Detroit: Where Music and Community Development are One

Loyalty is something that can never be replaced. As we move forward into the technological future of social networking and impersonalization, we may ultimatley lose ourselves. The very fabric that once held communities so tightly knit together, may dissapear. The City of Detroit, now alone more than ever, can represent the essence of man in the world we live in today. The subject that refused to crumble. The man who fights till the death--arms linked in communion with the very people that make him, him.

Through the height of our country's industrial and manufacturing prosperity, the City of Detroit came to life. During World War I and World War II, its facotires and assembly plants produced the largets amount of military air crafts and fighters. During the automobile era, the City flourished as our nation's people demanded the need for a vehicle. Now, with the recession that we face, the City of Detroit has struggled more than ever. Rising unemployment rates and a decline of social services and aid from the federal government. What happens when the people who once believed in us leave? Who do we become when those that said they would be there through the thick and the thin move on? We stand strong. We stand together.

It is important that we do not forget the places we come from. The places that make us who we are. The places that we call home. And it is important that we do not forget the people that makes those places what they are. Planners and urban designers spend too much time focusing on the finer things in life. They are the fairweather friends that live at the top. But where are they when we need them the most? When planning and community organizing are needed the most. In this day and age, we must learn to grow from the bottom up--without the help of the higher authorities. We are the people that make life happen--and we are the people that will bring us back from the rubble of despair.

Detroit, stand up. You will return.

Marshall Mathers' (Eminem) "Letter to Detroit"

DIGITAL JOURNAL ARTICLE: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304459