Imported from Detroit
| By Mike Tenbusch - Feb 10, 2011 2:23:08 PM ET |
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Categories: Education, Volunteerism, Advocacy, How I Live United, The LiveUnitedSEM Network
Categories: Education, Volunteerism, Advocacy, How I Live United, The LiveUnitedSEM Network
If you haven't seen the Chrysler commercial about Detroit, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc
This is what it feels like to find your voice.
Detroit’s strength has always been its muscle. In the big family of cities, we have always been the hellion, the rebellious child who came late to the party with a beer in his hand with enough charm to get away with it, and with a reputation for throwing a punch when the charm didn’t work.
For years at college campuses across the country, kids from Detroit and the suburbs formed spontaneous circles on dance club floors and in frat house living rooms and chanted, “Ain’t no party like a Detroit party, cause a Detroit party don’t stop.” I never saw kids from other cities do that, but that is just who we were.
Our toughness, our status as the problem child, is what held us together. It worked for us, in a really dysfunctional sort of way, until December 2008 when the leaders of the Big 3, the chiefs of our proverbial clans, went to DC and were given a universal smack down. Seems our siblings had had enough of our bravado, and they staged an intervention in front of a live TV audience to let us know. The fact that our Lions, the symbol of a city’s mettle, were finishing the NFL’s first 0 and 16 season thumped away any morsel of pride we tried to hold on to.
We had hit bottom, and it was a bottom we needed to hit.
But it stinks at the bottom. And Lord knows we’ve worked hard and taken some really hard hits to get back up. At some point, when you’re getting yourself cleaned up and you’re getting your feet back underneath you, you have to show up to a family gathering and let people know you’ve changed. It comes with risks, because everyone you’ve hurt doubts you, and you, yourself, have doubts too. But you step out anyway and say, “This is who I am.”
We’ve been to hell and back...
The hottest fire makes the hardest steel.
Hard work and conviction and the know-how that runs generations deep in every one of us.
That’s who we are.
That’s our story.
It’s a strong but humble conviction, not a false bravado, that marks Detroit now. And I’m proud to be imported from it.
This is what it feels like to find your voice.
Detroit’s strength has always been its muscle. In the big family of cities, we have always been the hellion, the rebellious child who came late to the party with a beer in his hand with enough charm to get away with it, and with a reputation for throwing a punch when the charm didn’t work.
For years at college campuses across the country, kids from Detroit and the suburbs formed spontaneous circles on dance club floors and in frat house living rooms and chanted, “Ain’t no party like a Detroit party, cause a Detroit party don’t stop.” I never saw kids from other cities do that, but that is just who we were.
Our toughness, our status as the problem child, is what held us together. It worked for us, in a really dysfunctional sort of way, until December 2008 when the leaders of the Big 3, the chiefs of our proverbial clans, went to DC and were given a universal smack down. Seems our siblings had had enough of our bravado, and they staged an intervention in front of a live TV audience to let us know. The fact that our Lions, the symbol of a city’s mettle, were finishing the NFL’s first 0 and 16 season thumped away any morsel of pride we tried to hold on to.
We had hit bottom, and it was a bottom we needed to hit.
But it stinks at the bottom. And Lord knows we’ve worked hard and taken some really hard hits to get back up. At some point, when you’re getting yourself cleaned up and you’re getting your feet back underneath you, you have to show up to a family gathering and let people know you’ve changed. It comes with risks, because everyone you’ve hurt doubts you, and you, yourself, have doubts too. But you step out anyway and say, “This is who I am.”
We’ve been to hell and back...
The hottest fire makes the hardest steel.
Hard work and conviction and the know-how that runs generations deep in every one of us.
That’s who we are.
That’s our story.
It’s a strong but humble conviction, not a false bravado, that marks Detroit now. And I’m proud to be imported from it.
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