Best In Black
Taraji P. Henson
Reaches10,000 Nominations Sept. 4 Deadline
Brings love and sisterhood to Women’s Empowerment Expo
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Volume 80 – Number 51
michiganchronicle.com
Aug. 30 - Sept. 5, 2017
This is your Detroit Detroit Future City delivers unsparing, clear-eyed look at the city By Keith A. Owens Senior Editor
The recently released report from Detroit Future City, 139 Square Miles, is relatively brief, unsparingly to the point, and should be required reading for anyone who claims to want to honestly understand where Detroit is right now. I mean, where Detroit really is. Not the feel good hype about Detroit being “back,” and not the defeatist rhetoric that nothing good is happening beyond downtown. Sometimes the truth hurts, but it also helps. Most importantly, the truth clarifies. And of all the things that Detroit Future City Executive Director Anika Goss-Foster shared with me recently as she attempted to break down the report’s findings, the one observation that stood out above and beyond all others was the following:
Colin Kaepernick defiance catching fire with supporters
Stand! By Keith A. Owens Senior Editor
So often this is how it starts: one man or woman decides they simply cannot take it anymore. So they don’t. Next thing you know, a movement has begun.
“This is the big headline for me, that economic inclusion is not just rhetoric, and I think that’s really, really clear. That African Americans who are the majority of the population of Detroit, we need to make much more of a concerted effort for all of us to be able to participate. And that if African Americans are not participating in employment and small business opportunities, and educational achievement, then that should be everybody’s problem. Anybody who cares about Detroit should be frustrated about African Americans not achieving to their fullest potential in Detroit.” Detroit, despite all the things we might see happening, is still overwhelmingly black and poor with a population of 672,000. The bankruptcy may have cleared the decks of crippling debt, but it couldn’t do
See DETROIT page A-4
WHAT’S INSIDE
Such is the case with Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, who made the decision last season to kneel during the National Anthem rather than stand with the rest of his teammates. Kaepernick had grown sick and tired of the excessive amount of police brutality being routinely visited upon black bodies in America, and so he protested in a way he figured would attract the most attention.
COMMENTARY
In that, he most certainly succeeded. Stories about Kaepernick’s protest, and photos of him kneeling during the National Anthem, dominated the news cycles and talk shows for weeks. Fast forward to 2017, and Kaepernick is back in the headlines — and in the middle of controversy. To date, Kaepernick, now a free agent, still has not been signed to a contract with any NFL team. Supporters believe strongly this is because the NFL considers him a radioactive Negro ever since he became political. Just last Wednesday, Chicago club owner Kenny Johnson, a strong supporter of Kaepernick’s protest, decided to launch a protest of his own. Until Kaepernick is signed, neither of his establishments —
The Bureau Bar and The Velvet Lounge — will show any NFL football games on any of their large TV screens. Both are within minutes of Soldier Field and would stand to benefit greatly from the considerable amount of football traffic. “I was literally sitting in my bar and I had decided to do it, and then I just posted to all our social media sites that we were boycotting until Colin got signed because we believed in what he was doing,” said Johnson. “We have such a big violence problem going on right now in Chicago with police killing unarmed black men. It resonates here very loudly. When we had that big incident here with LaQuan McDonald shot 16 times, that really kind of put a spotlight here in Chicago. And I have two sons, and I don’t want anything to happen to them. I talk to my sons about standing up for what you believe in, and with no fear of repercussion. “This was a way I could support him in a bigger way than just giving money to his foundation. … And I hope other bar owners will do the same, especially African-American bar owners,” although that support has yet to materialize. In the beginning it was just Kaepernick, on his own, as the shower of abuse, ridicule and outrage rained down. And not all of that outrage was from white people. More than a few black people — prominent black people — made a point of expressing their disgust and questioning why Kaepernick was being so antipatriotic. What they were really asking, truth be told, was why would Kaepernick insist on
making the race look bad. But then others began to kneel, then came more. And now, this season, after it seemed like last year’s protest was likely to fade, Kaepernick’s stand against police brutality is once again catching fire due to the apparent cowardice of the NFL which figured they could silently ban Kaepernick from the league by collectively agreeing not to sign him. And just like that, the protests heated up all over again. Many were wondering how could Kaepernick keep getting passed over and ignored — even to the point of dragging a mediocre quarterback out of retirement — simply because he was willing to take a stand against the brutalization of black bodies by those supposedly sworn to protect those bodies? So far, Kaepernick has been joined publicly by nearly 30 fellow NFL protesters, including Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, defensive end Khalil Mack, former Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett, center Justin Britt, cornerback Jeremy Lane and 11 Cleveland Browns players. In addition to his fellow ballers, the NAACP wrote a letter to the NFL to address the situation, and last week a rally of more than 1,000 Kaepernick supporters protested in front of the NFL’s New York headquarters. “There’s been a lot of support, you can go on our media page, but then there’s been a lot of non-black folks that have responded crazy about it, you know?
Detroit schools set to open, despite closure threat
By Ken Coleman
When she started working for the district and joined the union in 1996, “we were like family,” she remembers, “really cohesive.” Moving out of a shuttered school, she says, is demoralizing.
Special to the Chronicle
Dr. Robert E.L. Perkins, D.D.S. 1925 to 2017
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In a victory for community control of education, 24 Detroit schools threatened with closure have been removed from the chopping block after Michigan and the Detroit school board signed a three-year “partnership agreement” that will give schools some flexibility in goal-setting, reporting and spending. The partnership gives schools leeway to form their own leadership teams and get help from local universities, says Ruby Newbold, president of the Detroit Association of Educational Office Employees and an AFT vice president. Members in Detroit are breathing a sigh of relief as they prepare to go back to school, and AFT President Randi Weingarten is giving them credit for exerting the muscle to keep their schools open. Speaking recently to PSRPs in Detroit, Wein garten praised them for keeping the faith and not giving up the fight. “A year ago,” she said, “it was not clear if you would even have a school system.”
Andella White’s school is one of those saved from closing. Kids already come from all over to Edison Elementary School in Rosedale Park. “It’s the only school that’s around in this area,” said the Title I paraprofessional, “so why would you close it? But we were on the list.” Like Jackson, she has worked at schools that were closed and has seen the damage. It’s a mystery to her why they would close a school that has 35-40 students per class.
Laura Jackson That threat isn’t lost on Detroit’s paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, who know that state “reformers” are still gunning for their schools. “When I was growing up, it did not matter what was going on, you went to school,” said
Laura Jackson, a school secretary at Detroit Collegiate Prep High School. “The school was your safe haven.” But after wave upon wave of school closures over more than a decade, Jackson thinks students don’t feel as rooted in one place anymore.
White’s lips close tightly when the subject comes up of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. “She doesn’t even recognize us,” said White. “How can you speak about us when you don’t even see us?” Detroit’s new partnership agreement is proof that topdown reform doesn’t work, and gives Detroiters a chance to take
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