The recent Superbowl XL and the years of redevelopment projects leading up to the event have sparked a great deal of debate and speculation about the future of the city of Detroit. Is the Superbowl the kind of development that the city needs, and if not, what kinds of development can we imagine that would make Detroit a more just, safe, healthy and beautiful place to live?

Before and after the games, Critical Moment, in partnership with the Detroit Summer Collective, interviewed several longtime Detroit activists to get their take on the problems facing Detroit and possibilities of rebuilding Detroit. Transcribed below are some of their comments.

Ron Scott, Spokesperson, Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality

It’s interesting having a Superbowl when many people in this city don’t have a soup bowl. Detroit is going through one of the worst economic times that it has in the past fifty to sixty years. A lot of folks are saying that this is a great time for Detroit because corporate leaders have made the Superbowl happen and have brought all kinds of development with it. Suddenly, there was an increased focus on the infrastructure downtown, developing and building, replacing cement fixtures, better lighting etc. This is the first time that this has happened in about fourty years. Fourty years! And it’s reflective that those individuals that disinvested from the city, could have done these kinds of developments 40 years ago if they so chose. So the issues of racism and classism, in terms of moving out of the city and leaving it desolate, was a very intentional thing. And now folks can come back, get the land, get the buildings for virtually nothing and make huge profits on them.

I’m very concerned with what’s happening with the so-called “homeless,” who I call “displaced workers.” When trooper Jay Morningstar shot and killed Eric Williams in downtown Detroit back in April of last year and was recently acquitted of that crime in December, it was a reflection of the fact that—and many homeless people told me so—that they felt threatened and they had been told in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome in downtown, they were not welcome in Greektown. and that they would be moved out if they didn’t move themselves. So some people, fearing the bad publicity, decided to give them a party at the Detroit Rescue Mission during the Superbowl.

I thought it ironic that they have all these parties downtown, and whether the hosts be rap moguls or people in the auto industry, nobody wants to see the homeless. The irony of that is that many of these individuals who are displaced are the people who worked in the auto industries, who built this city.

With the closure of the Ford Wixom plant, we can expect the homeless population to grow. Workers in this country might be making as much as a hundred or a couple hundred thousand dollars one day, and the next day they might be making nothing. People in Detroit’s so-called middle class neighborhoods—Boston Edison, Indian Village, Rosedale Park—they’re losing homes at an all-time rate. The people who have the strongest supports will find ways to collectively bring resources together. Those who are not as well equipped, whether monetarily or psychologically, they fall through the cracks. As a result of the Engler administration, you don’t have the social supports, don’t have an adequate way of treating the schizophrenic and the depressed. One of the primary ways of treating bipolar people right now is in the prison system.

If the corporations planning the city now can build a little village between I-75 and downtown, and disperse the homeless, that would be fine for them. But if they think that that’s going to be it, they’re mistaken. People in Rochester Hills are losing homes, people in Bloomfield, people in Birmingham, they’re having major problems with the schools and financing in Royal Oak. I think that while those things are happening, it presents an opportunity for people across the region, cross-racially, cross-culturally, to really look at the economic redevelopment of this city and this area in a different way.

So we’re really looking at a situation where we need to build new institutions that will create different ways of providing food, capital support and housing in our communities. It’s the small businesses, grassroots organizations and churches that are the glue of the community. I feel that glue is coming loose.

And we need to re-form it. We have to begin to create smaller, alternative economies, because the GMs, Fords, Daimlers of the world, they’re moving out of America.

I’m always impressed by what is happening in the hip-hop community and that’s why I tend to stay close and relate and learn, intergenerationally. You have approximately 200 independent studios in Detroit, in basements, etc., that young people have created with no money from anybody other than themselves, what they made working one job, or two or three jobs. And ironically Kwame, the “hip-hop mayor” has not funneled any money into these things. Techno and electronic music came out of this city in the same way, it happened with no support from those people who are supposedly planning the future.

These kinds of things as a cultural framework ought to be promoted. They help us begin to see new ways of doing things. And I keep saying this about the youth because unless Detroit captures the imagination of the youth, unless it diminishes the number of youth going into the underground economy, ending up in prisons, trying to survive, or leaving the city because they want more options, unless we do that, then this area is doomed. But I contend that if young people are brought into the spectrum in a major way, through things like urban agriculture, cultural production, whether visual art, performance art, etc., then I think that represents new prospects for the city.

Pat Dorn, Chair, Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation

I see the Superbowl as a positive thing, but not a big influence, one way or the other, on the Corridor. It helped with some immediate issues—abandoned cars were cleared, streets were cleaned, garbage was picked up—but unless it’s maintained, I don’t see any long lasting effects. It was a quick fix.

Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation is a non-profit housing corporation that’s run by a board of directors from the neighborhood. We’ve been in operation for approximately twenty-two years. The main function of our organization is to maintain and rehab affordable housing in Detroit’s Cass Corridor so that, as people move in and buildings get torn down, we keep a mix of people.

For any development of any neighborhood, we have to keep a mixed income level. All-rich will not serve the city well, and neither will all-poor. We have to keep a combination of all of them, and keep a strong block of affordable housing. Especially in a neighborhood like the Corridor, where you have rental units, we need a large core of affordable rental units to supply all the workers for the neighborhood surrounding the Cass Corridor—downtown jobs, medical center jobs, and education jobs.

I think every housing plan should have a percentage of affordable units in it by law. There are some states that do that, and it goes a long way into keeping a mixed neighborhood. But, it’s not so prevalent here. But, if you had a ratio of, say, 30-40% affordable units, and 10% below the income mean for that area, it would go a long way to mixing up people.

Our neighborhood organization started with a rent strike of a particular business trying to demolish all the buildings around it. Slum landlords were leaving the buildings to deteriorate so they wouldn’t have to pay relocation. But now, we have moved past that. There virtually aren’t any buildings that are open for gentrification, or anything else. They’re all rehab-ed or in the process of being rehab-ed. The organization has gone more into issues of neighborhood cleanups and safety. These are constant issues to organize around and try to improve.

Jackie Victor, Co-owner, Avalon Bakery

The Super Bowl can be seen as marking a new era of development in Detroit—making downtown attractive to business, increasing role that large corporations are going to play in shaping the city. It’s the Disneyland approach to development, and I’ve never been a big fan of that model. Whether that works for downtown or not, I just feel that it’s sort of irrelevant for our work at Avalon Bakery.

At Avalon we’re working on a parallel track. It’s probably expressed best in this quote by Thomas Barry. He said, “We’re now experiencing a moment of significance far beyond what any of us can imagine. The distorted dream of an industrial/technological paradise is being replaced by a more viable dream of a mutually enhancing human presence within an ever-renewing organic based Earth community.” And that’s our alternative vision for Detroit. I don’t think any of us can live in the illusion that the technological paradise that Detroit once was was a paradise—it was something, it was an engine for the capitalist economy that did something, but I don’t think any of us have an illusion about any paradise.

Meanwhile, we connect with quite a significant number of people who have this other vision of Detroit. Even if they can’t express it the way those of us who are living it every day express it, they have a sense that there’s something else possible. Artists, teachers, activists, gardeners, or whatever, they have a sense that something else is possible.

What I see Avalon doing is manifesting that vision of what another economy would look like: one that is earthbased, based on meeting our basic needs in a wholesome way, but also like running a good business—you’ve got to pay your taxes, meet your payroll, pay benefits for your employees. And if you don’t do that stuff you’ll get shut down. You’ve got to participate in the economy to some degree if you want to last. And, you know, we all need healthcare. It’s no joke. But what we’re learning more and more is, the more you articulate your vision and the more forcefully you put it forward, the better you do. We’re not looking at becoming more mainstream. As we grow, we get to articulate our vision stronger! People are attracted to that, and it’s not a contradiction.

On our block, I’m ecstatic that over eight or nine years, we’ve had five small businesses open up, all African-American women-owned businesses. But, my god, this is the only neighborhood I know where this has happened. What we’ve done is not that huge—anyone can do it. I’m a little impatient. Where’s everybody else? I had this illusion that, if we opened a bakery, and we made it, lots of people would start opening small businesses. Maybe we’re five years out. I’m trying to figure out, is that our role now, should we be setting up a micro-loan fund to get people going, or set up a collective like the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh? What’s the impulse that’s needed now?

For every “no” there has to be a “yes.” This is the time that we’re in, in Detroit. We’ve said, we don’t like this kind of development; we say we don’t want a new Tiger Stadium; we say we don’t want these buildings torn down, but what are we doing to create something that’s different? That’s our responsibility, whether the decision-makers are making bad decisions or not. We can all throw up our arms, or we can do what we can do to make an impact.

Maureen Taylor, Chair, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization

The population of low-income and welfare recipients that I represent, we don’t give a damn about this Superbowl. We’ll watch it on TV and it’s an interesting kind of thing if you like football. But other than that, when it’s over with, goodbye! I mean it was more advantageous to have the Auto Show because when it was over at least we could go there and get some carpet from the convention area and put it in our living rooms. But as for the Superbowl, I don’t see any kind of lasting effects, other than that Ford Field is going to be made richer.

If not through top-down development strategies like the Superbowl, then what are the possibilities for building grassroots, self-sustaining economies in Detroit? What do you think about proposals like Africatown, the plan to build a strip of afrocentric, Black-owned businesses?

Africatown is a brilliant concept because people are talking about ways to create new industries and mechanisms of business, for example the idea of opening up a fishery and figuring out how to make Detroit a Mecca where you grow fish and sell fish, building economic sustenance for folks who live in those areas. But at the same time with proposals like Africatown you have to ask: who’s going to benefit unless it’s a co-op? Who’s going to own the fishery? Who’s going to own the belt shop? The dress shop? Are we about the business of trying to create economic wealth for some shopkeepers? And they’ll come and open up the little stores and say, “Oh we got a lot of money now, why don’t we move to Grosse Pointe? Why don’t we move to Taylor?” Is that what we trying to do or are we trying to open up an economic basis where with all the money we get from this fish shop, we’re going to build housing so that everybody can live here.

See, to change the world takes plans; it takes conversation; it takes organizing. Usually our organizing is based on let’s Black people organize for this and white people organize for that; senior citizens organize for this, young people organize something else. I got no more time for that, I done all them things. What I’m trying to organize now is for a global economy, for global needs.