In 2011, Highland Park couldn’t pay its electric bill. So DTE took the streetlights off the poles, about 1,400 of them.

When the lights left, residents put some back. On Avalon Street, that was Shamayim Harris. She’d bought a house there for $3,000. It was months after a hit-and-run driver killed her 2-year-old son. 

She kept building. A park in his name. A garden. A house where kids do homework.

The block became Avalon Village. She became a CNN Hero and a USA Today Woman of the Year. But in Highland Park, she’s Mama Shu.

She’s held office here before, but never the one that runs the city. Last week, she asked her neighbors to change that. She finished second, enough to put her on the November ballot, against incumbent Glenda McDonald.

Mama Shu joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to answer a question Highland Park has been living with for a generation: What can neighbors fix, and what needs a government? 

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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