EMERGENCE

Excerpt:

If you've been watching the fall of the American auto industry, you might have the impression that Detroit's become the saddest place in the United States. Rapper Ilana Weaver (aka Invincible) admits there's a lot of desperation in her city, but she insists there's hope aplenty, too, pointing to Detroit's official motto (“Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus,” which translates as “We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes”) as proof of its resilience in past calamities—from the 1805 fire that destroyed it to the five-day riot in 1967 that rocked its core.

“There's a lot of media coverage of Detroit that only shows the disinvestment, the abandonment, and the postindustrial aspects,” says the MC and community organizer, reached at her home. “What my work and my music focuses on is the way people here find innovative ways of dealing with those issues. There's community movements, a lot of self-reliance—whether it's people who take abandoned buildings and fix them up for housing, or people that turn abandoned lots into vegetable gardens. There's a lot of incredible work being done that doesn't get shown enough.”

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