Cornerstone Schools:
Game changers for educational excellence
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businessmen See page D-1.
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michiganchronicle.com
Volume 78 – Number 46
WHAT’S INSIDE
On A Roll
The Fifth Third Bank eBus returns to Michigan for its eleventh season
Food, Fun, Financial Literacy:
July 29 - Aug. 4, 2015
County financial emergency is no joke
White horse of
Sometimes Opportunity
KNOCKS Other Times It Rolls
rides again
Detroit Public Schools and Fifth Third to hold Back to School Block Parties
Ford, UAW contract talks (Page A-3) The first day of open contract negotiations between Ford and the UAW has taken place. Both sides agree that much has been accomplished over the years with more to be done.
By Keith A. Owens
Medicare and Voting Rights Act reach landmark year (Page B-4) Two of America’s most effective public policy acts turn 50 this year. President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law on July 30, 1965 and, eight days later, on August 7, he signed the Voting Rights Act.
FoodLab Detroit on the rise (Page C-1) The issue of how best two create and manage a local food economy in Detroit has been on the front lines of debate for years. That food economy is getting a boost from FoodLab Detroit, a rapidly growing enterprise.
Hot songs symbolic of hot summers (Page D-1) “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” “Fingertips – Pt. 2” by Little Stevie Wonder. Chic’s “Good Times.” These are songs that were heard everywhere during the summers they were released and have come to be representative of those months.
T
here’s a scene in “The Godfather: Part III” where Michael Corleone utters the most memorable line in an otherwise entirely forgettable drama when he says, his voice dripping with a level of righteous anguish that only an old gangster can summon, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Here in Detroit, we thought (hoped, prayed) we had put that white horse of heroin to sleep more than 30 years ago, but now that horse is back and bucking like a demon with a nail in its shoe. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Rev. Gregory Guice is pastor of Detroit Unity Temple, located right in the heart of the Palmer Park/ Woodward corridor area between McNichols and 8 Mile that has recently become a hotbed area of some very unwelcome heroin trafficking. Guice’s concerns and worries reflect those of the neighborhood that is working together with the 12th Precinct to uproot the cancer before it gets the chance to lock in and spread. One thing Guice and other neighborhood residents have noticed is significantly more drug paraphernalia scattered about, particularly throughout Palmer Park, one of the largest parks in the city. The fact that much of Palmer Park is a wooded area doesn’t help, since it is easy to conduct activity far out of plain sight.
See HEROIN page A-4
When Gov. Snyder said last week that he agreed with Wayne County Executive Warren Evans that Wayne County was in a state of financial emergency, that didn’t come as a surprise. Evans has been telegraphing his desire to pursue some form of extreme – albeit necessary – means Warren Evans to apply the brakes to the runaway train that he inherited. And Snyder isn’t exactly known for opposing state intervention as a means of “correcting” the financial stability of troubled Michigan school boards and municipalities. Snyder’s willingness to doggedly pursue the appointment of emergency financial management as a remedy has attracted significant amounts of praise and scorn throughout Michigan, and the results in Detroit of his much-contested approach are varied as well. Because although more are willing to concede that perhaps emergency management worked out in Detroit’s favor overall — even though the way it was done will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many for a long time to come — it is difficult to see how the relatively recent appointment of Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Number Four Darnell Early can in any way be considered a rousing endorsement for its effectiveness. Not when the DPS budget deficit has ballooned to $238 million after six years of emergency management, and at least $81 million is owed by DPS to the employees’ pension fund as recently as one month ago. If the previous three emergency managers couldn’t tame the beast, Early’s prospects as DPS savior seem doubtful. So given the mixed record of
See WAYNE
COUNTY page A-4
The poison of racism By Steve Holsey Alex Haley, prize-winning journalist and author of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” went so far as to describe racism as “a curse against mankind.”
COMMENTARY It probably is just that… and more. Certainly it has been and continues to be a poisonous thorn in America’s side. All over the world, actu-
ally, but for the sake of this article, the focus is on this country. The effects of racism, and its many “byproducts,” is mindboggling, and it is extremely doubtful that there exists anywhere a person of African descent who has not been touched in some way by racism, blatant or subtle. My first encounter with racism took place when I was about eight years old. A White friend from down the street, Mark, invited me to
his house. He introduced me to his mother who was in the backyard hanging up clothes. With a surprised yet resigned-to-the-reality look on her face, she said, “Oh well, a playmate’s a playmate.” That was in the late 1950s. Fast forward to the mid-1960s. A White female coworker informed me that she had dined at the Roostertail over the previous weekend and, seeing nothing insulting in what she was about to say, said, “I didn’t know they allowed inte-
Look inside this week’s
LIVING
WELL
$1.00
Rev. Gregory Guice in front Unity Temple, which is located on Second Avenue across the street from Palmer Park. – Keith Owens photo
By Alan Jackson
Magazine
and discover what people are talking about.
How Do Mental Health Conditions Affect the African American Community? Medicine for the Family Not Just For Kids Vacation ideas the whole family will enjoy
gration in a classy place like that.” Then in the early 1970s, I walked into a downtown drugstore on Washington Blvd. and immediately the White cashier near the entrance of the store called out loudly, “Watch the floor!” These are just three examples, and certainly minor ones compared the real horrors of racism, such as that which could prompt a hor-
See RACISM page A-4
How Do Mental Health Conditions Affect the African American Community? Not Just For Kids Vacation ideas the whole family will enjoy