Happy 313 day to DETROIT
March 13, every year.
I’ve had a fascination with Detroit my entire life. To this day, Detroit City is my one and only true love.
I was blessed to have had a parent that wasn’t afraid to bring me into the crime capital of the developed world in the 1990s and 2000s. She brought me up on techno and her parents brought me up on Motown. Since birth I’ve been a Detroit boy, through and through.
It was my adventures in Detroit — on its buses, through its skyscrapers, about its museum halls, inside its abandoned buildings and below its church steeples — that built me into the man I am today.
Detroit is an important historical city, too, for America, and for the rest of our world. Without Detroit’s industry and invention, our civilization would not be as advanced as it is today.
Our factories were the catalyst for the Great Migration and many Eastern Europeans looking for a better life in America. More than any other city, they all came to Detroit.
Its contributions cannot be overstated. Detroit is the birthplace of:
- American Automotive Industry
- The Minimum Wage
- The American highway, freeway and traffic system
- Techno & Motown music genres
- The individual phone number
These are among many, many of the contributions of culture and industry Detroit has made to the world.
For all 318 years of its continuous history, Detroit has been a global city from the day of its inception as a French trading post in 1701. Serving as a key North American stronghold for warring European powers, Detroit was key to the development of United States of America as a country. In the first half of the 20th century, our industrial contributions to the war efforts helped to solidify young America as a world superpower.
To this day, it is still one of the most significant international cities in the USA because of its border to Canada and vast industrial infrastructure alone.
We also boast one of the fastest growing and technologically advanced urban cores in The United States.
Because of this growth stage, Detroit is arguably the best per-dollar value of any major metropolis in America, making it a far better opportunity for artists and entrepreneurs than LA, NYC or Chicago.
We are also consistently rated among the best sports cities in America.
To add to this claim, we are the only city in North America to have MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL play within our downtown district. And Chicago, when you hear the name “Hockeytown”, they’re talking about us. #LGRW
We also claim home to of the most incredible theaters and sports arenas in the world. If you stand on Woodward Avenue near Grand Circus Park, you can see all of our major stadiums, music halls and theatres in one location.
As a must-stop location, the world’s best artists, symphonies, stage plays and concerts come through Detroit as much as any other major city.
We work hard to play hard, and we aim to entertain.
Just as important as our industrial and cultural contributions, Detroit has been a major propenent of advancement for human rights throughout the years as well.
Detroit is historically America’s city of equality.
Detroit has served as a leader during the American Abolition. We were key to the economic supply of alcohol throughout our country’s. Prohibition years. Our city also set the standard for Workers Rights everywhere and we were a critical in the success of the Civil Rights movement.
Detroit was a last stop in the Underground Railroad for freemen looking to escape to Canada (post-1850). We provided safe passage for escaped slaves looking to gain their freedom by crossing our border into Windsor, ON.
In the 1920s, when alcohol was in prohibition, we smuggled 75% of the country’s supply through our borders. If anyone wanted booze during that time, they had Detroit to thank. You’re welcome, America.
The Ford Motor Company set a new standard of living with their guarantee of a minimum wage for a full day’s of work. Our solidarity in workers’ strikes in our factories led to fair treatment of workers in industrial workplaces nationwide, a standard that has bled into every area of the American workforce (1910s–1940s).
In 1957 Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights movement moved to our city to escape Jim Crow opression in her home state of Alabama, and in Detroit is where she would remain until her death almost six decades later.
In 1963, the movement gained huge momentum in our city during The Walk to Freedom demonstration. It was the largest demonstration of Civil Rights in the country up to this point and MLK debuted parts of his “I Have A Dream” speech at the event.
Only a few years later, in 1967, Detroiters rioted when they had enough abuse the police that were supposed to be protecting them. This event is what changed an otherwise stellar 266 year reputation.
The period after this is infamously known as Detroit’s decline.
The city became the de facto poster child for urban decay in the developed world, a grim example to the faults of capitalism for the communities it builds and inevitably leaves for cheaper labor and higher profits in foreign nations.
The riots, combined with a lack of jobs, resulted in crippling depression for those who relied on the companies and industries that built their community just years before. The city was abandoned, the well was dried.
The 1970s saw a huge rise in crime in the city as white Detroiters fled to live in surrounding suburban communities, taking away precious tax dollars for city services. Crime was rampant and gangs began to take hold of the city’s neighborhoods.
In the 1980s, the crack epidemic further put in the city into ruin and devastated the greater Detroit region. Increasing violence throughout the decade and into the 1990s earned Detroit a reputation as the murder capital of the world.
In the by the time the 2000s arrived, Detroit had been all but quarantined as a viable place to build a career and family. In 2013, the nail had been put in the coffin as Detroit became the first major city in America to file bankruptcy.
Despite all of the tragedies, setbacks and adversity, it was the spirit of Detroiters that have kept the city alive. Recently, major investors like Dan Gilbert and the late Mike Illitch have come back to reinvest in the city and build a new framework for what the future metropolis could look like for America.
As of the last few years, Detroit has once again become an international hub for art and commerce. The city is fast growing and the opportunities of the pre-1960s are reemerging, raising Detroit back to international prominance as a city of opportunity.
Detroit has been, and continues to be, a world leader.
Our people value authenticity over anything else, and we don’t put up with mistreatment in any capacity. When we feel oppressed, we march, we riot and we rebel until things change.
The Detroiter is the hardest worker in America. A 60 hour workweek can be standard, and no amount of snow or bad weather can stop our hustle. The grind serves as the bedrock of our culture, and we put that grit into everything we do.
From its inception Detroit’s character is gangster, through and through. We get the job done and we don’t take any crap along the way. Freedom or death.
When the rest of the country we helped build was quick to abandon us, we pulled our bootstraps up and saved ourselves. That’s the Detroit way.
So please, don’t be so quick to say we’re a comeback city — we’ve been here the whole time.
If you’re feeling like experiencing a raw and beautiful city full of good character and great hospitality, visit Detroit.
We create, we work, we change, we play.
Happy 313.
