Land Matters! People Matter! This Book Matters!
A Review of A People’s Atlas of Detroit, Edited by Linda Campbell, Andrew Newman, Sara Safransky and Tim Smallman Wayne State University Press 2020
Hilary Ramsden
Although not an atlas in the conventional sense nor claiming to include all the peoples of this city, A People’s Atlas of Detroit intends to illuminate, reference and document a set of pervasive political, social and economic struggles and injustices as well as the many ways and means by which Detroit’s residents have fought to win back land, dignity, governance and identity from the ground up. The book aims to debunk myths that have come to be associated with the city of Detroit. The topic is gaining traction, as it redresses representation putting the residents of Detroit firmly at the centre of the research and its authorship.
This is an atlas that features multiple voices instead of a single one. In some way, the Atlas follows paths charted by other arts-led ethnographic projects which invite and elicit personal stories and local experiences of neighbourhood and environment rather than quantitative data alone in order to illuminate more clearly and justly issues affecting their populations. The book combines interviews, maps, essays, poems, timelines, images and even an ‘in memoriam’ testimony to create an eloquently deep and thick mapping of the affective and emotional landscape of a city. It foregrounds struggles for territory, land ownership and survival and charts new ways of perceiving and understanding this city as well as pointing beyond the city limits of Detroit to urban centres around the world. As a result, the Atlas positions itself as an offer and opportunity to create and develop radically new citizen-led methods and infrastructures for governance, urban and civic organisation within a framework of an ethics of care and social, political and economic justice. Putting the peoples of Detroit at the centre and firmly leading the future of the city, the Atlas seeks to unearth and do justice to the crises many of us are facing and to assist in imagining new political possibilities by highlighting and revealing the histories, struggles and experiences that have made Detroit a distinctive city.
Begun in 2012 as a participatory research project by ‘Uniting Detroiters’, a group of community activists, scholars, students and residents, the aim of the Atlas was to explore and document how peoples of Detroit were understanding and responding to the then occurring urban restructuring that had been taking place since 2000. Over 120 Detroiters took part in a series of workshops where a collective analysis of the city’s ongoing and evolving histories, injustices and struggles was carried out, eventually developing into basis for this book.
The roots of inner-city Detroiters’ struggles for self-identity, dignity, justice and land ownership extend far back before the year 2000, as shown in a series of timelines throughout the chapters. These show the seeds of dispossession and systemic exploitation sown in the times of white colonial settlers and frontier culture that over the years sparked many instances of resistances such as the Black Panthers, a community radio station, a seven-day march to protest lack of adequate transport, soup kitchens, and an environmental action council, to name only very few of the wide variety of exceptional projects discussed in this book.
Inspired by and building on the work by the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI) created in late 1960s by Detroiter Gwendoline Warren and Wayne State University Professor William Bunge, the approach of the four editors is to communicate a critical analysis of a key point in time in Detroit’s history through a tapestry of affective and emotional threads that emerge from the city’s landscape. These are interwoven with quantitative data and research material that reflect the multi-dimensionality of levels on which exploitation and dispossession have marked the development of the city and its residents.
Six themed chapters, beginning with Detroit’s struggle for liberation and continuing with land ownership and governance, urban agriculture and gentrification demonstrate how racial capitalism and urban revanchism are key to understanding the city of Detroit. These bring notions of intersectionality starkly to the fore, where racism and capitalism are inextricably interwoven as a result of white settler colonialism and exploitation which has continued through to recent water shutoffs and emergency management.
Sixty authors offer a wealth of scholarship and rigorous research as well as drive and passion for activism on a range of levels with contributions in each chapter from individuals representing NGOs, residents, educators, students, community organisations, farmers, artists, church organisations and civic workers.
Individual maps reveal a variety of significant and insightful perspectives on the history of race, class and the distribution of land and its governance from Slavery Landmarks and Home Owners Loan Corporation Redlining Map to a map in the shape of the state of Michigan that lists every locality in Michigan with housing vacancy rates equal or higher than Detroit, a brightly coloured map showing Michigan historical land cover and a federal-wide map showing percentages of housing insecurity throughout the US.
Each contribution to the Atlas, whether poem, map, essay or interview highlights in its own, distinctive way visions and examples for radical change through community and grassroots organising, rejecting top-down approaches to governance and organising in favour of alternative educational and radical approaches that support individuals’ capacities to change and change their surroundings through dialogue and exchange. They reveal narratives of activism from neighbourhood groups developing responses to speculation, foreclosure and land use, to community groups promoting and creating alternative models for collective landownership, to neighbourhoods of people creating urban gardens and local food systems that focus on educating younger generations of Detroiters in the interconnectedness of growing food from compost production to healthy food on the table. All the projects emphasise the vision for sustainable and independent neighbourhoods and the creation of an environment for future generations that is liberated and common.
The Atlas succeeds in re-presenting Detroit as a vital and living city with strong activist histories of ordinary people surviving and battling systemic racial injustices, inequalities and dispossession. It also provides an inspiring example of how other cities might create their own distinctive Atlases through similar methods, bringing to light peoples’ histories of struggle against injustice and exploitation and demonstrating new ways of creating vital and democratic urban centres through an ethics of care, where we practice new ways of being in the world and with each other.
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK! BUY IT!
NB [All royalties generated by this book are going to the Transforming Power Fund to enable the work documented in this book to be continued and to purchase additional copies to be distributed without charge to Detroit-based community organizations]
Author
Dr. Hilary Ramsden
Uwch Ddarlithydd /Senior Lecturer Drama & Performance
Cyfadran y Diwydiannau Creadigol/ Faculty of Creative Industries
Prifysgol De Cymru/University of South Wales