Neighborhoods Day targets blight, violence Groups promote connecting folks
BY ROBIN ERB FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER - AUGUST 3, 2008

Out on the sprawling pavement, shimmering under the midafternoon sun, it was a young boy who snagged everybody's attention Saturday. From behind a row of folding tables, those who'd been handing out bottled water and books and key chains swiveled to watch. Conversations stalled.

Even three small girls who'd been racing across the parking lot stopped to watch. "Don't think just because I'm little, I'm talking just to be talking," 9-year-old Jalen Elkins implored the small crowd. "This is for real."

Jalen was one of several speakers, singers, artists, community activists, school leaders, parents and youths who took part in neighborhood events throughout the Detroit area Saturday as part of the second annual Neighborhoods Day, organized by ARISE Detroit. The goal: Celebrate the city. Reconnect neighbors. Fight blight, violence and apathy.

Performances, a parade, face-painting and free food were planned throughout the day. Jalen, who finished his third-grade year at Northpointe Academy, hadn't planned on taking the microphone in front of the three dozen or so people who had gathered around the parking lot of the Martin Luther King Jr. High School near downtown.

But accompanying Weusi Olusola, a gunshot victim and founder of Pioneers for Peace, the boy began talking about people doing stupid things. He talked about violence. And he talked of a man who was caught in a stolen car with guns and is now in prison. "You don't make decision before you think," he told the crowd. "You've got to think."

Pioneers for Peace is a community group that teaches children about the impact of violence. Across town and perched on a truck lift outside an old Guardian Bank building, Chazz Miller and volunteers had spent part of the day scraping the building's blistered paint. In a stretch of Detroit marked by broken windows and weedy lots, the Public Art Workz founder and others envision a mural on these walls that will be painted in brilliant hues.

Miller took a break to hand out potato chips and hot dogs to passersby, explaining the project. Enticed by the smell of barbecue, a construction crew dropped by, vowing to return with extra paint for the project. And that may be precisely the point of Neighborhoods Day, said Leon Jones, former prison inmate-turned-musician who, with other members of gospel and R & B group the Resurrection, was setting up for an evening performance at a church on East Grand Boulevard.

Such events help people connect with each other and understand their role in the world, he said. "The community already has been saved by a higher power," he said. "Now it's our responsibility to be part of it and take part in it."

Contact ROBIN ERB at 313-222-2708 or rerb@freepress.com.

AMY LEANG/Detroit Free Press

Detroit artist Chazz Miller, 45, holds a copy of the hope-themed mural he plans to create at an old Guardian Bank in northwest Detroit, with the help of artist Jason Thomas, 23, right, also of Detroit, and members of the Brightmoor Community. The mural is to be completed by Angels' Night, Oct. 30.

Shannon Salisbury, 14, of Westland sings for Neighborhoods Day.