Entries Tagged 'Flint Michigan' ↓

How many grooves does a record have? from Shawn Chittle on Vimeo.

100? 50? 2?

Brendan Savage from the Flint Journal reports:

FLINT, Michigan — The youngsters who take the ice Saturday afternoon for the first practice of the Flint Inner-City Youth Hockey Program won’t be the only novices at Perani Arena.

They’ll be joined by another first-timer — basketball star Mateen Cleaves.

Cleaves, the former Northern High and Michigan State star who went on to play in the NBA, has agreed to don a pair of skates and take the ice to show the youngsters that it’s OK to take a chance and try something new even if you might look a little silly at first.

The program is still looking for youngsters interested in participating. There is no cost and all equipment will be free courtesy of Perani’s Hockey World. No experience is necessary.

Registration forms are available at Perani’s Hockey World or the Flint Generals offices inside Perani Arena. Program founder Rico Phillips said pre-registration is important so players can be fitted with properly sized equipment.

The program is open to boys and girls aged 7-13 who live in the city of Flint.

Saturday’s workout is from noon-2 p.m.

90 Year-Old Grandfather Tells Story of Turning In Lost Wallet Containing $12,500 from Shawn Chittle on Vimeo.

My Grandfather, Robert K. Chittle, WWII veteran, of Flint, Mich, found a wallet in a parking lot in 1947. It contained $1,300 – which in today’s dollars is $12,500. He managed to find the owner and return the wallet and the money.

The man who lost the wallet was a UAW member, and the union wrote my Grandfather a thank-you letter.

In this video he recalls the events from over 65 years ago.

I got pretty choked up when I read the letter and heard him tell the story first hand, which I think caught him off guard and thus he got a little choked up too.

It’s one of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard.

Thanks to Eric W. and Michael Moore for posting my Flint/Haiti article on the front page of MichaelMoore.com today. I’m humbled and honored…

There is a working class, blue-collar bar I visit often in Flint called Jesters. To outsiders it might appear as a rough and tumble place, with an unsual mix of bikers, pool sharks, white folks, single moms, gangsters, old folks, black folks, autoworkers, young folks, latin folks, and everything in between. A true melting pot, defying its label as an economically segregated city. The people watching in here doesn’t get any better.

Located just inside the city limits of Burton – which is even poorer then Flint – people come to forget. With 25% unemployment, the highest crime rates in the nation, and a fleeing population, you have to wonder how smiles can possibly happen. And yet they do. You see people struggling. People are out of work. Some are working. Many are making ends meet. Others live on the edge. A sudden, costly car repair, for example, can rapidly spin out of control into a black hole of financial despair of which there is no way out. I’ve seen it firsthand, countless times.

My heart goes out to the people of Flint who did nothing to bring this economic devastation onto themselves. And they have enough to worry about without the problems of the world creeping in. Even global tragedies pale in consideration to the view outside their own front window. I’m reminded of the kids at Southwestern High School in Fahrenheit 9/11 that when viewing bombed-out Bahgdad, comment “There are parts of Flint that look like that!”

And now I get word that Jesters, this past Sunday, held a fundraiser. Not for its own townspeople, who could use a hand, but to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. I’d wager a significant amount that few people in Flint have ever set eyes on a Haitian in their entire life. Now, consider the result:

They raised over four thousand dollars for Haiti.

This in a town where one can purchase 50 homes for $60k (that’s $1,200 per home), where a dinner for four costs $24, and car dealers sell used cars with an internal mechanism that disables the car when you get behind on a payment – where ever you are.

You get the idea of the significance of this event, this amount of money, and how out of proportion it is for Flint.

Four thousand dollars.

Four thousand dollars from what Business Week called “America’s fastest shrinking city.” Four thousand dollars from a town that is not doing better than anyone else. Raising $4,000 is like raising $4 million dollars from a small cocktail party in New York. It’s way more than it should be, and you wonder just where the money can possibly be coming from.

When I heard the figure, I immediately felt like The Grinch, after he boo-hoos the townsfolk for trying to do something worthwhile as he sits on his perch wondering what all the fuss is. Then he sees the joy the event brings, the selflessness, the spirit of giving especially at a time when there is so little to give. And his heart breaks free and grows from two sizes too small, to fifty times its size, bursting all constraints.

To George Zaravelis, the owner of Jesters, and his lovely wife Genie, I cannot fathom how you did it. And the world now has an example of how the people of Flint – beaten down and counted out, still have a few more rounds left.

I have never been more proud of my hometown.

My hometown of Flint, Michigan needs all the help it can get. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is holding a public comment period from now until February 28th, 2010 to talk about cleaning up the Buick City factory lot, which is heavily contaminated. They might have a new business that wants to go in there, but obviously, this new business cannot afford – nor be expected to clean up – a 100 year-old industrial wasteland.

From mlive.com

The site’s cleanup is crucial to creating a truck-to-rail intermodal hub on the site that could create 600 jobs. Officials with the Genesee Regional Chamber of Commerce have said that the developer doesn’t want to take on long-term liability of environmental contamination at the site.

Please visit the special EPA comment website and tell them that Flint needs all the help it can get, and both GM and the U.S. Government certainly owe a debt to the people of Flint who  have sacrificed far more than their fare share. It’ll take you all of 2 minutes, and it will mean a lot to the people of Flint, and to me… thank you!

It is rarely appropriate to celebrate a death. All but the most reviled humans in history carry a certain sadness at the news of their passing. When Roger Smith, former Chairman of General Motors, died, however, it felt bittersweet. Michael Moore put Smith on the front page of his website and offered his condolences to Smith’s family. It was an appropriate gesture. However Smith was a man that single-handedly put GM on a path to bankruptcy, destroyed several automaking cities (namely Flint) and with that, destroyed countless thousands of families. So far as I know, Smith never expressed regret or remorse. His passing was not exactly cause for mourning. His genocide of the working class is not lost on anyone.

When I heard of former Flint Mayor James Rutherford’s passing, it also was bittersweet. I knew him mostly as a pizza store owner at the local strip mall near my childhood home on Atherton & Hammerberg Road. I was just a little kid in the early 80′s, and like most kids I liked pizza and video games. Rutherford was always kind to me. It wasn’t until I got older and looked back with adult eyes did I find out that “Mayor Rutherford” should have considered himself lucky to not have spent his twilight years in federal prison.

September, 1979. Michael Moore’s fledgling Flint Voice newspaper is two years old and is doing the kind of muckraking journalism that even today would be considered “controversial.”

Rutherford was using city and federal-funded employees to do his campaigning, as well as “forcing” contributions from them – which is patently illegal. Moore was going to break the story. Upon publication, it ignited a firestorm in Mayor Rutherford’s office. A few months later, in May of 1980, Rutherford sent the Flint police to the Lapeer Press Printing company, which printed the Voice to find out where Moore was getting his inside information from. He wanted to find Moore’s sources. But you see, any government intervention of the freedom of press violates just about every provision of that pesky US Constitution. The founding fathers put up major walls to keep the press and speech free (it is, after all, the FIRST amendment, not the tenth).

The result of this illegal search and seizure was none other than one of the more sensational media stories to emerge on the national scene. The New York Times, CBS, Detroit Free, Press, Detroit News, all ran stories condemning the police and mayor, as well as calling for a federal investigation. The national exposure brought Moore some of his first glimpses of a national audience. Most mayors would have been forced to resign, but arrogant Rutherford stuck it out somehow.

Rutherford was just getting started. In the early 80′s came the laughing-stock disasters that were the Hyatt, Waterstreet Pavillon, Windmill Place, and Autoworld. Shall I go on? By 1983 voters had enough, electing James Sharp, ending Rutherford’s nearly ten year reign. As Flint residents surveyed the city around them, they could see GM was taking its gigantic Flint tax breaks (courtesy of Rutherford) and heading to Mexico. Fisher One gone. Chevrolet, gone. It was all crumbling down on top of us.

All of this made for excellent journalism. The Flint Voice would eventually expand statewide to The Michigan Voice, with Moore leaving in 1986 to helm the national magazine Mother Jones. That didn’t last, and the rest is history. Moore went on to film Roger & Me, and it’s all downhill from there. The young, poor, idealist “Mike Moore” everyone knew in Flint might very well be running yet another bingo game right now if Rutherford had not constantly make the kind of mistakes that provided for great journalism.

So while I struggle to find anything of value Rutherford “accomplished” – the one thing he did do, along with Roger Smith, was create the world’s most revered voice on the left. And I suppose we have to thank him for that.

Rest in Peace, Mayor. I still like pizza.

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Robert Frost (1915)

Building a Public Light Rail System in Flint Michigan from Shawn Chittle on Vimeo.

My idea is to leverage the 100+ years of General Motors infrastructure so Flint Michigan could build a low-cost light public commuter system. All the railroad tracks are in already in place.

By building some basic platforms, establish a schedule, and put the trains on loop. People hop on and hop off as they need. Park and ride from the suburbs. It would add jobs, save gas and time.

Few cities in America have as many interconnected rail systems, and Flint could be a model for others to follow.