By Jenny Lee
Originally published in The Michigan Citizen
The walls inside the Cass Corridor’s Neighborhood Development Center are undergoing transformation. On the east wall a new mural commemorates the two year anniversary of the Breakin’ Bread Community Potluck Series. In a landscape of deep purples and blues kids are walking out of schools, towards urban gardens, and into block parties where turntablists and breakdancers have taken over the streets.
The Breakin’ Bread gatherings bring people together every month to share whatever they have to offer. On the food table: Mom’s chicken, homegrown salads and Faygo 2-liters.
On the mic someone tells a story of police brutality, a young mother reads a poem about her hopes for her new baby, someone answers the question “What would it take to end youth-on-youth violence?” which leads to more questions. There’s always someone hauling turntables, crates of records and a cider press. At the end of the night a breaking cipher and upsidedown buckets, turned into drums by Corridor percussion legend, Larry Hull, accompanies clean-up.
On Nov. 8, Detroit Summer celebrated this powerful model of decentralized community organizing with the theme “Rep Your Hood: Graffiti and Community in Detroit.” The new mural in the community center was put up by renowned local artist, Sintex, as a way of telling the story of the past two years of potlucks.
As always, the event featured youth DJs Kase N Point and Dr. Seuss, and the legendary breaking crew, Hardcore Detroit. It was hosted by two of the youngest members of the Detroit Summer Collective: Starlet Lee and Josh Tuck.
After food and an open mic, Lottie Spady and Alia Harvey-Quinn of the Urban Artists Collective led a discussion around the question, “What does it mean to rep your hood? “They told the story of how gangs were originally created as a form of protection for a community but how, with the advent of drug economies, especially the crack economy in Detroit, they came to be a destructive force.
Quinn and Spady asked, “How can we rep our hoods in ways other than fighting for them? Do our hoods rep us?”
The people in the room, mostly youth, responded with ideas like mowing the lawns of senior citizens on the block, by hanging out with the younger kids and helping the younger ones clean up the trash or planting a garden.
“If your community was a potluck, what would you bring to it?” asked event organizers who broke everyone into groups. With markers, magazine scraps and found objects, each group built the collage of their ideal communities, while DJs Kase n Point and Doctor Seuss fed the creative energy in the room.
Afterward attendees explored each other’s collage neighborhoods. At the center of one there was a bird’s nest filled with things like Black history, dignity and a picture of Malcolm X. In another, Tupac Shakur stands at a podium in a suit imploring his neighbors to grow their own vegetables. Biggie’s head pops out from behind a fence, declaring, “I grow my own vegetables!”
These collages are only the beginning. A larger graffiti mural is yet to come. The mural is a collaboration between Sintex, youth from the Cass Corridor neighborhood and youth from Expressionz, a youth organization from Southwest Detroit.
The November potluck represents the best of what the Detroit Summer potlucks have been—a point of contact for hundreds of different people who otherwise might never have met, of all ages, doing all kinds of amazing work in every corner of the city and beyond.
The potlucks produce tangible things like murals, collages, new connections and and plates of leftovers. But we also walk away with subtler things, like confidence, affirmation and the belief that our communities are powerful.
Detroit Summer is a multi-racial, intergenerational collective in Detroit, working to transform communities. Detroit Summer organizes potlucks, speak-outs and parties throughout the year. For more information contact 313-333-6779
beautiful!
this makes me miss detroit so much! wonderful writing as usual.