Detroit has a number of famous representatives. Representatives John Dingell, labor leader Patrick McNamara, and Congressmember John Conyers. 

Charles Diggs Jr. doesn’t often make these lists. But should he? The first Black congressmember from Michigan, he worked with Martin Luther King, Jr, helped pass the Voting Rights Act, advocated for the end of apartheid in South Africa, and changed America’s foreign policy stances toward many nations in Africa.

Why don’t more people know about him? 

It’s partly because the congressmember ended his professional career in disgrace, having to retire because of a payroll kickback scheme he orchestrated.

But what should we remember about this representative who built cross-ideological and cross-political coalitions to achieve civil rights for more people in America and around the world?

Marion Orr is a professor of political science at Brown University. He spoke with Producer Sam Corey about his new book, “House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr.”

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Detroit has changed a lot in the last two decades. 

There’s more investment in the downtown and midtown areas. There are more people milling about the city. The parks and public areas have improved. 

Stephen McGee witnessed those changes up close.The photographer and award-winning filmmaker came to Detroit decades ago and began photographing the city for the Detroit Free Press. He aggregated a lot of that work into his documentary, “Resurgo.”

In it, he focuses his lens on decaying infrastructure, new investments injected into the area, and the people who never left.

Who gets credit for all these changes? And, how can the investments in Detroit be more inclusive of those that have always been here?

These are some of the questions that McGee’s “Resurgo,” asks. It will be playing at the Emagine theater Thursday, Nov. 12 in Royal Oak at 7 p.m.

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Last week, Democrats ran across the country on alleviating the issue of affordability. 

Those people spreading the message were often young, 30-somethings. 

That was true in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani became mayor-elect. And it was true in Detroit, where Mary Sheffield won as well. The voters who brought those people to victory — particularly in the New York mayoral race and the Virginia governor’s race — were young voters. 

Amanda Litman, the co-founder and president of Run For Something, recently told a reporter that of the over 200 left candidates affiliated with her organization, nearly every one who achieved victory did it by discussing affordability, particularly housing costs. 

So, how much does the issue of “affordability” translate to more liberal and more conservative places across the country? And, how much can we understand about what young people want from what we saw last week?

Litman joined The Metro to discuss.

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Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield ran on several promises: creating job opportunities for young people, improving schools, and investing in neighborhoods. 

It’s no question that her platform was appealing, as the candidate won 77% of the vote. Detroit has a lot of poverty, a significant amount of crime, and many residents are in need of better job opportunities. 

How are residents reacting to Sheffield’s victory? What do they hope she accomplishes? And, what kinds of organizing and coalition building will the new mayor have to do to live up to her promises?

Donna Givens Davidson, the president of the Eastside Community Network and a co-host of the Authentically Detroit podcast, joined Robyn Vincent to discuss.

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Political junkies have their minds on the elections that just happened this past week. But one year ahead, there are a lot more elections in the state.

That’s true for the governor’s race, where a slate of Democratic and Republican candidates, in addition to an independent candidate, are running for the seat. 

Currently, Congressman John James and former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox are in the lead for the Republican nomination. Why? And, what do they need to do to win?

Producer Sam Corey spoke to longtime Michigan Republican strategist Jeff Timmer to find out.

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For the first time, a woman is mayor-elect for the City of Detroit.

Mary Sheffield is a 38-year old Black woman and the current Detroit City Council President. In becoming mayor, she’ll have a much brighter spotlight flashing on her. And many agree that that light, because of her gender, will carry scrutiny that Mayor Duggan never had to face. 

Notably, Detroit already has many women leading organizations and departments across the city. So how significant is Sheffield’s win? And, what kinds of things might she need to be concerned about that a man wouldn’t?

To discuss all this now, we have Raquel Constañeda-Lopez served on Detroit City Council at the same time as Sheffield. Now she runs an organization called Restorative Democracy, which supports women of color who hold public office. 

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For a long time, Michigan’s roads didn’t have the funding they needed. Last month lawmakers placed a 24%tax on marijuana products sold in the state to fill that gap. The vote was mostly along party lines with Democrats supporting it, and Republicans rejecting the measure.

But the vote needed bipartisan support, and they got it from Upper Peninsula State Senator Ed McBroom. Last week, Metro Producer Sam Corey spoke with the Republican about why he gave a “yes” vote, and how he’s found common ground with Democrats who live in Michigan’s cities. 

They spoke before the state Senate voted to cover SNAP funding and before President Donald Trump complied with rulings to temporarily and partially fund SNAP for this month.

At the end of the conversation, state Senator McBroom was asked about whether he would support state funding for SNAP. Senator McBroom, along with several other Senate Republicans, did not attend the vote for that in the state senate later the same day. 

McBroom’s office said that the senator was told by Democratic leadership that they wouldn’t be voting on anything and that the SNAP bill wasn’t originally on the day’s agenda. Democratic state Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks’ office said the Senate Republican caucus was provided the bill and had time to meet to discuss it ahead of the vote.

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Next week, the Hamtramck will residents will elect a new mayor. 

That’s because the outgoing mayor, Amer Ghalib was picked to be the Kuwait ambassador. His Senate confirmation is stalling because of a positive remark he made about Saddam Hussein, liking a social media post comparing Jews to monkeys, and for his refusal to condemn Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians. 

Still, in Hamtramck, residents have a choice of who they want to be the next mayor. Those candidates include Adam Alharbi, Hamtramck City Council Member Muhith Mahmood, and write-in candidate Lynn Blasey.

WDET reporter Nargis Rahman reported on the race, and joined The Metro to discuss.

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One of the biggest issues Detroiters face has to do with their homes. There are a fair number of homes in the city, but over 20,000 of them are in dire need of repairs. That includes leaky roofs, electricity issues, and asbestos in the walls. 

The problem is large, but one retired firefighter, Gary Ringer, is trying to chip away at it. The Detroiter, who mostly helps people on the West Side, has been spending a lot of his time going to peoples’ homes, and assisting them with repairs. 

What inspires Gary’s volunteerism? What are the repairs people need? And, with the mayoral election next week, what kinds of investments does he think the next mayor should make to facilitate more home repairs? 

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Almost a decade ago, President Donald Trump began campaigning on a very different American policy than the one we previously had. He wanted America to be tougher on China, to build a wall across the Mexico-American border, and to put “America first.”

Today, a lot of that strategy has remained intact, some of it even influencing the Biden administration’s policies.

How do Americans feel about our country’s foreign policy stances? And, how do they want to see America lead?

Rebecca Lissner is a Senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Brady-Johnson distinguished practitioner in grand strategy and lecturer with the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.

This month, she began speaking with people around the country about what they make of American foreign policy. She is in town to understand how people in metro Detroit feel about the topic, and joined The Metro to share her findings.

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Poverty is going up in Detroit. So too are the costs of food and housing. All of this means that many are struggling to pay their bills, and homelessness—particularly for kids—is on the rise.  

A lot of these problems are big. To solve them, Detroit relies on money from the federal and state government. 

So, how much can one city with limited resources do to halt the rate of homelessness—and even reverse it?

With the mayoral election next month, Anthony Eid joined The Metro to discuss these things. He’s the senior director of public policy for the Community Development Advocates of Detroit, and the policy and advocacy coordinator for COTS, a housing agency in the city. 

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When it comes to our federal system, we often don’t have a representative, majoritarian democracy. That means the idea of “one person, one vote” often does not hold. 

Gerrymandering favors one party to be elected in the House of Representatives. The electoral college overrides the popular vote. Money is considered speech, which means that people with more of it have more influence in our politics. 

What would it look like to have a democracy that represents people more than it does geography, and to have a politics that doesn’t favor the rich over those with fewer means?

Osita Nwanevu is a writer at The New Republic and The Guardian and the author of the book, “The Right of the People.” And in it, he argues that if we had a majoritarian democracy, we would collectively be better off. 

Producer Sam Corey spoke to Osita about that prospect, and whether some ballot proposals initiated in Michigan would create a more representative democracy in the state.

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There are several initiatives to get on the 2026 ballot. One of them is to help implement ranked choice voting in the state, which is being run by the group Rank MI Vote. 

Last week, the campaign to implement ranked choice voting took a hit. That’s because the Michigan Association of County Clerks came out against it.

What are clerks’ concerns from around the state? And, how would the work of Michigan clerks change if ranked choice voting were implemented, according to the Rank MI Vote ballot measure?

Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown spoke to Robyn Vincent about this and more.

The Metro contacted the leaders of the Rank MI Vote campaign for comment. They had many things to say about the clerks’ decision to be against their campaign. We have included some of their comments in the interview.

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It’s flu season, and that means public health departments are promoting vaccinations. Over the past few years,  local vaccination rates have been down, and more people have become wary of vaccines. 

Before the pandemic hit, Oakland County’s approach to getting people vaccinated had been to focus on vaccine science and facts. In other words, tell people that vaccines are essential and encourage local pediatricians to maintain high vaccination rates. 

But in the last few years, the county has changed its approach to vaccine hesitance; it’s now trying to be more open, curious and empathetic towards those who have concerns. 

What else is different about Oakland County’s approach? And has it been working?

Oakland County Health Officer Kate Guzman spoke with Robyn Vincent about this and more.

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While much of the media’s attention on November’s elections has been on Detroit’s mayoral race, there are many other political contests happening outside the city. 

One of them is in Madison Heights. That’s where a one-term city council member is running for mayor against the current Eastpointe police chief. 

If elected, the council member would be the city’s first Black mayor. But what’s also interesting about this race is that he — not the police chief — won the endorsement of the Michigan Fraternal Order of Police.

How did City Councilor Quinn Wright do it? And, why does he want to be mayor? 

Last week, Producer Sam Corey spoke with Wright about that and more. 

The Metro reached out multiple times to Wright’s opponent, Chief Corey Haines. We still have not heard back from him.

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Even though violent crime has been falling fast in Detroit over the last decade, the city still has a crime rate that’s one of the highest in the nation.  

Every year, police recover about 6,000 illegal guns in Detroit. Yet legal gun ownership is also common in the city, a reflection of how deeply concerns about safety and self-protection run through daily life.

To try to prevent crime before it happens, Detroit police stop people for nonviolent offenses. A Detroit Free Press investigation found that 20 percent of DPD shootings over the past decade started with those kinds of stops. 

Those findings stress the question: what is the police’s obligation to stop crime before it happens in a place where many don’t feel safe and guns are plentiful?

To explore this, Detroit Free Press investigative reporter Violet Ikonomova spoke with Robyn Vincent about her recent reporting on police shootings that began with stops for nonviolent offenses.

Correction: A former version of this web post stated that 20 percent of police stops for small infractions ended in police shootings. 

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The cost of college isn’t just measured in tuition dollars. For many students, part of the challenge is navigating the maze to get there. This is especially true for young people who are the first in their family to attend college.

Even though college is really expensive, many people are still making the case for it. Economists and educators generally cite the financial and social benefits that come with the experience. 

But getting admitted to a university can be difficult, especially for first generation college students. The price tag is one thing — but so is all the bureaucracy around the application process.

Last month, Wayne State University and Detroit public schools rolled out a plan to ease that burden. The university announced that Detroit juniors with a 3.0 or higher will be automatically enrolled at Wayne State through the Warriors on the Rise program. 

Cyekeia Lee is the Executive Director of the Detroit College Access Network, which helps Detroit public school students get into college. She spoke with Robyn Vincent about the potential benefits of the program.

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The attorneys representing young people in Detroit’s courts say their pay hasn’t kept pace with their purpose.

They haven’t received a raise in more than three decades.

Wayne County juvenile attorneys handle neglect and delinquency cases. They represent kids and families in crisis, but unlike public defenders, they are independent contractors who receive a set fee per hearing and no benefits.

Juvenile attorney Marc Shreeman says the pay is about $500 for a preliminary hearing and pretrial appearance, roughly half of what similar attorneys earn in nearby Oakland County. 

Shreeman says low pay, coupled with rising caseloads, is having an impact. In 2019, roughly 120 attorneys were taking juvenile cases in Wayne County; now, there are fewer than 60. 

The dwindling number of juvenile attorneys and stagnant pay come as Detroit faces a rise in youth violence compared with last year, and a higher number of teens being caught with firearms. City officials have responded by strengthening curfew enforcement and raising fines for parents of minors found out after hours. 

WDET contacted multiple county officials for comment.

The Wayne County Executive’s Office did not respond.

A representative for the Wayne County Court Administration, which distributes pay to juvenile attorneys, said in an earlier statement that the department is “working closely with Wayne County to address potential funding options” and that staff have met with the Ways and Means Committee to discuss the issue.

WDET also contacted Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch, who chairs that committee, but did not receive a response.

Juvenile attorney Shreeman joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss the work of public defenders in a time when young people are facing more danger.

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There are about 2,200 urban gardens across Detroit. In a place with a lot of empty tracts,  that can be a great use of land. 

And, over the past few years, the city has done things to assist the people who tend to it. There’s now an entire department dedicated to the inner workings of urban farmers. 

Recently, the city alongside the Eastern Market Partnership are collaborating to offer $225,000 in grant funding to Detroit-based farmers.

But even with the new dollars being made available, preserving and expanding farms can be challenging because upkeep can be costly and labor-intensive. With Mayor Mike Duggan leaving office, there will likely be turnover and questions about the priorities of the new administration.

Amanda Brezzell is the creative director and co-founder of Fennigan’s Farms in Detroit, a board member for the Detroit Food Policy Council, and a policy and engagement specialist for the Groundwork Center.

They spoke with Cary Junior II about the challenges and joys of farming in Detroit.

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