# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Detroit, A Colorful Mural Stands As A Reminder Of The City’s ‘Segregation Wall’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Detroit’s Birwood Wall is now decorated with murals — children playing, Detroit Tigers, people of all races living in harmony. But when this wall was built in the 1940s, integration was not the goal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
/ CBS News

In our summer series "American Wonders," "CBS This Morning" is exploring places that make America wonderful. This week, CBS News national correspondent Adriana Diaz visits a neighborhood in Detroit that refuses to be forgotten. Most residents moved away after economic hardship and urban decay. But one man saw beauty in what was left behind - and now, his artwork attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
Scattered in empty lots among the few remaining homes on this two-block stretch of Heidelberg Street are seemingly random objects - a pile of suitcases, an old classroom chair, a baseball mitt - that might make more sense inside those homes. But making sense seems to be the last thing on the mind of artist Tyree Guyton.

Guyton grew up on Heidelberg Street with three generations of his family, through the rise, fall and now-renaissance of the city around it: Detroit.

"My grandfather, he was my best friend," Guyton said. "I was 9 years of age when he gave me a paintbrush and told me to paint and said that the world was my canvas."

Guyton's world imploded in 1967, when racial tensions and post-war urban decline sparked five days of deadly riots in his family's own backyard.

"Oh, I thought the world was comin' to an end," said Guyton, who was 12 at the time.

After the riots, the neighborhood emptied out - and left behind the objects that once filled residents' lives.

"I decided to gather those things up and to create this magic," he said. He added that he wanted to show that the objects, discarded years ago, still have value.

Guyton's so-called Heidelberg Project now attracts an estimated 200,000 visitors a year from all over the world, adding more than $3 million annually to the local economy.

"I just like the oddity of it all," one visitor said. "It's bringing the neighborhood back to the neighborhood," said another. "It's really interesting."

The project also brought controversy to the neighborhood. Some residents complained about traffic and code violations, and the city even bulldozed parts of it twice.

But Guyton said the controversy hasn't slowed him down. "I don't mind getting in trouble first and apologizing later, if necessary," he said.

The Heidelberg Project is now working with the city to address those concerns, a task that falls to the project's president, Jenenne Whitfield.

"It's like any other family, you got sisters and brothers that don't get along," Whitfield said. "But we never stop trying!"

A former banker, Whitfield made a wrong turn down Heidelberg Street 26 years ago and met Guyton sitting on a curb. Today, she's also his wife.

"Do you feel that your work has followed the rise and fall and rise of Detroit?" asked CBS News national correspondent Adriana Diaz.

"I definitely do, I think it is the greatest symbol," Whitfield said. "And as the city of Detroit is kind of having this new life, so to speak, so is the Heidelberg Project."

That new life means dismantling some of the installations and moving them to galleries around the world. The Heidelberg Project has a proposal at City Hall to turn this once blighted neighborhood into a vibrant artists' village, with live-work studios, an arts academy and businesses that cater to them. They've even trademarked their own school of art, called Heidelbergology.

Whitfield defined "Heidelbergology" as "the study of found materials incorporated into the fabric and structure of an urban community and the effects on that community."

"You've put Heidelberg, this neighborhood, on the map, and now you want to take it to the next level?" Diaz asked.

"That's why I can walk away," Guyton responded. "I've done it."

As the neighborhood's profile has risen, so has Guyton's. He's now represented by an art gallery in New York, and other cities have asked him to create works of art to revitalize their neighborhoods.
More

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How a Detroit artist used what was left behind to transform his dying neighborhood

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Heidelberg Project now attracts an estimated 200,000 visitors a year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Journal of Public and International Affairs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Abolishing School Resource Officers Amidst the Black Lives Matter Movement: A History and Case Study in Oakland and Los Angeles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This paper explores the potential of abolishing school resource officers (SROs), their history in education, and their role in exacerbating the effects of the school-to-prison pipeline and racial injustice. In the midst of calls to defund the police, policies to abolish police in schools are a vital…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, which comprises 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems - and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

I was 16 years old, stopped at a red light, the first time I saw sirens flashing in my rearview mirror.

Stomach tight, breath stifled, and heart pounding, I looked over at my friend in the passenger seat. The same terror trying to close my throat stared back at me through his eyes. I could hear a muffled voice over a loudspeaker telling me to pull over. Instead, I hit the gas, bolting through the red light and racing down the street. My friend yelled at me, "What are you doing? Pull over!" I didn't know what I was doing. It didn't make logical sense. All I knew was that we were in imminent danger and I had to get away. But my friend was right. Escape was impossible. My barely running old-school Tercel's horsepower was no match for a police cruiser, and capture after a chase was even more dangerous. I pulled over. I rolled my window down as the cop quickly approached demanding an answer. "I got scared," I said. "I'm sorry."

While I have since learned how to navigate the constricting terror I feel when I see flashing lights behind me (this hasn't changed despite nearly three decades and a professorship at a prestigious university), I want to be clear that this panic isn't limited to when we recognize the shape of a police car in our rearview mirror. It isn't limited to the myriad other activities people racialized as Black are brutalized for, such as walking or swinging or singing or laughing or playing or watching television or sleeping or breathing. It is also something many of our babies feel as they walk into their schools, as they sit in classrooms, as they navigate hallways between classes. It is what happens when you feel your body tighten as you realize cops are not in schools to protect you. They are there to protect schools from you.

Beyond the ways this understanding manifests in our bodies, the relationship between Black children and the school's larger disciplinary structure is clear: Both principals and teachers in U.S. public schools are over 80% white, and nearly 70% of police in schools are white. Regardless of the discipliner's gender (the majority of teachers and principals are women, and the majority of police in schools are men), Black students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade are overrepresented in every form of discipline - from teacher-issued referrals to corporal punishment to suspensions, expulsions, and police arrests.

What we want is for schools and classrooms to be spaces of love. Not just a love for the Harlem Renaissance or the civil rights movement but love for loud colors and loud voices.

Even Black toddlers in pre-school, as young as three years old, are disproportionately sent out of the classroom, suspended, and expelled. What they can look forward to as they enter elementary school are cops who think they are old enough to be arrested: Kaia Rolle, a six-year-old girl in Florida, was handcuffed, placed in the back of a police cruiser, and taken to a juvenile detention facility simply for throwing a tantrum in class. By the time her grandmother became aware of what happened, young Kaia had already had her mugshot taken and fingerprints recorded.

Six years old. Hopscotch, jump rope, and mud pies years old. Let that sink in.

Kaia is only one of the thousands of Black students harassed, assaulted, and arrested in schools every year - the very beginning of a school-to-prison pipeline that, through a system of discipline and marginalization, feeds children directly into the carceral system. Perhaps even more terrifying, however, is the fact that these experiences are too often normalized as part of Black students' reality in schools. Having learned early on about the unrelenting violence police unleash on those racialized Black, these children enter school with survival sensibilities based on a recognition of how police see them and what this means for how they necessarily must see police.

In fact, Black students are most likely to report not feeling any safer with an officer on their campus and least likely to agree with positive statements about the police in their schools. As a part of my own ethnographic work with Black high school girls, I interviewed students extensively about their experiences in schools - including with school police. One of my students remarked, "We're a target. And they see us as a threat, so you know we see them as a threat." If the police are threatened by Blackness more broadly, this signals the impossibility of a protective relationship between the police as a structure and Black people as human beings.

Students also shared numerous stories of their own negative interactions with police. Students discussed being followed, male family members being called the N-word, having guns put to their heads as children during raids of their homes, and being fondled inappropriately during unprovoked searches at school. Their own experiences, and the experiences of Black people en masse, led students to believe that police were against them and that police would either be unnecessarily brutal, or unhelpful and certainly nonprotective, in the event their assistance may have been needed.

Another one of my students commented, "I feel like police officers show different feelings towards Black people then they would to a normal, like, white person." A normal white person. While this student's words speak for themselves, I want to emphasize the way in which she understands police to be able to see the humanity in white people (look, a normal person) while they look at Black people "differently." This student understands that for police, Black people are not quite normal; they are something else entirely.

It is precisely this inability to recognize Black humanity that permeates students' broader anti-Black experiences in schools. Indeed, anti-Blackness in education is not simply about the ways Black students are disproportionately punished by teachers, administrators, and actual gun-toting police officers. It is also about the ways Black students are policed more broadly - the attacks against our hair in locs, braids, and even the Afros that grow naturally from our heads. The ways Black girls are hypersexualized and dress-coded disproportionately. The ways Black boys' bodies are adultified and rendered criminalblackman. The ways LGBTQ and gender-nonbinary Black students are erased, marginalized, and othered. The ways our bodies - our skin, our hair, our clothes, our voice, our body language, our cadence, our minds - have always represented a dangerous intrusion within educational institutions structured by anti-Black solidarity. It is about the policing of the boundaries of our existence - the way our very presence, let alone our struggle, our brilliance, our creativity, and our ingenuity, are misrepresented and/or effectively stamped out of the curriculum and denied space in schools more broadly.

So while the decadeslong fight led by students, parents, activists, and organizations alike to abolish police in schools is perhaps more readily understandable, we must also be calling for the abolition of policing in schools more broadly. The abolition of policies, practices, and structures that facilitate and support the narrative that Black students are a problem. The abolition of a system that uses our tax dollars to wield both tasers and textbooks against us. The abolition of the pipeline that funnels our babies from classrooms to cages.

Renowned Black feminist activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis recently remarked that "abolition is really about rethinking the kind of future we want." What we want is for schools and classrooms to be spaces of love. Not just a love for the Harlem Renaissance or the civil rights movement but love for loud colors and loud voices. Love for sagging pants, hoodies, and corner store candies. Love for gold grills and belly laughs on hot summer porches. We want schools to be sites of struggle, to engage with Black folks' historical and contemporary yearning to be at peace. To seek refuge from an anti-Black world, where Black children can dream weightless, unracialized, and human. Where language flows freely, where existence is nurtured and resistance is breath. Where the Black educational imagination dances wildly into the night - quenching the thirst of yearning and giving birth to becoming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Funneling Our Children From Classrooms to Cages Ends Now

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Detroit's Dudley Randall used poetry and persistence to change the face of literature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Frankie Knuckles at Power House club, 1986 opening night

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Exiled to Motown Exhibit Tells History of Japanese Americans in Metro Detroit | Clip

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Young Detroiters unlock their inner poets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The world's first crowdsourced space traffic monitoring system | Moriba Jah

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Freedom Is at the Heart of This Tradition | Op-Docs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Community comes together to support urban farm in Metro Detroit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sidewalk Detroit is proud to be a part of the community effort to re-invigorate Brightmoor's Eliza Howell Park as a valuable and experiential gathering place for area residents.

ARTIST RESIDENCY WITH SCULPTOR PATRICK DOUGHERTY

September 7-25, 2021 Eliza Howell Park, 23751 Fenkell Ave, Detroit, MI 48223 Sculpture: A Walk in the Park by Patrick Dougherty Photo credit: Noah Elliot Morrison
This installation will be open for approximately two years thru September 2023.

About Patrick Doughtery's 'Stickwork' sculpture at Eliza Howell Park
In September 2021 Sidewalk Detroit hosted internationally acclaimed artist, Patrick Dougherty as he created one of his famed 'Stickwork' sculptures in Eliza Howell Park. This artist residency engaged over 150 artists, volunteers, neighbors, and members of the public to work side by side with the artist as he created this monumental piece. Each aspect of the sculpture is hand-woven and composed entirely of natural materials. This art installation is a multi-year effort, part of Sidewalk Detroit's long-term work in the park. The vision for Eliza Howell Park is to improve park infrastructure, specifically focusing on stormwater management and restoration of the native ecosystem while curating activities that facilitate a deeper connection to the park.
Patrick Dougherty Bio
Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Dougherty was raised in North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina in 1967 and an M.A. in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Iowa in 1969. Later, he returned to the University of North Carolina to study art history and sculpture. Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, Patrick began to learn more about primitive techniques of building and to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. In 1982 his first work, Maple Body Wrap, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artists' Exhibition, sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of Art. In the following year, he had his first one-person show entitled, Waitin' It Out in Maple at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

His work quickly evolved from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumental scale environmental works, which required saplings by the truckloads. Over the last thirty-some years, he has built over 300 of these works, and become internationally acclaimed. His sculpture has been seen worldwide---from Scotland to Japan to Brussels, and all over the United States.

He has received numerous awards, including the 2011 Factor Prize for Southern Art, North Carolina Artist Fellowship Award, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, Japan-US Creative Arts Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Princeton Architectural Press published a major book about Patrick and his work in 2009. This monograph, Stickwork, has received excellent reviews and is available at www.stickwork.net.

Visit Patrick Dougherty Website: http://www.stickwork.net/
The Greening of Detroit Collaboration
The Greening of Detroit was an integral partner in the Patrick Dougherty artist residency. The team trained volunteers on how to harvest sapling branches, strip them of leaves, and assist in constructing the sculpture side-by-side with Patrick. From September 7th - 9th, the team harvested overgrowth of saplings from Belle Isle, Rogell Park, and Palmer Park. Following three days of harvesting, construction of the sculpture will began on-site at Eliza Howell Park. The project was completed and celebrated with an artist talk on Saturday, September 25th from 3:00 - 7:00 pm.

Sidewalk Detroit In Eliza Howell Park

Sidewalk Detroit was inspired by Eliza Howell Park because of its vast, beautiful landscape and direct connection to the Brightmoor neighborhood. As members of the community and frequent park visitors, we observed that the park was under-utilized by our friends and neighbors. This led us on a journey to discover what would bridge the gap between residents and community members.

In 2015, we began our research with informal conversations with residents. This eventually led to one-on-one interviews with park leaders and a large community dinner, during which attendees shared their hopes, dreams and concerns for the park. After gaining a deeper understanding of the history and conditions of the park, we decided our goal must be to provide neighbors with new, joyful and connected ways to engage in the park.

We knew that our work had to combine both infrastructure improvements and engaging, accessible programming. In 2017, we hired 10 residents to join our Community Leadership Team. These residents represented a diversity of backgrounds and were engaged to inform and guide our decisions as we moved deeper into programming and stewarding the park's development.

Since 2017, Sidewalk has been hosting free public intergenerational programming in the park as well as working to improve park amenities. Find out more about our programs and improvement initiatives below!

EHP ARTIST RESIDENCY: Weekly workshops

Artists in Residence:

Lisa McCall, Iyawo Dance Theatre 2017

Ivy Mitchell, Zoe Fitness/Zumba with Ivy 2018

Amen-Ra Drummers and Dancers 2018, 2019

Kerrie Trahan, Yoganic Flow 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Kelvin Wyatt, Creative Movement Brazil 2019

Yvette Rock, Live Coal Gallery 2019, 2020

Each year, Sidewalk Detroit selects talented artists and artist groups to lead weekly outdoor workshops in Eliza Howell Park. Through weekly programming, Sidewalk Detroit is able to connect neighbors with art in this serene natural space to improve the community's mental and physical wellness and increase awareness of ourselves as part of the ecosystem.

performance events in the park

Since 2018, Sidewalk has hosted jazz nights and other special events to celebrate the beautiful natural spaces in Eliza Howell Park. Like our weekly events, these events are intended to bring art, community, and nature together to share in our connectedness.

Orange, gold & Green annual fall festival

Orange, Gold & Green is our celebration of what we think is the most beautiful time of year in our region. We gather together to enjoy performances, hands-on art workshops, horseback riding, delicious food, and of course, the colors of fall.

Eliza Howell Park Concept plan

2016-2018 Sidewalk Detroit staff met monthly with the Eliza Howell Park Community Leadership Team, one-on-one with community members, and hosted community events to learn about the community's vision for Eliza Howell Park. Sidewalk collaborated with these residents and civic leaders to develop a concept plan for Eliza Howell Park, commissioning the Detroit-based landscape architecture firm LivingLab to create the plan. The concept plan, which continues to evolve, was developed to reflect the community's values and dreams for Eliza Howell Park.

Upon its completion in October 2018, this concept plan was adopted by the City of Detroit Planning Department as the benchmark for EHP improvements and planning.

The concept plan includes:

Updated road cross section to accommodate regional trail

Improved wayfinding, trail system, and access

Benches, garbage receptacles, and picnic tables

No-mow delineators to prevent mowing certain areas

Rain gardens manage runoff from impervious areas

Restored prairies across site

Restored vernal pond wetland area with boardwalk access

Art installations across site

Updated sports fields and playgrounds

Invasive species management across site

Shelter, restrooms, and splash play

You can view the full Eliza Howell Park Concept Plan here .

Phase I: improvements along the trail

Phase I improvements were installed from 2017-2019 with the intention of improving the walking experience on the main loop path and drawing park-goers in deeper to engage with the landscape in new ways. These improvements along the path included educational signs, benches, and trash can rings.

Phase II: Habitat Restoration and park improvements

Phase II of park improvements will be implemented 2020-2021 and will include large steps toward restoration of the park's natural habitat as well as improved access to these natural features for park-goers. Phase II includes:

Removal of invasive species

Restoring native habitat in prairie and wetland areas

Resurfacing and widening a portion of the crushed-limestone walking loop

Laying a new crushed-limestone cut-through path

Expanding of vernal pond habitat

Creating a boardwalk over the vernal pond

Creating a rain garden

Phase II Implementation Timeline:

Invasive Species Removal:
January 2020-November 2021

Construction:
October-November 2020

Native Species Planting:
September 2020-November 2021

Learn more about the ongoing process for Habitat Restoration in Eliza Howell Park! The video below is an interview of John DeLisle of Natural Community Services by our Parks and Greenspace Program Manager, Sophie Stockum.

Upcoming Events at Eliza Howell Park

Learn more about our projects & Services

About Eliza Howell Park:

Northwest Detroit's hidden gem holds 250 acres of preserved land in the flood plane of the Rouge River and is the fourth largest park in the city. Visitors can explore Eliza Howell Park (EHP) with over 2 miles of hiking trails through both prairie and forest landscapes. The landscape invites the discovery of a rich ecosystem of plants and animals from the vernal ponds to the the wildflower prairie to the hardwood forest canopy. EHP is a place for Detroiters to enjoy the serenity of being out in nature in the midst of the Brightmoor neighborhood and the surrounding urban environment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sidewalk Detroit is proud to be a part of the community effort to re-invigorate Brightmoor's Eliza Howell Park as a valuable and experiential gathering place for area residents. About Patrick Doughtery's 'Stickwork' sculpture at Eliza Howell Park In September 2021 Sidewalk Detroit hosted internationally acclaimed artist, Patrick Dougherty as he created one of his famed 'Stickwork' sculptures in Eliza Howell Park.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
High School Campus Grocery Store Helping Students, Families During Pandemic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This Tree Farm Is Bringing Life Back To Detroit’s East Side | NBC Nightly News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a statement after the meeting, Stop & Shop says they toured the newly opened food pantry and shared their concerns with the task force report.

They say the 20 products the student purchased represent 1 percent of the 10,000 items available in the two stores, and the overall difference in price between the stores is much lower than reported.

The Hyde Square Task Force students are reviewing this information to respond.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Student research project draws attention to price disparities in low-income neighborhoods

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A student research project in Boston is drawing attention to price disparities between grocery stores in high and low-income neighborhoods. Student journalist Sriya Tallapragada reports in this story produced during NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs Summer Academy, where teens from around the country come together to hone their journalism, film and storytelling skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tomeka Reid, Jazz Cellist and Composer | 2022 MacArthur Fellow

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Filipino Americans contributed to the farm workers movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Early Articulations of Intersectional Feminsm: The Combahee River Collective

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fred Hampton on the importance of revolutionary education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the past, the Sidewalk team partnered with the Artist Village and community business owners to transform the streets of Historic Old Redford into a space for discovery, dancing, innovation, and joy. In 2021, we brought unique site specific experiences to various locations across Detroit. Sidewalk Festival was hosted in the Joy- Southfield, Chadsey- Condon, Dexter- Linwood, and Jefferson- Chalmers neighborhoods. Sidewalk Festival doesn't use traditional stages-artists are challenged to create site-specific performance and installation art for the alleys, gardens, storefronts, courtyards, parking lots and streets.

This festival serves as a sacred space for the convening of boundary-pushing artists, residents, curious art-lovers, and those of adventurous spirit. The hyper local experience serves as an opportunity to shift your perspective about what to expect in Detroit and in yourself.

Our on-going work

As the producers and curators of Sidewalk Festival, our process includes:

Working with the community throughout the year through community meetings. We work closely with small businesses to be sure they are being served while maximizing festival opportunities for artists. We recruit local artists and youth projects for inclusion in our festival.

Our team works collaboratively with artists to develop a curatorial theme, host artist site visits, help artists market their projects, and support them in their processes to create performances and art for our festival.

We work on every facet of the production side of the festival as well. This includes fundraising, location scouting for site-specific art, logistics with the City of Detroit, rent festival equipment and needed contractors, recruit vendors, produce the festival grounds layout and so much more!

Learn more about our projects & Services

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CELEBRATING UNIQUE SPACES ACROSS THE CITY THROUGH DANCE - MUSIC - INSTALLATION - TRANSFORMATION

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Black Panthers' Overlooked Health Programs | The History You Didn't Learn | TIME

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Filmmaker Sky Hopinka's unconventional ways of telling Native stories

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Growing up in south-west Detroit, Vince Martin thought it was normal for the sky to be orange.

When he was three years old, his family moved from Cuba to one of the black areas of town. At the time, discriminatory housing practices segregated the city. His Afro-Cuban family settled in the 48217 district, now Michigan's most polluted zip code, where 71% of the population is black and air pollution makes the sky look like it's on fire.

Specifically, the Martins moved to Boynton, a working-class neighborhood. The town sits next door to a Marathon oil refinery and its sprawling industrial campus.

Martin, now an environmental activist in Detroit, remembers the refinery being made up of "one or two tankers" when his family settled there in the 1960s. Now, Marathon is a 250-acre tank farm that emits so much air pollution it's received 15 violation notices from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy since 2013 for surpassing state and federal regulations emission limits. (Marathon denies any wrongdoing, claiming it has reduced emissions by 75% over the last 20 years and only contributes to 3% of emissions in the area.)

But Martin saw air quality worsen as the refinery grew over the decades. He believes he escaped the worst of it in his youth because he traveled so often for sports, but others "weren't so fortunate".

At his 30-year high school reunion, it seemed to Martin that more people in his class were dead than living. He knew many had died from cancer. As a child, Martin's younger brother David developed asthma and juvenile diabetes, both of which have been linked with air pollution. Every few days, Martin remembers, David was rushed to the hospital with respiratory issues. "These episodes kept happening every time he'd try to go outside and enjoy his environment," says Martin. After a life of health complications, David died at age 45 from what Martin calls "toxic poisoning".

"Seeing someone with such joy in life, seeing it stripped away little by little, it's a terrible thing," Martin says. "To be in a community like that and be exposed to those kinds of pollutants. It's a sad story."

These stories are common in the 48217. Four of the state's top emitters of particulate matter sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides, which can, respectively, cause respiratory issues, and create acid rain are located within a five-mile radius of Boynton.

The situation in the 48217 is by far the worst out of all the areas in Detroit, but environmental problems pervade the entire city. And in Detroit, the blackest major city in the United States, those problems fall disproportionately on poor communities and communities of color. De-population, white flight and the implosion of the city's manufacturing industry have left behind vulnerable communities. These communities are now struggling, and fighting to survive.

Like Houston, Texas, and Richmond, California, Detroit is a stark example of what happens when poor people of color live alongside environmental destruction. "Detroit is a microcosm of the national and global crisis on climate change," says Michelle Martinez, coordinator of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, which lobbies for a safer environment for the state's most vulnerable groups.

Often, these communities are portrayed as hapless, or helpless. But OneZerospoke with four environmental justice activists in Detroit who have taken their own futures - and the future of their communities - into their own hands.

"Eventually a lightbulb goes off and you see that your community is a sacrifice," says Martin. "We're actually Dr Frankenstein's laboratory in Michigan. How you just going to sit here using these people as guinea pigs?"

Environmental justice activists have been fighting for a healthier Motor City for nearly 40 years.

Donele Wilkins, a pioneer in the environmental justice movement in Detroit, is one of them. In the 1980s, Wilkins was an occupational safety worker who became part of a conversation to erect a new solid waste incinerator in the middle of the city. The people involved in building the incinerator, mostly white men, saw it as an opportunity for a new construction job, she says. Government officials and many citizens were excited about it as well: an incinerator, then thought of as a safe, cost-effective waste disposal method, could attract new industries. But the city workers who would eventually have to work in the incinerator facility, many of whom were black, opposed its construction. Wilkins was there to lobby for them.

"They had some idea that it would not be a healthy workplace," she says.

Wilkins, driven by the knowledge "that it was my people who live in the shadows of factories and are impacted by all of these environmental injustices", lobbied to shut down the incinerator for decades. The incinerator was burning trash from Detroit, but also from suburban, majority-white neighborhoods like nearby Westland. Wilkins argued that known pollutants produced by the incinerator were linked to higher rates of cancer and respiratory issues, birth defects, and endocrine diseases. In 2018, a lifelong Detroiter named Kim Hunter, representing a group called Breathe Free Detroit, collected over 15,000 signatures on a petition to the Mayor to close the facility.

Finally, in March 2019, the incinerator closed for good - a significant win for Detroit's advocates.

In 2017, a report from the NAACP showed that in Detroit, 2,402 black children have asthma attacks due to natural gas pollution per year and miss 1,751 days of school as a result. Across Michigan, the report showed, 40% of the population in counties that have a refinery are black.

"One of the things that motivates me," Wilkins says, "is my determination to make sure not another child dies because they can't breathe".

Access to clean water, like clean air, is not a given in Detroit. For residents, the cost of water has nearly doubled since 2007. In 2014, the city began shutting off water to residents whose bills were more than 60 days overdue. By October 2018, more than 112,000 homes had lost access to water, and an additional 11,000 homes lost water for a week or more this year. "We're talking about people bathing babies in bottled water," said Gunn-Wright, the Green New Deal co-author, at an HBCU Climate Change conference in New Orleans this November. "People collecting rainwater to drink and to feed their children, to cook their meals."

In 2014, software developer Tiffani Ashley Bell tweeted her disgust after hearing about the water shutoffs. A Twitter user responded, offering to pay a Detroiter's water bill if she could pay it directly to the water utility. A lightbulb went off for Bell: that night, she built a website that connected Detroit residents who needed help paying their water bills with donors who were willing to help. That effort evolved into The Human Utility, a nonprofit that raises funds to pay the water bills of residents of Detroit and other cities whose service has been shut off. Since 2014, The Human Utility, which received startup funds from Y Combinator's nonprofit program, has paid the water bills of over 1,100 families, mostly in Detroit with the help of over 4,500 individual donors.

"I thought it was a problem that we shouldn't be having," says Bell, who is now also a columnist at the Medium publication Marker. In 2020, The Human Utility plans to use crowdsourced funds to pilot a water subsidy program that will lower the water rates of 100 Detroit families. Bell hopes it will show the city that residents will pay their water bills, if the rates are reasonable.

There is no guarantee, however, that the supplied water will be safe to drink. This year, Wilkins was approached by a man who said he had been sleeping in his car with his daughter after she experienced lead poisoning from the water in their home. They were not from Flint but from Detroit itself, where lead poisoning has driven others from their home as well.

Lead-emitting facilities in Detroit are disproportionately located or moving to black neighborhoods, according to a 2017 study. Even after these facilities close, lead left behind in the soil remains dangerous. It's especially harmful for children, who can experience behavior and learning problems, lower IQ, hyperactivity and slowed growth if they carry even low levels of lead in their blood.

Traces of lead contamination in young Detroit children rose by 28% in 2016 over the year prior, and not just because of increased testing, said Lyke Thompson, director of the Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University. Experts point to lead in dust, paint, and soil as understudied culprits. In 2019, 500 "hydration stations" had to be installed in Detroit's public schools so students could access water free of lead, copper and other contaminants.

"The fact is that we live in the shadows of countless brownfield sites and lead smelters ... that used to crush and incinerate batteries from the auto industry that contain lead," says Wilkins.

In 2019, Martinez and the MEJC partnered with the University of Michigan's School of Environment and Sustainability to create a map of the most and least environmentally just places in the state. The map aggregates public data of pollutants and contaminants, health outcomes and demographics in a census tract or zip code and assigns an environmental justice score to the area. It made plain with data what many already knew anecdotally: Michigan zip codes with higher concentrations of people of color and poverty levels, lower educational attainment, and other indicators of social disadvantage bore the greatest pollution-related burdens in the state.

It also makes the divisions in Detroit's segregated geography, created by redlining and white flight, starkly plain. The environmental justice score for Boynton, where Martin grew up, is 78; in Oakwood Heights, where Marathon's oil refinery is, the score is 80. Less than half an hour away in Grosse Pointe Shores, the richest neighborhood in Michigan, the score is 14.

"People don't realize that the average life expectancy of someone living in Detroit and someone living in the suburbs is a difference of 10 or 15 years," Martinez says. The creators of the map hope it will be adopted by state officials to monitor and act upon environmental justice in the state.

While the national discourse focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and shifting to clean energy sources, Detroit must focus on immediate needs. Its citizens are being choked to death by air pollution. The city's water crisis is on the level of some developing nations. Vacant factories have left behind toxic stains that will persist long after the refineries and factories have shut down. Detroit's population has dwindled from 945,741 at the start of the millennium to 673,104 in 2017, and the city's lack of preparedness for climate change suggests it will continue to crumble in the years to come.

And yet, Detroit's activists are optimistic. To Martinez, the environmental situation in Detroit represents "an enormous opportunity to reclaim the labor movement, the principles of the civil rights movement, and to reclaim the modes of production".

She points to the approximately 1,600 community gardens in Detroit, which have sprouted up in lots abandoned by people who fled the city after 2008. "That's a local, organic, closed-loop economy that is working to feed our elders organic, affordable food every season," she says.

As the city's infrastructure disintegrates, its activists are dismantling Detroit's history of environmental injustice and preparing for climate change by bringing green jobs to the city.

Though the fight has been arduous, Wilkins says that the incremental wins, like shutting down the city's incinerator, fill her with the hope she needs to continue pushing for environmental justice for the people in her hometown.

"I understand the resilience of my people," she says. "See, we survived the middle passage. We survived the worst case of human treatment anyone in this world can experience. We survived Jim Crow. We survived all the ugliness. We're still here. And while I'm here in this moment, my job is to advance whatever needs to be advanced so that my people can be better off.

"I fight for the strength of the greater good," says Martin. "I speak for the little kids growing up who don't know that they're going to have to deal with these issues in the future."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The blackest city in the US is facing an environmental justice nightmare

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Detroit's most vulnerable residents face inequalities like toxic air, lead poisoning, and water shutoffs. Now they're fighting back

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Detroit’s Urban Beekeepers are Transforming the City’s Vacant Lots | Short Film Showcase

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Genius of Fela Kuti and Afrobeat (feat. Femi & Made Kuti)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Transgender Rights Activist Works to Aid and Empower LGBTQ Youth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#The Art Influencer - Episode One: Jordan Weber

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Remembering 1969 Stonewall Rebellion participants Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marsha P. Johnson’s historic role in the LGBTQ+ rights movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How ACT UP Flipped the Script on AIDS and Gay Rights

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LaToya Ruby Frazier's "The Notion of Family" Confronts Racism and Economic Decline

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's the ultimate American multinational corporation, proudly headquarted in the United States, and synonymous with American sporting excellence. Alongside Coca-Cola and Apple, it's one of the great American commercial institutions.

But now Nike have definitively come out against Donald Trump with the announcement that NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is the face of a new advertising campaign.

Kaepernick is the player who, famously, sat down during the playing of the American national anthem, to protest against racial injustice and police brutality, before the San Francisco 49ers third preseason game of 2016, saying:

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder", referencing a series of events that led to the Black Lives Matter movement.

He added that he would continue to protest until he feels like "[the American flag] represents what it's supposed to represent".

In the 49ers' fourth preseason game, he opted to kneel, instead of sitting, explaining that he wanted to show more respect to former and current members of the US military while still making his protest, following a discussion with former NFL player and US military veteran Nate Boyer.

Black Lives Matter protestors march to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers v Minnesota Vikings game in September 2017 in support of Colin Kaepernick

Many other players subsequently followed suit, 'taking the knee' as the pre-match anthem was played, and it wasn't long before Donald Trump picked up on the movement, lambasting Kaepernick in March 2017, saying:

"And you know, your San Francisco quarterback. I'm sure nobody ever heard of him. I'm just reporting the news. There was an article today - I love to report the news and then they said I made a mistake, right? I said, 'No, the people reporting the news made a mistake if it's wrong.' But there was an article today, it was reported that NFL owners don't want to pick him up because they don't want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that? I just saw that. I just saw that. I said if I remember that one I'm gonna report it to the people of the Kentucky. Because they like it when people actually stand for the American flag."

In September 2017, he went further, challenging the league's owners to release anyone who 'took the knee', referring to each of them as a 'son of a bitch', saying at a rally:

"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He's fired. He's fired!'

"You know, some owner is going to do that. He's going to say, 'That guy that disrespects our flag, he's fired.' And that owner, they don't know it [but] they'll be the most popular person in this country."

Trump has consistently, and almost certainly deliberately, misinterpreted Kaepernick's protests as being disrespectful to the flag and the nation - despite the fact that he himself forgot the words to the anthem in January this year.

Kaepernick, 30, has suffered for his protests - after opting out of his contract with the 49ers in March 2017 he has been without a team, and filed a grievance against NFL team owners who he claims conspired not to hire him because of his protests. On Thursday it was ruled that the case can go to trial.

However, he has received Amnesty International's highest honour for his actions, and now this deal with Nike, who described him as "one of the most inspirational athletes of this generation".

Furthermore, Gino Fisanotti, Nike's vice-president of brand for North America, added: "He has leveraged the power of sport to help move the world forward."

Make no mistake, Nike's move is a big one. Kaepernick has been definitive on his position regarding Trump, and more than two months before his stunning election win, called him "openly racist", to which Trump responded:

"I have followed [Kaepernick's decision to kneel during the anthem] and I think it's personally not a good thing, I think it's a terrible thing. And maybe he should find a country that works better for him, let him try. It won't happen."

Nike have chosen to back Kaepernick, and adopt an undeniably political stance, potentially alienating a good deal of their customer base. Moreover, the company has big plans for him, with an insider telling Yahoo Sports that they plan to release a line built around him encompassing shoes, shirts, jerseys and other apparel. The campaign is part of a wider set of ads celebrating the 30th anniversary of its 'Just Do It' slogan, which also features Serena Williams and fellow NFL players Odell Beckham Jr and Shaquem Griffin.

One executive told Yahoo Sports, "It's the most controversial move [with an endorser] that Nike has ever made - especially if you're going to craft something substantial around him. I can't think of anyone in the history of Nike that would come close. Especially when you consider where the country is at and the fact that [President Donald Trump] will be very critical when big companies do things he doesn't like. Trump could tweet tomorrow for everyone to boycott Nike. I'm sure that was one of the first considerations before a new deal. ... But there's the other side, where Colin Kaepernick could be the most powerful social persona that Nike ever signs. Not necessarily the most lucrative, but just the most powerful in terms of moving the social needle. That's definitely part of the allure."

Nike are betting that they're going to come out on the right side of history, and they're betting big. Is it a hunch, or is it based on something that they know and we don't? And could this be the tipping point for other corporations to come out against Trump and finally turn the tide, with the midterms coming up fast in November?

Nike has a history of backing winners - they'll be hoping they've picked another one in Kaepernick.
(Images: Getty)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Colin Kaepernick and Nike became pivotal in the fight against Trump Toxicity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's the ultimate American multinational corporation, proudly headquarted in the United States, and synonymous with American sporting excellence. Alongside ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
CNN: SNCC's legacy: A civil rights history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LGBTQ+ Rights Movement and the AIDS Epidemic | Fight the Power: The Movements That Changed America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint Is Family in Three Acts (Full Version)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How House Music Was Born (Music Documentary)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Noise and Experimental Music Is For Everyone (feat. Dreamcrusher)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
24 Hours of Reality: Field Report - Kenya's Greenbelt Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Noise and Experimental Music Is For Everyone (feat. Dreamcrusher)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fearless Fund's Arian Simone on how VC funding can address inequities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our team spent months, researching, brainstorming, and learning from each other. Developing impactful and meaningful content for the VR experience has been of utmost importance. Our team ultimately drew from hundreds of sources, including previously created VR content, published research, twitter, blogs, podcasts, and our team's personal experience with race.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Peter Henderson: Environmental Impact of AI (and What Developers Can Do)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Whistleblowers Warn About the Dark Side of AI | The Circuit with Emily Chang

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Salmon People: A Native Fishing Family’s Fight to Preserve a Way of Life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brazil Shows You Can Harvest Sugar Cane Without Polluting the Air

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans Have A Long History Of Activism In The US

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dozens of people have been arrested in Atlanta after rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails were thrown at officers near the site of a public safety training center set to be constructed in the city. The center has garnered national attention after prompting protests throughout the city as well as in states like Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania.

The debate over the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center has been ongoing. The center is going to be used for specialized training for both law enforcement and fire department service workers.

City officials assert that the center could improve policing, while critics claim the effort is militarizing police and endangering communities.

Here is what you need to know about the debate around the center:

What is 'Cop City'?

"Cop City" is the nickname critics have given the planned training center.

The center is expected to cost $90 million and take up over 85 acres, with the "remaining portion of the 265-acres property as greenspace," according to the center's website, potentially impacting a forest in Atlanta.

The center will include an "auditorium for police/fire and public use," a "mock city for burn building training and urban police training," an "Emergency Vehicle Operator Course for emergency vehicle driver training," a K-9 unit kennel and training, according to the center's website. The first phase of the training center is scheduled to open in late 2023.

"This training facility will not only help boost morale, retention and recruitment of our public safety personnel, but will give us physical space to ensure that our officers and firefighters are receiving 21st century training, rooted in respect and regard for the communities they serve," said then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms when the center's lease agreement was approved.

The effort is backed by the Atlanta Police Foundation.

The first phase of the Public Safety Training Center in Atlanta is scheduled to open in 2023.

Atlanta Police Foundation

Why are people protesting?

One of the groups behind the protests, called "Stop Cop City," has demonstrated against the training facility for months. They say the center is further militarizing the police and will threaten the lives of marginalized people.

Authorities have argued that the center will help officers "set a national standard for community engagement, neighborhood sensitivity and devotion to the civil rights of all citizens by law enforcement," the center's website reads.

Protests escalated last week when a protester, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, was shot and killed by police as they raided the campground occupied by demonstrators. Officials say the protester fired the first shot at a state trooper, and the officer responded with the fatal shot.

There is no body camera footage of the incident, police said. Officials say investigations into the incident are ongoing.

"The police have raided the forest for over 7 months, destroying material by trashing camps and water supplies, threatened the lives of forest defenders and now have murdered one," the group said in a statement to ABC affiliate WSB.

The statement further read: "Protesters are only leveling the playing field & preventing future violence by disabling the economic machine of the Atlanta Police Foundation that seeks to sterilize all life within the Weelaunee Forest."

Protestors hold signs and march during demonstrations related to the death of Manuel Teran who was killed during a police raid inside Weelaunee People's Park, the planned site of a controversial "Cop City" project, in Atlanta, Jan. 21, 2023.

Other groups, like Defend The Atlanta Forest, have argued that the center will impact forests which are a vital part of the community, they said. Atlanta has one of the highest percentages of tree canopy in any major U.S. city, according to environmental advocacy group Trees Atlanta, and is home to wetlands and important migration sites for birds.

"The Atlanta Police Department seeks to turn 300 acres of forest into a tactical training compound featuring a mock city," the group said in a statement on their website.

"We refuse to let our forest be bulldozed in favor of the police and sold out to Hollywood," the group also stated.

Neither the city of Atlanta, nor the police department have immediately responded to ABC News' request for comment on the accusations.

The ongoing conflict

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency on Jan. 26 in response to ongoing protests in downtown Atlanta relating to Cop City.

Kemp ordered the state's defense department to mobilize up to 1,000 state National Guard troops to be called up to active duty "as necessary."

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp delivers the State of the State address on the House floor of the state Capitol on Jan. 25, 2023, in Atlanta.

Authorities arrested six people on Jan. 21 when demonstrations over the proposed training ground for the Atlanta Police Department, which started peacefully, escalated to involve shooting fireworks, smashing windows and igniting a police cruiser once protesters reached downtown.

Kemp's state of emergency declaration came as Atlanta braced for more protests against the facility, as well as potential unrest following the release of body camera footage of the alleged beating of Tyre Nichols by five Memphis, Tennessee, police officers who have since been fired and charged with murder in his death.

On March 5, more than 30 people were arrested after authorities say a group of "agitators" launched an attack on officers using commercial-grade fireworks, large rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Atlanta Police Department officials say that after attending an event near the site of the soon-to-be policing center, a group of people changed into black clothing and entered the construction area at around 5:30 p.m. ET.

No officers were injured during the incident, though police noted that "the illegal actions" of so-called "agitators could have resulted in bodily harm."

Some of those arrested sustained minor injuries, police said. Several pieces of construction equipment at the site were destroyed by fire and vandalism during the attack, according to police.
ABC News' Will McDuffie, Victoria Arancio, and Morgan Korn contributed to this report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is Atlanta's 'Cop City' and why are people protesting it?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dozens of people have been arrested in Atlanta after rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails were thrown at officers near the site of a public safety training center set to be constructed in the city. The center has garnered national attention after prompting protests throughout the city as well as in states like Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Police vs. Atlanta: The Battle Over Cop City

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Is ‘Cop City’ and Why Are People Protesting It?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Porsche Driving Force Award Honoree Stephanie Espy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ballroom History: The 1960s, Paris is Burning, and Today

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Crystal LaBeija: The Queen Who Reinvented Ball Culture | MASTERS OF DRAG | AMERICAN MASTERS | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wangari Maathai & The Green Belt Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LEGENDARY: 30 Years of Philly Ballroom | FULL DOCUMENTARY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meet the Woman Fighting for the Rights of Voters Who Can’t Read

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Native Hawaiians Taking Back Their Watersheds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Fight To Take Back Hawaii | Foreign Correspondent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Since Time Immemorial": How Indigenous People Are Reviving Traditional Stewardship

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Frankie Knuckles at Power House club, 1986 opening night

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abolishing poverty. It's the class title. It's the center of Honors Program Director Vicky Lawson's 30 years of research and the community relationships she's built. Students in Lawson's course untangle the interwoven complexities that lead to impoverishment. Ultimately they imagine a more positive "what if." For example, what if systems and institutions really did serve everyone?

What do you understand as homelessness? What do you understand as poverty?

Poverty, as most of us understand it, is the state of being extremely poor. But, for Honors Program Director Vicky Lawson and Geography Department Chair Sarah Elwood, the question is how poverty is created. People are often quick to characterize those experiencing housing instability as at fault, instead of recognizing the racial, social, historic, political and power structures that lead people to be impoverished. In the Seattle area, those factors include unaffordable housing in the city, lack of health and mental health care, gentrification, extreme income inequality and NIMBY - not in my backyard - politics.

Geography professors Lawson and Elwood also illuminate how our understandings of poverty, including the very definition of success - having a job, owning a house, fulfilling the American dream - are the result of complex histories and structures that stabilize white privilege. Our current culture holds individuals entirely responsible for their circumstances, as though history and public policy played no part. Lawson and Elwood show that the people are fine; it's the systems that need to be changed.

Referencing BIPOC intellectual traditions, Lawson and Elwood explain that the term 'poverty' overly simplifies explanations and understandings of lived experiences of impoverishment. They and other scholars call for abolishing poverty - replacing the idea of 'poverty' with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the systems that create it.

At its heart, abolition calls on us to imagine "what if?" What if we replaced a broken system with something better? What if institutional and systemic racism no longer existed? How would that impact housing stability, educational equity, access to healthcare and the like?

To broaden the conversation on abolishing poverty, Lawson and Elwood founded the Relational Poverty Network (RPN). The RPN brings together scholars, teachers, activists and policy makers from across disciplines and the world to explore and critique relationships of power and privilege. They examine the ways that policies perpetuate impoverishment. The members run research projects and host podcasts exploring the complexities surrounding houselessness and impoverishment. The Network's research is published in journals and newspapers to influence policy and advocacy.

The study of poverty is cross-disciplinary and like all Interdisciplinary Honors classes, Lawson's Abolishing Poverty class brings together majors ranging from STEM to film studies to business. Students also bring the many intersecting identities they hold into the conversation - BIPOC, refugee, immigrant, LGBTQ+, white, straight. They bring with them their lived experiences and understandings ranging from: "that person in the tent is my family member" to "cross the street when you see a houseless person."

As part of class, Lawson asks students to examine what they know about houselessness and poverty. She assigns students in the class different topics to facilitate class sessions - ranging from the city's response to houselessness, to mutual aid organizations, to the history of living outside in Seattle to an abolitionist approach to housing justice.

"Students teaching students is very powerful," explains Lawson. "They are able to pull in examples that feel relevant to 20-year-olds, helping them place the issues in a context they understand." This context helped many understand their own families' experiences, from navigating life in America as an immigrant family to complex reasons that contributed to their family's experiences with criminal justice or housing instability.

"Students came with an open mind," shares junior Courtney Hooks. "And, in accordance with the Honors Program, reflection was a big topic, as well as the interdisciplinary nature of this study."

"The work in this class is in noticing the problem, thinking we know about the problem, and then unlearning it," says Lawson. "That unlearning comes through a historical and intersectional analysis that looks at race and gender and thinks about the way in which Americans have refused to engage the issue of inequality."

Unlearning poverty is tough work. It asks us to look inward and examine our own understanding and the biases we hold. It calls on us to look beyond ourselves to discriminatory systems and structures. Lawson guides students through this process, helping them discover that the complexities of the issue expand beyond one field. She teaches that solutions come from collaborations with community members - unhoused and housed - who hold wisdom about needed changes. Hooks remembers her classmates taking steps toward relationship building, sharing reflections on their conversations with unhoused people: "Before, that person was demonized and dehumanized for me. But now I see them as my neighbor, and I feel that something really needs to happen."

Videos used in the Abolishing Poverty class

The Urgency of Intersectionality

TED talk by Kimberlé Crenshaw

Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias - and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice. (Talk given in October, 2016)

- TED

(Un)Knowing Poverty

TEDxBerkeley talk by Ananya Roy

Ananya Roy is professor of city and regional planning and distinguished chair in global poverty and practice at the University of California, Berkeley. She also serves as education director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and in this capacity founded and now leads the largest undergraduate minor at UC Berkeley, a program in global poverty and practice. (Talk given in April, 2013)

- TEDxBerkeley

The Criminal Legal System as a Social Problem

Lecture by Alexes Harris

In this lecture and follow-up conversation, distinguished teaching awardee Alexes Harris shares her research into how people's interactions with institutions - like the criminal justice system - shape the outcomes of people's lives. She delves into how those outcomes are different based on a person's race and ethnicity, gender, income bracket and other identities people hold.

Reimagining Social Care and Racial Justice

Lecture by Vicky Lawson

Among the lessons of 2020, foremost among them is an ever-present reminder of how we are all connected to one another and how the well-being of one person does impact the well-being of so many others. With that in mind, how can we infuse the idea, ethic and concept of care into our politics, policies, organizations, education and day-to-day lives?

Podcast

New Poverty Politics for Changing Times

A series of timely conversations between poverty scholars, activists and educators focused on questions of inequality and impoverishment.

Articles authored by or featuring Relational Poverty Network members

On Teaching in the Time of COVID-19: "Narrative Reconstructions and Collective Knowledge" // By Ashvin Kini // Journal of American Studies // June 9, 2020

What Black America Knows about Quarantine // By Brandi Summers // New York Times // May 15, 2020

Coalition's Efforts Amid Coronavirus Derail Plans For New Women's Prison // By Victoria Law // Appeal // May 04, 2020

From the Dying World to the World we Want // By Nikhil Pal Singh // Boston Review // April 29, 2020

Working multiple jobs to make ends meet: More common in BC than we might think // By Iglika Ivanova & Kendra Strauss // Policynote // March 6, 2020

'They've been invisible': Seattle professor studies role of black grandmothers in society // Interview and feature on LaShawnDa Pittman's research // The Seattle Times // February 2, 2018

Shop Here, Not There: Science Says Reducing Inequality Is Almost That Simple // By Chris Winters // yes! Solutions Journalism // November 20, 2017

An Unending Cycle: While the city wrangles over policy, homeless people are trying to survive // By Real Change's Ashley Archibald with partnering contributions from the UW's GIS Workshop // November 8, 2017

What Ethnic Studies Means to Me // By Koji Pingry // South Seattle Emerald // April 25, 2017

We can end this. But we have to do it together.

Jennifer Tee, Deputy Director, Facing Homelessness Two Questions, Nine People video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Go-Go Music Inspired Washington, DC's Beat Ya Feet Dance | If Cities Could Dance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Go-go music returns to Shaw’s Metro PCS store after #DontMuteDC protests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hundreds flood DC streets playing, dancing to go-go music | #DONTMUTEDC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History of Hip Hop in the Bronx - Arts in the City

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Plant Ecologist, Educator, and Writer | 2022 MacArthur Fellow

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Learn how to make lives better and more sustainable-and have some fun along the way!

Explore our online U-M-student-developed games, which range in format and difficulty, and test your skills and knowledge of sustainability issues.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
U-M Environmental and Sustainability Online Games | University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn how to make lives better and more sustainable-and have some fun along the way! Explore our online U-M-student-developed games, which range in format and difficulty, and test your skills and knowledge of sustainability issues.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Game designer Paolo Pedercini believes it's time to rethink the lessons of SimCity. Like many, the Carnegie Mellon associate professor played the smash-hit city simulation, but he felt there was something missing. The centrally controlled, city-from-scratch idea doesn't quite gel with the messy reality of today's cities. But to give game players a better sense of the realities of gentrification and development, he felt a little bit of magical realism was in order.

"The problem is that SimCity sells itself as a sandbox, and you end up with a North American modernist city," he says. "Class and racial conflicts are often removed from the game, even though they're central to how cities have formed in North America."

His answer, the new game Nova Alea, is a poetic, not just pedagogical, look at how cities operate, positioning itself as a kind of anti-SimCity. A counter to what he, and many critics, feel is the message and perspective pushed by the iconic game, it places players in a fake city where profit is their goal. Instead of promoting that growth and success are one and the same, Pedercini designed this abstract game to factor in the class and racial conflicts at the root of gentrification and real estate speculation.

In Nova Alea, players take the role of speculator, trying to make a profit buying and selling property in a massive metropolis, but have to factor in market forces that can spoil their plans. As rents and prices inexorably rise and homes evolve into skyscrapers, game play gets more and more tense. Fortunes can quickly disappear when the market turns and the bubble bursts. It's sort of like house flipping on an urban scale, forcing players to act fast. There's even a cadre of "Weird Folks" that enter the city at the outset of gameplay, representing artists and other early gentrifiers that often begin the re-urbanization of big cities.

The dynamic gets more interesting with the addition of grassroots push back, as residents representing those being displaced enact barriers to development and gentrification. As the game progresses, resistance to development comes from below, with rent control-like restrictions and other barriers slowing down market forces. Pedercini included these impediments as a way to show how certain actions could slow down and potentially mediate runaway development. Pedercini, who previously lived in Brooklyn and now resides in a home in Garfield, a gentrifying neighborhood on the east side of Pittsburgh, has witnessed the effects of rapid development first hand, which inspired the game's creation

He feels i t's important to challenge this SimCity narrative, since he can see its influence in video games and real-world planning. The realization of the techno-utopian ideal of the game can be seen as a kind of philosophical forebearer to some of the smart city designs of today, such as the South Korean city of Songdo, a centrally planned high-tech urban center.

Via his company Molleindustria, Pedercini has a long history of using video games as tools for social commentary, having created simulations that address the moral issues of drone attacks or satirize the country's gun laws. He sees the city, and its many layers, as a rich source for future game development. Nova Alea is just the start of a series of forthcoming projects meant to start a dialogue with SimCity, and provide new perspective on our changing metropolises. The next game, Motoria, will present players with a Detroit-like scenario, addressing issues of recovery, growth, and speculation.

"The city is such an interesting challenge," he says. "It's the most complex human system."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Video game about gentrification lets you play the role of real estate speculator

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
City-building simulation Nova Alea provides a "anti-SimCity" view of development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
online game Archives - Games4Sustainability

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Society and environment. Online game. 2 hours and more. Build a civilization in a simulated ecosystem. Education about environmental impact and collaboration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Native American Tribe Is Using Traditional Culture To Fight Addiction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Analysis: drug consumption rooms: an overview of provision and evidence

Supervised drug consumption facilities, where illicit drugs can be used under the supervision of trained staff, have been operating in Europe for the last three decades. These facilities primarily aim to reduce the acute risks of disease transmission through unhygienic injecting, prevent drug-related overdose deaths and connect high-risk drug users with addiction treatment and other health and social services. They also seek to contribute to a reduction in drug use in public places and the presence of discarded needles and other related public order problems linked with open drug scenes. Typically, drug consumption rooms provide drug users with: sterile injecting equipment; counselling services before, during and after drug consumption; emergency care in the event of overdose; and primary medical care and referral to appropriate social healthcare and addiction treatment services.

With the emergence and rapid spread of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) linked to epidemics of heroin use and drug injecting in the 1980s, a range of responses geared towards reducing the harms associated with drug injection and other high-risk forms of use were developed in Europe. These included services such as outreach, peer education, health promotion, the provision of clean injecting equipment and opioid substitution treatment. While harm reduction as a policy started to gain wider acceptance and expanded in Europe throughout the 1990s, one of the more controversial responses has been to make spaces available at local drugs facilities where drug users could consume drugs under supervision. Concerns have sometimes been expressed that consumption facilities might encourage drug use, delay treatment entry or aggravate the problems of local drug markets, and initiatives to establish drug consumption rooms have in some cases been prevented by political intervention(Jauffret-Roustide et al., 2013).Nevertheless, as the debate about opening new drug consumption rooms remains high on the political agenda in a number of European countries, this analysis aims to provide an objective overview of their characteristics and current provision, and of the effectiveness of this intervention.

Drug consumption rooms are professionally supervised healthcare facilities where drug users can consume drugs in safer conditions. They seek to attract hard-to-reach populations of users, especially marginalised groups and those who use on the streets or in other risky and unhygienic conditions. One of their primary goals is to reduce morbidity and mortality by providing a safe environment for more hygienic use and by training clients in safer use. At the same time, they seek to reduce drug use in public and improve public amenity in areas surrounding urban drug markets. A further aim is to promote access to social, health and drug treatment facilities (see 'Service model').

Drug consumption rooms initially evolved as a response to health and public order problems linked to open drug scenes and drug markets in cities where a network of drug services already existed, but where difficulties were encountered in responding to these problems. As such they represent a 'local' response, closely linked to policy choices made by local stakeholders, based on an evaluation of local need and determined by municipal or regional options to proceed. Facilities for supervised drug consumption tend to be located in settings that are experiencing problems of public use and targeted at sub-populations of users with limited opportunities for hygienic injection (e.g. people who are homeless or living in insecure accommodation or shelters). In some cases clients who are more socially stable also use drug consumption rooms for a variety of reasons, for example because they live with non-using partners or families (Hedrich and Hartnoll, 2015).

In terms of the historical development of this intervention, the first supervised drug consumption room was opened in Berne, Switzerland in June 1986. Further facilities of this type were established in subsequent years in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Greece and France. A total of 78 official drug consumption facilities currently operate in seven EMCDDA reporting countries, following the opening of the first two drug consumption facilities in the framework of a 6-year trial in France in 2016. There are also 12 facilities in Switzerland (see 'Facts and figures').

Breaking this down further, as of April 2018 there are: 31 facilities in 25 cities in the Netherlands; 24 in 15 cities in Germany; five in four cities in Denmark, 13 in seven cities in Spain; two in two cities in Norway; two in two cities in France; one in Luxembourg; and 12 in eight cities in Switzerland.

In Ireland, a law ( Misuse of Drugs Act Supervised Injection Facilities 2017) was passed to enable licensing and regulation of such facilities. In the same month, the locations and area of operation of two fixed, and one mobile, supervised drug consumption facilities were announced in Lisbon, Portugal. The services are expected to become operational in the second half of 2018 and early 2019. Based on a feasibility study on drug consumption facilities in five major cities in Belgium (Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Liège and Charleroi), recommendations were presented to Belgian policymakers in February 2018 (Vander Laenen et al., 2018).

Increasing opioid overdose deaths and research on two existing supervised injection sites in Vancouver are among the factors that currently see various municipalities establishing such facilities across Canada (Kerr et al., 2017; www.sallesdeconsommation.com). In Australia, a medically supervised injecting centre is under preparation in Melbourne, following the model of the existing facility in Sydney.

Characteristics

A number of features are common to the majority of drug consumption facilities, irrespective of where they are located. For example, access is typically restricted to registered service users, and certain conditions, for example minimum age and local residency, have to be met. They usually operate from separate areas attached to existing facilities for drug users or homeless people, while some are stand-alone units. Most target drug injectors, though they increasingly include users who smoke or inhale drugs.

Overall, three models of drug consumption rooms are operational in Europe: integrated, specialised and mobile facilities. The vast majority of drug consumption rooms are integrated in low-threshold facilities. Here, supervision of drug consumption is one of several survival-oriented services offered at the same premises, including provision of food, showers and clothing to those who live on the streets, prevention materials including condoms and sharps containers, and counselling and drug treatment. Specialised consumption rooms only offer the narrower range of services directly related to supervised consumption, which includes the provision of hygienic injecting materials, advice on health and safer drug use, intervention in case of emergencies and a space where drug users can remain under observation after drug consumption. Mobile facilities currently exist in Barcelona and Berlin; these provide a geographically flexible deployment of the service, but typically cater for a more limited number of clients than fixed premises (Schäffer et al., 2014).

An organisational overview of 62 drug consumption facilities in seven European countries (Woods, 2014) shows that they deliver a wide range of auxiliary services. In addition to providing clean injecting equipment and health education advice, and referring clients to treatment and further care, 60-70 % of facilities offer access to primary healthcare by a nurse or physician. Among other frequently provided services were: coffee/tea, use of a phone, and the possibility to take a shower and wash clothes.

The same survey ( ¹) (Woods, 2014) showed that, on average, the facilities offer seven places for supervised injection (ranging between one and 13 slots) and four places for smoking/inhaling. Over half of the facilities provide the service on a daily basis, opening on average for eight hours a day. The number of daily visitors varied widely - between 20 and 400 - with six of the 33 facilities catering for more than 200 clients a day. Addiction treatment facilities and the police were identified as the main sources of referral.

Figure 1: Professional groups represented in DCR teams

Source: Based on Figure 7 in Belackova et al., 2017.

A recent online survey conducted by the International Network of Drug Consumption Rooms (INDCR) explored among others the professions represented at consumption rooms. Most teams included nurses and social workers, but medical doctors formed part of nearly every second team and security staff formed part of one third of consumption room teams (Belackova et al., 2017).

Evidence of effectiveness

The first drug consumption rooms were set up in Swiss, German and Dutch cities in response to health and public order concerns linked to open drug scenes. Although set up and supported by a range of local stakeholders, the facilities were experimental in the beginning and sometimes controversial. Subsequently, local service providers, public health authorities and the police carefully monitored the situation before and after the opening of the facilities and documented whether intended changes were achieved. Outcomes were reported directly to local and sometimes national policymakers, but data were rarely published in the international literature. The results remained relatively inaccessible to the international research community until research summaries in the English language were published (Kimber et al., 2003; EMCDDA, 2004). However, supervised injecting facilities established in Sydney and Vancouver as pilot projects, accompanied by well-funded university-based evaluation studies using elaborate designs (including cohort study) resulted in a substantial body of evidence (for an overview see www.sydneymsic.com and supervisedinjection.vch.ca).

The effectiveness of drug consumption facilities to reach and stay in contact with highly marginalised target populations has been widely documented ( Hedrich et al., 2010; Potier et al., 2014 ). This contact has resulted in immediate improvements in hygiene and safer use for clients (e.g. Small et al., 2008, 2009; Lloyd-Smith et al., 2009), as well as wider health and public order benefits.

Research has also shown that the use of supervised drug consumption facilities is associated with self-reported reductions in injecting risk behaviour such as syringe sharing. This reduces behaviours that increase the risk of HIV transmission and overdose death (e.g. Stoltz et al., 2007; Milloy and Wood, 2009). Nevertheless, the impact of drug consumption rooms on the reduction of HIV or hepatitis C virus incidence among the wider population of injecting drug users remains unclear and hard to estimate (Hedrich et al., 2010; Kimber et al., 2010), due in part to the facilities' limited coverage of the target population and also to methodological problems with isolating their effect from other interventions.

Some evidence has been provided by ecological studies suggesting that, where coverage is adequate, drug consumption rooms may contribute to reducing drug-related deaths at city level (Poschadel et al., 2003; Marshall et al., 2011). A study in Sydney showed that there were fewer emergency service call-outs related to overdoses at the times the safe injecting site was open (Salmon et al., 2010).

In addition, the use of consumption facilities is associated with increased uptake both of detoxification and drug dependence treatment, including opioid substitution. For example, the Canadian cohort study documented that attendance at the Vancouver facility was associated with increased rates of referral to addiction care centres and increased rates of uptake of detoxification treatment and methadone maintenance (Wood et al., 2007; DeBeck et al., 2011).

Evaluation studies have found an overall positive impact on the communities where these facilities are located. However, as with needle and syringe programmes, consultation with local key actors is essential to minimise community resistance or counter-productive police responses. Drug treatment centres offering supervised consumption facilities have generally been accepted by local communities and businesses (Thein et al., 2005). Their establishment has been associated with a decrease in public injecting (e.g. Salmon et al., 2007) and a reduction in the number of syringes discarded in the vicinity (Wood et al., 2004). For example, in Barcelona, a fourfold reduction was reported in the number of unsafely disposed syringes being collected in the vicinity from a monthly average of over 13 000 in 2004 to around 3 000 in 2012 (Vecino et al., 2013).

The effect of the Sydney supervised injecting facility on drug-related property crime and violent crime in its local area was examined using time series analysis of police-recorded theft and robbery incidents (Freeman et al., 2005). No evidence was found that the existence of the facility led to either an increase or decrease in thefts or robberies around the facility. Similarly, a study by Wood and colleagues compared the monthly number of charges for drug trafficking, assaults and robbery - crimes that are commonly linked to drug use - in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside the year before versus the year after the local drug consumption room opened and found that the establishment of the facility was not associated with a marked increase in these crimes (Wood et al., 2006).

In areas reporting an increase in the use of inhalable drugs, such as crack cocaine smoking, drug consumption facilities that originally targeted only injectors have started to broaden their services to include supervised inhalation. Findings suggest that supervised inhalation facilities offer the potential to reduce street disorder and encounters with the police (DeBeck et al., 2011). This change in service provision is taking place in a context where there is a decrease in the prevalence of heroin injecting and an increase in access to opioid substitution treatment. In this context some facilities have adapted service provision to the needs of inner city crack-using populations.

In summary, the benefits of providing supervised drug consumption facilities may include improvements in safe, hygienic drug use, especially among regular clients, increased access to health and social services, and reduced public drug use and associated nuisance. There is no evidence to suggest that the availability of safer injecting facilities increases drug use or frequency of injecting. These services facilitate rather than delay treatment entry and do not result in higher rates of local drug-related crime.

For an overview of the peer-reviewed literature see Belackova and Salmon, 2017.

Conclusion

Drug consumption facilities have the ability to reach and maintain contact with high-risk drug users who are not ready or willing to quit drug use. In a number of European countries supervised consumption has become an integrated component of low-threshold services offered within drug treatment systems. In Switzerland and Spain some drug consumption rooms have been closed, primarily due to the reduction in injecting heroin use and a decline in the need for such services, but also sometimes due to cost considerations. In Greece the operation of the facility was suspended after the first nine months due to delays in establishing a legal basis, and the service provider is working with the Ministry of Health to prepare its re-opening. In the Netherlands cutbacks were made following a reduction in the number of visitors, linked to the success of another programme (Plan van Aanpak Maatschappelijke Opvang) that brought homeless people into (supervised) accommodation where the use of drugs is often allowed. Alcohol consumption rooms, which tend to be located in the same building but in separate rooms, are increasingly combined with drug consumption facilities in the Netherlands (Netherlands Reitox Focal Point, 2016).

The emergence of new forms of stimulant injection, including new psychoactive substances, has resulted in potentially increased risks for drug users. In this context, drug consumption rooms are currently the subject of political discussion in some European countries as calls for their implementation are debated. As frontline, low-threshold services, drug consumption rooms are often among the first to gain insights into new drug use patterns and thus they also have a role to play in the early identification of new and emerging trends among the high-risk populations using their services.

Footnotes

( ¹) Facilities in the Netherlands not included

References

Belackova, V., & Salmon, A. M. (2017) 'Overview of international literature - supervised injecting centers & drug consumption rooms - Issue 1', Uniting Medically supervised injecting center, Sydney.

Belackova, V., Salmon, A. M., Schatz, E., Jauncey, M. (2017).'Online census of Drug Consumption Rooms (DCRs) as a setting to address HCV: current practice and future capacity'. International Network of Drug Consumption Rooms, Correlation Network/ Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, Amsterdam/Sydney http://www.drugconsumptionroom-international.org/

DeBeck, K., Kerr, T., Bird, L., et al. (2011), 'Injection drug use cessation and use of North America's first medically supervised safer injecting facility', Drug and Alcohol Dependence 15 January, 113(2-3), pp. 172-6.

EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) (2004), European report on drug consumption rooms, EMCDDA Thematic paper, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg.

Freeman, K., Jones, C. G., Weatherburn, D. J., et al. (2005), 'The impact of the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) on crime'. Drug and Alcohol Review March, 24(2), pp. 173-84.

Hedrich, D., Kerr, T. and Dubois-Arber, F. (2010), 'Drug consumption facilities in Europe and beyond', in Rhodes, T. and Hedrich, D. (eds), Harm reduction: Evidence, impacts and challenges, EMCDDA Scientific monograph series no. 10, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, pp. 305-31.

Hedrich, D. and Hartnoll, R. (2015), 'Harm reduction interventions', in El-Guebaly, N., Carrà, G. and Galanter, M. (eds), Textbook of addiction treatment: International perspectives, Section IV: Main elements of a systems approach to addiction treatment, Springer, Milan, pp. 1291-313.

Jauffret-Roustide, M., Pedrono, G. and Beltzer, N. (2013), 'Supervised consumption rooms: The French paradox', International Journal of Drug Policy 24, pp. 628-30.

Kerr, T., Mitra, S., Kennedy, M. C., & McNeil, R. (2017). Supervised injection facilities in Canada: Past, present, and future. Harm Reduction Journal, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-017-0154-1.

Kimber, J., MacDonald, M., van Beek, I., et al. (2003), 'The Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre: Client characteristics and predictors of frequent attendance during the first 12 months of operation', Journal of Drug Issues 33, pp. 639-48.

Kimber, J., Palmateer, N., Hutchinson, S., et al. (2010), 'Harm reduction among injecting drug users: Evidence of effectiveness', in Rhodes, T. and Hedrich, D. (eds), Harm reduction: Evidence, impacts and challenges, EMCDDA Scientific monograph series no. 10, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, pp. 115-63.

Lloyd-Smith, E., Wood, E., Zhang, R., et al. (2009), 'Determinants of cutaneous injection-related infection care at a supervised injecting facility', Annals of Epidemiology 19(6), pp. 404-9.

Marshall, B. D. L., Milloy, M.-J., Wood, E., Montaner, J. S. G. and Kerr, T. (2011), 'Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America's first medically supervised safer injecting facility: a retrospective population-based study', Lancet 377, pp. 1429-1437. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62353-7

Milloy, M. J. and Wood, E. (2009), 'Emerging role of supervised injecting facilities in human immunodeficiency virus prevention', Addiction 104(4), pp. 620-1.

Poschadel, S., Höger, R., Schnitzler, J. and Schreckenberg, D. (2003), 'Evaluation der Arbeit der Drogenkonsumräume in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland', Nr 149, Schriftenreihe des Bundesministeriums für Gesundheit und Soziale Sicherheit, Baden-Baden.

Potier, C., Laprévote, V., Dubois-Arber, F., Cottencin, O. and Rolland, B. (2014), 'Supervised injection services: What has been demonstrated? A systematic literature review', Drug and Alcohol Dependence 145, pp. 48-68.

Salmon, A. M., Thein, H. H., Kimber, J., Kaldor, J. M. and Maher, L. (2007), 'Five years on: What are the community perceptions of drug-related public amenity following the establishment of the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre?' International Journal of Drug Policy 18(1), pp. 46-53.

Salmon, A. M., Van Beek, I., Amin, J., Kaldor, J. and Maher, L. (2010), 'The impact of a supervised injecting facility on ambulance call-outs in Sydney, Australia', Addiction 105, pp. 676-83.

Schäffer, D., Stöver, H. and Weichert, L. (2014), Drug consumption rooms in Europe: Models, best practice and challenges, European Harm Reduction Network, Amsterdam.

Small, W., Wood, E., Lloyd-Smith, E., Tyndall, M. and Kerr, T. (2008), 'Accessing care for injection-related infections through a medically supervised injecting facility: A qualitative study', Drug and alcohol dependence 98(1-2), pp. 159-62.

Small, W., Van Borek, N., Fairbairn, N., Wood, E. and Kerr, T. (2009), 'Access to health and social services for IDU: The impact of a medically supervised injection facility', Drug and Alcohol Review 28(4), pp. 341-6.

Stoltz, J. A., Wood, E., Small, W., et al. (2007), 'Changes in injecting practices associated with the use of a medically supervised safer injection facility', Journal of Public Health (Oxford) 29(1), pp. 35-9.

Thein, H.-H., Kimber, J., Maher, L., MacDonald, M. and Kaldor, J. M. (2005), 'Public opinion towards supervised injecting centres and the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre', International Journal of Drug Policy 16(4), pp. 275-80.

Vander Laenen, F., Nicaise, P., Decorte, T., De Maeyer, J., De Ruyver, B., Smith, P., van Puyenbroeck, L., & Favril, L. (2018). Feasibility study on drug consumption rooms in Belgium. Brussels: BELSPO.

Vecino, C., Villalbí, J. R., Guitart, A., et al. (2013), Safe injection rooms and police crackdowns in areas with heavy drug dealing: Evaluation by counting discarded syringes collected from the public space (in Spanish), Addiciones 25(4), pp. 333-8.

Wood, E., Tyndall, M. W., Zhang, R., Montaner, J. S. and Kerr, T. (2007), 'Rate of detoxification service use and its impact among a cohort of supervised injecting facility users', Addiction 102(6), pp. 916-19.

Woods, S. (2014), Organisational overview of dug consumption rooms in Europe, European Harm Reduction Network - Regenboog Groep, Amsterdam.

Wood, E., Kerr, T., Small, W., et al. (2004), 'Changes in public order after the opening of a medically supervised safer injecting facility for illicit injection drug users', Canadian Medical Association Journal 28 September, 171(7), pp. 731-4.

Wood, E., Tyndall, M. W., Lai, C., Montaner, J. S. G. and Kerr, T. (2006), 'Impact of a medically supervised safer injecting facility on drug dealing and other drug-related crime', Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 4, pp. 1-4.

Netherlands Reitox National Focal Point (2016), '2016 Workbook Harms and harm reduction', submitted to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, not published.

Video: drug consumption rooms

Service model for a hypothetical consumption room with public health and public order objectives

Main components

Assessment and intake

Supervised consumption area

Other service areas

Referral

Implementation objectives

To determine eligibility for using the service, control of official access criteria

To provide information on consumption room functioning/house rules

To provide information about risk avoidance/safer use

To provide hygienic equipment

To obtain information on drugs to be used

To determine individual needs (e.g. assess health status)

To ensure lower-risk, more hygienic drug consumption

To supervise consumption and ensure compliance with house rules (e.g. no drug sharing, dealing)

To provide tailor-made safer use advice

To provide emergency care in case of overdoses and other adverse reactions

To provide a space for drug use that is protected from public view

To prevent loitering in the vicinity of the room (police cooperation)

To monitor the effects of drug consumption among clients who have left the consumption area

To provide primary medical care services: abscess and wound clinic

To provide drinks, food, clothes, showers

To provide crisis interventions

To provide a needle and syringe programme/safe needle disposal devices

To provide further services at the same facility, e.g. shelter, case management, counselling, treatment

To provide information about treatment options

To motivate clients to seek further treatment

To refer clients to further services, e.g. detoxification, substitution treatment, accommodation, social welfare, medical care

Outcome objectives

To establish contact with hard-to-reach populations

To identify and refer clients needing medical care

To reduce immediate risks related to drug consumption

To reduce morbidity and mortality

To stabilise and promote clients' health

To reduce public nuisance

To increase client awareness of treatment options and promote clients' service access

To increase chances that client will accept a referral to treatment

Find out more

Further reading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Drug consumption rooms: an overview of provision and evidence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Supervised drug consumption facilities, where illicit drugs can be used under the supervision of trained staff, have been operating in Europe for the last three decades. These facilities primarily aim to reduce the acute risks of disease transmission through unhygienic injecting, prevent drug-related overdose deaths and connect high-risk drug users with addiction treatment and other health and social services.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why do we have to put drug users in jail?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Social Justice Series: Mental Health and Addiction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Narcan Distribution Program for Opioid Overdose

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Tottenville High School held its annual Soundtrack of Life premiere, which featured public service announcements on drugs, addiction, and drinking and driving. NY1's Thabie Sibanda was there and has that story.
Don't do drugs. Don't drink and drive. These are just a few messages in a series of PSAs produced by the students from the Staten Island Young Adult Borough (YABC) program at Tottenville High School. It's called the Soundtrack of Life.

"Because we have a huge epidemic on Staten Island of drugs and stuff like that. So it's important to bring awareness," said student David Davidov.

The YABC program helps overage and under-credited students get a high school diploma. YABC joined forces with the Sundog Theatre to put together this Soundtrack series.

Coordinators say making these PSAs is a great way to engage student commitment.

"It's being creative about issues that actually help us look at our lives in a different perspective," said teacher Jeannine Otis. "Art does improve lives, and sometimes, it saves lives."

"There's so much inside of teenagers that adults don't always tap into because teenagers kind of hang out with themselves. And when you start to bring that out through the arts, it's amazing the depth of feeling that that they have," said Susan Fenley, executive director of the Sundog Theatre.

The students say some of them were serious, while others were satirical and meant to entertain but still served to send an important message.

"Ours was a joke, but in reality, you have ones about anti-smoking, anti-drinking, not speeding. Those are things that can either end your life or ruin your life or ruin someone else's life. So you know, don't do that ever, but don't do it when you're young because there's so much more that you have ahead of you," said student Brendan Hayes.

"It feels good because we're putting ourselves out there on issues about drugs to try and save other people's lives," said student Victor Aparicio.

Coordinators tell NY1 PSAs will air on Staten Island's community access station.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
YABC Students Make Anti-Drug, Anti-Addiction and Anti-Drinking PSAs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tottenville High School held its annual Soundtrack of Life premiere, which featured public service announcements on drugs, addiction, and drinking and driving. NY1's Thabie Sibanda was there and has that story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Neighborhoods Now Presents: Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bill Moyers Journal: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Meet an Iowa organization fighting to help farmers and other ordinary citizens fight for change.

(Show 353)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How community land trusts can help stem affordable housing crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Detroit tenants gathered to call for housing justice, raise awareness of challenges renters face

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meet Kea Mathis: Community Organizer Fighting for Housing Justice in Detroit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Justice 4 Housing helping people get homes after prison

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Property, Home and Precarity: Housing Justice Movements

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Atlanta has an easy way for residents to report concerns. Just dial 311. In the past year, about 2,330 people called that number for an issue related to homelessness.

11Alive Investigates listened to many of those calls, a mix of compassion and frustration.

"This should not go on somewhere where it's right out in public view. This is in my neighborhood," said one caller.

"He's now gone to defecating on the sidewalk," another reported.

"I will call every day until something is done about it," vowed a resident, upset that despite an earlier call, nothing had changed to close the encampment near his house.

In June, Mayor Andre Dickens said the number of people homeless in Atlanta had actually dropped 38%. But that's not the perception, even among the homeless themselves.

"Maybe if you count the ones that have passed away or have left or are in jail," said Brandon, who asked us not to use his last name. He's spent about six years living in encampments around metro Atlanta.

Investigator Rebecca Lindstrom also spoke with staff at shelters across the metro who said the decrease in people needing housing assistance was short-lived and is now consistently at or above capacity.

11Alive went out into the community and even surveyed those in our newsroom about their thoughts on the causes of homelessness.

Addiction, job loss, lack of support, mental health problems, and personal choice all came up.

"You think that anyone can go to a shelter, why don't they?" asked one person.

Meanwhile, another added, "every time they clean out an encampment and someone loses their birth certificate, that bars you from so many federal and local resources."

One man living on the streets, who asked not to be identified said, "It's like sticky at the bottom and it kind of holds on to you." He described that stickiness, which for him is anxiety and depression triggered by a car wreck that killed his wife and daughter.

"If you just said, 'I don't want to do this anymore', what would be your first step?" investigative reporter Kristin Crowley asked him.

"Oh, I say that every morning," the man quickly responded.

THE HOMELESS YOU SEE

Atlanta is on a mission to remove encampments. The city pledged more than $26 million for its Lift 2.0 initiative, to house 1,500 people living on the streets by next December.

According to a weekly report by Partners for Home, the non-profit contracted to oversee the project, 13 people have moved into housing as of Oct. 25. Twenty-five people have filed applications and 117 people are currently staying in motel rooms free as part of the effort.

The initiative targets the people we tend to think of when we envision homelessness, those living on the street or under bridges, or hidden in pockets of bushes and trees, creating unconventional and often controversial encampment communities.

"All of this is me. My bedroom, this is where I've got the bed, and TV," said Brandon showing us around his setup at The Hill, the name given to a large encampment near Cheshire Bridge in Atlanta.

"I want to get out, but until I save up enough money, the best thing I can do is get back into the habit of living in an actual house," he explains as he showed the tent that serves as his kitchen.

Every two years, cities count their homeless population. In Atlanta, of the 2,017 homeless counted in 2022, the majority were adult, Black men. More than a third (37%) reported a serious mental illness. Thirty-two percent reported a substance use disorder and 20% were veterans.

But only a third of those counted were actually living on the streets, an indication the tents we see are a symptom of something else - chronic homelessness.

"I think chronic homelessness is the revolving door of lacking any stability in your life," explained Ike Reighard, the CEO of MUST Ministries, a shelter in Cobb County that also offers food, clothing, and job placement assistance.

Reighard said that instability makes those living in encampments the most visible and complicated population to reach. They have often created a new sense of community with those living in tents nearby and don't believe stability in another environment is possible.

"Sometimes social awkwardness, sometimes its PTSD that keeps a person living in an encampment," he explained.

The reasons for remaining on the streets may also include chronic health problems, job loss, encampment cleanups, and lack of family support, especially among the LGBTQ community. Theft is also a problem because it often robs people of the documents they need in order to get a job and work.

Brandon breaks down the street population this way, "The hobo is just standard 'sleep on the park bench so everybody can see you and dig out of the trash.' Somebody who has given up. But then you have homeless people. They're there not by choice, but by circumstance. And then you have people like me who are out here by choice."

Over the past six years, Brandon has worked his way through all three phases. He said it was a process to restore his hope and routine to embrace a more traditional way of life. He credits Tracey Thompson for it all.

Thompson, visits the Hill and other encampments several times a week creating the kind of trust needed to begin working through the barriers.

"My goal is to help people get housed, ultimately who want to be housed. And if not, what's going on here and how can I help? You need rakes, ok. You need garbage bags? Ok," she explained.

Thompson has been able to help Brandon work through various barriers in the way of finding housing. Among the most critical was medication for his mental health needs.

"The meds happened first. And in the process of the meds, the ID came through. Then once that all happened, the job came," remembers Brandon.

That's when he also realized he no longer wanted to tolerate the rats, trash, and a lack of running water, adding "there's nothing like a toilet that flushes. Trust me!"

Now the challenge is finding an apartment or house to rent that he can afford. But, as Thompson helps him with his hunt, she knows the idea of zero encampments is unrealistic.

"There's always going to be a part of our population that doesn't do well being closed in. The rules and regulations that come with housing," she explained.

THE HOMELESS YOU DON'T SEE

Even if Atlanta manages to find housing for those living in encampments, the data suggests there's a far greater number of people out of sight, equally in need of help to find their way home.

"It's the mom, her parents, and the children," Reighard explained.

When MUST Ministries opened its new shelter, it created ten rooms to directly assist families. But it's not enough.

In August 2020, MUST said it spent $12,000 to rent motel rooms to help seven additional families. This year, it spent $52,000 to rent rooms for 37 families.

"About 80% of those we serve are women and children. And I don't think that's what usually comes to a person's mind when they think of homelessness," Reighard added.

Many people sleep in cars, bounce between their family and friends' houses sleeping on couches, or rent rooms at extended-stay hotels to buy time in their search for stable housing.

Matthew Jones, the founder of The Grocery Spot, said he sees the struggle every day in the eyes of those who come for help. He created the non-profit in Atlanta's Grove Park neighborhood where the median income is just over $23,000.

"You got to be pretty vulnerable I feel like to even stand out in the heat and wait, sometimes, you know, for an hour and a half just to get some free food. But it's a lifeline," he explained.

The Grocery Spot's manager, Porsha Braxton, used to be homeless for about a year herself, living in hotels while going through a bitter divorce.

"I understand these people when they come up here," she explained. "It can happen to anybody. It can. There are people with businesses that are homeless now because of COVID."

Jose Garcia is among those who've turned to The Grocery Spot for help. When the grandmother he lived with died, her house was sold and he couldn't afford a place of his own. He described the non-profit to 11Alive as "a blessing," adding "you can actually have food instead of having to go and ask somebody for something to eat."

Christy Betz, who partners with The Grocery Spot and runs a Facebook group called Giving Grace explained "the biggest need now is people holding on by a thread. People who are $200 away from losing their apartment."

Her group started 10 years ago to provide things like food and clothing. Now, the page is filled with people about to become homeless or those who already are.

"We have a lot of folks in hotels right now and they are having trouble getting approved for apartments because the rent in Atlanta has gotten so out of control," she added.

WHAT IS AFFORDABLE?

Gloria Daniel will tell you if you have a place to live that's affordable, consider yourself lucky.

Daniel has struggled for more than a year to find an apartment that fits her budget, about $900 a month. That is well below the average rent for a one-bedroom in metro Atlanta, $1,400.

There are complexes around the metro that receive tax breaks in exchange for providing apartments at lower rent rates. For example, tenants at Stride where Daniel is on the waiting list, pay between $750-$1,500. It's the same apartment, just a different price based on income.

But those price-reduced apartments are hard to come by and Daniel said depending on location, the wait list varies from one to five years.

She is not sleeping on the streets but is homeless. 11Alive met up with her at the storage unit where she's forced to keep her stuff while sleeping at a friend's house.

"I'm paying almost $400. Like $399. These two are both my storage," Daniel said, pulling up the door to one that holds clothes and other daily items she needs to access. While she does pay rent to her friend as well, there is limited space to bring more than a day or two of food and clothes.

The government defines affordable housing as rent or mortgage that costs less than 30% of a person's income. That means to rent that average one-bedroom in metro Atlanta, you have to make $46,000 a year. At minimum wage, you'd have to work 124 hours a week to afford it.

"We may have Fortune 500 relocations coming here, it does us no good if people who lived here a long time still find themselves living on the streets of Atlanta or in the woods or unhoused," Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said.

Former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms made similar statements during her term, pledging to create or preserve 20,000 units of affordable housing. The city even created a dashboard so the public could track efforts.

At the time, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta warned the metro area needed 416,000 more places for people with lower incomes to live. To date, the city of Atlanta has spent or committed more than $900 million and created 7,309 units. It's hardly enough for struggling families to notice.

The number doesn't seem large when you consider all of the ribbon cuttings and press releases in the news.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich, the CEO of Invest Atlanta, took 11Alive's Rebecca Lindstrom around one of the affordable housing projects protected by the city of Atlanta, adding it has "about 120 affordable units."

She added, "no one is going to earn more than $40,000 who live in these units."

However, the tax breaks and low-interest loans that make these deals possible are temporary, generally a set period of time. For Capitol View, that's about 15 years. After that, the owner can charge anything it wants, which means the work to find new affordable units never ends.

"At the end of the day we're, we live in the United States. It's a capitalist society," Klementich added.

Even at the reduced rates, it's still too much for someone coming out of an encampment or homeless shelter to afford. Background checks, rental history, and credit scores are other barriers. Capitol View will take tenants on housing assistance programs like section eight, if there's space.

Capitol View also said it's only had five units available for new tenants this year.

"The best way to find out about these units, call the individual property owners and find out if they have any availability and if they don't, get on the waiting list," Klementich explained.

But if that's the best way, Daniel says we need to do better. She began to cry, recounting all of the emails, phone calls, faxes, and in-person visits she has made to find a place to live.

"It's been really hard. It's taken a toll emotionally, mentally," she said adding, she's not looking for free, just affordable.

11Alive Investigators are examining why tents line Atlanta's freeways and why families struggle to find stable housing in their three-part series The Way Home. Read Part 2: The Cause and Part 3: Solutions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'It's sticky at the bottom' | Man living on the street explains why it's so hard to end homelessness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Way Home: The Problem is part one of an 11Alive Investigates series examining why tents line our freeways and families struggle to find stable housing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Launching and supporting Black-owned businesses | Mandy Bowman | TEDxDover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Buy Black’ movement boosts Black-owned small businesses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fawn Weaver, CEO of Uncle Nearest | Full Focus Enterprise Case Study