Kardia Kaiomenē: Redefined

"Definitions belong to the definers,

not the defined." - Toni Morrison, Beloved

For the past fifteen months, we’ve been participating with a grassroots organizing campaign called Core City Strong. The Core City neighborhood is directly to the west of Woodbridge, the neighborhood in Detroit where we live. Core City is literally right across Rosa Parks Blvd from us. It is 96% Black and has a median household income of under $20,000. Core City summons old memories. There are many burned out buildings and open lots where homes once stood. But a lot of people still live in the neighborhood. On many Spring and Summer afternoons, Tommy runs through Core City, tracking wildflowers, feral cats and friendly faces.

A dozen years ago, a wealthy white dude named Murray Wikol bought a parcel of land for $1300 in Core City. He tried to sell it for a huge profit a few years later. Then, he pivoted with plans to build a concrete crusher facility. Just a few blocks from homes, schools, churches and organic farms. He applied for a permit and was denied. But he put up electronic fences with barbed wire and started storing and sorting huge mounds of dirt and concrete anyways. Trucks and tractors have been operating on the site. When wind whips from west to east, as it so often does in Detroit, it sends toxic fugitive dust through the neighborhood. The city has given him 127 blight tickets and he still owes more than $130K of it. The city is now suing him.

Wikol, who lives in a mansion in suburban Bloomfield Hills, claims that all the construction and demolition debris that is stored on his property has been illegally dumped there by other people. Wikol claims that he has cleaned up that land more than anyone else ever. He claims that he is just trying to create jobs and development in the community. Wikol is trying to control the narrative. Code for lying out of his ass. For the past fifteen months, we have listened to Murray Wikol spread his propaganda to news sites, over and over and over again. Everything's been documented by a professional community organizer named Vanessa - as God is our witness, a sure-as-hell, real-life superhero who just so-happens-to-live a block from Wikol’s toxic shit show.

Murray Wikol is a multi-millionaire. He is also a public nuisance, a bad-faith actor and an environmental racist. He is a criminal who refuses to be held accountable. It is remarkable what he gets away with and how much time and energy is required to get him to clean up his mess and move out of the neighborhood. We join monthly meetings, have made numerous calls to the mayor and city offices, have attended hearings and circulated petitions. Last month, in wind-chill snow flurries on the second day of Spring, we held yet another press conference in front of the site. News vans showed up. Long-time, low-income residents testified to the toxic trauma.

When politicians and their wealthy campaign contributors rave about the “free market” and “less government regulation” and the importance of entrepreneurs “creating jobs” – and at the same time they lament the rise in “crime” in neighborhoods – we think it is important to put a face on whose life and livelihood these definitions protect and serve. The city of Detroit, and the city and state and nation where you live, spends billions of taxpayer dollars on arresting and incarcerating and evicting poor people of color, militarizing the border and bombing dark-skinned people on the other side of the planet. Meanwhile, real corporate criminals like Murray Wikol and many others, doing untold damage to the lungs and livelihoods of low-income communities, can only hope to be contained by neighbors forced to spend a lot of their free time and energy organizing just to protect themselves.

Last week, we put flyers on the doorstep of every house in the neighborhood to recruit people of faith and conscience to show up to two key events this week. On Wednesday night, our team met with city attorneys and signed affidavits for their lawsuit against Wikol. On Thursday night, we gave public comment at the city planning commission for a proposal to downzone thirty-five parcels of land in Core City so that developers like Wikol will not even think about trying to start their heavy, fugitive-dust-flying industrial projects in the future. After three hours of passionate testimony and questions from commissioners, they unanimously passed the proposal! What a gift to meet people like Vanessa, Steven, Eleanor, Ash, Laprisha and Nadia. Neighbors who know what’s really going on in the world. Neighbors who are willing to to do whatever it takes to redefine a world where everyone can breathe.