southwest detroit — The Southwest Detroiter Blog

Posts tagged southwest detroit

Longtime Detroit Artist Surprised with Community Arts Award

Family, friends, and colleagues gathered on Sunday at the Latino Cultural Center on Bagley to surprise beloved local artist and mentor Mary Luevanos with the Michigan Hispanic/Latino Commission’s Arts in Community Award.

Luevanos was unable to attend the commission’s 2023 award ceremony in Kalamazoo last fall and so Theresa Rosado, who nominated Mary for the award, brought the ceremony to her.

“I knew she would shy away from a ceremony for her so it was presented as a birthday party for her [great] granddaughter,” said Theresa Rosado, a fellow artist who nominated her for the award.

For decades, Mary has welcomed fellow artists into Detroit’s arts spaces, guided children in valuing their creative potential, and facilitated artistic works and sessions throughout the community. Her enduring dedication and influence, even without expectation of payment, inspired Rosado to nominate her.

“I can't think of a person that has worked more selflessly without an expectation of being paid, or even thinking of an award,” Rosado said. “We can all learn from Mary.”

As Luevanos was honored, people shared stories of how she has contributed to Southwest Detroit’s vibrant, resilient arts ecosystem and motivated them personally. Despite limited resources, Mary has long prioritized community arts and made an impact by encouraging artists—from children scribbling with sidewalk chalk to painters working within cramped apartments—modeling how to stay dedicated to one's craft, even (especially) in difficult circumstances.

Mary's example reveals that art is not an extravagance, but an essential and uplifting force within communities. Her commitment has gradually cultivated a richer, more vibrant local culture, one inspired person at a time.

Culture, CommunityInside Southwest DetroitJanuary 29, 2024mary luevanos, southwest detroit, michigan hispanic latino commission, award

'Creative Connections' Project To Stimulate Economic and Creative Capital

We are excited to share that the most recently approved federal budget included two million dollars to the Creative Connections Collaborative, a project developed by the Southwest Organizing Network, which includes the following organizations in Michigan's 13th Congressional District: Urban Neighborhood Initiatives (UNI), Equitable Internet Initiative Southwest, Grace in Action Collectives, Garage Cultural and Inside Southwest Detroit.

The Creative Connections project will stimulate economic and creative capital through the deployment of high-speed broadband infrastructure as well as the construction and renovation of four indoor and outdoor community spaces where residents build businesses, develop and nurture creative and entrepreneurial networks, and non-profits provide programming focused on community, youth, art and culture.

The funding supports the completion of capital projects that exemplify the network members’ shared value of neighborhood development without displacement of residents, especially those who have lived here long-term.

In celebration of this award, Amelia Duran of Garage Cultural said, “As a community, we deserve all this and more. We deserve spaces that allow us to dream up new ways to organize, to be creative, to make art and make noise, to celebrate our uniqueness and ensure all of who we are is seen and understood.”

Each development project began with a participatory design process that kept community members of various ages and identities at the center of vision, design, decision making and ongoing use of the spaces.

The network’s proposal responded to the 2022 Congressional Community Projects initiative in which elected officials put forward projects that serve the needs of their districts. Christine Bell of UNI said, “we want to thank Rashida Tlaib and her team for their hard work and dedication to the community. Thank you for continuing to fight hard for your people day after day, you are the true embodiment of what politicians should do for their communities.”

Members of this network have been building together in shared values and authentic partnership for more than ten years. Initially meeting in garages and on front porches, they continue to share space, resources, and talents, whether there is funding or not, to meet community needs with community assets. The result of the award affirms the power of authentic, long-term community collaboration.

Capital Improvement Project Sites:

1725 Lawndale, Detroit, MI
Equitable Internet Initiative of Southwest Detroit

4670 Junction, Detroit, MI
Garage Cultural

1725 Lawndale, Detroit, MI
Grace in Action

1540 Elsmere, Detroit, MI
Inside Southwest Detroit

2026 Lawndale, Detroit, MI
Urban Neighborhood Initiatives (UNI), Lawndale Center

PHOTO CAPTIONS (From top to bottom):

Community gathers at Grace In Action along The Alley Project for the annual Blessing of The Lowriders in May of 2017. The Blessing of The Lowriders brings community, faith, and culture together through a celebration of the creativity and craft of lowriding.

Youth and adult neighbors bike through the community along Vernor near Lawndale together during the 2020 Juneteenth bike ride organized by SW Rides, a program of Urban Neighborhood Initiatives.

Amelia Duran and the Detroit Collaborative Design Center co-facilitate a participatory design workshop in 2018 with partners and community of Garage Cultural. These workshops bring together decision-makers, professionals, and constituents to collectively envision the activities, values, and physical features of the space.

Mary Luevanos facilitates Open Studio in 2017 on The Alley Project in the same garage where Inside Southwest Detroit, Radical Productions and other Grace In Action collective co-ops have split and shared space since 2012 when the organizations didn’t have indoor locations to run programming.

Place, CommunityInside Southwest DetroitApril 24, 2022southwest organizing network, southwest detroit, Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, grace in action, equitable internet initiative, the alley project, press release, blessing of the lowriders, garage cultural, rashida tlaib

First Your Liberation and Then Mine

Across the globe communities are realizing, acknowledging, and studying the interconnectedness of their ongoing struggles for liberation and civil rights. For many, our nation’s adopted political values and policies boil down to injustice for profit and are adversely impacting the health, education, and safety of generations.

In Southwest Detroit our residents are strong and engaged. For each other and in community. They are not only in service of their own interests. Many have become allies for others’ fights for liberation in the face of systemic injustices that are preventing them from living free under oppressive structures.

They are in solidarity in fights against a system that routinely prioritizes money over human wellness when making decisions about what is important. That system values profit over people—meaning it systematically harms people to protect profits.

That mantra—profit over people—makes many of us expendable within that system whether it be about our health, education, or public safety. However, it also unites communities in struggle, forging communion and challenging the chains that bind toward freedom and justice for all.

“So what exactly does it mean to be in solidarity?”

— Raúl Echevarria

Does simply being “in the same boat”, or having similar issues, mean people are in solidarity with one another? Or do we make things harder on each other (and ourselves) by failing to connect the dots and purposefully work together?

Raúl Echevarria is processing what this moment in our history is presenting us and what it requires of us to overcome, together. He offers thoughts on solidarity that gets at some of these questions and beyond.

In Solidarity

Words by Raul Echevarria

“Raúl is a community development practitioner with more than 20 years of experience, primarily in Humboldt Park, a historical Puerto Rican community in Chicago, and is currently employed as the Director of Land Use and Economic Development at UNI in Southwest Detroit.”
-From University of Detroit Mercy, Master of Community Development website

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police Department and the subsequent uprisings in most urban cities throughout the U.S., the word solidarity has become popular in activist and non-profit circles.

True solidarity requires intention, shared mission, and action

It is important to highlight the true nature of the word and raise the expected actions based on its use. Solidarity is not a mere substitute or synonym of words such as "support." Solidarity has a deeper or profound sentiment and commitment. To be in solidarity is to intentionally intertwine action and mission with another based on common or mutual interests.

This requires some form of analysis of the issues that multiple groups of people confront.

Solidarity comes with expectation and accountability

When used in its original intent, solidarity effectively connotes “co-liberation”, which has greater implication than simply to support.

“If you use this term then there is an expectation that you show up for your sister or your brother. And if you don’t show up, there is an expectation that you should be held accountable for your absence in the movement. ”

— Raúl Echevarria

To be in solidarity is not for the faint of heart. It is not a trend. If we cannot uphold the true intention of the term then perhaps we should stick with "support”. There is nothing inherently wrong with supporting others. It is a virtue to be sure. But words carry energy and with that energy responsibility to carry out its intention.

Solidarity Protects Movements From Divide-And-Conquer Tactics That Leave Us By Ourselves

Solidarity makes movements stronger, more solid. And every time that folks have embodied the true nature of this term, intersecting their issues and oppressed experiences, the forces of the state apparatus, those that abuse their authority granted by the people, have had to give way. Every time.

Indeed a common tactic of 'divide and conquer' is utilized by those in authority, lifting up differences among groups and distracting from those common threads discovered during the previously mentioned analysis. The division is easily accomplished if the analysis is weak or does not exist.

But if solidarity is truly embodied, the movements will not be so easily torn apart, because they are stronger in those places that unite, that bond. The stitchwork on the quilt of movements need to be tight. THAT is true solidarity.

First your liberation and then mine

And so to the Black community that is suffering under the weight of white supremacy, I say, "Tu Lucha Es Mi Lucha" (Your struggle is my struggle). First your liberation and then mine.

En Lucha,

Raúl

CommunityInside Southwest DetroitJune 26, 2020southwest detroit, solidarity, blacklivesmatter

Standing In The Shadows of Love

Zoë Villegas shares reflections on finding a place in the ceremony, economy, and celebration of Valentine’s Day growing up in Detroit. Erik Paul Howard illustrates her musings with photographs from the places and rituals her reflections are rooted in.

Words by Zoë Villegas
Photos by Erik Paul Howard

*A Valentine’s Day window display lights up the street at Delia’s Fashion on W Vernor Hwy and Springwells in Southwest Detroit.*

Remember how it was... here in the Motor City where backseats were made. With women hauling buckets of plastic wrapped single roses, doing cash exchanges in a series of hand motions in under 15 seconds—across from the Grand Marquis with the blinking light guarding Armando's.

On the intersection at I-75 and Springwells where the smog sunset brought to you by Marathon refinery will offer an air of romance later, two men compete selling pink carnations and red roses on the eastern and western corners. Specials on Hypnotiq, Rosé and small teddy bears that say "I luv you" next to condoms and aphrodisiacs by cash registers at the liquor store, remind us what month it is.

Casino lights flash red and pink. The insurance building with a glowing heart illuminates Fisher Freeway. All month in lobbies of welfare offices we have women selling perfume from brief cases, negotiating prices and discussing plans for reservations, showing manicures and pitching last minute sales on makeup sessions. All red outfits we plan to wear later are fodder for conversation when we get our bureaucratic mess dealt with for the day. One more document to turn in. Denied a bridge card once again. Apply again tomorrow.

The ho store has been window-dressed with red tinsel and cutouts of bows and arrows displaying a sale on lingerie and all the variations of fabric that mimic lace, sequin, chiffon, satin and silk in the entire spectrum of erotic alternative fibers.

This economy was trained young—we were once freshman girls delivered singing Valentines and boxes of chocolates... for $1 anyone can say all the things they could never say. Radio dedications evoke memories of Ford-Wyoming drive-in make out sessions allowing songs long out of rotation to be made an exception for the sake of a collective memory.

Detroit carves a space for a moment to live—in between the stress and mundane of every day life, while we fantasize about leisure. If even in those two seconds at a light can be used for maximum potential filled in with the sentiment of romance buying a flower that is how it's done.

We take a holiday seriously. The message is about claiming our time, our right to love amidst the harsh reality of endless work to make ends meet.

Detroit says I love you the same way we do everything else, with hustling. Happy Valentine's Day to all the hustlers standing in the shadows of love.

For those about to ho, we salute you.

Last Days at Home with The Family

Local artist Freddy Diaz is spending his last few days at the home where he grew up before moving.

Here Freddy is shown sifting through belongings where he grew up during his last days at home with the family before moving into his own place.

“I never really paid attention to it as a kid but as I got older I think my grandmother and aunts being creative gave me some sort of confirmation... someone having a similar energy to mine. Sewing was their way of channeling theirs and graffiti was mine.”

— Freddy Diaz

His grandmother is visiting his family from Mexico. It’s always a special time together when she is able to make the trip, often staying with them for an extended period of time at the house.

He sees himself in her craft and creativity. "I never really paid attention to it as a kid but as I got older I think my grandmother and aunts being creative gave me some sort of confirmation... someone having a similar energy to mine. Sewing was their way of channeling theirs and graffiti was mine."

With his grandmother visiting from Mexico, he and his mother enjoy all the time together visiting. "Man I love my mom's cooking. I'm going to miss that. Actually I'm not because I'm not far."

CommunityInside Southwest DetroitFebruary 10, 2019family, swdetroit, southwest detroit, vernor-springwells, 48209, artist, mexico

First Latin American Baptist in Southwest Detroit

First Latin American Baptist church in Southwest Detroit hosted its final service on the corner of Fort St and Dragoon this week as demolition crews razed nearby structures across the street.

The church building was constructed in the early 1900’s and has been home to the congregation for the past 50 years. It was purchased by MDOT—along with hundreds of other parcels along W Fort St and throughout the Delray neighborhood in Southwest Detroit—to be demolished to clear land for the new Gordie Howe International Bridge to Canada.

The parish has a long, celebrated history in the neighborhood as it has served the Latino community in Detroit since its inception almost 90 years ago.

Elizabeth Valdez, a member of the congregation since 1987, says she will miss the old building but that it will not dampen the spirit of the church.

Pastor Kevin Casillas and the First Latin American Baptist church of Southwest Detroit will be moving into their new home on Scotten between Vernor Hwy and Toledo after one final celebration at their current site next week for their annual children’s Christmas Party.

PlaceInside Southwest DetroitDecember 6, 2017First Latin Baptistfirst latin american baptist, southwest detroit, swdetroit, kevin casillas, elizabeth valdez, faith, church, fort st, 48209, gordie howe international bridge, dragoon, delray

Capital Improvement Project Sites:

1725 Lawndale, Detroit, MI Equitable Internet Initiative of Southwest Detroit

4670 Junction, Detroit, MIGarage Cultural

1725 Lawndale, Detroit, MIGrace in Action

1540 Elsmere, Detroit, MIInside Southwest Detroit

2026 Lawndale, Detroit, MIUrban Neighborhood Initiatives (UNI), Lawndale Center