E-MERSE! As co-coordinators we (Bella and Christopher) are here to write about the group’s first day of the Community Organizing and Resistance Immersion. Today we visited another college campus, Detroit Mercy. We met with their Titan Equity Nourish Network (TENN). TENN works with the neighborhood around the college to connect students to community members through food deliveries right to the door of neighbors. They are attempting to get rid of the barriers between the two communities and form one community in the neighborhood. As a group we experienced and reflected how community organizing can look on a college campus and the differences apparent between Detroit Mercy and UP and how we can bring those differences to UP. Today helped the group analyze how different food related programs are not simple because of the many different social and institutional structures that may either limit or enhance programs.
We also visited a Museum! We went to the Detroit Historical Museum to get a glimpse of Detroit’s history. We started off by learning about how colonialization affected Indigenous peoples and moved into the development of Detroit’s industrial sectors through time. A big focus though was the Summer of 67 exhibit (focused on the Detroit Rebellion/1967 Detroit Riot), which was able to show how one perspective of a narrative can distort other’s perspectives based on who was sharing that narrative. This connects to the learning goals we came up with as co-coordinators and being able to recognize how history is told and how that influences today’s circumstances. We hope that the group can utilize the museum in how it shows different ways the history of Detroit is told and that they can connect that to their experiences on immersion.
-Bella Metcalf and Christopher Karo