How to with Naturally Flyy Detroit Page D1
Friday, June 30, 2017 | MotorCity Hotel
POWERED BY REAL TIMES MEDIA
Volume 80 – Number 42
michiganchronicle.com
June 28 - July 4, 2017
Chronicle to Paradise Valley: More than an address change
By Ken Coleman After 56 years at its 479 Led yard Street office, the Michi gan Chronicle is moving to the area of downtown that has been identified as the new Paradise Valley district. Talk about going full circle. Let’s go back in time. “Lucius (Harper) gave me the keys to the one-room office at 1727 St. Antoine after intro ducing me to the other tenants of the building who, for the most part, were the most im portant and richest gamblers and numbers kings in Detroit,” a wide-eyed Louis E. Martin, the Chronicle’s first editor and pub lisher, recalled about the news paper’s beginnings. “He left $17 in a cloth money sack, the entire cash capital of the busi ness and told me to be careful with the money.” The Detroit Chronicle, as it was known, first published on April 14, 1936. The office suite was located in the original Par adise Valley, once the epicenter for black business and cultural expression. It sat where Ford Field is today and was owned by numbers-running boss Everett I. Watson. The two-story build ing also served as business headquarters for heavyweight boxing star Joe Louis and his co-manager, John W. Roxbor ough. During the late 1930s, the Chronicle moved to 612 E. Vernor Highway at Paradise Val ley’s northern border and later to a large residential dwelling located at 268 Eliot Street on the northern end of Brush Park. After that, the paper moved to its present location, 479 Led yard, in March 1961. I had the great fortune of writing for the paper during the 1990s and in a sense I never left. In fact, if I can’t make it to Chronicle on Wednesday to pick up my paper, I sometimes call just so I can hear Pauline Leatherwood, office recep tionist, respond to my ring by saying, “The Michigan Chroni cle…” I’m going to miss Ledyard in spite of its structural im perfections. If the walls could talk, they would share riveting stories about legendary jour nalists like Longworth Quinn, publisher; Al Dunmore, manag ing editor; June Brown, classi fied sales manager and colum nist; as well as Aretha Watkins, Betty DeRamus, Bill Black, Danton Wilson, Mike Goodin,
See PARADISE VALLEY page A-4
WHAT’S INSIDE Touching Communities. Touching Lives.™ A PUBLICATION OF MGM GRAND DETROIT
June • 2017
Silver anniversary Concert of Colors is sure to be pure gold By Scott Talley Special to the Michigan Chronicle
World class: Few events in the world use the power of music to unite diverse audiences like Concert of Colors. The 25th edition of Concert of Colors will take place July 12-16 at several exciting locations throughout our community. Cover photo by Doug Coombe
During her days as a morning news anchor at WDET-FM, Kim Silarski could always be counted on to provide an accurate account of important events that impacted our city and citizens. Fastforward about two decades and Silarski still speaks the truth, and that is why our community can trust her when she says the 25th Concert of Colors will be one of the most special events to take place in metropolitan D “The 25th Concert of Colors is not just one of those round and shining anniversaries, we feel it is a real accomplishment,” said
Many say downtown growth explosion is major sign of progress. But for who?
By Keith A. Owens Senior Editor
In short? The anger being expressed by a number of Detroiters over the $34.5 million in public funding approved by De troit City Council to go toward the Detroit Pistons’ move downtown is the chickens coming home to roost. After attending the standing-room only emergency school board meeting that was called last Friday largely in response to these angry Detroiters (not to men tion the community meeting called at the exact same time by Councilwoman Mary Sheffield who said she is considering changing her ‘yes’ vote because of so many angry calls from constituents at the 7-2 vote), the one thing that occurred to me is that this level of discontent has been simmering near boil ever since former Governor John Engler took over the Detroit Public Schools more than two decades ago.
COMMENTARY
Many Detroiters say they are getting tired of having multi-million dollar de cisions made involving their tax dollars without their input and without their sayso. The widely held perception that this most recent multi-million dollar decision is being made to benefit billionaires such as Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores and the Ilitch family, the driving force behind the construction of Little Caesars Arena and District Detroit, when so many De troiters are struggling to make ends meet makes the sting that much more severe. The question that keeps popping up is why does the city have to pay all this money? These guys are billionaires, so why can’t they cover it? To be clear, the opposition does not at all seem to be against having the Pistons come to Detroit. Many actually support
• MGM Grand Detroit is a proud sponsor of the 25th Concert of Colors • Damon Martin brings elements of his work at MGM Grand Detroit to make sweet music at United Sound Systems Recording Studios • Mayor Coleman A. Young’s legacy lives on through scholarships to Detroit students • And much more!
Detroit’s Queen of Tires
It must be stated, however, that the tax increment financing deal actually won’t affect any of the money intended for DPSCD, and therefore will not diminish the money that’s intended for the chil dren. What will be affected is the payment toward the debt, which falls under DPS, also referred to as ‘oldco’, not the newly created entity of DPSCD. “I’m very troubled by the fact that it appears as if some people here don’t want the people of the City of Detroit to have a voice in what’s going on. I’m personally for the Pistons coming back. I’m just not for using our dollars to help billionaires. This is major corporate welfare,” said Wil liam Davis during the public comment portion of last week’s emergency school board meeting. Davis President of the De troit Chapter of National Action Network. Rochelle Jordan, a neighborhood resi dent, felt much the same, as did the lengthy line of public speakers that stretched out the door of the meeting room. “I’m for the Pistons coming downtown, but when it comes to these children we’re looking and future congressmen and future lawyers. It’s very important that we fight for these children.”
Added Russ Bellant, “I find it troubling as a former [library] commissioner be cause I know we lost millions of dollars to the tax capture of the Detroit Public Li brary,” said Russ Bellant. “I’m hoping as board members you will look at this not from any downtown influ ence, not from any other influence other than is this right for the school district. That should be your only criteria because that’s your elected responsibility. Is it good for the education of children? “When the city had charges put on tick ets of institutions they own; Tiger Stadi um, Red Wings, money was collected by the owners to pay for the maintenance of those to the city. They never paid it. And in 2012 the law department said that the Ilitch organization owed the city of Detroit $284 million. It was never collected. Ilitch signed off on paper for a total couple mil lion dollars and it was buried.” And that furiously boiling sentiment right there is what the supporters of all those $$$$ for Little Caesar’s Arena and the Detroit Pistons move either don’t un derstand or are purposefully overlooking. Because ever since Detroiters lost control over their school system, which means parents and voters who felt they no longer had a voice in how their own children were being educated, followed by the loss of control over their city, there has been a hardening sense of resentment directed against those who they felt were responsi ble for taking that control away. To many, this sequence of events has felt very much like taxation without representation. So now, after all these years of a steadily building anger over being disenfranchised and shut out, while watching stories about how their city was making a come back, the (hopefully) last DPS emergency
See GOOD
DEALS IN DETROIT page A-4
The problems of poverty are bigger than the programs and policies designed to solve them By Sandra Svoboda
gest municipalities, the percent age of people living in poverty rose dramatically during the last five decades. In 1970, 15 percent of Detroit residents lived at or below the federal poverty line. By 2014 that had nearly tripled and is the nation’s highest among big cities.
WDET
When the Kerner Commission Report came out in 1968 to ex plain the wave of urban violence across the country, its authors famously warned that America was headed toward two societies, separate and unequal, largely based on race.
“Detroit is an outlier in the extent of poverty relative to the other major cities here in the United States that it’s up against,” says Matthew Larson, assistant professor of criminal justice at Wayne State Universi ty.
Now family income also is de fining inequality in urban Amer ica, where most of the biggest cities saw rises in the percentage of people living in poverty be tween the 1960s and today. The problems of the resulting poverty are bigger than the pro grams and policies designed to solve them, says Liette Gidlow, associate professor of history at Wayne State University.
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that move, are anxious to have the team in the city, and love the Pistons. But the belief amongst the people on the ground that the movers and shakers behind this deal may be structuring a deal that fattens the corporate wallets of billionaires and advances a major development deal on the backs of poor Detroiters by redirecting millions of school tax dollars that could and should be spent on Detroit’s DPSCD schoolchildren is fanning the flames. Which is why those at the meeting are ad vocating that the question be put on the November ballot, giving residents the op portunity to vote on whether this money should be approved.
Continue on page 3
Inside This Issue
Page C-1
How much will this Detroit progress cost us?
“There are broad economic forces at work: globalization, de
cline of manufacturing. The jobs that have been created in the last several decades that have re placed manufacturing jobs have not replaced the incomes earned by those jobs,” she says. “Even the minimum wage has not kept
up. So incomes are down over time, and the result of that is in creasing poverty.” In Michigan cities, the story is more dramatic than in the rest of the country. In the state’s 12 big
Throughout the state, the ef fects of poverty are widespread and felt differently in each com munity, says Kate White, ex ecutive director of Michigan Community Action, a network of organizations throughout
See POVERTY page A-4