My late father was a World War II veteran, and as a child I remember him talking about the promise of America. “If you work hard enough, you can be anything you want to be,” he would say. My dad was a Teamster who drove a milk truck for a living. While not the most glamorous job, it fulfilled my father’s dreams. He was able to buy a home, support a family and have a little bit left over for an RV and retirement.
Almost certainly, many of the people who lived in Detroit, Michigan, have the same fond childhood memories: a union parent working hard to ensure that their children would have a better future.
Two of my favorite live albums were performed in Cobo Hall, home to this year Netroots Nation—Bob Seger’s Live Bullet and Nine Tonight. As a teenager listening to those albums, I imagined Detroit as this mystical place where Bob Seger could draw huge crowds, and a place where all of our cars came from. It was Motown, Motor City and Detroit Rock City, all rolled into one.
To get to Netroots Nation, I drove to Detroit from Madison, Wisconsin. On my way through the I-94 corridor into Detroit I saw countless houses—or to put it more plainly, people’s homes—boarded up. Generations of families were raised in these homes on the promise of America, a promise that has not been kept.
As I walked through downtown Detroit I see what once was, and the promise of what can be; however, I’m not sure I can comprehend what I have seen in Detroit. In my journey through downtown Detroit I felt like I was walking through Batman’s Gotham or Robocop’s (the original) Detroit. The abandoned buildings and Gothic architecture, sometimes being one in the same, against the backdrop of modern buildings that are thriving speak of two different cities. Two different Americas.
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