Detroit anger justified, but shouldn't steal the show at mayoral forums

Yahoo

04-06-2025

If there's one takeaway from the recent forums for mayoral candidates, it's this: Far too many Detroit residents are extremely frustrated and need to vent before they can get down to business and elect the next mayor.
I'm not pushing for any candidate in this race. What I am advocating for is less yelling, and more searching for the person who will make this city better.
But I understand the anger.
Residents have been frustrated over how their voices were stripped away, as far back as during the bankruptcy proceedings that permeated through nearly every government function in more than a decade.
They're mad because 12 years ago, they were promised that every neighborhood in Detroit had a future, and now they step outside their homes only to see the same mess they saw previously.
'I look around my neighborhood, and it's sad that this is the future they felt we deserved,' Ken Whittaker said in a recent social media post.
He added downtown and Midtown are great, and credits the city for building four neighborhoods from the ground up, but it still hasn't reached his doorstep.
'I've owned a home in this city for 27 years and very little has gotten better around me,' Whittaker says. 'This is the two Detroits we speak of. It's not hyperbole. It's the truth.'
At some of these forums, the frustration of residents takes center stage, more than what candidates have to say. It takes some of the substance away.
What we're seeing is a byproduct of what happened during the bankruptcy in 2013. (I would also contend that it started even earlier, if you add in the takeover of the Detroit Public Schools in 1999).
During Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr's regime, residents' voices were silenced, despite issues such as city pensions being cut, contracts to outsource services such as trash pickup and Belle Isle being leased to the state for it to run as a state park.
Orr essentially stripped the council from a legislative body that could advocate for residents to a group that could only pass contracts under $30,000.
It didn't help that the bill for 17 firms of restructuring consultants and bankruptcy lawyers soared to more than $63 million.
That's not to say Mayor Mike Duggan has not done a tremendous job in developing downtown, Midtown and several neighborhood strips during his tenure.
It's just there's still a group of Detroiters who are not reaping the benefits, whether that's real or perceived. Almost everyone on the 11th floor has had to deal with that criticism, including 'Da Mayor,' Coleman Young, for expanding what was then called Cobo Conference Center in 1989 at a $225 million cost.
'The frustration we're facing is actually in something a little bit even foundational to what people are feeling that goes beyond just the situation of bankruptcy, state intervention in Detroit public schools, because a lot of folks don't have a lot of muscle memory,' says political consultant Eric Foster, who adds there had been state intervention in the schools and the city dating back as far as 1937.
Other residents echo Whittaker's disdain when they hear the police statistics that Detroit has the lowest crime rate since the 1960s, when the city had 1.5 million people and a substantially larger police department.
The crime rate may be lower, but residents don't feel safer, particularly when some had to deal with the aftermath of a mass shooting last summer.
Young folks can't even enjoy their prom send-off – at one such festivity, without 20 rounds being fired at Martin Luther King High School late last month.
The yellow tape around the school says a lot.
Let's also not forget homeowners were overtaxed by at least $600 million between 2010 and 2016.
And despite the jobless rate being about 7.5%, Detroit's poverty rate of 31.5% is more than double the state rate of 13.5%, according to U.S. Census data.
But all it takes is reading the room to know that the frustration is real, which makes public forums a place to vent.
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Foster says it's all rooted in that Detroiters have not accepted that the city hasn't remained what it once was.
'We've never really dealt with that trauma,' Foster says. 'It's like a divorce, and you haven't dealt with the trauma of the divorce. You had the white flight, and then you had Black middle class flight.
'Those are traumatic events. It's impacted the city in a lot of ways financially and has negatively impacted services, (which) has led to different tensions from race and the class dynamic. One thing I would hope that everybody running for (office) would invest time in actually ... (dealing with) Detroit and trauma that Detroit has gone through.'
Don't believe the trauma is real? Just go back and look at the failed Charter Commission Revision proceedings, or the non-work by the Reparations Commission. Or any given Tuesday during public comment at the Detroit City Council.
The Charter Revision Commission's weekly meetings devolved into shouting matches, and their antics even resulted in a police report being filed. The charter revision sought to address water access, affordable housing and busing, increased citizen input and responsible contracting.
After nearly three years of work, the measure failed.
Former Congressman John Conyers, City Council member JoAnn Watson and 'Reparations' Ray Jenkins are looking down from above, knowing the commission is dying a slow death in the city that led the charge on the issue.
Compare that Los Angeles, which brought a significant plan with 115 recommendations to the state to compensate those harmed by slavery. It included a 400-page report on how to deal with the issue.
Instead, the group turned into an ineffective, non-elected body that didn't bring in any experts from Los Angeles, Evanston, Illinois, which came up with a plan to compensate Black residents $25,000 from cannabis sales or Tulsa, whose mayor just announced a plan to launch a $105 million private charitable trust for descendants of the 1921 race massacre. It would provide housing and scholarships.
It was an issue I kept my eye on, knowing what other those places have done. I'm left in disgust that a real opportunity in Detroit — one of the Blackest cities in America — couldn't get past infighting to send a report, while Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is in office.
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My worst fear is people will be so caught up in their feelings that they either don't vote, or just simply hold their nose and vote for any candidate, rather than searching for the one that meets their needs.
A more robust voter turnout will help too.
The voter turnout that elected Mike Duggan as mayor in 2013 was 17% in the primary and 20% in the general election.
The trends for municipal elections have remained the same. The primary election turnout in 2021 was 14%.
About 47% voted in the presidential election last year.
It's about moving past the campaign rhetoric and understanding what their elected officials can actually do.
'People have bad information inflow, and that's a part because of the people who have been elected not actually communicating what their actual job is, and the candidates running not communicating what the functions are of the job that they're running for,' Foster says. 'So people have impressions of what the city can and can't do that go beyond just the actual charter ability of a city.'
To paraphrase Michelle Obama, stop yelling, find your candidate and vote.
Darren A. Nichols, named one of Michigan's most recognized media figures, is a contributing columnist at the Free Press. He can be reached at [e-mail] or his X (formerly Twitter) handle @dnick12.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroiters are angry, and I'm worried about the mayor's race | Opinion