The People Issue

It’s 2019, and Millennials are still getting stereotyped by the media as a bunch of whiny little entitled kids. OK, boomer, we have some bad news for you: The oldest millennials are nearly 40 now — far from whiny little entitled kids — and that makes you hella old. It also means that there’s a new generation coming of age now: Generation Z.

Defined as the generation born starting in the late ’90s, the somewhat ominously named cohort — what comes after? — is different from millennials in that it never really knew a time before the digital era. Many basically grew up with a smartphone in their hands, and while much has been made about the ways technology and social media have warped our souls, it can also be a powerful sword if wielded masterfully. In that sense, Gen Z have proved themselves to be warriors. Witness the survivors of last year’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida, who took to social media with the hashtag #NeverAgain, giving the gun-control debate a jolt of energy and urgency. Earlier this year, the Sunrise Movement posted a viral video showing elementary school children confronting California Sen. Dianne Feinstein about supporting a Green New Deal. (“There’s no way to pay for it,” Feinstein says dismissively. “We have tons of money going to the military,” a young girl expertly responds. A recent study of the Pentagon’s budget by an MSU professor revealed, essentially, a $21 trillion black hole.) Then there’s Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist whose quest to save the planet from anthropogenic climate has amassed millions of followers on social media, leading her to recently be named Time magazine’s person of the year — the youngest person ever to hold the distinction — and triggering President Snowflake in the process.

It’s certainly the case here in Michigan, too. 12-year-old Mari Copeny, better known on social media as “Little Miss Flint,” is somewhat of an analog to Thunberg, using social media to raise awareness about the ongoing Flint water crisis. Others have made an impact in smaller ways, from squeezing in gun control and environmental activism in between school and work, to using their high-school graduation speech to speak out against injustice, to simply helping keep jazz and an iconic rock album alive. We present to you our 2019 Generation Z people of the year. —Lee DeVito

Mari Copeny, aka ‘Little Miss Flint’

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny — better known on social media as Little Miss Flint — is carrying empty cardboard boxes out of Grand Blanc’s Woodland Park Academy into a recycling bin. She and other volunteers have just finished unloading toys, electronics, and food for a holiday drive for local families.

As we enter through a side door propped open by a case of bottled drinking water, we’re greeted by a staff member folding more cardboard boxes. When we ask to speak with Loui Brezzell, Mari’s mother, Mari pipes up: “I’m Little Miss Flint.”

Mari leads us to her mother, but we overhear Mari tell her sister and her aunt she doesn’t want to do an interview at this moment. She’d rather be helping set up the toy drive.

On a gymnasium stage, Brezzell guides us through tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of donations — $5,000 worth of books, roughly $18,000 worth of toys, and another $3,000 worth of Amazon Fire tablets. There are winter coats, uniforms, backpacks, school supplies, and what Brezzell estimates to be another $8,000 to $9,000 worth of “stuff.”

Later, we duck into a kindergarten classroom to start the interview. While Little Miss Flint wasn’t initially thrilled about pausing her fundraiser prep work to speak with a reporter, she eventually lets us into her world.

Before becoming one of the many faces of the Flint water crisis, Mari was a beauty pageant contestant, which is how she earned her nickname, “Little Miss Flint.”

Mari says she doesn’t remember much from that period in her life, and frankly doesn’t like reminiscing on it. However, she does remember pageants as being “dramatic,” as parents would often get upset if their child didn’t win first prize.

“All of the moms complained about how their kid didn’t win,” Mari says. “I’m kind of too old to be wearing a crown and sash around, traveling around. That’s just a little bit baby-ish.”

The events of the next few years would see Little Miss Flint grow up faster than most. When the #Black- LivesMatter campaign against police brutality started, Mari got involved.

“Back before the water crisis kind of made headlines, she was already kind of known [for] trying to help the kids not be so afraid of the local police,” Brezzell says. “She was always taking cupcakes to police officers and little fun stuff.” Then the Flint water crisis hit. In 2016, Mari, then 8 years old, watched as her mother covered her sister Keilani in an ointment and plastic wrap because she was breaking out in mysterious rashes. What they didn’t know is that the tap water flowing from their own faucets was contaminated with lead and other toxic chemicals.

“We didn’t know what was causing it,” Brezzell says. “We thought it was the detergent or something. Then, we found out it was from the water.”

Of course, we now know that in 2014, while under state-appointed emergency management, the disastrous decision was made to try to save money by switching the city’s drinking water source from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River. But the leaders didn’t bother to treat the water properly, resulting in lead being leached from the pipes into the drink- ing water supply. Once the crisis was exposed, Mari wrote a letter to then-President Barack Obama before embarking on a bus ride to Washington to watch then-Gov. Rick Snyder testify about Flint before Congress, inviting Obama to visit Flint. “My mom said chances are you will be too busy with more important things, but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift people’s spirits,” she wrote.

Obama announced his decision to visit Flint by posting his response letter to Mari. “You’re right that Presidents are often busy, but the truth us, in America, there is no more important title than citizen,” he wrote. “Letters from kids like you are what make me so optimistic for the future.” (Months later, Mari would meet another president when she met then-candidate Donald Trump, though the look of unease on her face in a viral photo of the two would appear to be foreshadowing.)

Now 12, Mari has expanded her advocacy work beyond the city of Flint into communities like Newark, New Jersey, east Chicago, and Pittsburgh, where water has also been contaminated. She’s also gearing up to release a brand of water filters with her name on them in collaboration with water filtration company Hydroviv. Brezzell says it took about half a year and several fundraising campaigns before owner Eric Roy was on board. Brezzell says Roy and the family were friends long before the attention from President Obama came.

“He did a fundraiser to send filters here, and he sent us one of his filters initially,” she says. But the family ended up giving it away to an elderly neighbor who needed it more.

Mari says that while the new filtration systems are a start, more work still needs to be done in Flint and across the country as government slowly replaces the cities’ aging infrastructure.

Until then, activists like Mari will be there to make sure people never forget about places like Flint. —Jasmine Espy

Antonio Cipriano, budding Broadway star

Antonio Cipriano admits he had no idea who Alanis Morissette was when he received a Facebook message from casting director Stephen Kopel asking the 19-year-old performer to audition for the role of Phoenix in the Jagged Little Pill Broadway musical.

“I was like, who the hell is this Alanis Morissette person?” Cipriano says. “My mom overheard me saying that and she was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

It wasn’t until his mother played Morissette’s seminal 1995 record that Cipriano realized that Jagged Little Pill was the soundtrack to his childhood.

“I know almost every single song on this album,” he says. “I don’t know who Alanis Morissette is, but I know all of this music. I’ve heard this music growing up my entire life. It’s really cool how she had an impact on me before I even knew who she was, and now I’m singing ‘Ironic’ and ‘Head Over Feet’ in the show. It’s pretty incredible.”

Raised in Grosse Pointe, Cipriano had always dreamt of the Broadway stage but never saw it coming into fruition as it did. As a junior at University Liggett High School, Cipriano was selected to represent his school at the annual Sutton Foster Ovation Awards, which honors achievements made by high school drama students throughout Michigan. After winning the award for best actor, he went on to the National High School Musical Theatre Awards — or the Jimmy Awards — where he placed as a finalist. A few months later, Kopel sent the Facebook message that would eventually make Cipriano’s dream come true.

“After the Jimmy Awards, it was like, Oh, I can actually achieve this dream,” he says. “I can actually do this. Because it was always just like a thought. It was always an idea. But how am I gonna get there? What am I going to do to get there? So when it actually happened, it was unbelievable.”

Jagged Little Pill, which was written by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Diablo Cody (Juno) and directed by Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus (Pippin), took nearly seven years to manifest. Morissette told The New York Times in a recent profile that the Broadway show is in no way a jukebox musical — later confirmed by an NYT review of the show, hailing it as a “joyful and redemptive” evolution of the jukebox genre. The story of eight characters and the worlds they inhabit is told through the songs from the record and includes some from Morissette’s later work and parallel issues faced by a modern family: addiction, race, rape, and trauma.

“She wrote Jagged Little Pill when she 19,” Cipriano says of Morissette. “So when she was my age, she wrote Jagged Little Pill. I cannot imagine myself ever doing that.” He adds that the awardwinning Canadian songwriter is “the nicest human ever” and one of the most intelligent people he’s ever met. “She’s literally like my mom,” he says. Jagged Little Pill the musical will be Cipriano’s home through early July, just a few weeks after Morissette embarks on a North American tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of the record. He and his castmates perform eight shows a week, padded with daytime rehearsals. Though he says the transition from Michigan to New York City has been a crazy one, he’s working at staying present so he can soak it all in.

“It’s crazy all the time, but it’s also the best city ever,” he says. “I’ve met so many awesome people. I have so many great friends here. It’s a very exhausting process for sure, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s really incredible. I’m very grateful.” —Jerilyn Jordan

Tayiona White, all-around-activist

At 17, Tayiona White is busier than most adults — and she doesn’t seem to mind.

A junior at Cass Tech High School, Tayiona heads from the classroom to the Potbelly Sandwich Shop every weekday for a four-hour shift before ending her long day with homework.

It’s on the weekends when the 16-year-old directs her energies toward her passions — gun control and environmental justice, to name a few. She’s the social media coordinator for Detroit Area Youth United Michigan (DAYUM), an activist organization run by high school students. On Sundays, DAYUM holds meetings and invites people to learn about activism and social issues.

“Whatever is important to us, we talk about it and try to help,” she says.

DAYUM has coordinated events such as a student strike on count day, a Youth Summit on Guns and Violence, a watertesting research project, a demonstration calling for climate action, and The March for Our Lives, a student-led rally in support of stronger gun controls.

They’ve protested water shutoffs, education inequality, and Project Green Light, an expanding surveillance system in Detroit.

“I want to be involved in change,” Tayiona tells Metro Times. “I don’t want to sit back and watch it happen.”

Tayiona’s generation is faced with the horrifying realities of climate change and mass shootings. While elected officials more than twice her age are ignoring the grave issues, Tayiona is among the generation that is confronting them head on.

“We have to fight for stricter gun control,” Tayiona says. “It should be simple, but we have to fight for it.”

Tayiona is also concerned about environmental contamination. In southwest Detroit, for example, dozens of factories are belching dangerous chemicals into the air.

For Tayiona, issues such as gun control and climate change are common sense. People’s safety should be the priority.

She recognizes that changing the world likely begins with her generation. “A lot of the stuff that is happening has been going on for too long,” Tayiona says. “It’s time for change. It’s a new age and a new era.”

When Tayiona graduates from high school, she wants to continue helping make the world a better place. Her plan is to become a pediatric nurse.

“I want to help kids,” she says. “I feel like everything starts with your childhood. If I can do anything to help a child, I want to.” —Steve Neavling

Tuhfa Kasem, a student who spoke up

Tuhfa Kasem wanted more.

A senior at Detroit’s Universal Academy charter school, Kasem, then 1, had become disenchanted with the way her school was being run. Her favorite teachers were fired during her freshman year, there was a lack of certified teachers to teach her throughout her high school career, and she and her peers had to endure a string of substitute teachers instead. After getting involved with 482Forward, a citywide network dedicated to making sure Detroit children have access to quality education, she started to learn that her experience at UA wasn’t typical.

“I thought it was just like a normal thing in every school, that that’s how all schools run and that’s how everyone gets treated,” she says. “I started realizing that it’s just educational injustice in specific schools, or in schools that don’t get enough funding, or schools that aren’t in the best places — and those are the schools that get mistreated.”

Kasem is a smart, ambitious young woman. The youngest of four, she was born in Yemen and moved to the U.S. when she was � years old. After Kasem was named salutatorian of her graduating class, she says an idea came to her while she was sitting in her room a few days before the ceremony: She would focus her speech on her frustrating educational experience at UA. She went to the living room to tell her family what she wanted to do.

“I was like, �Guys, I have a plan,’” Kasem says. “Growing up, they always raised me to stand up for what I believe in, and if I know I’m doing the right thing, then just go for it.”

When the day came to make the speech, Kasem was nervous. But the nerves vanished when she took the stage.

In her speech, Kasem railed against the “unlawful” injustices she and her peers experienced at the school. “Thinking we’d just stay quiet and accept it as first-generation Yemeni and Iraqi students, I can honestly say it’s partially our faults since we’ve tolerated it for a majority of the time. The few times we would speak out, we’d quickly be shut down and excuses would be shoved down our throats and we’d be given no option but to accept them,” Kasem says. “I’ll give this administration props for the one thing they’re good at, which is switching the problems back on the students.”

The administration swiftly cut Kasem’s mic, which led to the audience asking her to talk louder.

“So then I just moved away from the mic, and I started screaming without it,” she says.

The battle didn’t end there. After graduating, UA Students later noticed their transcripts had not been sent to them. Kasem and her peers visited the Dearborn Heights offices of Hamadeh Educational Services, which manages the school, but the staff locked the doors and wouldn’t let the children enter.

A couple weeks after news of the incident went public, the students finally received their transcripts and diplomas — except Kasem and her fellow salutatorian, �ainab Altalaqani, who had also made a speech criticizing UA. Then, they received transcripts, but no diplomas — the school held them until Kasem and others went to an Oakland University Board of Trustees meeting with a list of demands. OU then intervened and made sure Kasem and Altalaqani received their diplomas.

Kasem says the experience opened her eyes.

“There are people that are going to try to get in your way and always try to make everything worse for everyone,” she says. “And they’re always going to be there — but if you don’t fight it, then it’s just going to get worse.”

Today, Kasem is focused on her freshman year at Wayne State University, and she hopes to become a dentist. She is also continuing her work with 482Forward to fight against educational inequity in Detroit public charter schools. She says she hopes her speech and her continued efforts will urge Universal Academy to hear the voices of its students.

“The students do know what’s best for themselves and what they need in order to be successful,” Kasem says. “We are going to start speaking up, and we do expect change — and not for you to just shut us down.”

Looking back on her graduation speech, Kasem says she realized what she’s capable of.

“I never knew I really had that in me, you know?” she says. “I guess no one does until they actually do it. And I think it’s inside everyone — they just have to find it.” —Sonia Khaleel

Alexis Lombre, jazz virtuoso

At 22, Alexis Lombre has the work ethic of a veteran jazz star. The jazz pianist and vocalist should be exhausted given her touring schedule the past year — all while keeping up with the demands of her senior year at the University of Michigan (she graduates next spring). When not on the road, Lombre holds court at various jazz clubs in Detroit, including Cliff Bell’s, where she held a two-year residency on Tuesday nights this year. And when she returns to her hometown of Chicago, she performs in popular jazz spots such as the Jazz Showcase with local heavies like saxophonist Rajiv Halim.

She’s among a crop of young musicians such as Allen Dennard, Trunino Lowe, and Kasan Belgrave making a name for themselves in Detroit. Her debut album, 2017’s Southside Sounds, exemplifies her songwriting expertise. It’s obvious she’s studied: Her left hand infuses the spirits of greats such as Bobby Timmons and Herbie Hancock, and her right hand channels the ghosts of Detroiters Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones.

Lombre grew up on Chicago’s Southside. Her folks weren’t musicians, but music was a big part of her household, where everything from R&B to jazz was available.“I come from serious music lovers,” Lombre says. “My grandparents had a huge love for jazz and passed it down to my mother, and that love passed down to me.” Listening to her discuss her love of R&B musicians such as Earth Wind & Fire, Frankie Beverly and Maze, and Ray Charles with such enthusiasm, you’d swear she’s of a different era.

Lombre started taking classical piano at 9, and jazz around 12. She found her teachers were telling her conflicting techniques, so she had to choose which genre she would stick with.

“I definitely felt more like myself playing jazz,” she says, “but I still love classical music.”

She gives credit to her mentors, including Kansas City pianist Steve Million and Willie Pickens, a Chicago music legend, whom she studied privately with after receiving the Jazz Institute of Chicago Kiewit-Wang Mentorship Award.

Another key mentor in her development was jazz pianist Benny Green, an alumnus of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, who encouraged her to attend U-M. “He told me he was teaching at U-M, and I followed him,” she says. “Then I heard about Ellen Rowe, who is a piano teacher there, and Marion Hayden, so when I saw all the women on the faculty, I was like this was a move I had to make.”

Seeing the important role Detroit has played in jazz, as well as the huge female presence on the jazz scene, also affirmed Lombre’s decision to move to Detroit. The Motor City has historically been a hub for accomplished female jazz musicians, such as pianists Terry Jean Pollard, Alice Coltrane, and Alma Smith — “musical mothers,” as Lombre calls them. Those include bassist Marion Hayden and drummer Gayelynn McKinney of the Grammywinning group Straight Ahead, who have also coached her.

“It’s really empowering having two strong women who support you and your ideas,” she says. “Sometimes when I had older men in my group, I’ve had them still try and run my band a little bit because I’m younger and not really [embrace] my ideas.”

Lombre says it’s been encouraging playing with local musicians in Detroit because they’re receptive to female musicians.

“When I was coming up in Chicago, they really didn’t know what to do with me,” she says.

Since moving to Detroit in 2015, Lombre has grown by leaps and bounds, touring nationally and internationally. In January, she performed in South Africa with Chicago saxophonist Ernest Dawkins. She’s also opened up for pianist Robert Glasper and saxophonist Jimmy Heath. Her biggest OMG moment so far has been befriending multi-Grammy winning jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding, whom she met at the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe last year when Spalding performed a tribute to pianist Geri Allen. Lombre asked Spalding to sit in.

“I’m like her annoying little sister,” Lombre says with a laugh. “Our stories are very similar. We grew up rough, but luckily had a lot of programs that could invest their time in [us], so when I read her story, she showed me that I can actually pursue this.”

Like Spalding, Lombre is musically eclectic — evident during a recent set at Cliff Bell’s, where she opened with Michael Jackson’s “I Can’t Help It,” then moved into Geri Allen’s “Unconditional Love.” One of her goals, she says, is keeping the “soul” in music alive, so don’t expect her to just be tied down to jazz. She simply goes where the music leads her.

“I like playing all different types of music,” she says. “I played a straight ahead jazz gig on Friday, then on Saturday I played an R&B and salsa gig, and on Sunday, I played an avantgarde gig. I love being able to go from different situations musically.” You can catch Lombre next from 7-10 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 8 performing with Nomad at Blue LLama in Ann Arbor. — Veronica Johnson