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We Have To Tell Our Own Story . . . And Build Upon It.
So I found myself reading USA Today, because that’s one of the luxuries of having a third grade education affords you, and came across a fairly mundane article about these tough economic times. The articles focused on small cities in North Carolina struggling to weather the current economic storm. It’s an innocent enough article until, for no apparent reason, the author decides to throw in:
“Main Street Mount Airy (N.C) itself looks nothing like the boarded-up downtowns in much of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.”
You gotta be kidding me. Is that sentence really necessary to tell this story about the demise of the textile industry in the south?
Without a doubt, the Great Lakes region has taken the brunt of the recent downturn in the American economy, with Michigan certainly suffering more than most, and it is easy to use Michigan as the media’s posterchild or exhibit A for whatever ails our republic and way of life. But are our main streets and downtowns really as bad as everyone makes them out to be?
The Let’s Save Michigan campaign is advocating for a new focus on our city centers and main streets and to push for policies and personal actions that will make them more livable and desirable. It is an area where we as a state could improve, but at the same time we already have a lot to build off of.
The USA Today comment, and similar media portrayals, are broad strokes of negativity that ignore the recent accomplishments of our cities. Just last week Marquette, a city that the folks who consider this fly-over territory would write off for dead, was voted the most Distinctive Destination in 2010 for a contest by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Similar distinctions have been awarded in recent years to Holland, Marshall, Petoskey, and Saugatuck. Traverse City, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and Ann Arbor have made significant strides in reviving their downtowns—making them more walkable, denser, and overall, more appealing. We are even seeing new signs of life in Flint and Detroit.
But this isn’t the Michigan that is covered by the national media. Who do we have to blame for that? Sure, a part of it is because it’s real and a portion of it is laziness on the part of media, but we also can’t escape blame ourselves. As much as we may bitch about how the national media portrays us, in the end, their language isn’t far off from what we say about ourselves.
We need to stop being our own worst critics and start taking actions that make the rest of the nation appreciate the state we love. All too often we are the ones who beat up on ourselves and are the ones that are first to point out our shortcomings and reinforce negative stereotypes.
As a young person that cares about the future of this state and its communities, it’s frustrating to see friends flee the Michigan looking for things that they can often find here, if only their minds weren’t already warped by popular misconceptions and stereotypes.
But what is ultimately most disheartening is to see people in Michigan tear down other parts of this state and feed the negativism. Yes, times are tough right now in Michigan, but they aren’t nearly as bad as the talk radio and the comments sections of the local newspaper websites would lead you to believe.
I think we all should be getting pretty damn tired of these negative portrayals of our state by now. So let’s do something about it.
Instead of writing off Detroit and taking the national media for its word, drive down 96 and explore the city beyond just sporting events and auto shows. What you’ll find is a city that is more fascinating and engaging than the 60 seconds tv reports or 800-word Time articles would lead you to believe. Instead of ignoring Grand Rapids and considering it a cultural backwater, go and visit it during the upcoming ArtPrize and you’ll find a delightful and surprisingly large downtown brought to life with the hustle and bustle of people enjoying their city. And despite the troubling times we are enduring at the moment, the same could be said for most of Michigan’s downtowns, from Kalamazoo to Alpena to Calumet.
At the end of the day, no one will tell our story better than us. So what story are we going to tell? We can either speak amongst ourselves and to others of the positive things that are going on in Michigan and take action, address our shortcomings and then build on our assets to bring about a revival of Michigan. Or we can continue the negativity and feed into, and reinforce, the media stereotypes that hold us back.
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