Bloggers vs. Blight

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we have a political climate in the city and surrounding suburbs that hinders us from creating the necessary bonds for massive movements in Detroit—in the bowels of the city, far from the riverfront, casinos and ballparks. I read a Free Press editorial recently that said if you’re a black politician in Detroit who reaches out to the suburbs, you’re labeled as an Uncle Tom; if you’re a white politician in the ’burbs who reaches into the city, you’re committing political suicide.

Shame on the system.

The coming together of the past and present—whites and blacks—to work on the Fletcher Playground project has produced incredible dialogue and innovation that could benefit other bruised and fractured neighborhoods around the city.

Happy sometimes takes his young children to play at Fletcher Field; Lou, Shaun, and Amanda have become friendly with kids in the neighborhood. One day, Happy says, 4-year-old Mandy, after an afternoon spent at Fletcher Field, announced to her mother, “I want braids like the girls at the park have.”

“So Shannon sat there for almost an hour, trying to get her thin blond hair into braids ‘like the park girls,’ ” Happy says. He smiles at the memory. It’s moments like this—small but powerful—that he’s been working for. They’re the whole point.

Megan Garber is a Columbia Journalism Review staff writer. Excerpted from Columbia Journalism Review(July-Aug. 2008), a media monitor published bimonthly by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism; www.cjr.org.

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