plainpaul

A writer/editor for the Free Press expresses his point of view:

As a newspaper editor, as someone who has spent years in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, my brow tenses at the thought of Detroit’s uncountable problems. The reasons people leave. The budget mess at City Hall. The city’s beleaguered children.

But as a dad, I get to see this city through much more optimistic eyes, to appreciate the treasures, to see the Detroit of possibilities and fun.

I get to feel a little of the nirvana.

I know it may not always be that way. Once my family is here full-time, schools will be a huge, depressing issue. As the kids get older, so will their safety and ability to move independently around Detroit the way I did growing up.

Detroit’s troubles are never that far away, and I’m not blind to them. Even as my kids enjoy great public spaces downtown, a budget standoff between Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council threatens some 77 parks, including several of the city’s biggest. For how many city kids will that fundamentally alter the contours of their world, their childhoods?

A friend says our parents’ generation of Detroiters failed by leaving us a city that simply has to be endured. We stay, if we do, because we can take it. Because we’re loyal and tough enough to put up with the crime and ugliness, the desolation and acrimony.