On the Wolverine

Heading for Detroit on the Wolverine for the NDSG meeting. I love trains. A ticket to Motown -- $28 each way. Plus I got free upgrade from previous trips. I can't drive it for that and the travel time is about the same. Wish we had high-speed rail with a Chicago hub. I'd hardly ever fly.

Detroit power outage. A metaphor?

Power Struggle… Detroit schools continue to be a disinvestment basket case, even more so since the state takeover. The latest news is about school power outages which shut down 30 schools in the city Tuesday. Before Tuesday, schools had missed 130 days collectively through the end of January because of power outages. Now that number has climbed to 160.

While in Detroit, I'm hoping to see the Grace Lee Boggs and Jimmy Boggs school, a small school named after two of the heroes of the city's freedom movement. In a good piece in Huffington, Laura De Palma described the beloved community being created at the school, largely based on Dr. King's legacy.

She writes:

Many Detroiters have been resisting the city's emergency manager laws and the downtown corporate takeover and fighting to reinvent the city in a way that is just, transformative and paradigm-shifting. Activists in Detroit have been asking, "What kind of revitalizing does Detroit need at this point in history?" Gentrification and social entrepreneurship that ignores history and context and does not address the root causes of the economic disinvestment in the city of Detroit is not the kind of change we need.

Front Page...Check out the front page of today's Defender. It's Prof. Timuel Black still looking great at 95.

Go Portland...It looks like it's on in Portland. PPS leaders say they will try and scab out the strike. "We expect our regular PPS substitutes to work during a strike and plan to hire replacement teachers on a temporary basis while you are on strike," the document reads. "Staffing will be deployed where it is needed most."