It’s been another long pandemic winter. Here in Detroit, the temperature finally rose above sixty for five consecutive days. The Maple tree just outside the kitchen window is shimmering green leaves! We wake up every morning to the songs of red-winged blackbirds and robbins. The butterflies and dragonflies are dancing. The dandelions yellow the landscape all over the city. We’ve been taking late afternoon walks through Woodbridge, where we moved into a little condo four months ago.
This racially diverse neighborhood is a collection of century-old Victorian homes a dozen or so blocks from the campus of Wayne State University. This little 2-bed, 2-bath condo is our first ever home purchase, a privilege of inter-generational wealth. We are grateful for the frugality of our fathers and the willingness of Tom's mother to be a co-signer! We are loving that Spring is offering us more chances to tread softly in this neighborhood as guests - and learn what it means to throw in with this city once again.
Two nights ago, we talked with Katie, a neighbor just down the alley who is an assistant principal at a middle school in the suburbs. She has three kids and her husband Juan is now stuck in Mexico for three months awaiting results of a tuberculosis test. A cruel smokescreen for holding him, as he does not have tuberculosis. Juan has lived in Detroit for more than 20 years, but the federal immigration laws still treat him like a leper. Meanwhile, just this week, seven teachers at Katie's school called in subs because they tested positive for Covid. Her principal told her earlier that day that his cold and cough was probably Covid too, but he didn’t want to leave her running the school alone.
And then there's this. The house across the street caught fire late Tuesday night. Four boys live there, the oldest in his twenties, the youngest a freshman in high school. They are living in their grandmother's home, the first their family owned since migrating out of the Jim Crow south. A common story for Black families living in Detroit and throughout the U.S., where racist structures, policies and practices determine who has security and who is always one emergency away from losing everything.
Their grandmother died two years ago. They lost their mom to cervical cancer last year. We can still smell the smoke every time we walk by their home, which they now guard vigilantly day and night, since the damage done by the fire makes their home vulnerable to security breaches. Without intervention, it is likely they will lose their home. Katie lamented that it couldn't have happened to a more undeserving family. These young men are model neighbors and citizens, ones she's long encouraged her own kids to take cues from.
In these days, everyone is hanging on by a thread, at or beyond capacity. Most folks we talk to, all over North America, report that life is more challenging than ever. We are exhausted and overwhelmed. It seems like the social safety net is the key factor that separates those of us who grew up in the sunlight of opportunity from the other America. As inflation rises and work commitments spill over, many of us still have mothers who provide childcare and housing subsidies and home cooking and whatever else we might need. But many don’t. In a perpetual pandemic, many of us are insured and can choose whether to risk exposure. Many aren’t and can’t.
While we were crafting this update, the city of Detroit officially announced it has entered a "High Covid-19 Community Level." The latest Covid variant has come around the corner, more contagious than ever, and the federal government will not be mandating masks in public spaces or funding testing sites or covering hospital bills for uninsured patients. More and more vaccinated people will catch the coronavirus and die from the disease because they lack insurance, work long hours at frontline jobs subjected to unmasked people and/or their immunity has been compromised by age, intergenerational trauma, environmental racism, or the economic apartheid that continues to funnel wealth and security upward in our country, reserved only for a smaller and smaller privileged few.
Exploited workers, even many who are vaccinated, are now dying at alarmingly increasing rates because U.S. public policy has lifted all protections and safety measures, giving the virus free reign to evolve and mutate into smarter and deadlier versions of itself - and to spread like wildfire throughout our population. Those protected by some semblance of power, wealth and privilege (like ourselves) can make choices to continue to remain somewhat protected, as well as be assured we will be cared for when and if we do get sick or contract long COVID (an underreported concern now afflicting more and more of us). Meanwhile, the masses are sacrificed at the altar of our deadly refusal to challenge a return to "normal," promoted by power structures which continue to profit off an unending pandemic.
In this vulnerable season, we are pursuing healing and liberation in the cracks and corners of American culture: the beauty and brilliance of Black and Indigenous people, ancient and ancestral wisdom, the wonder of the more-than-human world and insights from restoration therapy and the 12-step movement. Now more than ever, we are wrestling with the words of Audre Lorde who warned against working to capacity forty years ago. Now more than ever, we are realizing that we will need to say "no" to some good things so that we can be centered and emotionally available. So that we can be present enough to see and hear what's happening all around us. We have been challenged by the tireless work of our mentor organization We The People of Detroit, still fighting for a people and planet whose clean, affordable and safe water is being actively poisoned, piped, stolen and withheld by wealthy and powerful elites across this city, nation, and globe.
The very least we can do is put on our own life masks - and then commit our energies toward recovering from the over-work and over-capacity that keeps us too busy to throw in with the Other America. The healing and liberation of our entire groaning planet beckon us towards an intentionality of resistance and grounding. Join us in lifting up and listening to those with their backs against the wall since the birth of this nation. It is in all our best interest to follow their wise and strategic leading, organizing, and Beloved Community-weaving. Indeed, in a world that becomes more cruel and callous by the minute, it is here that all our most poignant hopes for collective healing resides.
*In the next few days, we will be collecting money from folks who want to donate to the four young men still living in the home that caught fire a few nights ago. Let us know if you'd like to contribute.
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