community businesses created out of the ideas of common, everyday folks who see a problem and understand the solution and whose hearts and spirit are tired of the exploitation and the waste. People who realize that the past was promised to us by the future, that we are always in a sense in the past. Each moment is but a tiny glimpse into eternity, a glimpse the speed of light that is no more than the distance of one rotation of the atom of hope around the nucleus of change. Community business, or community control of resources, or the ability of community people to protect the opportunity and space they share, they have inherited from exploitation and greed and at the same time build an environment that is non-threatening to those who insist that exploitation and greed are o.k. and a necessary part of any reinvestment scheme "because we (those exploited and left in abandoned communities) are poor", is our challenge.

There is no simple answer, no easy way to achieve our goals. None. In fact we invite a particular type of hardship that accompanies this effort. It is the hardship of a birth, the hardship of the reversal of abandonment and disillusionment. It is the hardship of renewing spirits, of clearing the path for our royal family--all of us--the collective the city.

Enough with the philosophy, now to the practical. Let us ask the question: how is it our children are drawn by the allure of not drugs, but money what hunger and want do they fear that pushes them to this limit? It is not the same hunger and want we fear. Many of us are only one or two generations away from chronic unemployment that is the factory has not always existed. And it did not employ everyone in its most productive phase. Large numbers of people during those times, still suffered from a lack of good paying jobs. But we kept going, we made it. We found a way. We made a way out of no way. And this way served us, our collective community and it built us as human beings and when we looked around we had created a change. Our space was different, or "better" than it had been before.

But today, there is a fear of hunger and want that is driving our children mad. We have to find a way to help them out of the madness. Because one day, they too will face the ultimate challenge of reclaiming their space and opportunity, we must equip them to do so. How? Through our art drawings, paintings, visual arts, songs, dance, music, ritual and of these build upon the spiritual foundation we give them. We have to reclaim our artist and artistic vision. We must find useful work for our poets, musicians, writers, dancers, sculpturers, architects, that are sitting down now drawing Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Superman and Super woman, these same artists who used to draw with pride a "picture of you" or a "picture of my house or neighborhood or my future", now are programmed to draw a picture of a televised image, whether they are allowed to watch T.V. or not. The ability to see ourselves as agents of change, as determiners of a change for the better of the whole community has been threatened. What our children draw, their art, represents that future ability to visualize and create change. Change from the inside out. Change that responds to need and is built upon pure dreams.

Community based arts and cultural programs and services must become a part of our everyday lives. This is work to be done. Immediately we should set up arts and culture spaces, centers or opportunities for all. We should be able to visit a museum, hear creative music, see a dance performance, enjoy any discipline of the creative arts any time of the day or night we wish. Where ever there are creative artists willing to perform or share, there should be opportunity for them to do so and an audience ready for them. Our children must grow up seeing artists as part of the guardianship of community, culture and the future.

Housing. How people are housed is one of the fundamental questions we face. If we decided to embark upon a plan of rehabilitation and preservation of housing we would immediately find the work to be done and create the jobs to do it. We would have the housing and community preservation industry. We must build a housing and community preservation industrial base in our city. Whether we wish as individuals to own or rent, decent housing that is safe and affordable must be our objective. Opportunities for ownership must be expanded and becoming a homeowner must be made easier. In other words, if a house is abandoned, a real system for claiming it

within a reasonable time must be respected because now the process for reclaiming abandoned housing is not respected by the city process itself in spite of the best efforts of most city workers. Otherwise we will continue to lose affordable and beautiful housing by the thousands, daily, until there will be nothing left and we will risk the temptation of "investors and planners" convincing us that high cost in-fill housing is what a neighborhood needs in order to survive.

We need to build a movement in this city around a true affordable housing agenda that makes it impossible for someone to stay in a public position, whether elected or appointed if housing conditions don't improve and are not maintained for all the people, especially those of us who are "low income" and who do not wish to work ourselves to death pushing and hauling our own future to the alter of multi-national exploitation and human sacrifice. Community based housing developers must be developed and supported so that they are not isolated from the community they represent and wish to serve. They must be supported so that they do not have to buy into the needs of exploiters rather than the needs of the people and community they envisioned they would serve.

Lastly, we need to develop transportation services that can move people around to where they have to go that is fast, efficient and clean. For some of us it will mean transportation less than five miles in any direction from our homes, for others it will mean transportation that is ten or more miles in any direction from our homes, because we are not seeking to rigidly segregate ourselves into enclaves of isolation as a means to deal with our contradictions, but because the space and opportunities we find will be in different places for each of us and we will choose where we seek this space and opportunity.

The building of community based arts and cultural opportunities and the creation of a community owned housing and community preservation industry would necessitate the existence of a transportation system that meets not only the employment but social needs of people. Trolleys to work or to enjoy art, buses to those places farther away. Community transportation systems on small buses or in vans that pick up and d

rop off at home are critical. Markets that hire drivers to pick up shoppers is just one example of a new transportation model. Let's treat all of our citizens as though they are the president or wealthy, in our delivery of services.

Kaleema Hasan is a mother of five and grandmother of five. She is a poet and urban peace warrior working with other Detroiters helping to create the vision and the practice of building a new world that is nurturing and sustaining to children, youth, seniors, families and adult individuals. This means creating an environment that is clean and non poisonous to the mind, the spirit and the body of all living creatures upon the earth.

Vision of a Liberated Future

There is much talk today of liberation
of freedom and democracy
there are revolutions and counter revolutions

in Africa, South America, The pacific Isles, Asia,
Europe,the Middle East

All over the world

there is much mischief and blood shed in the land
when will the liberated future come

who will be liberated
what is to be done with the oppressors

what will rise up out of the ashes

an a cynshed time/future
an incomplete romance

an intolerable need for peace

so the sheep skin separates from the wolf
the wolf drops his teeth onto the flesh of freedom

so continues the manifest vision of a liberated future

so persist this manifest vision of liberation because
the sound of crushing skulls and the war machine beat of
military beauty and human misery

makes its heart deaf to defeat!

--Kaleema Hasan

Return to the Index of Synapse 34, Winter Solstice 1995