Detroit, MLK, & Rosie the Riveter

Continuing #demoday necessitated channeling Rosie.

Demolition is starting to wear on me, though I love visiting our house everyday and feeling that we're making progress. There are a LOT of nails in the kitchen floor that make taking up the original hardwood (which is beneath tile and leveling cement) difficult and also impede shoveling the debris.

I never thought I could hate an inanimate object as much as I hate plaster. Unlike drywall, which mostly comes down in large pieces, plaster comes down in small chunks, or worse, dust, and has to be shoveled up and then swept up. 

So I'm reminding myself that I can do this. Today, that resulted in the above picture - living the Rosie the Riveter narrative that I, as a woman, can complete physical labor that was traditionally men's work. Rosie was actually from metro Detroit - Ypsilanti, I think. 

You know what else happened in Detroit? MLK's first rendition of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Which is sort of a juxtaposition, particularly now, when DPS school children face such harsh learning conditions, in part because they live in a city where the majority of students have a certain color of their skin. A city where many, many of the people with the same color skin are unemployed, underemployed, or employed in jobs with such low wages and such poor working conditions as to be comparable in many ways to sharecropping. These jobs result in many living in the poverty so rightfully condemned by MLK as a result of discrimination. MLK called the US out for defaulting on its promise that all citizens had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Detroit is in default. Michigan is in default. 

As I stood today in my kitchen, my second kitchen, because I also have an apartment while I gut the #fixerupperdetroit kitchen, I was, and always am, profoundly aware of the privilege of purchasing a home. I am so deeply grateful, but I wish all Detroiters, all Michiganders, could experience homeownership, could have jobs with enough dignity and wages to afford a home. 

I wish all of my students believed that "we can do it!" I wish they all had hope in MLK's dream. Many do. But some see the default, the discrimination, the poverty, and it feels insurmountable to them, and I don't blame them. 

We have not followed through on MLK's demands (yes, they were demands, and he was a radical). We have not fulfilled the goals of the African American civil rights movement. 

We still can, and we must. We must, for today's children. They deserve so much better than what they're getting.