Jon Brumit (solo on drums) at Sound House
CHICAGO — This morning at a café in a gentrified neighborhood of Chicago, I sat reading Facebook on my iPhone and came across yet another story relating to Detroit, the city frequently cited for its riches-to-poverty story. This one was posted on the blog of Rania K. Halek, and outlines the story of young Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old black woman who was shot dead in the predominantly white suburb of Dearborn Heights. It was 2:30am on a Saturday morning, and she had just gotten into a car accident. Her cell phone was dead, so she knocked on a stranger’s door to ask for help. She posed no threat, and her death is a horrific, fear-based and completely outrageous and senseless act of violence.
This crime now has Detroit attached to it, and with it comes the added stigma of what happens to a once-thriving city whose dreams have been deferred, decimated and is currently in the process of being rebuilt. What is Detroit like, and why has it become one of the sensitive points of national American media? In part two of a two-part conversation with Gina Reichert of Power House Productions, an artist-run nonprofit that works to develop and implement neighborhood stabilization strategies in Detroit, we go further into taking down the knee-jerk Detroitisms and what it is like to be part of the long-term process of regrowth.
Read the interview here: http://hyperallergic.com/92456/powering-through-detroits-many-isms/
