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369 “Why Detroit Summer?” appeared in the May 1993 issue of the Save Our Sons and Daughters Newsletter. Why Detroit Summer? Last summer we made a good beginning toward involving out-of-town youth with local youth in the struggle to build Detroit. We now know that there are some young people who can be counted on to join a cause that requires commitment to a vision larger than themselves. Creating parks out of vacant lots, rehabbing houses, planting community gardens, painting murals, and marching against crack houses, Detroit Summer ’92 Youth Volunteers won the respect of grassroots Detroiters and seeded the idea that together we can build a movement to rebuild, redefine, and respirit Detroit from the ground up. When all around us so many people are drowning in the politics of blaming others, when most people refuse to grapple with hard questions because they are afraid of failure (not recognizing that failure is often the mother of success), it is heartwarming to know that there are people who care enough about the future of our city, our country, and the world that they are ready to engage in the struggle to create new relationships between the generations and new ways to build community. Like most cities Detroit today is at a historic point. At one time it was a crowning jewel of the Industrial Revolution. Millions of young people were lured here to pursue their dream of finding a job. Today that dream has evaporated as corporations replace human beings with robots and export jobs overseas where they can make more profit with cheaper labor. So we, the citizens of Detroit, are faced with new problems no previous generation has had to solve. We have to ask ourselves new questions that human beings like ourselves never had to ask. We have to create new dreams for the twenty-first century. How can the million people now trapped in Detroit make a living? What kind of an economy can we create since we know very well that we can’t depend upon Ford or GM to do it for us? Can we create the kinds of local enterprise that will provide for our basic needs and at the same time provide meaningful jobs for all citizens? How can we put our hearts, minds, hands, and imaginations together to redefine and create a city of community, compassion, cooperation, participation, and enterprise in harmony with the earth? I do not have the answers to these questions. At this juncture in history no one has the answer to the future. All we know is that we are living at one of the most challenging times in human history, at a time when the people not only of this city but also of the country and the world are in need of new direction and new visions of social, political, and economic responsibility toward one another and to our planet. Ward.indb 369 12/21/10 9:28 AM Part IV 370 Historically, new methods of thinking have come out of young people. Just as in the early 1960s SNCC youth spearheaded a new direction in the struggle for civil rights in the South, young people today can inspire Detroiters to pioneer in building the city of the twenty-first century—as we pioneered in the struggle for the dignity of labor in the 1930s and for black political power in the 1960s and 1970s. Ward.indb 370 12/21/10 9:28 AM ...

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