Welcome to the 2017 Metro Times People Issue.

Photos by Jacob Lewkow
The People Issue 2017 In 2015, we decided to commemorate what we thought were some of the most interesting Detroiters with what we dubbed our People Issue. So we bunkered down in the Metro Times editorial office and, after several rounds of lively debate, hammered out a list of 30 candidates united only in the fact that we thought they were doing cool things in and around Detroit — a list that included artists, activists, politicians, musicians, writers, entrepreneurs, and more. After taking a year hiatus, we’re back with a brand new People Issue. In the following pages, you’ll meet some of the people who we think are doing important work in the city, region, and state. Some you might have already heard of — like the man running to be the country’s first Muslim governor, or the Olympian boxer from Flint. Others might not be household names, but equally as important — like the first superintendent to head Detroit’s public schools after years of state control, or the head of the venerable Wayne State Police Department. Some have been toiling quietly in the city for decades, others are newcomers. One may have even brought your favorite band to town — and served you a beer at the bar at the very same show. Of course, there are so many people doing good work that trying to create a comprehensive list would be a fool’s errand. In the end, we tried to show a wide cross section of the fabric of Detroit. You might see someone you know. You’ll certainly meet more than 20 people who you ought to know. Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Contender: Abdul El-Sayed 2018 gubernatorial candidate To the unknowing eye, Abdul El-Sayed may appear to be another big-dreaming millennial (which he is) who posts pictures of food on Instagram (which he does). Yet he has more up his sleeve than a compelling smile and a homemade jerky recipe: At just 32, El-Sayed is running for governor. El-Sayed’s story is one chock-full of twists, turns, and seemingly innumerable accolades. Born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrants, he attended Andover High School in Bloomfield Hills before moving on to the University of Michigan, where he studied political science and biology. Four years later, he spoke at the university’s 2007 commencement alongside former president Bill Clinton, who joked that El-Sayed had a future in politics after hearing him. He completed his MD at Columbia University in 2014, following stints at the University of Michigan Medical School and Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. After spending a year as an assistant professor in Columbia’s Department of Epidemiology, he was appointed by Mayor Mike Duggan as health officer and executive director of the Detroit Health Department in 2015. At 30 years old, El-Sayed became the youngest-ever health official of a major U.S. city. El-Sayed says that his time at the Department angered him into action. “I was rebuilding the Detroit Health Department, an agency that had been shut down when our city was facing municipal bankruptcy and state takeover, and watching the same emergency managers who were poisoning kids in Flint,” he explains. “Public health is about a set of basic things that people need in their lives to keep them healthy — access to a good job, a living wage, a good roof over their heads, healthy air, healthy water, a walkable environment. I realized the work of being a health commissioner was limited to a few parts of that. I wanted to go about setting an agenda that was really about people, for people.” El-Sayed’s impact extends well beyond the sphere of public health. In just a few months, his gubernatorial campaign has garnered support from Democrats statewide. A practicing Muslim, if elected El-Sayed would be the United States of America’s first Muslim governor. “Look, I am Muslim, and a lot will be made about my faith. To me, it is part of who I am, but independent of why I’m running for governor,” he says. “It inspired me to serve people, in the teachings of my faith, but really, I’m running because I believe I can be a great governor for people, whether I’m Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Atheist, or another. I think I’m more focused on having the right conversations with people about the challenges they face, making sure that we’re coming up with the right solutions, and that we’re in the position to implement them when we’re elected.” In the 2016 election, Michigan voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1988. Today, incidents of Islamophobia are being reported on a regular basis across the state. From this vantage point, El-Sayed’s chances of victory may appear slim. Yet to him, the race is about more than just the title of governor. “I want to create a movement that unites people around a belief that our government, which is hallowed [as] being for people and by people, a movement that brings us back to that core,” he explains. “I think that would result in my being elected, but more importantly, results in the opportunity to lead the way that I want to lead and be able to inspire, again, about what government can do for people. If and when it is focused on real people, rather than the corporate elite who have locked out so many from the means for a great life.” Regarding his tangible goals for the state, El-Sayed cites repairing the damage caused by a deceptive state government. “We look around, we see problems like a faltered economy, failing schools, a state that is one of the least transparent, the least accountable in the entire country,” he says. “That’s led us to doing things that are dastardly, like poisoning 9,000 kids in one of the poorest cities in America. That’s cause for a lot of criticism. I hope that what my candidacy can do is to inspire people to believe in a future, a potential, that is better than the one that we live in. If we can’t believe in that, I worry a lot about our future.” El-Sayed may hold a multitude of titles, but in the end, he hopes to be remembered for something more. “[I want to be remembered as] somebody who believed honestly in people and their ability to thrive and to flourish if we create the right circumstances,” he says. “Somebody who worked every day to create those circumstances for all kinds of people. And somebody who inspired people to believe in a world that is just a little bit more just, a little bit more equitable, and a little bit more sustainable than the one that we have today.” Find out more about El-Sayed’s campaign at abdulformichigan.com. Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Visionary: Carl Nielbock CAN Art Handworks, Inc. Carl Nielbock knows a thing or two about rebuilding cities. Born in Celle, Germany in 1959, Nielbock grew up amid buildings and monuments destroyed by Allied shells. Their rebuilding was a typical part of his childhood. The rebuilding was cultural too, as Germany was de-Nazified and integrated into the West. He describes it as a special time, when a “forward-looking” populace had to decide “which values to reject and which to sustain.” Little did he know as a child that another city 4,000 miles away that would face many of the same challenges. And he could hardly have guessed it was in his blood. You see, Nielbock was one of the “children of the occupation,” with a German mother and an African-American GI father. In 1984, 25-year-old Nielbock came to Detroit, hunting down a return address he’d found among his mother’s possessions. He found his father, his uncle, and a whole family he never knew he’d had. And he discovered the rich, historical architecture of the city he’s now adopted. In America, Nielbock has prospered, working on architectural refurbishing and fabrication, helping such showpieces as Grosse Pointe South High School and the Fisher Building shine like new. He has been able to repair the studio and living space he now occupies, near the intersection of Gratiot and Chene, headquarters of his company CAN Art Handworks, Inc. Nielbock is disposed to see things much differently than your typical Detroiter. Where many see eyesores, he sees assets. Where others see trouble-prone teens, he sees potential apprentices whose skills are needed. And even in Detroit’s vacant land, he sees potential for wind farms, green energy, and much more. He’s even designed windmills that aren’t capital-intensive, that have weathered years of storms and continue to produce energy on his back lot. Producing energy on small vacant lots? Working with existing utility authorities under a reverse meter program, Nielbock says large amounts of green energy — and income — could be generated. “It could be produced by co-ops,” he says, “just like urban farms produce food. The idea is to create taxable income for every lot here, so we can fund civic services from schools to ambulances.” With Detroit being named a City of Design by UNESCO, Nielbock has been joined by others envisioning the future. He has collaborated with academics and students in Europe, most recently at Austria’s University of Graz. The school’s teachings, which include learning by doing and using what’s available, dovetailed neatly with Nielbock’s ethos. Students, in turn, were excited by the way he “upcycles” consumer technology into green infrastructure. They and others like them will crowd into Detroit Sept. 22-24, looking to learn from Nielbock and our city’s other design visionaries. To Nielbock, such cultural exchanges offer much for Detroiters to learn. “In Germany,” he notes, “one-third of the entire economy is skilled trades and the goods that the skilled trades bring forth. In Detroit, that was fueled by the automotive sector, but that doesn’t exist anymore.” To fill the void, Nielbock would like to see an effort to cultivate the skills to refurbish the old and integrate it with the new. “We’ve got to reinstate the skilled trades that originally built the Paris of the Midwest,” he says. “Everywhere I look, I see how the skilled trades originally built all this historic stuff, and how it will be integrated into the new economy, which is based on tourism and recreation.” Meanwhile, a new “urban revival architecture” will fuse historic style, green energy, and new technology. Nielbock says, “That’s just what we need in Detroit.” “We must seek out and look at sustainable societies,” he says. “They’re already doing this in Germany, Austria. Scotland. Of course, their societies are so different, with free school and living wages, we can’t even wrap our heads around that here.” Given all the money that’s being poured into redevelopment, Nielbock asks what trades might look like if just 10 percent were set aside for skilled trades training, an investment in maintaining Detroit’s civic treasures. Similarly, Detroit could help cultivate the next generation of sustainable energy experts. To Nielbock, they need not be isolated disciplines, but can blossom together. It’s all about using things we’re not used to seeing as valuable. “Let’s see if we can think of ways to use things we’ve already created,” he says. “There is greatness on every corner.” By Michael Jackman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Critic: Taylor Renee Aldridge Curator and Arts Writer It’s been a busy year for Taylor Renee Aldridge. In late 2016, the arts writer joined the Detroit Institute of Arts rejuvenated Contemporary Art department as an assistant curator under new hire Laurie Ann Farrell. Her online arts journal Arts.Black was named a Knight Arts Challenge winner, and was awarded a $15,000 grant. Her writing also earned her an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and most recently she was announced as one of the recipients of the Kresge Literary Arts Fellow grant. Again, this was all since late 2016. It all came somewhat suddenly for Aldridge. Staying in Detroit wasn’t originally her plan. Detroit-born and raised, Aldridge left in 2007 to pursue an undergraduate degree at Washington, D.C.’s historically black Howard University and later, a master’s degree from Harvard. Aldridge returned in 2015 “initially to just work on my thesis, and have some quiet time away from the East Coast,” she says. “But then I immediately fell back in love with Detroit.” When Aldridge returned, she found that quite a bit had changed in her hometown. Parts of downtown were all but unrecognizable to her, having been transformed during the rise of Dan Gilbert. The city’s image was even transformed in the national media, suddenly in vogue as a “comeback city” and a destination for aspiring artists. One piece in the national media immediately stood out to Aldridge; a Vulture magazine story comparing the Motor City of today to 1970s Soho, which asked nine artists why they chose to live in Detroit. Aldridge found a glaring flaw with the piece — it featured almost entirely white transplants to the city. So Aldridge took to her then-new arts journal, Arts.Black, to write one of her site’s first posts — a thoughtful yet scathing critique that included her own list of nine contemporary Detroit artists of color. The post went viral. “I was just re-reading it. I was like, ‘Wow, I was completely fearless at this point in time,'” Aldridge laughs. “But I just was really surprised and taken aback by the fact that I had come home and read this article about the Detroit arts community, and it did not include any of the people who I thought should be included, or people who have really been contributing to the arts community here for some time. I thought it was pretty tone-deaf.” Aldridge had started the journal just months before, along with New York-based co-founder Jessica Lynne. She says it was a natural extension of her thesis research. “We were really curious to find out where the black art critics are, because those voices are very important as we build up what will be the future art history of this moment,” she says. “We had some difficulties just finding people who strictly identify as art critics. So we thought we would create a space where black art critics could be nurtured.” It wound up being perfect timing. Since taking the helm of the DIA in 2016, director Salvador Salort-Pons announced a multimillion-dollar focus on acquiring new African-American art. By the end of the next year, the DIA brought in Farrell to head up the contemporary art department, also hiring Aldridge and Lucy Mensah — both African-American women — as assistant curators. It’s the first time the department has had a staff this big in more than 15 years. The first order of business, Aldridge says, is working on a complete reinstallation of the contemporary art gallery. Slated to debut in 2019, the facelift will involve pulling older pieces from the museum’s archives as well as acquiring all-new works of art. It will be the gallery’s first major reinstallation since the museum’s big expansion in 2007. “We’re in a really unique position as a department because we get to get new artwork, and we get to work on remodeling the gallery, which is a dream,” Aldridge says. In the meantime, there’s plenty of work to be done. Aldridge and Lynne are planning an Arts.Black book fair for Aug. 26 at Good Lab gallery in Detroit. As part of the 50th anniversary of 1967, Aldridge is also coordinating a “Wikipedia edit-a-thon,” which would invite members of the community to debate, discuss, and edit Wikipedia’s pages on the 1967 uprising. By Lee DeVito Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Bibliophile: Janet Webster Jones Source Booksellers Owner   When she was a little girl, Janet Webster Jones loved taking trips to her neighborhood’s Detroit Public Library branch. Her mother was a librarian, and so a deep love of books and learning was cultivated early in life. “I came up at a time when television wasn’t your main source of information,” she says. “In our neighborhood on the near west side, we had a wonderful library branch that has since been torn down by an emergency manager. It was a center of a lot of the life and culture in that part of the city. We used the library all of the time. We were there every week. So, it’s always been part of my life.” Jones is a lifelong Detroiter, and though she left the state to attend college, she returned with a degree, and in 1959 started a job at Detroit Public Schools. During her 40-plus-year career, she served as a teacher, a speech pathologist, a consultant, an administrator, and a staff developer — and despite the many problems that currently plague the school system, she says her experience was overwhelmingly positive. “While I was in Detroit schools we had a wonderful opportunity to serve Detroit in so many ways that were noticed by the educational communities at large and across the country,” Jones says. “We were doing wonderful work.” While she’s been retired from that gig for quite some time, she’s found a way to continue serving and educating Detroiters. She’s the owner of Source Booksellers on Cass Avenue in Midtown, and though she recently celebrated her 80th birthday, she actively runs the store. Jones has been in business since 1989 when she started vending at local events, but it was years before she started a brick-and-mortar operation. In 2002, Source opened inside Spiral Collective, a shared space outlet on Cass Avenue, where she worked alongside fellow local retailers Tulani Rose and Dell Pryor Gallery. Then, in 2013 she got the chance to move to a stand-alone location in a new strip across the street. Jones seized the opportunity and her business has continued to grow. As a small, independently owned bookstore, it might seem impossible for Source to compete with companies like Amazon that sell deeply discounted texts that will arrive at your doorstep in two days. But Jones has managed to make the store a destination, a place where you can expect to find a highly curated selection of hardcovers as well as a friendly face eager to point you in the right direction. In order to carve out her little slice of the market, Jones focuses on stocking nonfiction books on a tightly defined cadre of subjects. You’ll find texts on history and culture, health and well-being, metaphysics and spirituality, and books by and about women. She also carries tomes related to Detroit as well as a small selection of children’s books. Jones has also found ways to bring customers into the shop, whether they’re in the market for a new read or not. Each week the store hosts any number of events, including a free Saturday morning exercise class, author talks, poetry readings, and community conversations. The events help to make Source the type of cultural hub that first sparked Jones’ love for her local library. “We try to have books that will be of interest to and will serve the community,” Jones says. “And when I say community I mean anyone who has the courage to come on in.” By Alysa Zavala-Offman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Learner: Alivia Zivich Co-founder of What Pipeline   You would be forgiven if you haven’t heard of art gallery What Pipeline. Tucked away around the corner from Mexicantown’s main drag, it’s a small, nondescript building. In fact, it’s so off the beaten path that gallery director Alivia Zivich seems to express genuine shock when two people wander in after visiting a nearby taco truck during our interview. “The taco truck brings in people, but rarely do people come back here,” Zivich explains. “They might come back here because we have chairs out front. Unless it’s people I know going to the taco truck — then it’s like, ‘I see you. Come say hi.'” But Zivich says she chose the space, formerly used as storage for a nearby glass business in Southwest Detroit, for precisely these quiet qualities. When Zivich and gallery co-owner Daniel Sperry got the itch to open a gallery in 2012, they decided early on they didn’t want to go the nonprofit route, which meant they’d need to be thrifty. “Low overhead and low pressure was kind of our motto,” she says. Plus, the spot had something many Midtown and downtown galleries didn’t — a parking lot. The unassuming space wound up being perfectly suited for its new life as a gallery when it opened in April 2013. “All we did was put just one wall up and paint it white,” she says. “And all the walls are backed with plywood, so we don’t have to find studs when we’re hanging art. It was kind of weird. It was like it was meant to be a gallery.” You could say that Zivich, too, was kind of meant to be an art gallery director, even though she didn’t seek to be one. Growing up in Saginaw and Pinckney, Zivich pursued an undergraduate art degree in video and printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before splitting for Los Angeles just in time for the dot-com boom, where she found a good-paying gig as a website programmer. But when the bubble burst, Zivich says she found herself lost. “At that point, I realized, ‘What am I doing?” she says. “I got really distracted by the comfort of a paycheck.” She returned to Michigan in 2006, and started seeing her “long-term life partner” Nate Young (of noise-rockers Wolf Eyes — the two had known each other since they were teenagers). She quickly found a life in Michigan that she didn’t elsewhere. “I was like, ‘Wow, it’s so easy living here comparing to Los Angeles or Germany,” Zivich says. “I could really get by on a little.” The move allowed Zivich to branch out into other pursuits. She and Young started a DIY record label, AA Records, and by 2012, Zivich landed a gig working as the curatorial and production manager for Detroit’s Nuit Blanche-style Dlectricity arts festival, which illuminates Midtown with experimental, light-up installations from artists the world over. “It gave me a knowledge of myself, like, ‘I know I’m capable of pulling off bigger projects than I even realize,'” she says of working on Dlectricity. “But on the flipside I don’t have a whole lot of final say over it. It’s a big committee process. I kind of wanted to take some of the skills I learned there and go on my own.” Enter What Pipeline. The name, Zivich says, is a nod to the idea of making art accessible. “It was about this idea of bringing something here,” she says. (She chose the word “Pipeline,” it was Dan’s idea to put the word ‘What’ in front of it.) The idea was that not only would the gallery work to bring art to Detroit that might not get seen otherwise (the first show featured work by the German artist Lucie Stahl and British artist Tom Humphreys, friends of Zivich’s who were already in North America for a Toronto exhibition), but it would also expose Detroit artists to a wider audience. “We have so many great artists here in Detroit, that as we’ve gained popularity, so have they,” Zivich says. This summer, What Pipeline hosted an exhibition of paintings at Manhattan’s Andrew Kreps Gallery featuring work by the late Detroit painter Mary Ann Aitken and sculptures by Dylan Spaysky. In September, the gallery will partner with Chicago artist Pope L., the recipient of the prestigious Bucksbaum Award at this year’s Whitney Biennial, who will bottle 150 gallons of Flint tap water and sell it as an edition. Zivich says all proceeds will go to United Way to help with the ongoing water crisis. With What Pipeline, Zivich says she feels like she has found an outlet for her various interests. “I like gathering skills, I like learning new things all the time,” she says. “I guess, of the many worlds I’ve worked in, I find that art allows me to dabble in all of them.” By Lee DeVito Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Activist: Rachel Crandall-Crocker Transgender Michigan founder   Rachel Crandall-Crocker was born into a normal Michigan middle class family in 1958. Her father was a CPA and her mother stayed home with the kids. The only problem was Rachel was born a male. At just 4 years old, she says she knew something wasn’t right. But, it was the ’60s and when Crandall-Crocker told her parents she was a girl, they were horrified. For the next 38 years she lived as a cisgender man, all the while feeling trapped by both her body and society’s expectations. While living as a man, Crandall-Crocker went to school, became a social worker, married, and settled down in Okemos. It appeared she’d built a beautiful life, but when she was all alone, she’d secretly cross-dress. She tested the waters, leaving the house while dressed as a woman, and things began to snowball. Once she found a transgender organization, Crandall-Crocker knew there was no turning back. She came out to her parents and her wife, and their relationships fell apart. She started wearing a little makeup and growing her hair out and her boss fired her. Months after losing her closest personal relationships and her job, Crandall-Crocker’s finances were in disarray, she no longer had a home, and she struggled to figure out the next steps in her transition. It was 1997, and few all-encompassing organizations existed to assist trans people seeking hormone treatments or to offer advice on a legal name change. Having a social work background, she had some expertise in working with therapists and doctors and eventually found the help she needed, but not before hitting rock bottom — and contemplating suicide. But, instead of ending her life, Crandall-Crocker decided to take another course. She started volunteering with the transgender organization that first encouraged her to come out. Then she organized a group at Michigan State University, observing the attitudes and beliefs of other transgender people, and becoming more conscious of the needs in her community. She started making pamphlets and had an information table at local events. She started a website. And the culmination of those things became Transgender Michigan, an organization Crandall-Crocker founded long before many acknowledged the T in LGBT. Through Transgender Michigan, Crandall-Crocker offers all kinds of services to the trans community. Now a licensed therapist, she offers counseling to those hoping to come out or continue their transition, as well as parents and teachers who want to help a transgender child. Transgender Michigan also hosts an annual health fair for trans people, an important resource for an underserved community. “A lot of transgender people haven’t seen a doctor in years and years,” she says. “They’re afraid of health care institutions because they’re worried they will be discriminated against. They’re worried they won’t be understood.” The already misunderstood and highly marginalized community came under further attack when Donald Trump tweeted about his hope to ban transgender people from serving in the military. Crandall-Crocker spoke at a Royal Oak rally to protest his efforts, and despite her normally mild manner, she seemed to have erupted in front of the crowd. “We must fight!” she yelled into the microphone. “We must flood the White House with letters. We must flood the White House with telephone calls. It doesn’t matter if you do it once, twice, or a million times. Only all together, can we win.” By Alysa Zavala-Offman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Collaborator: Tony Holt Wayne State University Police Chief    As “Midtown” goes through publicized, celebrated convulsions of glitzy redevelopment, it’s easy to forget that, once upon a time, it was called the university district. It’s also relatively easy to overlook one of the humbler foundations underpinning all that redevelopment: Wayne State University’s police department. The force’s quick response times and commitment to public safety have constituted an increasing counterweight to crime in the area. And given a city police force that’s often stretched to the limit, who knows how many developers and business owners might have spent their money elsewhere if not for Wayne’s small but speedy contingent of officers. One of the leading lights helping Wayne State University’s police punch above their weight is WSU Police Chief Tony Holt. Since he was instated in 2009, he’s worked relentlessly to analyze crime, establish partnerships, and involve the community. That’s meant drawing together the various security fiefdoms to share resources and information at COMPSTAT meetings every other week. “Everything is data-driven,” he says. “When I started as chief, we met in this room with about four or five people. Now there are 40 people in attendance every other Wednesday.” Holt’s meetings now include representatives from the Detroit Police Department, Wayne County Sheriff, and security directors from the Department of Education, the Detroit Institute in Arts, the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Hospital, the College for Creative Studies, and several other high-profile groups in the vicinity. All those working relationships with other security forces don’t just help keep the campus safe; Holt wants to make sure everybody benefits. The goal isn’t just to shift crime to another neighborhood, but to catch the criminals. That’s more likely to happen when security is coordinated. “Two guys on a bicycle robbed somebody right at Cass and Kirby,” Holt says. “With our video, we got a good picture of it. I gave the picture to everybody at the COMPSTAT meeting. Henry Ford calls us and says, ‘We’re holding two guys who fit the description.’ We drive up, those are the two guys and they were picked out of a lineup. It just shows what this collaboration does when we all work together.” Some crimes, of course, are the sole purview of DPD: homicides, sex crimes, barricaded gunmen, narcotics raids. But Holt cultivates an inside track with other jurisdictions by sharing resources: He has Wayne State officers assigned to a DPD’s carjacking and homicide units, and another with an FBI task force. He even lets a Department of Corrections officer borrow an office right in his station. “They’re required to do home visits,” Holt says, noting the prospect can be intimidating in some instances. “We send three officers and maybe a canine with him,” he says. “That’s a great partnership.” On paper, Holt says, his area is bounded by Lothrop, Simpson, I-75, and 14th Street. That said, all his police officers are sworn in by the city force, and can make an arrest almost anywhere in the city. And they frequently do. “I go where I’m needed and where the issue is,” Holt says. “This is an open campus. And, we encourage people to walk on campus, live on campus, go downtown, go to restaurants in Midtown. To have people do that, we need a safe environment.” If that means telling Woodbridge residents he’ll dispatch a uniformed officer to observe them as they leave their homes between midnight to 5 a.m., that’s what he’ll do. “We haven’t had a carjacking since we started that project,” he says, beaming with pride. The university’s resources have helped Holt not just with expertise in data management, but in surveillance. The first floor of Wayne’s cop shop has a room outfitted with panels of flatscreen monitors, showing feeds from cameras all over the mid-city area. Even Wayne’s phones are being upgraded with cameras, so “when you pick up a call, I’m looking at you. You gotta keep adding this technology.” And yet despite all the high-tech gadgets and gizmos at his department’s disposal, he’s aware of the value of individual police doing the work and checking in with residents. As matters come up for discussion, he pulls out his phone and communicates directly with the officers responsible for the details he’s discussing. Though he often he ends the call with a friendly reminder of what needs to be done, it doesn’t come off as “micromanaging,” but a helpful query from above about whether tasks are complete. And few people have as deep and wide a knowledge of the neighborhood as Holt. Though it’s his disposition to hire police who want to move on to bigger and better things, he’s practically a lifer, a top cop with 40 years on the job in his old stomping grounds. He fondly recalls the days “when the Cass Corridor was really the Cass Corridor,” with memories stretching back into the 1960s, when he was a teenager living on Prentis and working at Oklahoma’s gas station on Second and Alexander. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a shop, bar, or restaurant you could name from years past that won’t provoke warm reminiscences. Underneath the snappy statistical analysis, administrative savvy, and technological capability, Holt seems very much a likable neighborhood guy. You can see why he enjoys not just glad-handing the shop owners, investors, and executives, but taking their side, helping ensure their neighborhood is prosperous and peaceful, and that nobody escapes justice. “I could always just put six officers to just circle the block, make it too hot to work,” he says. “But the idea is to catch the bad guy.” He adds with a laugh, “We have plenty of room. Our jail is so nice, you won’t want to leave it.” By Michael Jackman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Seamstress: Rebecca Smith Better Life Bags Rebecca Smith was never particularly interested in sewing. As a child, she says she spent summers quilting blankets with her grandmother, but never really picked it back up until she became pregnant with her first child eight years ago. “My mom had just given me a sewing machine for my birthday,” Smith says. “I think she was hoping I would get back into it.” On a whim, she made herself a diaper bag and posted some photos of it on Facebook. Someone commented that she should open an Etsy shop. “I hadn’t even heard of Etsy,” she recalls. Smith had just quit her job as a teacher in Georgia. Her husband was in the military, and the two of them wanted to relocate when he returned — somewhere with more diversity, she says. but also someplace where they could feel needed. Somehow, Hamtramck got on their radar, and they moved — sight unseen. Smith started developing her bags further, adding leather to the design and pledging 10 percent of sales to Kiva, a micro-financing site that offered loans to people in third world countries — hence the name of her Etsy shop, Better Life Bags. But what was still mostly a hobby for a stay-at-home mom quickly changed when Smith’s work caught the eye of Joy Cho, an influential blogger and designer who shared one of Smith’s designs with her Pinterest followers. Suddenly, Smith couldn’t keep up with the orders. She says she considered either quitting or outsourcing the work. But then she had another idea. “I knew one of the ladies I met who had just moved here from Yemen. She knew how to sew,” Smith says. “So I thought, she can do all the insides, I can do all the outsides, an we can put these together twice as fast.” Things clicked when Smith saw the positive change the arrangement had on her friend’s life. “I thought, there’s probably a lot of women in this community that can’t get jobs [because of] language barriers, education barriers, cultural barriers,” Smith says. “Sewing is kind of a universal language.” That first employee still works with Smith. Now, her company has grown to 15 employees total — mostly women, who design, fabricate, and ship Better Life Bags out of a Joseph Campau storefront. The bags are customizable. Shoppers can go to Smith’s website, betterlifebags.com, and choose various swatches of fabric. “You’re kind of building your own bag, and having a part in the design process, which I think is really fun for customers,” Smith says, describing it as “like a video game.” On the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, Smith opens the storefront to the public, where customers can design their own bags in person. Eventually, she hopes to expand operations into an adjacent storefront, which would allow her to move into printing her own fabric designs. Now a mother of three, Smith has watched her company grow — balancing creating a quality product with a mission to do good. “We have a mission for our business, and a lot of customers buy our product because of our mission,” Smith says. “We want it to be a really good quality product that someone would buy anyway, but the fact that there’s a mission behind it is just like the cherry on top.” By Lee DeVito Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Steward: Ashley Hennen Scarab Club Executive Director   The Scarab Club was founded 110 years ago as a sort of do-it-yourself project by Detroit’s upper-crusters to celebrate, discuss, and enjoy art. It set up shop a stone’s throw from the Detroit Institute of Arts when the DIA was brand-new, and celebrates its 90th anniversary next year. It’s a one-of-a-kind club, and the rafters of its second-floor lounge have been signed by such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Diego Rivera, Norman Rockwell, and Gilda Snowden. It’s a priceless piece of history. But as an institution, it seemed to cater to more established, older artists, removed from the energy of Detroit’s younger art scene. Enter the club’s new executive director, Ashley Hennen: She’s charged with breathing new life into the institution. It’s fitting that the ancient club, named for a symbol of creation and regeneration, should find new energy in the willowy 29-year-old, who has already helped bring membership to its highest total yet. As Hennen relaxes for a moment in the club’s rear garden, she rattles off the amenities and extensive programming, much of it new, that the club offers. There’s a lot packed into the unassuming building: three floors of galleries, member exhibitions, displays of works from the club’s permanent collection, juried shows, curated shows, established artists exhibits, chamber music concerts, sketch classes. And that’s not to mention the Knight Foundation-funded Night at the Scarab Club concert series exploring Detroit’s musical history, or such literary programming as the Woodward Line poetry series or the Regular’s Table in collaboration with Detroit Research. “We are also looking at installing a coffee service too,” Hennen says, “so it really becomes a place where people can come hang out, get some work done.” But in addition to projects, programs, and pour-overs, Hennen hopes to foster one of the club’s original purposes: a place for people to gather and discuss art and ideas. “There are a lot of galleries in the city, and more and more coming all the time,” Hennen says. “But I think what’s different about the Scarab Club is that it’s more than just a place to hang art, it’s more than just a gallery. It really has a kind of intimacy. It’s a club, but it’s open to the public. We don’t charge admission. This is a place where there is an opportunity to feel this sense of ownership. Like if you walk into the DIA, who feels ownership over something like that?” To Hennen, no radical changes are needed. She has focused on getting the word out, especially to the younger generation of millennials now calling Detroit home. That has meant e-blasts and aggressive use of social media, building on the club’s recent full-spectrum branding makeover, which included an original video series featuring Scarab Club artists. “The history here, the story here, it’s so rich,” she says. “It’s just a matter of telling it.” It seems that there’s no place Hennen would rather be. She says she’s lived in suburbia, in college towns, and rural precincts, but finds herself right at home with her mission here in Detroit. “I think this is a really interesting time and place to live,” she says. “There’s a lot of interesting questions that come up in the city.” Thanks to her efforts, those questions are ensured one more place to be discussed. By Michael Jackman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Scientist: Natalie Nevarez University of Michigan Ph.D. student   Raised in California and Arizona by Mexican migrant workers, Natalie Nevarez isn’t really a Detroiter. She’s a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, where she recently defended a dissertation paper based on her research of monogamy in prairie voles, and soon she’s moving to California where she’ll continue her neuroscientific study of the mammal at Stanford University. While conducting her research at U-M, Nevarez’s friends started joking about a $25,000 scholarship being offered to women studying science, technology, engineering, and math by online pornography giant PornHub. But Nevarez didn’t find it funny. She applied for the money — and won. While the controversial scholarship is an interesting anecdote, it seems like a minute detail if you know Nevarez’s whole story. When she was 7 years old, her mother decided to get her GED, yet she faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: She spoke only Spanish. Nevarez had taught herself English by watching cartoons and listening to Tupac, so she became her mother’s translator, helping her earn a diploma. By 13, Nevarez enrolled herself in community college. She’d been helping her mother take courses there and figured she might as well get some credits herself. She completed her associate’s degree by 16 and walked in her college graduation before even completing high school, as crazy as that sounds. She graduated from high school at 17, after spending her entire senior year doing a photography independent study, a move she calls “stupid.” After earning her undergraduate degree in Arizona, she was accepted into U-M, although she admits at that point, she didn’t really know where Michigan was. She’d been so busy gobbling up neuroscience classes, she hadn’t taken the time to learn basic subjects, like geography. “Just being honest, my education wasn’t very good,” Nevarez says. “For the most part, the school really struggled with kids not speaking English, so most of my day I spent as a T.A. helping teachers with students who weren’t English-speakers. I was so behind on so many school topics, but I really liked neuroscience, so I kind of put all my eggs in one basket and I became very knowledgable in one subject while not being caught on all these other really basic things.” Now, Nevarez studies topics like geography, philosophy, and history in her spare time, creating her own curriculum in order to catch up — which is, if nothing else, a testament to her love of learning. Throughout her childhood, her parents emphasized the importance of education, but she says they never really needed to say a word. Seeing them physically exhausted at the end of a work day was enough. “They both really always told us that an education was something no one could ever take from you,” Nevarez says. Nevarez’s parents separated when she was 13 and a few years later, her father was deported. He’s still a migrant farmer, but now makes a fraction of the pay. “It sucks because he is literally doing the exact same job, but for way less money. As if the job wasn’t hard enough,” she says. Nevarez says she often feels pangs of guilt for not pursuing a field that would directly advance brown people — a field like city planning, which her sister is currently seeking a Ph.D. in. “That’s one thing that comes with being a brown girl in academia,” Nevarez says. “Sometimes I feel guilty that a lot of people who are minorities in grad school tend to study minority issues. Obviously that is super important, so sometimes I feel a little guilty that I am studying, you know, monogamy, which isn’t necessarily a brown people issue.” Regardless, Nevarez has still found ways to help marginalized communities. She started a student organization called MYELIN, a group that mentors children from low income and minority families by offering free science-based workshops. She hopes to inspire a new generation of brown kids to love neuroscience as much as she does. “An education is your ticket out,” Nevarez says. By Alysa Zavala-Offman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Fighter: Edythe Ford Activist and Community Organizer As a black woman raised by activists during the civil rights era, Edythe Ford has faced circumstances unimaginable to most. “I’ve been chased by police dogs, [shot at],” says Ford. “One time we were running in Mississippi during a protest, I was about 7. I had my aunt’s hand and then her hand was gone. They later found her three blocks away where she’d been hit by the water from a firehose. “They took us to jail of course, and we got out and just started back again.” Things have calmed down for Ford since the political turbulence of the 1960s and ’70s, and while she no longer risks her life at protests, she has never ceased fighting for what she believes in. Now in her late 50s, Ford has invested her energy in getting resources to the east Detroit neighborhood where she lives. Ford’s run with the 48214 zip code has been long and arched. She was raised just off the once-vibrant Mack commercial corridor near Van Dyke, watched it burn during the 1967 uprising, left for the suburbs, and returned in her 30s after getting her master’s in history from Wayne State University. Blight was rampant and the poverty rate was high. She was then thrust into the role of neighborhood squeaky wheel. “My grandmother used to be the neighborhood busybody, and she had a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and I guess people used to go to her because she was the smart one in the neighborhood,” explains Ford. “[So] when I came back to the east side after living out in Birmingham, all the elderly neighbors on the block saw me moving in and they started coming down and said, ‘You know you gonna help us because that’s what your grandma used to do.'” Ford started with simple things — sending volunteers to cut the lawns of older residents, getting the cellphone numbers of local patrol officers so she could call them directly on crimes. Then, a few years ago, her efforts gained financial backing from the Mack Avenue Community Church Development group that is working to revitalize the neighborhood holistically, and she was hired as director of community engagement.  Residents now go directly to Ford whenever they have problems, but Ford has grown to rely on them too: Neighbors have to do their part to keep blight at bay and, occasionally, help her fight for city services. “Sometimes I might have 20 neighbors call on a crime, all at one time, and that makes the [police] come out,” Ford says. “If we have an issue and we’re not getting service, 12 of us may show up at the parks department or general services and ask how come we can’t get this fixed.” Ford and her community’s indefatigability have paid off. Last month, after a six-year fundraising effort, the MACC Development group opened one of the first new businesses along the stretch of Mack left depleted since the riots — a laundromat that will include a coffee bar with cups that cost $1. And in the true spirit of holistic revitalization, the business offerings were determined after Ford solicited input from community residents. The build-out of the site, which will double as MACC’s headquarters, cost a whopping $1.5 million. “I remember one guy said, ‘You know, they don’t want us to have anything out here in the hood, but I love you guys because you’re not giving up.’ And it happened,” she says. “You gotta go out there and you gotta fight … that’s just how I was raised.” By Violet Ikonomova Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Sushi Chef: Nick George aka Dr. Sushi   There are some fish distributors in town who don’t really want to talk to or do business with Nick George, aka Dr. Sushi, the chef behind the Dr. Sushi pop-up. Instead of just buying fresh fish, carving it up, and serving it, Dr. Sushi first aks lots of questions: “Where was it caught? How was it caught? What time of year? Was it caught in the wild or harvested?” “I’m really annoying when it come to talking to fish companies,” he says. “I burned my bridge with Superior asking them about how fish I wanted was caught. They ended up being so curt with me that I don’t even mess with them anymore.” At other times, communication is a challenge, like when he buys from the fishmongers at 168 Asian Mart — who offer some of the area’s best fish, but only speak Mandarin. So it goes as the first Michigan chef to trade in sustainable fish, but George says it’s worth it. Simply put, he’s an environmentalist, and overfishing is depleting the world’s fish stocks. For example, about 95 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna population is gone. “I think it would be irresponsible for someone to serve fish that’s being harvested at a rate that exceeds its respawn rate. I care about healthy ecosystems. Most sushi bars still serve bluefin and it drives me crazy, so I can’t,” he says. “I love tuna so much that I have sworn it off until they figure out a way of conserving these populations and keeping healthy fish stocks, and I practice what I preach.” It’s a very unusual and progressive philosophy for someone in Michigan, but then George was always sort of an unusual guy. While most young teenage boys are into something like baseball, George developed a healthy sushi obsession by the time he was 15 years old, and became a regular at Clawson’s Noble Fish, which is considered one of the area’s best sushi shops. “I think I wanted to be different, and the things that I was into were different. I was kind of like a weird kid,” George laughs. But he suspects that his love of food developed out of his associations with big family events at which — as a kid — he ate tons of food and hung out with his cousins. Eventually, George started working at Noble Fish, learned the craft, and began rolling and cutting fish for friends and family until landing a job in Chicago teaching a sushi class. In the next step, he placed a Craigslist ad as a sushi chef for hire, and his first event was such a smash hit that he and a friend who helped out realized they were on to something. And that’s when Dr. Sushi — the company and the persona — was born. “I brought a friend and he was extra geeked. He said, ‘I can’t believe we just did that! We should really start this business! You should call it Dr. Sushi!’ Then I couldn’t think of anything else, so it stuck,” George says. These days, Dr. Sushi regularly holds noodle-based and izakaya-style pop-ups at Nancy Whiskey’s and PJ’s Lager House in Corktown, and keeps busy with private catering events and classes. To try his sushi, you’ll have to book him for a party, because he isn’t crazy about the idea of rolling raw fish at dive bars. “I could serve sushi out of them and keep people safe, but there’s something about the vibe and I don’t want to do it there,” he says. “I’m available for hire. Most of my sushi business is catering and setting up at private parties, though once in awhile I’ll find a place and do a one-off.” By Tom Perkins Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Teacher’s Favorite: Alycia Meriweather Detroit Public Schools Community District Deputy Superintendent   Alycia Meriweather never asked to become the superintendent of Detroit’s public schools. Yet last year, she found herself unexpectedly thrust into the role. When Judge Steven Rhodes — the financially insolvent district’s fifth state-appointed emergency manager in seven years — took the helm in 2016, teachers and principals within the district had had enough of what they viewed as outsider control of the district, which had been without a superintendent for the entire time. They demanded someone with local and academic ties to lead. Unbeknownst to Meriweather, she was a favorite for the position, her name circulating among various Detroit teachers’ private Facebook groups. “It actually got to the point that people were posting pictures on that site, ‘Meriweather for superintendent,'” she says. “People started taking screenshots and sending them to me. And I’m like, ‘Where is this coming from? What is this?'” Finally, Meriweather was formally approached by the teachers’ groups to gauge her interest. They didn’t want to blow the opportunity — if they presented a name, they needed to know if she would say yes. And they needed to know the next day. Meriweather says she went home and discussed it with her husband, and prayed for guidance. “I just felt like, I love this district and I love this city so much, that I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime to help the district that I love,” she says. “And if everything did go sideways and I did everything I could, I would sleep well the rest of my life because I would have known I gave everything in my power to save the district and to get it to a better place.” In many ways, Meriweather was a natural fit for the role. Born and raised in Detroit, she started attending Detroit public schools at the age of 4, eventually graduating from Renaissance High School. Barring a year in seventh grade when her family lived in Africa and the years she spent at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she has lived in Detroit her entire life. After U-M, she returned to the city, teaching middle school science for 12 years. She worked her way up into DPS administration, serving first as supervisor for middle school science, and then going on to roles within the district directing and managing the Detroit Mathematics and Science Center, the Detroit Children’s Museum, and Camp Burt Shurly summer camp. Before she was appointed as interim superintendent, she was serving as executive director of curriculum. As interim superintendent, Meriweather says she created an academic plan based on five pillars: literacy, innovation, career pathways, family and community, and wraparound services. She launched little free libraries where students could leave a book and take a book at all of the schools, and she implemented Monday’s Message, where she wrote to the entire staff. The district’s fortunes changed rapidly. By the summer of last year, Gov. Rick Snyder signed a $617 million state aid package that effectively bailed the district out, ending the age of emergency management and creating a new debt-free Detroit Public Schools Community District. It’s also the first time the district has had an elected school board with power, and earlier this year, the board appointed a new superintendent in Dr. Nikolai Vitti. Meriweather says she doesn’t mind that she wasn’t picked. “I do take a great deal of satisfaction that we are in a different, better place now than we were a year ago,” she says. “I am so thankful that we had the opportunity to serve the district and the city in that role.” Now, Meriweather will continue to guide the district as Vitti’s deputy superintendent. She says her goal is to figure out how to align the district’s resources to best support students — like finding ways to get glasses for students who can’t afford them, or getting police to patrol safe walking paths to school. “Those things may seem like they should not be the school’s responsibility, and that’s another debate,” Meriweather says. “To me, anything that’s a barrier to our students being successful is something we need to figure out how to address.” It also includes plenty of positive thinking. “I just really put a lot of focus and effort on communication and making sure that we were sharing good news,” she says. “And that’s really something that I think is critically important, especially in Detroit and in DPSCD. There are great things happening every day, and sometimes those stories get lost.” By Lee DeVito. Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Boxer: Claressa Shields Professional Boxer and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist   Claressa Shields grew up in Flint, a city long-besieged by wayward economic forces and, for the last three years, a seemingly never-ending water crisis. Her mother abused substances and her mother’s boyfriend was abusive, so for many years, she lived with her grandmother. Shields, 22, didn’t meet her father until she was 9. He spent seven years in prison, and they met upon his release. While getting to know one another, he told his daughter he wished he’d just followed his passion in life — if he’d done that, things would be different. “After being in prison for seven years, he got out and even though he served his time, he was treated like a convict and he couldn’t get a job because he was a convicted felon,” Shields says. “He felt like he had served his time, but they were still punishing him. He said if he had stuck to what he was passionate about, he wouldn’t have been in the situation he was in. I just asked what he was passionate about and he said boxing. I thought if I were ever to do something big for my dad, it would be boxing. ” Tough from a young age, Shields says she could hold her own against the boys at school. “I could slam guys,” she says. “I was able to do that stuff when I was younger.” By 11, she wandered into a local gym and began beating on the boys with such a fury that coach Jason Crutchfield could no longer ignore her innate talent, her obvious strength. But when she asked her dad to sign her up for boxing lessons, she didn’t get the answer she expected. “He said no. [He said] boxing was a man’s sport and added on that I was too pretty to box,” Shields says. Egged on by her grandmother, Shields continued to train and eventually moved in with Crutchfield and his wife, becoming a family member as well as a mentee. Under Crutchfield’s tutelage, a 16-year-old Shields qualified for the 2012 Olympics, where she competed against women whose experience far exceeded her own. Against all odds, she came home from London with a gold medal. There is no doubt in Shields mind that she is the best boxer there is. She will tell you as much. Yet, the type of success male boxers experience has eluded her. Even after making history at the Olympics, she couldn’t get a sponsorship deal. Brands were not clamoring to endorse her. It’s been a slow, rocky journey and it’s nowhere near over. In 2016, Shields returned to the Olympics and came home with another gold medal, making her the only American Olympic boxer to win the title consecutively. Since then, the pace of her ascension to fame and fortune has moved from glacial to simply unhurried. She recently won a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Sports award, an honor she seems as grateful for as those gold medals. But, what she really wants is money. She wants a million-dollar fight. On Aug. 4, after only four matches as a professional boxer, she went up against 30-year-old, undefeated Nikki Adler at the MGM Grand Detroit for the World Boxing Council super middleweight title — and won. The fight was Shields’ second for Showtime, an opportunity that surely came with some cash. Yet, until women boxers are earning seven-figures per fight, Shields isn’t going to stop demanding what she deserves. “I want to break those barriers and erase those lines between women’s boxing and men’s boxing. I want to be there when we get equal pay and we have the same opportunity as men to box,” she says. “Women should get equal pay and equal TV time and I hope by the end of my career, we’re over that hump.” By Alysa Zavala-Offman Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Do-Gooder: Chris Lambert CEO of nonprofit Life Remodeled   Chris Lambert came to Detroit to do good. The CEO of a blight-busting and construction nonprofit called Life Remodeled, for the past several years Lambert has coordinated annual multimillion-dollar school improvement projects and community makeovers. He and thousands of volunteers clad in lime green shirts will descend upon a specific neighborhood and make a lasting impact through six long days of work. Lambert says the neighborhoods the nonprofit has touched have seen reductions in crime and an increase in neighborhood engagement. Lambert took a winding road to get here, but says it was God that led the way. Born in a rural Indiana town where church was a cultural norm, Lambert took spirituality more seriously than his peers or even family members, eventually earning the nickname “Lambert the Jesus Freak.” In high school, however, after getting involved in sports and going through a growth spurt, he strayed from the spiritual path in pursuit of the fun he saw his classmates having. Lambert says he started small, looking in the mirror one day and forcing himself to say the f-word. As a self-described “all-or-nothing guy,” he returned to school the following day spewing curse words. From there, he got into girls, drinking, drugs, and eventually landed at the biggest fraternity at Indiana University. Lambert was off the God path, and looking to make money. He studied marketing and planned to go to law school; real estate development was a possibility. But that all changed when he says God spoke to him during a study abroad trip to Australia, where some locals he met took him to a church service. The sermon he heard described a man who had turned his back on God in pursuit of vice. After the sermon, Lambert, then 22, went up to the altar and got down on his knees. “[I said] ‘God, from this moment, I’ll stop doing whatever you want me to stop doing and I’ll start doing whatever you want me to start doing,'” he recalls. Lambert returned to the states, left I-U, and joined a seminary in California where he met his wife, Andrea. They then moved to Liberia to become community development missionaries. When they came back, Lambert says they wanted to settle in a place where there was “a lot of diversity and a lot of social need.” That, coupled with the fact that Lambert’s wife was raised in Southwest Detroit, helped them decide on this area, and they began their work by starting a church in Westland. But Lambert quickly learned he wanted to have more of an impact. “Basically I was always more passionate about the other six days of the week than I was about Sunday,” he says. “When I started a church I never wanted it to be just about a one-day-a-week event, and that’s what eventually led me to start Life Remodeled.” To date, the organization has removed blight and boarded up homes on more than 1,000 Detroit blocks, built a STEM lab and football field at Cody High School, put a new roof on Osborn High School, and outfitted a park near Denby High School with a performance pavilion and basketball and volleyball courts. Lambert’s latest effort is focused in the area of what is now Central K-12 and the former Durfee Elementary-Middle school in the Boston-Edison neighborhood. The organization has leased Durfee, which was closed and merged with Central High School because both schools had too few students for the space they were in, from the Detroit Public Schools Community District for $1 per year. Lambert says Life Remodeled will put $5 million in repairs into the school, and build a Community Innovation Center focused on entrepreneurship, education, and community. By Violet Ikonomova Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Collectivist: Stephanie Chang Michigan’s first Asian-American state representative   As state representative for Michigan’s House District 6, Stephanie Chang is well aware that it takes a village to effect true change, whether in the legislature or in the community at large. Before her time in office, the Canton native worked on such initiatives as community engagement for Detroit’s James and Grace Lee Boggs School, in addition to cofounding the Michigan branch of APIAVote, a national organization devoted to providing Asian and Pacific Islander Americans with the resources necessary to be politically informed. “I had been working as a community organizer in Detroit working on a number of different social justice issues, and I was approached by my predecessor, Rashida Tlaib, as well as a number of other friends, to consider running for office,” Chang says of her choice to run for office. “It was a six-month process of talking to a lot of different people, and I was very hesitant at the beginning. Eventually, I decided to run because I saw it as a great opportunity to make a difference in a different way … just to take it to the next level and make a bigger impact.” Chang was elected to office in January of 2015. During her first term, she served on the Committees on Criminal Justice, Education and Judiciary. Now in her second term, she serves on the Committees on Education Reform, Natural Resources and Law and Justice, for which she serves as Minority Vice Chair. Of her role as the Law and Justice Minority Vice Chair, Chang is the leading Democrat on the committee. She explains what bills came out of the committee to the other Democrats so that they have the information they need to make an informed vote, and works with the other Democrats on the committee to make sure everyone knows what’s going on, to find out where people are at on certain bills and to be able to relay information back and forth with the Republican chair of the committee. “What’s been nice is to have a good bipartisan relationship with our chair, which actually allowed us to get a really great bipartisan package of bills through last month that are related to female genital mutilation,” she says. “It’s a great role; I enjoy it.” Though Chang has made her mark on the state legislature, she and her team have also moved mountains with grassroots community initiatives created through their neighborhood service center in Detroit. “One [initiative] that I thought was really impactful was last summer, when we did a community baby shower for low-income pregnant women and moms with babies under the age of 1,” she says. “We gave away a bunch of gifts, we did workshops on breastfeeding and safe sleep … we actually gave away and helped install car seats. It was just really incredible, and it was very clear that we were actually making a difference for about 80 families. That is one example of something that we do through our neighborhood service center that I’m just really, really proud of.” When discussing Chang’s achievements, there is another crucial component to be addressed: She is a first-generation American, and was the first Asian-American woman to be elected to Michigan’s legislature, a role she does not take lightly. “They came to this country looking for better opportunities for themselves and for their future children,” she says of her parents, who emigrated from Taiwan. “I think that I have a role that I need to play. That’s not necessarily the role that I sought out, but because I’m here and I’m the only [Asian-American woman], I know that there are people looking to me as an example,” she says. “Sometimes, I get approached by other Asian-American women who themselves want to run for office, and it’s exciting for them to see someone that looks like them there … I see that as something that’s unique to being a woman of color in the legislature that’s an additional role you take on automatically because of your identities, in addition to all of your normal work as a policy-maker and as an advocate of the community.” Chang clearly holds herself to the highest of standards. She doesn’t hesitate to do the same for her state. “My goals for Michigan’s future are to make sure, one, that we have a quality education for every single child, make sure that we have a fair justice system and that we have an economy that works for everyone,” she says. “I know that sounds like buzzwords, but I feel like we have a long way to go … The fact that we still don’t have earned paid sick leave for every worker and it’s 2017 — and we know it’s an issue with overwhelming support — is just an example of something that we need to get done. So my vision is that we should have a state where people know that their child is going to get a great education, and a state where that know that they are going to be treated fairly under the justice system, and also just a basic quality of life.” By Tess Garcia Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Believer: Garret Koehler General Manager at Assemble Sound   When we catch Garret Koehler by phone, he’s wired — having just wrapped up giving 100 Detroit summer camp kids a tour of Assemble Sound, the church-turned-recording studio and co-working space in Corktown where he serves as general manager. “I thought they were going to be college kids,” he says. “When a bunch of 8-year-olds walked in I was like, ‘This is going to be a very different thing than I thought it would be.'” Koehler says he devised a game in which he would play them tracks from Detroit artists to quiz them. “I kept trying to trick them. They knew everything from Motown through Tee Grizzley,” Koehler says. “It’s literally the best — you have like, 100 kids who all know every word of ‘First Day Out.'” Assemble Sound is all about collaborations. The space hosts monthly Assemble U educational series on various industry topics. It hosts a functional recording studio, to which artists-in-residence have 24/7 access. Studio time is booked on a shared calendar, and residents are encouraged to sit in on each other’s sessions. Another aspect of Assemble Sound is placing its roster of artists in TV and film. (It provided nearly all of the original music for Comedy Central’s Detroiters.) Originally from Chicago, Koehler first came on our radar through his work in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to convince ESPN to bring the X Games to Detroit. When we spoke with him in 2014, he was organizing a show featuring a collaboration between rappers Passalacqua and rockers Flint Eastwood. The show wound up being the catalyst for what would become Koehler’s next big project. Following the show, he spoke with Jax and Seth Anderson of Flint Eastwood about what worked and what didn’t. “Everything evolved from that show,” he says. “It was this feeling like, ‘Man, we’re really good at coming together like this to put on big shows. Why don’t we have the same approach and philosophy when it comes to creating music and navigating the music industry?'” Koehler, Seth Anderson, and Nicole Churchill began looking for a church to host their vision of a gathering space for musicians. For a variety of reasons — functional, financial — the group looked to churches as options. “We wanted a space that was big enough where we could do things like artist talks and industry panels and stuff, but small enough and acoustically interesting enough to be a studio,” Koehler says. On top of that, churches have rectories, so they could have a living space to host touring musicians. They finally found a church in March 2015. It had been empty for more than six years, and needed a new roof and plumbing. The build-out has been slow but steady. Koehler and his partner bought it with their “life savings,” he says, and a few grants. But Koehler says there were other reasons they chose a church. “Spiritually, it was like the whole idea was predicated on something like a belief that we don’t really know if it’s true, but we believe in it, and we want to convene other musicians who believe in it,” he says. “And that belief is in a more connected music scene in Detroit is a foundation for success, both for the individual musicians and the scenes that those musicians represent.” By Lee DeVito Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Vegan: Amber Poupore Owner of Cacao Tree   It wasn’t too many years ago that eating out as a vegan in metro Detroit wasn’t a particularly satisfying experience, as it involved choosing from dishes like a baked potato with salt and pepper, or a side salad. But times have changed. Detroit is now recognized as one of the nation’s most vegan-friendly cities, and there are dozens of restaurants to choose from that offer an enticing selection of vegan dishes. That can partly be attributed Amber Poupore spreading the vegan gospel, and she does so by the most effective means possible: cooking people good food. During the last 17 years, Poupore managed Inn Season Cafe, a vegan favorite in Royal Oak that she grew from a small spot to a regional attraction and nationally recognized restaurant. When she departed in 2010, she opened Cacao Tree, a popular raw vegan and vegetarian restaurant in downtown Royal Oak. Five years later she established her second vegetarian and vegan restaurant, The Clean Plate, in Shelby Township. And last year, she consulted for the owners of Ferndale’s Green Space, and she’s now in the process of opening a new kitchen that will allow her to expand her restaurants’ dinner menus and her growing catering business. But while the restaurants Poupore is involved with are beloved within the vegan community, she says she makes her biggest impact while doing cooking demonstrations, giving lectures, and doing educational outreach at corporate events. It’s in those settings that she convinces people who might not have ever tried vegan food — or think it’s weird — that it’s delicious. “You want to give someone an actual tangible experience of eating really fresh food and not make it so much about being vegan, but eating good-tasting food made from good ingredients,” Poupore says. “I get so much fulfillment from showing people that vegan food can be delicious. I’d rather invest in that than an advertisement. That’s how I build my clientele. It’s a strategic business move, but it gives me an opportunity to do what I love, which is teach people about eating vegan.” Beyond that, Poupore also got involved in a program in New Mexico in which she’s part of team of doctors and dietitians that’s trying to prevent and reverse diabetes in Native American communities. What’s worked best is veganism, which is why the doctor in charge of the program continues flying Poupore out to develop a curriculum for people to transition to a plant-based diet. As part of that, she does around 25 cooking demonstrations on her nearly bi-monthly trips, and she says the results are starting to show. “You can tell people all day long how good for them it is, but until you give them the tools to do something and a taste of the food, it doesn’t set in,” she says. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh my god it’s so good. And this is so easy.’ A couple of them finally went vegan and they started having all these amazing health benefits.” By Tom Perkins Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Booker: Virginia Benson  In-house booker at El Club   If you’ve ever seen a show at Marble Bar, El Club, UFO Factory, or even Jumbo’s in the last couple of years, Virginia Benson more than likely had a hand in getting your favorite almost-famous band to play a gig in Detroit. And while you were watching that show, she more than likely served you up a cold beer or a mixed cocktail from behind the bar. “This whole thing started when I moved from Olympia where I was more involved with music and photography,” she tells us from the leafy back patio of El Club, where Benson does a majority of her booking now. “I started bartending at the Garden Bowl and that kind of led to me putting together smaller shows. I did an internship with Ramona from Black Iris Booking, and then just started doing it on my own.” Doing it on her own led Benson to creating her own booking company after leaving the Majestic, where she was doing their in-house talent buying. “I started Party Store Productions from the very bottom and sort of just built it up from scratch,” she says. “I’ve been doing it for five years now.” Once Graeme Flegenheimer opened Southwest Detroit’s newest venue El Club in 2016, Benson was recruited to do the in-house booking — where she has had a hand in elevating the music scene in Detroit by bringing acts to the city that have never toured here before. While Benson confesses that Detroit isn’t the strongest market to be working in, the goal is to turn that ship around.”Detroit is definitely not a major market — it’s secondary at best, so it is hard to convince some bands to stop here.” She adds that since working at El Club, however, the variety and diversity of acts coming to the city has changed. “El Club and Graeme have had a lot to do with it,” she says. “I was always trying before to get acts to come here, but didn’t really have the means to.” Benson finally saw her hard work pay off when she was finally able to book the Brooklyn, New York-based band Woods after years and years or skipping Detroit on tours. “If a band is going on tour they will reach out to us, especially if we have worked together before, but sometimes I’ll find an act that is interesting and I’ll try and get them to come,” she says. “It goes both ways.” Since taking the lead over at El Club, Benson has been able to book amazing (and super-niche) shows with the Detroit Cobras, rapper and singer Lizzo, and former Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore, who played a special series she has helped curate at MOCAD. Benson achieved another milestone when El Club recently announced a show that is taking place aboard the Detroit Princess riverboat. “I’ve been wanting to do a boat show ever since I went on the Bruise Cruise years ago,” Benson says, referring to the 2011 rock-themed Bahamas cruise that featured the likes of the Black Lips and Vivian Girls. Benson’s cruise will take a spin on the Detroit River and then will dock for a concert featuring Detroit’s Protomartyr, who are releasing a new album at the show. “This is really my dream show,” she says. Benson has also had a hand in mentoring fellow employees at El Club who want to bring an act or festival to Detroit. “We try to foster new festivals when we can, like Waking Windows fest or Trip Metal. Trever Millay, who works for us, did the Barely Human fest and that was super fun. So if someone who works here has an idea we try and be supportive.” She jokingly adds, “I want every bartender to have their own festival.” Coming up from the bottom has taught Benson things she never knew about the industry. “I never realized how much it’s like trading commodities or stock, rather than just having a love for music,” she says. “For me, I just wanted to book all the bands that I love, but you also have to make sure that your venues aren’t going to lose money. I always thought I was going to be a rock star, never on the business side of things.” While Benson is not booking your next favorite show, she can be seen most nights pouring beers and mixing up cocktails behind the bar at El Club. A majority of patrons have no idea that the same person who poured them a shot of tequila also made sure that the band they are about to see makes a stop in Detroit. By Jack Roskopp Credit: Jacob Lewkow
The Inspiration: DaQuann Harrison DWH Inspires If you met DaQuann Harrison as a boy, you wouldn’t have thought he’s the type of guy who would someday be written about in a People Issue. By 8 years old, he began stealing, and faced a charge for arson and expulsion from school after starting a fire in a school bathroom. At home he endured physical and sexual abuse at the hands of a babysitter’s nephew, and earned his first trip to a juvenile detention center at age 12. Harrison suffered through periods of homelessness, attempted suicide, and spent stretches in psychiatric wards. Still, in high school, he excelled in football at Ypsilanti Lincoln and looked forward to the day in September 2013 that he could play in front of his father, who was to be released from prison. But his dad never made it to a game because he killed his girlfriend within 72 hours of release, and is now in prison for life. Not long after, kids at school started bullying and harassing Harrison, and the situation culminated with an incident in which he brought a knife and airsoft gun to school. That ended with his expulsion, arrest, and several felony charges. Indeed, if one looks at the challenges and choices Harrison made growing up, it wouldn’t be a stretch to predict that his future included prison. But it didn’t. Harrison turned his life around and now spends his time helping troubled youth across the country with his own organization, DWH Inspires. When we spoke with him on a recent evening, he was on the road in California at the Roots and Remedies Conference giving a speech called “Living black in dark world.” He’s also a part of Youth Empowers, a new youth-led, peer-to-peer group in Washtenaw County that pairs people like Harrison with those who are facing the same challenges he once dealt with, and addresses issues of race and inequality. Beyond that, he’s pursuing a degree in political science at Washtenaw Community College, expects to transfer to Eastern Michigan University, and will soon start an internship with U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell. “I’m really surprised at where I am today,” Harrison says. “If you look over my story you would think the end result would be with me in prison or dead, but my story eventually turned around 360 degrees to something that I didn’t expect or believe it would.” He also helps out kids and has a voice in policy making as the federal liaison for the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan’s Dignity in Schools campaign, the Washtenaw School Justice Partnership, My Brother’s Keeper of Michigan-Washtenaw County, and Michigan Juvenile Justice Youth Advisory Board. “I’ve been there and done that, so I know the feeling. Social workers are good, but they haven’t been there, haven’t been in that community, faced molestation … and the different circumstances that have happened,” he says. “To overcome the odds is amazing, so why not work with people who are in the shoes that you’ve been in, because you have a better chance of helping them.” By Tom Perkins Credit: Jacob Lewkow

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