Charles Simmons, long-time Detroit activist and professor of journalism at Eastern Michigan University, is an active member of the King Solomon Baptist Church on 14th St., just south of West Grand Blvd. The church is a historic center of the Northwest Goldberg community in which it is located. In 1963, Malcolm X delivered his legendary “Message to the Grassroots” speech at King Solomon.

Students from EMU and the University of Michigan have joined church members in cleaning, repairing and painting the many rooms and activity areas within the church. The Committee for the Political Resurrection of Detroit, of which Simmons is a co-chair, has been active in helping to clear the space and plant a community garden on Marquette and Wabash. It has also sponsored summer bazaars with King Solomon as well as a Health and Environmental Fair with the Duffield Library.

In this interview, Charles Simmons shares his thoughts about community-building in Northwest Goldberg and around the King Solomon Baptist Church.

How big is the Northwest Goldberg community?

It has a couple of thousand people. It goes from West Grand Blvd on the north, back to Edsel Ford on the south, Trumbull on the east and Grand River on the west.

What are some of the strengths of the neighborhood that you can draw on to help rebuild the community?

There are more small businesses than I had thought, maybe 20-25 businesses. We have schools. Northwestern High School, McMichael Middle School, Therkel Elementary. We’re going to have to figure out how to use the schools, the kids and the teachers to support our various projects. And the elders -- the present population about 1/3 appear to be elders -- grandparents, we are going to have to figure out programs to unite the elders with the kids.

We also have a number of senior citizens buildings and nursing homes. Now some of the people in the nursing homes are not sick people. They are capable of doing things. And then we have the apartments with the seniors. We are going to have to figure out how to utilize seniors in programs as volunteers; many of those people have some kind of skills. They would be able to barter their skills for things they need done.

What are some of the issues that should be addressed and what can be accomplished in the community?

We need intra-neighborhood transportation. Many people don’t drive and don’t have anyone to drive them. They can’t walk; they have physical disability. We need a shuttle service in the neighborhood.

A lot of people have house repair needs; everybody’s got a leaky roof.

Another thing we can do is provide equipment for working on the houses, and train people to work on their houses. We had started a tool lending library project several years ago. I bought some tools, but we need a place for them and we need to arrange for people to be able to borrow tools like books from the library.

I think it would be good if we could get some of the vacant buildings renovated. Give them to people to renovate in exchange for their labor.

What role do you see for King Solomon in either these issues or in any of the other community concerns?

The church has tremendous space that is not utilized. Most of it needs renovating, but some of it does not need a lot. Space can be used as places for these various programs.

We are presently a site for Narcotics Anonymous. They meet every week at the church. We have a free food program on Wednesday that gives out hot meals to residents. We have been focusing on McMichael Middle School. And we got a couple of parents involved who are members of the church now, so they’re bringing the kids.

After we do these basic survival things, we want to get into housing development.

Where do you think the community can go in the next 15-20 years?

I think we can have an educational institution or service, after-school programs, computer training. We can have much needed health services, both prevention and care with on site nurses and health providers. We can have at least housing for the seniors, but we should be able to do more than that. Have the beginning of regular environmental-type education along with the health education. To the extent that we can do any type of cooperative ventures, to get people into participating in their economic survival, it would be very good.

Although I haven’t been to Venezuela, what I hear about what is happening in the communities, they are developing cooperative ventures. They are poor folks. They are finding new ways to organize, to use collective work to empower the community; bricks and mortar, as well as health care and education.

I think community gardening is one very small step to educate people about farming in a place where people don’t have enough food, in a community where people are poor, where the things we can get out of a garden can actually help. It’s not going to solve the food problem, but it can help and it can advance.

The Capuchin Kitchens are an example. They’ve got this large greenhouse -- bigger than the one at Belle Isle -- and a hot house so they can raise food all year around. They are raising food in large quantities like a real farm; they have enough of it to give to social services people, folks on welfare.

That has to be duplicated all over the city. We need [a community garden], at least one, in Northwest Goldberg. Kids could be educated in agriculture, the way that they’re being at Catherine Ferguson Academy. Those girls are getting educated in agricultural methods and the importance of agriculture. You can create the facility and you can hire the people to do the work and they can make some money also.

Part of it is training in what people eat. Begin to eat more fresh food. But it also brings people together. And we get people together and talk about the future.

A woman stole some greens from our community garden. She operates in the underground economy. She turns over stolen goods. And a lot of people have some kind of hustle, because they need to do something to survive if they are not employed. They may not have any other income. We are beginning to change some values about doing something cooperative. You don’t need to steal this. All you have to do is put in a little labor and it is free.

One thing that we can measure that I thought was very positive: after we started that project on Marquette, some of the neighbors -- even though they didn’t come down and participate in the garden -- started their own gardens in their own back yard and doing more renovations on their own houses.

The next step is creating some type of internal economic system where we can barter goods for services, goods for goods -- something like that. I think that is a step towards being self-reliant in some areas.

We need to begin to look again at what type of society we want. And this is a just a microcosm of a new society. Where we live near where we work, we eat healthy food, we work together on projects that are mutually satisfying and uplifting, and we work to have an environment that is healthy. So when we have those things and people don’t have to do things that are illegal to survive, then they can begin to think about a new society.

I think that is where we need to be going. It needs to be a model for building a new society, a new world. And we need to join hands with people in Venezuela and Cuba, India, other places around the world where they have similar needs.

Fred David is a member of the Critical Moment editorial collective.