The landscape of voting in Michigan has evolved significantly, with expanded early in-person voting, enhanced absentee ballot tracking, and permanent absentee ballot registration now available.

As voters prepare to head to the polls again in November, a new monument in Detroit commemorates the long journey toward voting rights for all.

The dedication ceremony for the Civil Rights Monument took place at Viola Liuzzo Playground, located at the corner of Winthrop and Trojan on Detroit’s west side. The monument honors Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit woman inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who traveled to Alabama to participate in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Tragically, Liuzzo was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Lowndes County. Before her departure, she asked her friend, Sarah Evans, to care for her five children if anything happened to her—a promise that Evans kept.

The monument features images of Liuzzo and Evans with the inscription “Sisters in life…Sisters in struggle,” and on the opposite side, it lists the names of Detroiters who answered Dr. King’s call to support the Selma marches, including notable figures like Rosa Parks and John Lewis.

Dorothy Dewberry Aldridge, a civil rights activist and historian, described the monument as a “teaching monument,” intended to educate the public about the events of 1965.

Collette Mezza, also a member of the Viola Liuzzo Park Association, emphasized the significance of each name on the monument.

“They each have their own remarkable story, and what inspired them to go down to Selma in 1965, and many of them are still alive and many of them continue their activism like Dorothy,” Mezza said.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who attended the ceremony, said everyone today has an opportunity to continue the fight for voting rights.

“Let us all recommit to continuing on that legacy as a new generation of foot soldiers who are marching forward for democracy teaching about the past and being clear-eyed about the present challenges and the work we must do to preserve that sacred promise of democracy for everyone.”

The event concluded with a ceremonial march around the park, echoing the marches of 1965 and honoring those who fought for voting rights.

A new study from the University of Michigan shows that Black stroke patients arrive at the hospital significantly later than their white counterparts.

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Published Sept. 5 in collaboration with Brown University, the research included data from more than 600,000 patients in the American Heart Association Get With The Guidelines Stroke Registry from mid-2015 through 2019.

The study revealed that it took on average 28 minutes longer for Black patients with stroke symptoms to receive emergency care. Researchers also found that EMS workers were roughly 20% less likely to notify emergency departments ahead of a Black patient’s arrival compared to a white patient.

The disparity was most prevalent in areas with a high poverty rate. 

Regina Royan, one of the lead researchers on the study, says getting a stroke patient to the hospital quickly is crucial for positive health outcomes. 

“The therapies that we have for stroke are really effective, but they are only available within a short time frame from the time that symptoms start,” Royan said.

Royan says there has been significant effort to making health care inside hospitals equitable, and it’s time to bring those efforts outside the hospital as well.  

“This is a disparity that must be addressed, as Black Americans have a higher prevalence of stroke, get strokes younger and die at greater numbers from the condition,” said Royan in a news release.

Other headlines for Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024:

•  Michigan Attorney Dana Nessel announced charges this week against 11 people stemming from pro-Palestinian protests on the University of Michigan’s campus in May.
• Detroit Police Chief James White confirmed to BridgeDetroit on Wednesday that he is one of eight finalists in the running for CEO of the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network.
• The American Arab Chamber of Commerce is hosting its “East & West Mezza Fest,” a culinary tour of Dearborn, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 13.

Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.

Once dominated by non-local LLCs exploiting the system for quick returns, new data suggests that fewer outside investors are “milking” the system, and more Detroiters are taking advantage of opportunities to participate in Detroit’s recovery.

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A new article entitled “Detroit’s Sweat Equity” from Alex Alsup, published in Substack newsletter The Chargeback, discusses the change from outside investors to residents purchasing and rehabbing homes from the tax foreclosure auction. Alsup says local buyers are flipping the script on the traditional narrative of Detroit real estate. By investing personal labor — or “sweat equity” — into rehabbing homes, they reduce the costs associated with renovation and create value in a way that large, outside investors can no longer exploit. 

Foreclosures are at their lowest since 2005, and new ownership trends show a citywide gain of about 9,000 re-occupied homes since the pandemic. The old “milking” model — where the value was in extracting rent from undervalued properties — doesn’t work anymore because Detroit’s homes have gained too much value. This lucrative foreclosure-rental-foreclosure pipeline is drying up, and Detroiters are stepping up to take advantage of the opportunity. 

Chase Cantrell, CEO of Building Community Value, a nonprofit that helps Detroiters become property owners and rehabbers, says that the Detroit Land Bank Authority now privileges local buyers, giving them a better chance to purchase and improve properties. 

Online bidding on properties in the Wayne County tax foreclosure auction begins September 11 and runs through September 18, 2024. There are 1,748 Detroit foreclosed properties listed on the Wayne County Treasurer’s auction site.

 Guests: 

• Alex Alsup is the Vice President of Research and Development for Regrid and the author of the Substack newsletter The Chargeback.
• Chase Cantrell is the CEO of Building Community Value, an organization that provides training and resources for Detroiters interested in small-scale real estate development.

Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on Detroit Public Radio 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.

A recent study from three children’s hospitals has found that patient information relating to racial and ethnic designations is significantly inaccurate.

Mott Children’s, Helen DeVos, and the Children’s Hospital of Michigan participated in a study led by University of Michigan’s Dr. Gary Freed to identify and address racial and ethnic inequities in health care.

Dr. Freed found that between 22 and 59% of electronic medical records have inaccurate information about race and ethnicity. He says these errors may have impacted certain populations being either over or underrepresented health care.

“If we’re not accurately describing certain populations, any analyses that we’re doing about those populations may be wrong,” Freed said.

Dr. Freed hopes that his pioneering work with this study encourages other health care systems to conduct their own studies to identify and address disparities in their racial/ethnic patient records.

WEMU is a member of the Michigan Public Radio Network serving Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County. To read more from WEMU, visit wemu.org. 

One might believe that people perceive individuals who live in poverty as in greater need of help when faced with hardship compared to more affluent people, but research indicates the opposite is true.

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The “thick skin bias” is a belief that individuals who live in poverty are more resilient than affluent people when facing a challenging situation. The assumption could, as a result, influence the degree of support those who are struggling receive from others.

Today on Created Equal, the team continued Wednesday’s conversation about a Wayne County judge who singled out a student for falling asleep in court during a field trip, and how society perceives and responds to people in poverty.

Psychology professor Nathan Cheek joined the discussion to help unpack the “thick skin bias,” where it comes from, and why this assumption is the wrong one.

“We are deeply uncomfortable with injustice and inequality, and we have deep motivation to believe in a just world. A world that is fair where people get what they deserve and deserve what they get, and so it’s really threatening to us when people confront inequalities.” he said. “So one of the strategies that people adopt to get through life is adopting beliefs that justify inequality.”

Guest:

• Nathan Cheek is an assistant professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.

The Democratic Party has officially selected Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential nominee on Monday afternoon — marking the first time a woman of color has won a major party’s nomination, and only the second time a woman has been selected.

Of the 4,567 Democratic delegates who cast ballots, Harris — who just held a rally at Detroit Metro Airport on Wednesday — won the support of 99% of the voters. Though Harris appears to be succeeding in her rushed bid for the presidency, it’s important to note that there are significant barriers women face when running for an election. 

Today on Created Equal, NBC News Correspondent Ali Vitali; political science professor Dr. Cathy Wineinger; and Kimberly Peeler-Allen, visiting practitioner at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, joined the show to discuss Harris’ nomination and the state of women in politics.

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Guests

Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News and the author of the book “Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House…Yet.” She says that Michigan’s women-dominated leadership will assist Harris’ campaign because Michiganders are used to voting for, and seeing, women win top government offices. 

“Politically, Michigan is a battleground state. But from the perspective of gender and politics, you [have to] look up and down the upper echelons of leadership in Michigan,” Vitali said. “You have, of course, Gretchen Whitmer at the top of that, but then you have Jocelyn Benson and Dana Nessel. It’s important to look at the fact that Michigan voters are habituated to seeing women run for executive and top leadership roles, and they’re used to seeing them win.” 

Dr. Cathy Wineinger is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. She says the biggest barrier to office is firstly getting women to run, and then making sure they run as themselves. 

“I think getting women to decide to run in the first place is the biggest challenge to overcome. But I think we’re seeing that, and this change in the political landscape does send a signal to women [and] to women of color, that: ‘Hey, I can run and I can run as myself. I don’t need to fit into this [white man] stereotype,’’ Wineinger said. “And that’s especially true on the Democratic side of the aisle – I think it’s maybe not as true on the Republican side.”

Kimberly Peeler-Allen is a visiting practitioner at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University and was formerly the Senior Advisor to New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ reelection. She says the reason women of color experience harassment when seeking government positions is because of America’s history as a white, patriarchal society. 

“The vice president and [her] campaign aren’t leaning into the diversity of her experience and her identity, but the Republicans are,” Peeler-Allen said. “We’re seeing the increase of violence, threats and harassment against women and people of color in elected office across the board. A lot of that is sparked because of, for lack of a better phrase, their ‘difference’ from what the norm has been.”

Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.

Last month marked the 50th anniversary of a Supreme Court case originating in Detroit that’s had a lasting impact on equity in schools, both locally and nationwide.

The Milliken v. Bradley decision limited the courts’ ability to address segregation in schools by halting an “interdistrict busing” plan to tackle Detroit’s increasingly segregated classrooms. Under the plan, students from Detroit would have been bused into the suburbs and kids from the suburbs would have been bused to Detroit schools.

Legal scholars say the 1974 ruling eroded the progress of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared racial segregation in the classroom unconstitutional. After that ruling, districts across the country were experimenting with ways to integrate schools. 

The Milliken v. Bradley case originated when the NAACP filed a lawsuit against Michigan state officials on behalf of students and their families, arguing that school integration in Detroit could never occur where discriminatory practices like redlining and racial covenants are present. 

While the lower court ruling said the city, state and surrounding suburbs must comply and participate in a desegregation plan, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a narrow 5-4 decision signaled that the courts shouldn’t be involved in efforts to desegregate schools. 

Today on Created Equal, host Stephen Henderson was joined by three guests — Chalkbeat Detroit reporter Robyn Vincent, Detroit historian Ken Coleman, and Education Trust-Midwest Executive Director Amber Arellano — to talk about the Milliken ruling and its ripple effect on the Detroit public school system today.

Subscribe to Created Equal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guests

Robyn Vincent, education reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit, wrote a recent article entitled “Still segregated and unequal: The reverberations of Milliken v. Bradley in Detroit 50 years later.” Vincent says Detroit schools are not equitably funded in comparison to other districts.

“That became especially true with the adoption of Proposal A back in the ’90s, now that education policy is unequal in how much funding different school districts receive per student, and meanwhile we know Detroit schools serve a lot of kids from low-income households,” she said. “Nearly 80% qualify for subsidized lunches, so that tells us something.”

Ken Coleman is a Detroit historian and journalist. He says although Detroit’s Black population was growing, large swaths of the city had very few African American students up until the time of Milliken v. Bradley, and there was a clear correlation between segregation in schools and segregation in housing.

“There are lots of neighborhoods where Black kids don’t go to school with white kids because of race discrimination that was carried out in the real estate industry, and even pushback in city neighborhoods throughout the ‘40s and ’50s and ‘60s,” he said.

Amber Arellano is the executive director of Education Trust-Midwest. Arellano discussed how there have been a lot of changes within the past two years when it comes to schools being more equitable. She also talks about the recent funding mechanism that accounts for the concentration of poverty, which made history in Michigan.

“We are one of the first 10 states in the country to do this,” said Arellano. “It is an acknowledgment that we have had one of the most regressive and most inequitable state funding systems in the country, and in just two years, it’s driven almost $300 million more into schools for students with low-income background,” she said. It is really an important statewide change.”

Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan announced Wednesday it won a nationwide lawsuit after a seven-year legal battle to prevent family separation, detention and deportation on behalf of Iraqi nationals.

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The class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 1,400 Iraqis — many who were arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be deported immediately.

ACLU Michigan said in a news release the settlement prevents indefinite detainment and protects people from old removal orders when they seek to change their immigration status. 

“We are proud that our work helped stop the needless detention and deportation of hundreds of people, who otherwise would have been separated from their families,” said Miriam Aukerman, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan, in a statement. “Too often, immigrants are locked up for months or years for absolutely no reason other than they want what so many of us have already, the chance to build a life in America. The settlement will make it easier for them to do that.”    

The lawsuit was filed in 2017 due to the mass arrests of Iraqi nationals over technical immigration violations or past convictions. The Iraqi government did not process travel documents for deportation, leaving people vulnerable. Many of the people had not lived in Iraq for decades.

A deportation could result in torture or death due to changing conditions in Iraq. The class action lawsuit allowed detainees to be released and pursue other legal avenues for immigration status, such as allowing them to file for asylum or citizenship.

The lawsuit, Hamama v. Adducci, was filed against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. attorney general in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Other headlines for Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024:

• The Michigan Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) has issued a new report stating there’s a surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate in the state.
• The Detroit Water and Sewer Department launched a new EasyPay plan to help residents pay off past due water service balances.
• A Community Wellness Fair offering free resources and family fun will take place from 1 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10, at the Northwest Activities Center Field Immunizations, voter registration, job requirement and HeadStart enrollment will be available. Additionally, there will be free haircuts, book bags and food.
• The Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights and the Michigan Carpenters of African Descent is hosting a back-to-school and back-to-work community cookout on Saturday, Aug. 10, at the Union Carpenter & Millwright Training Center in Detroit, featuring food vendors, a school supplies giveaway and entertainment.
• The 43rd annual Dearborn Homecoming Festival is taking place this weekend, Aug. 2-4, at Ford Field Park.

Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.