Writer Gary Gildner looks back on a Flint that “gave joy to my youth”
By Jan Worth-Nelson To understand how writer Gary Gildner feels about his Flint childhood in the 1950s, some Latin is in order. Flint — specifically Flint’s legendary Holy Redeemer Catholic Church and school and its devoted diaspora — is at the heart of the second essay and central to many of the others in Gildner’s new collection, How I Married Michele and other journeys, just out from BkMk Press in Kansas...
Re-greening Flint: New city trees coming next spring via Mott Foundation grant
By Jan Worth-Nelson Last year, in light of threats from an aging tree canopy in the city, the C.S. Mott Foundation contributed $208,000 to the Genesee Conservation District (GCD) to remove more than 330 dangerously cracked and dead trees in the traffic islands, medians, and “parkways” between streets and sidewalks. Now, the foundation is granting $140,000 to replace those lost icons of the city’s urban forest. ...
Pierce Park restoration underway with community collaboration
By Jan Worth-Nelson An 80-acre park in Flint which had been overrun by neglect, arson and invasive species is getting a big dose of love and hoped-for restoration from a partnership between the College Cultural Neighborhood Association (CCNA), the Genesee Conservation District (GCD) and the City of Flint. Pierce Park, owned by the city since the early 1960s, lies between 1-69, Dort Highway, Gilkey Creek, and a residential swathe on...
Flint public schools’ confrontations with race and inequality inadequate, part of history and still an issue, Tendaji panel participants contend
By Jan Worth-Nelson Three generations of Flint residents who’ve been students in the Flint public schools agreed in a Tendaji Talk event Tuesday evening that they had not been adequately introduced to race or inequality issues in their education, and that they directly experienced the effects of systemic racism and inequality whether they understood it at the time or not. They further contended that systemic racism in the Flint...
Infrastructure work, environmental justice “can’t wait another generation,” Kildee and activist panel agree
By Jan Worth-Nelson As the U.S. Senate was voting to approve the American Jobs Plan 69-30 Tuesday morning, with 19 Republicans joining all Democrats, a group of Genesee County activists from environmental justice, health care, and education spoke out forcefully to U.S. Representative Dan Kildee(MI-5) in a zoom webinar about the $1 trillion plan now on its way to the House of Representatives. The roundtable, organized by the activist...
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