Hope and Fixing Flint

I already posted about this on Facebook but now I think it warrants a proper blog entry.

My friend Gordon Young, a great guy who also writes and maintains the Flint Expatriates blog has come out with a stark new blog titled How to Fix Flint: Replacing the pipes in my hometown won’t revive the city. It will take the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to save it.  I strongly recommend you check it out.  Even from 2,000 miles away, Young gets it and is able to write some of the most compelling analysis of Flint and its troubles and triumphs.

After you read it, I hope you’ll take a moment to consider my response.  It isn’t a rebuttal — I can’t really argue with anything Gordon is saying here — but it does attempt to tackle the question of “so what do we do?”  A bit of insight: I’m an reflexive (as opposed to a rational) optimist; I need to come at something with hope if I’m going to be useful in any way.  So how does one scare up hope in the midst of such distress?  Here’s what I posted on Facebook:

Another dose of real talk from Gordon Young. A pretty bleak read, but you don’t want your doctor or nurse to dance around the facts, and you don’t want your journalists to as well. And these are essential realities that Flintstones have to wrestle with as we plan for our future, and that America has to wrestle with as it examines its conscience.

Speaking personally, I’ve been blessed in life and family, friends, and Flint have been good to me. My complaints are fairly trivial next to those of many friends.

But I do have one thought that leads, perhaps, to a small allotment of earned (or unearned) hope.

Around the time I moved back in 2011, there was a shift in my thinking. I no longer think of Flint as a geographic place, but rather as a tribe of people moving through time together, momentarily united by proximity. In some ways, this doesn’t change the picture, because such a tribe is struggling mightily to survive and thrive. But the metric is different in a meaningful way. It isn’t about abandoned schools, or a rejuvenated downtown, or about my own memories: remember when I sat out on that porch reading? It’s about the people I see on the streets every day, friends I grew up with who have moved away, and the children living in this city who will be carrying their memories of it with them long after I am gone. I don’t care much, anymore, whether “Flint” the city is going to be around in 20 years, but I care passionately about how “Flint” the tribe will be in 20 years.

This, alone, is not grounds for optimism. As Gordon points out, poverty here is entrenched. When a house burns down, it is the people who live there who suffer… sometimes fatally. With the water crisis, it was children who were lead poisoned and seniors who got Legionnaires’. We are all scarred, in ways big and small, by everyday unkindness and the relentless and indifferent machinery of capitalism. But even if the Marshall plan is not coming to Flint (though I agree we must fight for it) I am inspired at the way Flint residents marshal their own spirits and creativity and determination to rally again and again.

Tonight I went with my family to a friend’s “end of summer” bonfire. It was supposed to be a fun, casual get together, but while we were there, none of the grown-ups could resist the temptation to talk shop. I heard brainstorming about programming for youth, how this outreach program was going to best leverage its connection with so-and-so, how that curriculum was going to accommodate itself to the needs of 2017. While my daughters ate marshmallows and kicked a basketball back-and-forth, nobody could restrain themselves. This bonfire took place just a couple blocks away from the streets where I distribute a community newspaper each month. This month, I noted that eight more houses were abandoned than the month prior. Out of about 120. 7% of those houses were abandoned in one month.

But the bonfire happened. The conversations were probing and rigorous. The energy there, positive and visceral. The programs will happen. The kids will learn. They will carry their experiences with them. It isn’t a total victory of any sort, but it is a victory.

My two cents for anyone putting a stake on Flint, right here or from afar: yes, fight for the seeming impossible, but seize hope wherever it presents itself. Seize hope relentlessly and unrealistically and passionately and constantly. Look for it from the people you meet. Hope is so powerful not because it is realistic and rational, but because it persists despite its being unrealistic and irrational.

If you want to be happy in Flint, you probably have to be a little unrealistic and irrational.

 

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