A few days ago the Detroit City Council voted against rezoning residential neighborhoods in Southwest Detroit to heavy industrial use. The rezoning was requested by Central Transport and the Moroun family. The proposed changes came up when the city swapped land they owned in SW for land the Moroun’s owned near the new FCA plant on the East side. After months of speculation, worry, rumors, backdoor deals, attending public hearings, the people have reportedly prevailed.
The corner of W Grand Blvd and Toledo was primed to become yet another truck yard. The proposed rezoning to heavy industry would’ve had numerous negative effects on the mostly poor, mostly Latinx neighborhood. It would’ve effected my family directly. My mom lives on the street connected to the almost truck yard, and I spent my teenage years here. The neighborhood once had a sizable Lithuanian population, and my mother’s husband bought their house from some of his family members there about 20 years ago.
On one hand, I feel like we’ve won. On the other, the physical landscape has still been altered. Billionaires still “own” the land now. They’ve cleared it, and erected a fence. I think a lot about these cycles, how our memories are tied to seemingly unimportant places. And how easily these places are erased. How those unaffected call it “progress.”
Truth is, this is Anishinaabe land. Europeans built a railroad, factories, and a whole neighborhood on this stolen land. I came to know it after deindustrialization, and during the complete disinvestment in this city and its mostly black people. During this period, I imagine this land was closer to what it once was. “Vacant” some would say, but providing, for trees, plants, bugs, and the migratory birds who have always seemed to know its location. Providing until now, now that this neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying and capitalism and industry has deemed it valuable again.
Below is some of the life I was able to document happening here.
feraldetroit.com 