John Cummings
By Tunde Wey
September 12, 2012
Southwest Detroit teems with energy. Its streets are lined with tacquerias, barbershops, retail stores and restaurants, and there is a strong show of neighborhood vibrancy with residents and visitors alike out walking around and riding their bikes, exploring. The density and walkability so notoriously absent from the city are alive here. Clark Park in Southwest Detroit, a verdant enclave over three blocks long, hosts family barbecues, softball games, and frisbee-catching dogs with their owners enjoying the ample shade. Here, it seems, Detroit is the city we all hope for; but Southwest Detroit also faces its own unique set of challenges.
Southwest Detroit, home to the largest Latino community in Michigan, is also struggling with high youth unemployment and an untenable immigration environment.
The community, an international border town, is experiencing growing tensions between its recent immigrant population and the border authority. And while its youth population, which is over 13,000 according to the 2010 Census, guarantees the area’s continued growth, there are few employment opportunities available to them -- according to the State Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth’s 2008 figures, Detroit had an unemployment rate of 54.7% for youth between 16 and 19 years of age. The situation has only worsened.
Despite the discouraging figures in what seems like an otherwise thriving multi-cultural neighborhood, there are passionate residents working diligently to address these issues. John Cummings is one of them.
John Cummings, 30, pastors
GRACE IN ACTION (GRACE) a Southwest Detroit-based Christian faith community working to engage youth and organize residents around key issues. A California native fluent in Spanish, Cummings moved to Detroit two years ago with his wife, Meghan Sobocienski.
Cummings says he started GRACE to address three issues he sees as paramount in the community: youth unemployment, immigration, and widespread skepticism of traditional religious institutions. For Cummings the only way to address this skepticism is to make faith relevant in the lives of its adherents, and to do that GRACE is negotiating the community’s most immediate concerns.
To address the challenge of engaging youth, GRACE currently organizes youth-led art, music and culture events such as their weekly poetry night and jam session.
GRACE also runs a weekly program called the
Youth Arts Initiative where youth to work on art projects after school -- a mural is the first major collective project born from this program.
Meghan Sobocienski speaks very passionately about “increasing local capacity” of the youth through skill development.
Sobocienski says a majority of Detroit city youth are ill-prepared for the so-called “knowledge economy,” the next iteration of the U.S economy that will rely heavily on technical specialization and high-tech computing.
This acknowledgement of the huge technical deficit in the community youth is the impetus for the ambitious
Youth Entrepreneurial Program. This training program will teach community youth to design, develop, market and sell smart phone apps and other software technology.
In a city with a high illiteracy rate as well as poor education infrastructure, teaching such skills is a daunting challenge, but Cummings and Sobocienski offer that the consequences of inaction weigh heavier than the costs of trying.
Immigration in Southwest has long been a tension-fraught affair with some residents complaining about routine border patrol harassment. Through accessible educational and community avenues like casual movie nights, GRACE informs residents about how to constructively frame the conversation around this contentious issue. GRACE will be convening a forum of local spiritual leaders to deliver a unified voice on the issue, and create safe communication channels between the community and immigration authorities.
The reluctance of GRACE to approach their faith ministry from a traditional perspective is seeded in the spiritual education of its founders. Cummings and Sobocienski, both products of the Lutheran seminary, speak about creating “a cutting edge religious experience” for the community, one that recognizes the intimate connectedness between the spiritual and social. This philosophy is evoked in their refrain “economic needs are spiritual needs."
In Southwest Detroit, it seems the enviable element isn’t the apparent fullness of life here but rather the dedication of spirited community groups such as GRACE that work hard to nurture this community.
Photograph by Marvin Shaouni Photography.