It’s Never Been Easy To Be Black In Detroit
I hadn’t been to Second Baptist in years. The last time I went: An eighth-grade field trip, stocked with prank-playing boys, one of whom flipped a fingernail in my mouth after tricking me to open it.
A Flint Manifesto for the Rust Belt
Flint’s water crisis has become an alarm bell that’s ringing across the country, especially in the Midwest. Now that the poisoning of a Michigan city has become national news, the press and public are looking for lessons.
The Next Mobilization Effort: Unseating the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor
The police officers who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice may have escaped criminal charges, but the prosecutor who made that recommendation to the grand jury hasn't gotten off at all.
REASON: An Elegy For Tamir Rice
The Grand Jury of Cuyahoga County accepted County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s recommendation and declined to indict Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for murder...
The Cleveland Consent Decree: A Progress Report
With a settlement reached between the City of Cleveland and the Department of Justice and an independent monitor agreed on at the beginning of this month ...
Stop Being So Angry About Tamir Rice, Says Paper of Record. And Please Sit, Quietly
In an Editorial Board op-ed published in the Friday, October 16 edition of Cleveland's main newspaper readers are instructed to be "patient" with the Tamir Rice case.
The White People Are Not Marching On Cleveland
Detroit is gaining white people! CityLab has announced the “March of the Young White People” featuring Detroit's spike in caucasians, and the Detroit News reported that the white population of Detroit is up 8,000 people since last year.
The City-States of the Rust Belt
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. During the summer, on weekends and breaks, my friends would often go to Milwaukee (1 1/2 hours drive ) and Chicago (3 hours) with their families for vacations.
Reflections On A Cleveland Debate
Prior to the start of last Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, there was a part of me that hoped someone would get hit with a folding chair.
Ten Words Urbanists Should Stop Using; Or, the Unliveable, Unmade Place of City Planners
As an editor whose work intersects with that of urbanists, I am often required to clarify prose for readers. And let me tell you this plain: clarifying the words urbanists use is a lot of work.
The Brelo Verdict: Safety in Numbers for the Police
When the verdict came down Saturday in the Michael Brelo case—the case of the Cleveland police officer who found it necessary to fire 49 shots into a car, killing two unarmed people ...
Silence of the City: Why Isn’t Cleveland Speaking Out About Police Violence?
Hardly anyone noticed this last one. There were a few articles in the Plain Dealer and the national press jumped in a bit, and some of his friends and relatives did put some foil balloons and prayer candles on a telephone pole ...