Abstract
The documentary, We Are Not Ghosts!, directed by Mark Dwokin and Melissa Young, explores the unique narrative of the once thriving city of Detroit, Michigan, known as The Motor City. Once a thriving and bustling city filled with people from all over, many of which relocated during The Great Migration who were attracted by the ever-expanding automobile industry and high wages, has now been abandoned, and those who remained are faced with housing woes, reduced governmental budget, and a lack of employment opportunities. The automobile industry, which helped position Detroit as an economic center, has now departed and left the city in a dire economic state. As the automobile lines slowed and high wage salaries dried up, people left the city center for better opportunities either outside the city limits or outside the state. The city of Detroit, as illustrated by the documentary, has been plagued with an increasingly high foreclosure rate, high crime and unemployment rates, and a city void of valuable resources. So, what does a city and its residents do when they are faced with these unfortunate circumstances? This documentary profiles the innovative community development approaches of residents, on the ground level, as they collaboratively work together to revitalize the city and renew an economic and cultural reawakening of the space.
The hour-long documentary offers its viewers a fresh and intriguing look at the financial position in which many cities are placed when they are unwilling to diversify their business community and the skills of those in the employment market. Detroit welcomed and embraced the incentives that were afforded by the entry of auto industry for its residents. The city rode the wave of low unemployment and high wages, with the expectation that the good times would continue to roll. B.B. King’s famous lyrics most eloquently summarized the period leading up to the departure of the auto industry—let the good times roll—sentiment that many of the people featured in the documentary share. Upon the industry’s departure from the city, there was a combination of factors that led to lower wages, increasing unemployment rates, sprawl, increasing crime rates, the relocation of businesses to the suburban areas, increasing population decline, increasing food deserts communities, and blight. Essentially, it was the combination of these and other factors, in no particular order, that led to the worst economic downtown for the city. As the documentary illustrates, those residents that stayed, either by choice or because of the lack of available resources to relocate, had a strong desire to build a better future for their city and to do so with the resources currently available. In essence, these residents sought to redefine the city and its image by drawing on a perspective grounded in community resiliency.
The mission of these Detroitans is most eloquently summarized in the statement by a young African American man who participates in the spoken work community collaborative, who stated, "The city is in a very vulnerable place and I think because it’s in such a vulnerable place, we’re in a position now to actually explore our power." The documentary explores ways that residents have started to achieve this power by (re)creating community through community development initiatives. This documentary profiles the community development efforts of urban gardeners, spoken word artists, schoolteachers, and block club members as pockets of residents take on initiatives that focused on violence and youth, addressing food deserts, and collaborative cultural projects to (re)create community and foster residents’ buy-in. These residents understand the significance of Detroit to the history of America and the auto industry and the current state of its financial affairs. In contrast of these two positions, these residents continue to embody resiliency in the face of adversity by challenging the narrative that the city is a memory of the past. Drawing on the social capital within the city—its residents and their respective form of human capital—the film explores a number of testimonies of how Detroitans are not waiting for change to come to the space; rather, they are willing to engage in the tough work themselves. One example is Avalon Bakery, a neighborhood bakery featured in the documentary, which only uses local ingredients to help the local economy. Moreover, the space helps to serve as a gathering place where residents can meet and exchange ideas. In another instance, members of a collective bike co-op, candidly named Hub of Detroit, engages in motivating residents to engage in sustainable practices by providing cheap bikes and bike services and educating residents about bike maintenance. The efforts of the Hub of Detroit are simply to encourage its members to be catalyst of change.
Essentially, these unique community profiles of local initiatives illustrate the need of Detroiters to support and invest in themselves as a means for improving the situation within Detroit. One of the most notable community profiles in the documentary is the urban food gardens initiative, D-Town Farm. Members of the D-Town Farm collaborative work together to develop a cooperative to address the issue of food deserts in the city. This particular initiative not only provides nutritious fruits and vegetables to participants, young and old, who participated in the cooperative, but it teaches food literary and sustainability. Essentially, the aim the cooperative is to teach individuals about agricultural self-sufficiency, a concept that predates the period of industrialization and Detroit’s automobile industry, by instilling lifelong skills in its members where they are able to make the connection of the soil to their own lives while also strengthening the social bonds of Detroitans.
The documentary illustrates, like so many other cities facing similar circumstances, that there is no overnight solution to resolving the economic issues and population decline. Rather, the underlying message of these initiatives is to redefine and reinvent them through a new vision that is not predicated on the past. Rather, for the Detroitans featured in the documentary, the past offers a window into the future. The documentary would be an invaluable supplement to any criminology, sociology, social work, or urban planning course because of its versatile nature in the process of addressing multiple topics, such as: culture, deviance and crime, the economy and work, education, groups and organizations, health inequalities, urban sociology, social and economic justice, theories of urban change, and racial and ethics relations. For example, in an urban sociology course, this documentary could serve to draw students’ attention to the processes that have helped facilitate the drastic urban crisis that many cities are currently experiencing and the ground-level initiatives that are taking place for communities to redefine themselves. Drawing on community development as an ongoing process rather than a stagnant process, social work and urban planning students will be able to become aware of the importance of community and economic development to socially vulnerable communities that are on the decline. Moreover, students will be able to gain a greater sense of the importance of social and human capital to the process of community change.
We Are Not Ghosts! is a timely documentary that offers a unique narrative and forces its viewers to grapple with the tough questions that center on how willing we are to sustain our own communities. The documentary uses historical footage in the backdrop of the narrative of many of the projects to force viewers into a place where they have to make peace with the reality of Detroit in the context of their own experiences and communities. Further, viewers are forced to reconcile whether and to what extent cities should rely on businesses for their survival and what should be obligations of city municipalities to the viability of these communities. The documentary offers its audience a provocative and invigorating story that will engage a stimulating conversation as each individual interview explores the personal narratives of residents that are unique and resonate with many of our own personal experiences. What if you did not have a car, public transportation was not reliable, and your community did not have a local grocery store? Viewers are forced to grapple with these types of questions as residents address, through their own experiences, the impact of limited resources on their ability to navigate their communities.
Detroit is but one example of what the future of our current thriving urban spaces could experience, and this special place serves to teach us about how our communities are composed of people who are vibrant, living, and breathing beings with much to contribute to the continued viability. Julia Pointer, a school teacher featured in the documentary, states in the face of an existence without the auto industry, "We have to create community." Throughout the film and the numerous community development projects, designed with the intent of building community and community relations, the words of Julia Pointer are evident, and Detroitans are taking the reins and not waiting for change to come to them. The documentary ends with a profound quote from the poem by Jessica Care Moore: "We are in this city, and we are alive! We Are Not Ghosts!" This statement embodies the very image of Detroit and suggests there is still life here, breathing beings, and a living and breathing city. Rather than retreating into the darkness, these residents are strengthening their voice and laying claim to the notion that they will not disappear.