Let me start out by saying that I like that the Color Run took place in Ypsi this morning. Anything, in my opinion, that brings upwards of 15,000 people into the city, to spend their money, is a good thing, even if they do shut down a lot of streets, and leave tons of trash in their wake. It was incredibly cool to see Beezy’s, the Ugly Mug, and Sidetrack packed this morning, and a throng of people around the Growing Hope bicycle blender, waiting to buy smoothies from young Ypsilanti entrepreneurs. With all that said, though, I find the whole thing kind of weird… I just don’t get why anyone would spend $50 to have people throw shit in their faces as they jog… But, I guess, as religion plays less and less a part in the daily life of Americans, folks are hungry for (purchased) experiences that allow them to feel as though they’re part of something bigger than themselves… And, I suppose, this is probably better than goading bulls as they stampede through narrow alleyways, or any number of other things.

When I first heard that Ypsi would be one of 30 U.S. cities to host a 5K Color Run, and that some of the proceeds would be going to local non-profits, I sent off a note to the organization, asking just how much money our non-profits were likely to get. They told me, “The charities and their requirements, needs, partnerships, fundraising, disclosure limitations and agreements vary with each venue,” and suggested that I contact the charities directly. (The local charities that partnered with the Color Run were Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels, SOS Community Services, Michigan ElvisFest, Ypsilanti Area Jaycees, Downtown Association of Ypsilanti, Growing Hope and Food Gatherers.) While I’ve yet to reach out to any of them directly, I did hear from an anonymous source that the total contribution was in the ballpark of $13,000, with those charities that turned out the most volunteers this morning, getting larger shares.

So, here’s the math as I figure it… The last official count that I heard was that 17,500 had registered for today’s run. According to their site, registration, depending on how big of a team you to have, runs from $45 to $55. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll be conservative, and assume $45. 17,500 people, paying $45 a piece, would yield a whopping $787,500. Assuming my source was right, and our local charities received $13,000, that means they received considerably less than 2% of the total take. And, for that $13,000, the corporate entity behind the Color Run not only got a lot of free publicity, but they also got a great deal of free labor… Not a bad business model, huh?

But, like I said, our local business people had a great day, and the neon corn starch-covered people that I came in contact with were all nice. Still, something seems odd about it… Maybe I’m just jealous that it didn’t occur to me to commoditize an Indian religious ritual.

I’ll give them credit, though. They’ve done a bang up job of marketing this thing.

[note to self: Now, I just need to find a way to Americanize this festival in Lebanon and bring it to the midwest with a pop soundtrack.]

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I think that this might also mark the end of legitimate rave culture. (It occurred to me this morning, as I was watching neon covered midwestern folks jogging into the park, where techno music was being blasted, that this is what rave culture looks like when it’s marketed to the suburban masses.)

To my knowledge, not much has changed since I first posted this a year ago, at least relative to how the money is shared with those non-profits that assist with the marketing of these events, and provide the free labor which makes them possible. There have, however, been changes on other fronts. Most notably, a competitor, seeing what a cash cow the Color Run is, has decided to get into the act. And, in fact, this group, called Color Me Rad, will be hosting a run of their own in Detroit on the very day the Color Run will be in Ypsi… Oh, and others have begun to join me in pointing out that this whole thing is a scam. Hopefully, over time, this will build, and the organizers will be forced to give more than 2% of their proceeds to the communities they shut down and trash… Of course, everyone seems to know how terrible of an organization the Susan G. Komen Foundations is, and yet they continue to keep right on going. The sad reality, I think, is that people just don’t give a shit. They like wearing pink ribbons, running through clouds of neon cornstarch, and feeling as though, by doing so, they’re making a difference.

Just to be clear, though, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t host this event. It’s good for business, and it brings a ton of people to Ypsi. I just wish that our non-profits shared a bit more in the obscene wealth that’s being created on our turf.

[note: Those who are interested in going deeper on this are encouraged to read through the 100+ comments which were left when this post first ran.]

MARK: Here’s your first question… Were you born in Michigan? And, if not, how old were you when you first moved here, and what were the circumstances surrounding the move?

DUSTIN: I was born and raised in Michigan, specifically Otsego… a small town off US-131, in between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. My parents also both grew up in southwest Michigan: my mom in Otsego, my dad in neighboring Allegan. With the exception of a brief stint on my dad’s part in Kalamazoo, they’ve lived in one or the other their entire lives.

MARK: But, if I’m not mistaken, you did live outside the state for a while, didn’t you?

DUSTIN: Yep. I lived in Portland, Oregon for about a year and a half, starting in 2006. Aside from that, I’ve been in Otsego, Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, or Ypsilanti.

MARK: What brought you back from Oregon? It’s been my experience that people don’t generally return from there.

DUSTIN: It wasn’t the right time. There was life-progress that I thought would be easier to make in Michigan, where I didn’t have the handicap of not knowing what the fuck I was doing. Well, I guess one has that handicap anywhere, but I had a little more direction in Michigan than I was ready to muster in Portland.

MARK: So the conditions weren’t right for you to emerge from your cocoon as a fully-formed, radiantly-beautiful butterfly of a man… but now they are?

DUSTIN: Something like that. It’s a little more banal, though. It’s more that I now feel as though I can economically manage myself a little better, and make smarter choices, compromise with potential clients better… things like that. If it’s a matter of “becoming a man/adult,” it’s only inasmuch as I’m not as sensitive to constructive, or even non-constructive, criticism as an artist/designer… “The customer is always right,” y’know.

MARK: Did this awakening have anything to do with the epic dust-up between you and our mutual friend The Non-Local Banker?

DUSTIN: Yeah, I’ve got to get outta town before I make any other enemies.

MARK: I was just wondering if that’s when you officially gave up, decided that you had to play the game, adopted the “customer’s always right” mindset, and lost your last shred of idealism?

DUSTIN: It was a foregone conclusion. According to Ian Fulcher, I made that leap years ago. He loves to point out my tragic fall from punk idealism to shameless capitalism.

MARK: I think you still had a little fight left in you when you took on the bankers.

DUSTIN: Nah, I have a decent amount of fight left in me. I consider myself a “radical pragmatist.” There’s still a lot of stuff I have a big problem with, though re: capitalism, government, mass media, and the other usual suspects. However, as a friend of mine once said: “If you have cancer, you’re not going to go to the indie rock hospital.” I’m radical when it makes sense. Shooting myself in the foot doesn’t make sense. I’ve done enough of that to be limping for life.

MARK: So, what’s the plan? Back to Oregon? To do what?

DUSTIN: Yep, back to Oregon. Portland specifically for the city amenities, but Oregon in general for the natural beauty and milder weather. With the exception of working at Encore Records, I’ll be doing basically the same things I do here: freelance art and design, DJing parties/weddings/whatever, and writing… Hopefully a lot more of the latter than I do here, although I’m not making anyone, including myself, any promises.

MARK: Are you just learning how to write? Is that a skill you need to be successful in Portland?

DUSTIN: No, I’ve been doing it a long time, though I still feel like I’m learning. I used to write music and culture articles for The Ann Arbor Paper when that was a thing, with varying degrees of aesthetic success. I’ve been trying to write a graphic novel, as well as some other essays and a non-fiction book, but I’m holding myself to really high standards, so nobody has really seen much evidence of the progress. It’s slow going.

MARK: What is it about Oregon that you find compelling, other than the natural beauty and the weather?

DUSTIN: Not much. I mean, I like the “vibe” out there, I suppose. It’s as characteristically lazy and slow as it’s depicted on some sketches on Portlandia, or maybe more like the depiction of Austin in Slacker, although this is less true now that it’s such a hot place to move. It’s just a very comfortable place for me. It should be noted that I don’t give a rat’s ass about the music or art scene out there. There’s plenty of it, but I care about MAYBE 1% of it. It’s less interesting certainly than Detroit, and Ann Arbor and Ypsi when those are going full-steam… I actually think the time is ripe to be doing stuff around here, minus maybe Ann Arbor. That’s not my primary concern, however.

MARK: Since you brought the subject up, what’s your biggest gripe with the Ann Arbor scene? And how do you see it evolving in your absence?

DUSTIN: Well, I don’t really have a gripe about it, from a cultural standpoint; I’m simply not as interested as I used to be in such things, but that’s not the community’s fault. I will concede that I’d like to see more people do something that’s not a rock band, exercise a little more imagination, but that’s not a new feeling nor one that’s any stronger now than at any other time. Besides, if people like doing it, and other people like supporting it, who am I to say? Ann Arbor specifically is admittedly kinda lame at this point, just kind of a yuppie watering hole/undergrad pit stop en route to Brooklyn or whatever, but that’s not why I’m moving. Like I implied earlier, the proximity to Detroit and the tight-knit scene in Ypsi kind of remedy those issues. As for evolution sans moi, I’m sure the area’s propensity for transience will keep things fresh in one way or another. I don’t feel like I’m leaving too much of a mantle to take up, but I’m confident that there will be people around to do something comparable.

MARK: If I didn’t have my roots sunk so deep into Michigan, I’d consider making the move. I’ve always had a fondness for Portland. I know it’s become cliche, but it really is a great place. I just hope that, with so many young, talented people there, you’re able to find gainful employment.

DUSTIN: Me too. My goal is to not be dependent on the city for employment, because you’re absolutely right in your implication that the job market is horrible. It doesn’t have the infrastructure of NYC, San Francisco, and all of the other big cities that “the creative class” tend to migrate toward. The miracle of the internet age, though, is that it doesn’t necessarily matter. If I need to, I have friends who can get me a dumb service job, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can avoid as much.

MARK: I have to believe there’s always room for someone who can so deftly incorporate gynecologic imagery into his work.

DUSTIN: Hahaha, I was actually just writing the html code for the page on my portfolio that will feature that controversial image.

MARK: What’s left to do before you go? Is there a list of Michigan things that must be accomplished before entering this new phase of life?

DUSTIN: I’m trying to spend a little more time exploring and appreciating Detroit before I leave. I didn’t have a car from 2004-2012, so my visits in that time were pretty limited. I’d also like to get back to the U.P. I also might start a Link Wray-ish instrumental party band for the summer, if I can get my shit/friends together for it.

MARK: So how did you spend your time in Portland when lived out there before? What did you do for a year and a half>

DUSTIN: Drank shitty beer, walked and rode a bike a lot, worked at American Apparel, met my best friend Cait, played in a Replacements/Alex Chilton/T. Rex/Pavement amalgam power trio called FOREVER STOKED, recorded my best record, saw the legendary noise/improv band Smegma multiple times, did some of my worst cartooning since age 18, worked at a toy store, got offered a job at the American Apparel factory in L.A. that I ended up turning down, entertained my first serious suicidal thoughts, drank Everclear, got offered sex in a filthy house-party bathroom (same night as the Everclear), drank a ton of super-good coffee, put my finger in a sea anemone’s “mouth,” and pretended that I had a clandestine relationship with Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy’s) to entertain my hero Ricky Delucco.

MARK: Did Dov make love to you and/or photograph you?

DUSTIN: It never got that far. I was actually supposed to be his assistant’s assistant, but I never flew down for the interview. I’m sure, one way or another, I would have been fucked, though possibly not in a sensual way.

MARK: Is that why you came running back to Michigan… because you were jilted by Dov Charney? And how cool is it that assistants get assistants in LA?

DUSTIN: I actually jilted Dov. I was explicitly informed that casual sex would be an incredibly likely part of the deal, which was hard to turn my back on, but I just couldn’t see myself in L.A… The assistant who was trying to hire me actually died tragically a year and change later, likely due to overexertion from working 22 hour days and drinking endless amounts of Starbucks (but it should be said that that’s conjecture). She was my age. Weird.

MARK: Who is Ricky Delucco? (I’m too lazy to resort to Google.) And what has he done to earn your respect?

DUSTIN: Ricky Delucco doesn’t need to earn respect, he demands it. This is by sheer force of his beautiful aura and gregarious laugh. That said, he’s also an amazing draftsman and designer, one of those people that makes me look like a total chump by comparison, but nonetheless showers my work with praise. He also doesn’t prefer to be called Ricky, but I can’t resist.

MARK: Tell us about this imagined liaison with Dave Thomas.

DUSTIN: The imagined affair with Dave Thomas was just something that came out of a stream-of-consciousness conversation; the specific origins of which are a mystery lost to the sands of time. In other words, “you had to be there,” but besides Rick and myself, those that were there were largely unamused, so maybe being there didn’t help.

MARK: Did you take the person up on the party sex? I ask because I was once made a similar offer and declined. It was the only time I’ve ever been propositioned by an attractive young woman who was completely unknown to me, so I have fond memories of it. I was at a baby shower that had somehow evolved into something much different with the addition of strangers, who had apparently been drinking all day. A nice young woman, after a short conversation, asked me to join her in descending the stairs we were standing next to, and defiling the basement of the unsuspecting homeowner, at which point I had to tell her that I was the homeowner, the basement was already sufficiently filthy, and the woman standing about ten feet from us was my wife. I believe she moved on to someone else… I later had to stop her friend from having sex with another guest in our bathroom.

DUSTIN: I rejected the bathroom sexual advances, but I assure you that this was an accident caused by the aforementioned consumption of Everclear (side note: Art Alexakis of the band Everclear still lives in Portland, or at least he did. My friend Ami, who now owns Brass Tacks Sandwiches, used to work at an ice cream parlor at which Mr. Alexakis was a regular patron. She described him as being haunted by the spectre of defeat at every turn.) The woman who propositioned me had asked me prior if I had a girlfriend. When I said no, she said “SO IF YOU HAD SEX WITH SOMEONE TONIGHT, YOU WOULDN’T BE CHEATING ON ANYONE?”. She then suggested we go wait in line for the bathroom. When it was her turn, she said “would you care to join me?”, to which I responded “pfffft, we can’t both pee at once.” Later that night, I made some very dubious choices with one of my roommates, but I’m going to keep that one vague to protect the innocent.

MARK: Describe your work.

DUSTIN: Basically, I do illustration and design work, and I also moonlight as a DJ playing mostly 45s from the 1950s/60s. Some of the design work is done by analog means (pen and paper, rub-on letters, and the like), but most of it is augmented digitally in some way or another. My over-arching aesthetic is influenced heavily by pre-digital cartoonists and graphic designers (Robert Crumb, Milton Glaser, Seymoure Schwast, George Maciunas, Peter Bagge, Basil Wolverton, etc.). If folks are interested, they can view samples of my work at DustinKrcatovich.com. I also run a small art and sound label called FM Dust, which is currently semi-dormant but will rise again, just like the phoenix.

MARK: Was Ann Arbor too small for both you and Jeremy Wheeler?

DUSTIN: Probably, but he and I super-tight bros from way back when, so I don’t know if we’d see it that way.

MARK: If you could take one person from Ann Arbor with you to Portland, who would it be?

DUSTIN: Tough one. The first person that came to mind is my roommate, Jen Munford.

MARK: Do you feel bad for abandoning her?

DUSTIN: Nah… My departure just increases the likelihood of her continuing to like me. I do most of my sulking and complaining at home.

MARK: Will you be defacing any billboards before you leave?

DUSTIN: I wouldn’t dream of it. Not because it shouldn’t happen, just because I’m a wuss.

MARK: What did you learn from the exchange over the Bank of Ann Arbor’s “non-local banker” campaign?

DUSTIN: Not much. It was fun, if a little distressing, to watch that little gag open up old wounds and latent rivalries that have nothing to with me. Everyone needs to lighten up. Any high-falutin’ commentary from my end notwithstanding, it’s all just a joke.

MARK: Have you ever thought of seducing Dave Thomas’s daughter, Wendy? According to Wikipedia, she graduated from the University of Florida in 1983 with “a bachelor’s degree in consumerism.” I didn’t know that you could major in consumerism.

DUSTIN: I’m pretty sure that’s what most of the students at the University of Michigan are studying right now. That’s why downtown Ann Arbor’s a quasi-corporate food court now, and the closest thing to radicalism you usually see is either half-hearted, or perpetrated by people my parents’ age. I’ve never dated a redhead before, but I’d be intrigued to start any old time.

MARK: I hate to ruin the illusion, but she no longer has the red hair, and looks like this. She is, however, filthy rich.

DUSTIN: Oh, man, I found some really mean comments about her after following those links. Poor rich woman. That said, I think I’ll pass. I did consider becoming a gigolo for middle-aged wealthy widows when I moved to Portland the first time, with the smokescreen of an artist/patron relationship, but I never followed through.

MARK: If you woke up one morning to find that someone had traded your feet for your hands, what would you do?

DUSTIN: There’s no PG answer to that one, my friend.

MARK: Yes, I think you’ll fit right in in Portland.

DUSTIN: I dunno, I’m scared of fixed-gear bikes and I’ve never gone mushroom-hunting, but I’ll do my best.

MARK: What’s the ideal job for you?

DUSTIN: Professional roustabout/drifter who owns a houseboat. I don’t know anything about that, though, so probably cartoonist, although I come in and out of that field of interest, and I worry almost everyday about early-onset arthritis crushing all of my dreams.

MARK: I don’t know it’s of epidemic proportions, but, as you mention suicidal thoughts, I feel as though I should mention that, as nice as Portland is, there seem to be a lot of people leaping off of buildings. It’s something about the rain. I don’t suppose it will be too bad for someone moving from the relatively sunless state of Michigan, but I thought that I should mention it. Be sure to take your vitamin-D and your light therapy lamp, OK?

DUSTIN: Thanks for the concern. There’s no two ways about it: winter in the Pacific Northwest is gloomy as shit. The one positive about snow is that it’s bright white (well, until it’s brown and slushy, anyway), so at least that offsets Seasonal Affective Disorder a teensy bit. That said, it’s usually about 15-20 degrees warmer in the winter in Portland, so it’s a tradeoff.

MARK: It’s at the forefront of my mind at the moment because I just recently got a text from a friend in Portland. Someone had jumped to his death right outside his office window. I suspect that a lot of it is the weather, but I imagine that some folks also move to Portland expecting for their lives to turn around, and then have to deal with reality. But, like I hinted at before, I don’t have any data to support the notion that people are taking their lives in Portland more than anywhere else. For all I know, we have more suicides per capita in Ann Arbor.

DUSTIN: I’ve heard that both Seattle and Portland have exceptionally high suicide rates. Rain and grey can do that to people. I’m steeling myself for it, though.

MARK: Do you have a question for me?

DUSTIN: Have you ever seen Pete Larson naked?

MARK: As you likely know, it’s very difficult to avoid accidental intercourse with one’s bandmates… So, do you have a final comment for the people of Michigan?

DUSTIN: Is it ever! Closing statement: so long, suckers. Nah, nah, barring unforeseen obstacles, Michigan will see me again plenty. This isn’t goodbye, just see ya later.

MARK: Oh, and I’ve just been asked by Concentrate Media, to come out and do some live exit interviews at Connor O’Neils on the 28th. Would you like to join the panel?

DUSTIN: Sure, why the heck not?

update: If you’d like to attend the Concentrate event on the 28th in person, and see me interview the likes of Dusty, Jacqui Robbins and Newcombe Clark, you can sign up here.

[Be sure to check out the rest of our Ypsi/Arbor Exit Interviews.]

MARK: What is Small & Mighty?

HELEN: We’re still in the defining stages of Small & Mighty, but SAM… my new acronym, since we can’t really use S&M… attempts to provide a more formal support system for businesses in their beginning years. It was already in place to some extent. We found it around town, in bars, at our houses, in the neighborhoods, etc. We were already asking for advice, comparing notes, and just generally talking shop with one another. So far ,our SAM meetings have been somewhat structured in theme, but have also just served as a sounding board for questions, concerns, and issues that we face as very small business owners.

LISA: Just to add to what Helen said, and throw in a little snarkiness… I DESPISE NETWORKING. I love Small & Mighty because we don’t wear nametags, and we always have cheese at our get-togethers. They’re actually fun, and I don’t dread them. Getting together with other self-employed folks — no matter how different our services or products — to slog through the challenges, or share super helpful, positive ideas is… wait for it… awesome.

JEAN: I’m going to follow up on what Lisa said with more of what we are NOT. We are not a start-up incubator. We are not focussed on any one sector… Both of those areas are well covered by other groups in the community… I’m pretty sure even the term ‘small’ is a relative term. We’re a group of newer business owners… I’m the exception– maybe our first entrepreneur-emeritus… who are interested in learning from each other and finding collaborative opportunity. We are also generally in the progressive, creative class category. Many of us are involved in the service sector, but we’ve been reaching out to other types of entrepreneurs. I think they could enrich the social stew and the collaborative potential. We are in the process of defining our mission. There are no official membership criteria. Most small businesses have no choice but to grow incrementally, so it seems we are all comfortable waiting for our identity to emerge naturally. There is no hierarchy, and there are no ‘deliverables.’ No one is paid to run this. If someone thinks they can contribute, and they run an independent business, they are welcome to join.

MARK: Why is a group like Small & Mighty necessary?

HELEN: I’m not sure how necessary SAM is, but I do know it’s incredibly helpful. SAM creates a forum for super-small business owners to ask concrete questions like, “Who has a good accountant?” or “Does someone have a van I could borrow this weekend?” or “I’m looking for some funding sources – who’s successfully gone that route?” to more abstract ideas like work-life balance, running successful meetings, and managing staff.

LISA: Yes. I second all that. We want to pool our complaints and successes, and learn from them. I guess to put it simply, if I can share a ‘Challenge-Overcome’ story that prevents someone else from going through it the hard way, or at least expedites it, then the group is working.

JEAN: Yes! Within SAM, we can comfortably share our ignorance and failures as well as our successes. We talk ‘learning curve’ all the time. I’m not sure that happens at most ‘networking’ events. Someone at a SAM gathering brought up the term ‘co-opetition.’ That’s the other element I would emphasize. We are committed to each other’s success, even when we’re in the same field. I think this may, in the end, be our differential. We are focussed on positive relationships with each other, our co-workers, our customers, our community. Because it works. It makes our businesses better. My 2$ theory: I think small businesses can harness a kind of reverse economy of scale when they work together — relationships based on trust and goodwill are more efficient — and a lot less expensive. That, and being flexible, are the two big assets small businesses have going for them when they go up against the goliath of Big ‘C’ capitalism.

MARK: What were the circumstances that brought the three of you together? And, if, in the process of answering that question, you could each introduce yourself and tell us what you do for a living, that would be great.

HELEN: I’m one of the owners of eat. We’re a catering company, we have a food cart, and a carry-out space on Packard, here in Ann Arbor. Jean hired me when I was in high school at the old Jefferson Market, which was where I met my business partner, Blake Reetz. I think I also met Lisa at the old Jefferson Market, but we work together quite often on the same events. She hosted our food cart when we were first starting out, a couple years ago. We’ve also partnered with her and many other wedding vendors to organize The Wedding Party, which is a not-your-average wedding show… Lisa first approached me about this at last year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival. She said that she and Jean were talking about starting a sort of network-y — support-ish group for small business owners. I think they had that meeting and decided they needed a third organizer to round out their team, so they asked me to join.

LISA: I’m the owner and manager of pot & box. We are a full-service flower shop with daily deliveries and floral design services for weddings and events. We also provide horticultural decor for residences and businesses, with an emphasis on the extraordinary and unusual. We also offer container garden design services to facilitate folks planting up all those pots & boxes out there… Ha! I guess it really does all start back at the Jefferson Market. I lived around the corner, and ate there at least once a day. OK, sometimes three.

JEAN: I used to own Jefferson Market. Now I work for Zingerman’s Community of Businesses to improve our environmental impact. I started my business in order to make the kind of life I wanted for myself and my family. What I learned quite accidentally, as people in the community became very attached to the business, and we became a community center, was that people yearn for community. We were not a perfect family or a perfect business, but we offered something people really craved — and it had nothing really to do with the coffee or the food. I really believe in community. I think we all know we need it, and we all know that, when we build it in the right way, our lives improve. I also believe in ownership… especially for women. Legacy, I’ve learned, happens in unpredictable ways… see eat, Helen and Blake’s business. I guess I hope SAM might be a part of that too. I’m doing this to apply what I’ve learned, and also to spend time with people I really adore. Lisa and I always talked business nuts and bolts. Helen and I do that too. We just, as Helen said, thought we’d broaden and formalize the conversation.

MARK: Until recently, Small & Mighty had been called YEP, which stood for Young Entrepreneurial People… Why did you decide to change the name?

HELEN: We got some flack from people who were part of the YEP network but didn’t consider themselves young. We always thought of “young” as a loose term. I think that’s how it went anyway… Lisa was more in charge of that one.

LISA: We also got flack from people when we changed the name. As someone suggested in an offline comment, “I think you’ll find that the men in the group won’t like ‘Small & Mighty,’” to which I said, after I was done scoffing, “Well, individually, we are small and mighty, and collectively too. It’s perfect. I love it.” Ironically, I was the stubborn one that wanted to call us YEP. Then, after fielding many, many comments questioning the “Y is for Young,” I posted a call for a new name on the group’s Facebook page saying, “What should we call our small and mighty group?” The catalyst to change the name was hearing that we had won the Awesome Foundation grant, and, after a brief Facebook discussion, I renamed the group. SAM.

JEAN: We are not a brand or a marketing group. The name could change again. I am not young. I know ageism exists, so I’m happy we shed the “young.” I also never believe it’s too late to start a new chapter, or to take ownership. I hope we attract people across the age spectrum who are trying something new. I think intergenerational conversation has been lost because we always are dividing and compartmentalizing socially… More cheap philosophy points for me!

MARK: What will your $1,000 grant from the Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation be used for?

HELEN: $1,000! We are so excited and honored to be granted that money.

LISA: Yes! Huzzah! As I said in the application to the Awesome Foundation, we’d love to pay someone for the organizational tasks. (Because, as small business owners, we’re REALLY good at delegating, right ladies?) We’d like to build and cultivate an online presence. We’d like to host inspirational events. I’ve been looking at the monthly meet-up in Detroit called Open City for ideas. They have really terrific panel discussions, and always a great turn out.

JEAN: I see the Awesome Foundation grant as seed money to help us grow. I don’t want SAM ever to become a burden on small business owners who almost always have limited resources. Give us a year and we’ll parlay that $1000 into something, yep, Awesome. That’s what entrepreneurs do. As Lisa said, some will go to essential, but everyday, expenses that will allow the awesome to happen, and some will be held aside for magic-making opportunities. Not sure what form that will take, as the whole group needs to weigh in, but we’ll be happy to report back when we know.

MARK: What do you see as your geographic boundaries? I ask because, with Lisa moving to Detroit, and opening a second Pot & Box store there, I’m wondering if there might be opportunities to join forces with some of the people who are doing exciting work there.

HELEN: So far our geographic boundaries have been the Ann Arbor-Ypsi area, but I feel confident with this new Pot & Box space SAM will have some ties to Detroit.

LISA: Absolutely. I have always maintained that I am a sheepdog, herding like-minded people together. Last week, the staff of Sweet Heather Anne met me at Cliff Bell’s for Open City, and a few of our entrepreneurial friends from Detroit just attended our SAM visioning seminar with Paul Saginaw of Zingerman’s. Soooooo, it’s already happening!

JEAN: I don’t think we are interested in defining geographic boundaries or cultivating that sort of division particularly. I really love Detroit and think it holds the key to Michigan’s future. For many of our group members, the Detroit area would define their market more so than just Ann Arbor-Ypsi. I would never want us to hold ourselves apart from Detroit if any entrepreneur there thought they could have something to gain by partnering with us. It would be super cool if they would sit with us at our welcome table.

MARK: To play Devil’s advocate for a minute…. What would your response be to someone who said to you, “We don’t need Small & Mighty because we already have a Chamber of Commerce“?

HELEN: SAM and the Chamber of Commerce serve different purposes. It’s always felt that the Chamber of Commerce isn’t for super small businesses. SAM provides its network with person-to-person communication lines and support.

LISA: Exactly. And, I would go further to say that someone could ask why we need SAM if we have Think Local First. To which I would answer, that SAM is a hyper-local, user-based, small business support group. I appreciate Think Local First, and have been a member since the beginning. But I can’t be vulnerable about my struggles at the annual TLF meeting like I can sitting around a giant table, eating cheese, and drinking wine with the SAM peeps.

JEAN: Yes to all that Lisa said. I also have been a longtime supporter and past board member (twice!) of TLF. We are… at least on my part… intentionally something quite different. We have no standard ‘deliverables’ like the Chamber or TLF – no marketing function, no public campaigns, and, until now, no real presence. We are a collaborative, scrappy little nuts-and-bolts support group for entrepreneurs.

MARK: What’s the biggest problem facing local entrepreneurs such as yourselves today? Is it access to working capital?

HELEN: Working capital is certainly the biggest obstacle for both start-up and growth. Blake and I keep finding our business at a place where we could potentially expand, but with what money? We get to a spot where we can make it with the infrastructure that we have, but we can’t grow with that infrastructure. Then, in order to grow our business, we have to add more of everything – kitchen equipment, staff, vehicles, etc. How to get that capital to push us up again is always a huge question.

LISA: Working capital, gimme! Of course it’s a challenge. You have to be creative. Or throw it on the credit card and bust some ass to pay it off. But, then again, I am a huge advocate for challenges bringing out the most creative solutions. I think there can be a balance between sourcing funding in creative ways and making it work when you can’t.

JEAN: Access to capital provides the capacity to plan ahead. It’s a tool. The banking system for small and big business are separated, and funds for small, localized businesses are very constricted right now. New pathways are opening. People like Michael Shuman are working to open new channels. The majority of sustained job growth happens in small businesses- – even Romney campaigned on that – but we’re not supporting them sufficiently. Access to capital is also a limiting factor to pursuing environmental sustainability for small businesses. One has to look beyond upfront costs to savings on operating costs to see how it pays for itself – but banks don’t want to go there. Small businesses can’t easily get investors (few qualify legally) and everything from a bank is tied to equity now.

MARK: Who can join Small & Mighty? What kinds of entrepreneurs are you looking for? Are there certain sectors that you’re focused on?

HELEN: The SAM network has been pretty diverse so far. We have folks who, like Jean, are small business/community supporters and great resources. We have folks like Lisa and I who have been in business for a handful of years with an established base. It’s been really interesting to see who comes and what brings them. We aren’t really looking for any certain kind of entrepreneur. It’s great to get in a room with a bunch of people who own very different businesses and find that there some common issues that we all face.

LISA: Our only ‘you must be this high to ride’ stipulation is that we ask that people who attend are “happening,” as Jean says — People who are business-runners, self-employed, or non-profit organizers. This isn’t the place for people who are thinking about maybe this idea that might work for a business… We want reports from the field, and we want to talk about them over a cheese plate.

MARK: So, what just happened a Cesar Chavez?

DANIEL: Cesar Chavez Academy (CCA), the largest charter school in Detroit, and second largest in Michigan, just won a union election by a greater than 2-to-1 margin. They elected to join the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Michigan ACTS), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFT Michigan, and the AFL-CIO. CCA has 4 campuses — lower elementary (K-2), upper elementary (3-5), middle (6-8), and high (9-12) — and educates about 2,200 students. The size of our bargaining unit is about 150 and is comprised of teachers, specialists, counselors, and social workers. CCA is managed by a private company, The Leona Group, so staff are not considered “public employees.” Because of this, the election, and subsequent contract, will be sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – the federal agency that oversees private-sector labor laws.

The election victory is the culmination of months of organizing that began last April. After building an Organizing Committee, the campaign went public at the beginning of the school year, in late August, and a petition was filed with the National Labor Relations Board at the end of December, after a large rally where hundreds of members, parents, and community supporters demanded a quick election. The election was scheduled in early January.

MARK: Am I correct that, while there have been successful attempts to organize in other states, that this is the first charter in Michigan to unionize? And, if that’s the case, what did we learn from these experiences elsewhere?

DANIEL: Actually, this isn’t the first charter school in Michigan to organize. AFT-MI represents two other charter schools — most notably Arts Academy in the Woods (AAW), a charter school in Fraser that unionized last year. AAW is also a member of Michigan ACTS. But, yes, there are only a few that have successfully unionized.

This is, however, the first for-profit school to go union in Michigan. CCA is the flagship school of The Leona Group, the nation’s third largest for-profit management company. Leona has schools across the country – in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and Arizona. CCA is also one of the oldest charter schools in the state, having been established back in 1996. It’s also the first school that The Leona Group managed.

There are other AFT “ACTS” projects around the country, including campaigns in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Ohio, and New Jersey. All are working to organize charter school teachers, and many have a number of successful organizing drives. We’ve learned a great deal from theses other campaigns, but perhaps most notably that it can be very difficult to successfully organize charter school employees. Each campaign presents it’s own specific set of issues so we must spend quite a bit of time preparing for our organizing drives.

MARK: Another state may have overtaken us, but, as of a few years ago, Michigan, I believe, had more for-profit charter schools than any other state. What can you tell us about the current situation in the state? How many charters do we have, and how do they break down between for-profit and non-profit?

DANIEL: We are still number one in terms of for-profit education management organizations (EMOs). Our state legislature has passed a number of laws that allow for-profit EMOs to thrive – thus the high number.

The 2010/2011 numbers: 44 for-profit companies managing roughly 180 schools, 12 non-profit schools managing 35-40 schools, and a handful of self-managed schools without an EMO.

These numbers have gone up in the past year and will continue to rise. Last year, legislation was passed that lifts the cap on charter schools in Michigan. Currently, in Detroit, more than half of all students are being educated in “non-traditional” school distracts. This includes the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) and charter schools.

MARK: Given the relatively high turnover rate of charter teachers, I would think that unionization would be a challenge. After the success here, however, are you enthusiastic about the possibilities in other charter schools?

DANIEL: For a number of reasons, unionizing charter teachers is challenging. Like many of our graduate and adjunct locals, turnover is high. We’re also dealing with private management companies that are not interested in yielding the unmitigated power they have at their schools.

Nevertheless, we do know that charter educators, like teachers in traditional (unionized) school districts, want a voice in their school communities. Overcoming fear and dealing with dictatorial EMOs is difficult, but not impossible. We are eager to continue working with charter teachers across the state. The buzz surrounding this election will certainly help new educators discover CCA ACTS, but the real victory will come after we win a contract.

MARK: Organizing in small, individual schools, I imagine, is something new for you, and will require a somewhat different model. How are you adapting to make this happen?

DANIEL: Chavez is a rather large school district — larger than many of our traditional K-12 districts. While organizing at individual schools/districts is different than organizing larger higher-ed locals, the basic model is still very much the same. We must build real relationships across our school communities and work everyday to ensure that we’re talking about our issues and united in our effort to improve them.

More than ever, we need to work alongside community groups and parents, as their voices are integral to our success. At CCA, parents and community activist were crucial in helping us get to the election. They came out en masse to Board meetings, attended our rally, and even signed a letter to The Leona Group for us.

MARK: If a teacher at a charter school happens to find this interview, and wants to pursue unionization at his/her school, what would you recommend that they do?

DANIEL: Contact Michigan ACTS! It will take some real time and effort, but we can help you develop a plan that will work at your school. You can email us at: michiganacts@aftmichigan.org. Or call: 313-393-2200. And, if you want to follow what we’re doing, you can like us on Facebook.

MARK: What, realistically, can the teachers at unionized charter schools in Michigan expect in terms of results? Where will you be focusing, and what do you think is achievable?

DANIEL: We’ve accomplished a lot already — building a authentic school communities, empowering teachers to speak-up for what they believe in, etc. Of course, we believe that there is much more to do contractually.

Charter school teachers have almost none of the protections that teachers in traditional k-12s have. Job security, professional compensation, standardized rules and procedures, and having a recognized voice in school policy are all important.

We will prioritize our bargaining platform after we survey membership and establish a Bargaining Committee. We know that we’re going to face a lot of resistance from The Leona Group, so continuing to build power — both at school and in the community — will be the lynchpin of our success.

MARK: How does the recent passage of so-called right-to-work legislation in Michigan complicate the effort to unionize charter schools?

DANIEL: As you can imagine, the so-called right-to-work legislation makes organizing even more difficult. The important takeaway from Chavez, I think, is that despite the attacks on organized labor in recent years, teachers still want to join unions. Governor Snyder claimed that people should have the right to join unions, and the educators at CCA made their decision loud and clear. They’re saying “Union YES!”

Here’s hoping the teachers at Cesar Chavez all the best as they move forward, and fight not only to protect their rights, but to change an industry which has proven itself, over and over again, to care more about corporate profits than the futures of those young Americans they’re paid to educate and the long term viability of those communities in which they operate.

[note: The top two images are from the December 20 Cesar Chavez Rally for Recognition, and the bottom one is from their victory party a few days ago.]

MARK: Let’s start with the name. Why “Two James”? As neither you, or your partner in this endeavor (Peter Bailey), is named James, I’m guessing that it might perhaps be a reference to Detroit’s distilling history… Am I on the right track?

DAVID: I like that theory Mark, but actually the name is derived from both mine and Peter’s fathers’ names. The story is, as we were sitting in the living room of Pete’s house in Chattanooga (that’s where he was working at the time), writing our business plan, we came to the “okay, so what are we going to call ourselves?” juncture. We ran the gamut of ideas – resurrected distillery names, nautical themes, two syllable words, literary heroes and heroines, figures from Greek and Roman mythology, etc. You name it, we thunk it. And we came up with some really good names. The problem, though, was that they didn’t really mean anything to us besides being really cool-sounding names. Well, the one thing we both had in common was the fact that both our fathers had just recently passed away. This had crossed my mind early on, but I didn’t know how we would incorporate that into our branding. Then I asked Pete what his dad’s name was, and he said “James.” To which I responded, “No shit.” (Obviously this was my dad’s name too.) At that point, we decided on “James and James,” and then it evolved into “Two James.” We liked the ring of it. It was two syllables, and easy to remember and pronounce. But, most importantly, it was near and dear to both our hearts. Oh Damn… Now it’s PERSONAL!

MARK: I’m curious as to what your fathers would have made of this undertaking of yours… Did they appreciate spirits? Were they at all entrepreneurial?

DAVID: Well, I’m glad you asked, Mark, because I believe their backgrounds fit into the branding better than their names. Both of our fathers were entrepreneurs. Peter’s father hails from England, where he grew up above a pub called “The Dog and Gun” if I’m not mistaken. And, as you can imagine, he was raised with a fondness for spirits, and spent countless hours fraternizing with the locals. He got his degree in mechanical engineering, and, before he passed, he started countless businesses – most of which involved machine parts. He also dabbled in inventing, and had a couple of patents to his name. My father was born in Kentucky, and lived New York before eventually moving with his family to Detroit. He graduated from Salesian high school in Detroit, and went on to get his english degree from Michigan State University. He wanted to be a writer, but unfortunately, with a growing family, he had to put his aspirations on hold and enter the workforce. After working for a few ad agencies, my father ended up starting a marketing company called Phoenix Group, based in Farmington. He did extremely well, but I don’t think he ever let go of his writing bug. That’s what he really wanted to do with his life. However, before he stopped writing, he had some successes to hang his hat on. He wrote jokes for Phyllis Diller and Rodney Dangerfield. (I’m not sure Rodney ever actually used his jokes. I would have to research it a bit further. But Phyllis definitely did.) And he wrote the bulk, if not all, of a comic strip called Thornsby. (Fred McLaren did the illustration.) I still have a bunch of the original art work. As far as drinking goes, he was a conservative drinker who really enjoyed the finer stuff. Scotch was his jam.

MARK: What can you tell me about the history of distilling in the city of Detroit? I believe I’ve heard that Two James will be the first to operate in the city… at least legally… since Prohibition. Have you had an opportunity to go through the city archives to verify this, and see just how prevalent distilling was prior to Prohibition?

DAVID: Yes, as far as we know, this is true. We dug as deep as we could, and couldn’t find a single distillery in the city that operated after Prohibition…. “legally” that is. The roots of distilling in Detroit were extremely deep before Prohibition. And, during Prohibition, Detroit was a smuggler’s paradise, given that the Detroit River is less than a mile across in some places, and 28 miles long, with innumerable hidden coves along the shoreline, and among the islands. Taken collectively, it’s estimated that the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River, carried 75% of the liquor supplied to the United States during Prohibition.

So it’s not an exaggeration to say that distilling in Detroit was huge. There were a plethora of distilleries in and around the burgeoning city. American Liquor Company, Frederick Myll Co., Robinson and Aronheim, etc.. However, none of them were as big as Hiram Walker. Hiram opened his distillery in Detroit in 1858. He started as a grocer in 1830, distilling cider vinegar, and eventually moved on to whiskey. He barreled his first batch in 1854. But, with the temperance movement starting to gain a following, and parts of Michigan becoming dry, Hiram wisely moved his operations a mile across the Detroit River onto Canadian soil, right before the choke hold of the Volstead Act. The rest, as they say, is history. The Canadian Club giant was born. But Hiram was really a Detroiter!

MARK: I’m curious to know how much this rich, often illegal, history is contributing to what you’re doing… or perhaps distracting from it. Are people coming out of the woodwork to bend your ear with stories of the Purple Gang? Are they giving you recipe suggestions based on things that may have been handed down through the generations?

DAVID: Not much, Mark. Honestly no one really knows much about it. We’ve met a few older people from the city who tell tales of their grandparents smuggling whiskey by driving across the frozen river, and stuff like that, but that’s about it. There’s a great dive bar called the Stone House where the Purple Gang used to hang out, and, if you go in there, occasionally you get the local “expert” telling you stories, but we haven’t really run into many people like this. For the most part, people are just really, really excited for a distillery to opening up in the city. As for historic inspiration, I’ve done some extensive research, and have a few ideas of resurrecting some old labels, but I don’t want to give away my secrets just yet.

MARK: To oversimplify a bit, based upon my admittedly rudimentary research into you and your partner, it looks like one of you is a scientist, and the other is a cocktail snob. That sounds to me like an ideal combination for an undertaking like this… but I’m curious as to how you go from the thought – “We’d like to make our own spirits” – to actually doing it. How did you educate yourselves? And, in answering that, if you could share your pre-distillery backgrounds, I’d appreciate it.

DAVID: Peter got his masters in Sustainable Systems and Design from University of Michigan, and worked for Steelcase, and numerous city governments, before settling on a large carpet manufacturer just outside of Chattanooga, in Georgia. I went to Michigan State for Art History and Studio Art, and wanted to be a professional “fine” artist. So, naturally, I ended up working at my brother’s restaurant, Cafe Felix, in Ann Arbor…. because, obviously, this is what the pursuit of art gets you. (Insert smiley face here.) I was always a wine geek and ended up getting my wine specialist license, but, after a visit to the Milk & Honey bar in NYC, in early 2000, I fell in love with the cocktail. Unfortunately, when I’d first started tending bar in the mid to late 90′s, the newly defined “martinis” were trending. “Appletini’s,” “Chocolate Martini’s,” and the like, were all the rage – syrupy, vapid concoctions that weren’t even close to the actual definition of a martini. And, then, one day, I made a chance visit to Milk & Honey – a little, hidden bar down a dark, dank alley, in the middle of the Lower East Side. Sasha Petraske was making drinks that literally destroyed anything and everything I thought I knew about making drinks. I could go on about this for hours, so I’d better stop here, but let’s just say that I got into it heavy – sculpted ice, homemade tonic, smoker, carbonated cocktail heavy. Because all of these drinks were rooted in the past, the way drinks used to be made, with homemade ingredients, etc., I just naturally progressed to wanting to make my own spirits, because I was making everything else in-house at that point. I remembered the growth in micro-brewing in the 80′s, and I started to see a few small distilleries opening up, and I just thought it would be such an amazing job. I called Peter in Chattanooga one day, and said, “Hey, what do you think about opening a sustainable craft distillery?” and he said “Sounds fun, what do we have to do?” And the rest is history. We took a class in Chicago to see if this was a viable option, or if we were getting in over our heads, and realized that we had a huge upper hand on almost everyone in the class. And that was it. I flew to Chattanooga the next week, and we started work on a business plan.

MARK: Can you tell me more about the class in Chicago? Is there a school for would-be distillers?

DAVID: Well, I guess, sort of. You will find this a common theme for start up distilleries. It’s a way for them to raise some cash for almost no cost. The distillery will offer a class, usually with the help of a still manufacturer, providing the attendants with sales sheets from the still company and other limited information. Actually, I shouldn’t say that… the information was extensive, but it was more like a chemistry class. They would break down the molecular structure of yeasts, sugars, etc. It was a science lecture, and a boring one at that. The only thing keeping us from falling asleep on our desks was the speaker’s hilariously thick German accent. The technical data was there, but that’s a very, VERY, small part of actually opening a distillery. There were some great things about it, like the emphasis on sensory evaluation, but there was no hands-on component at all, and that’s what we really wanted. We wanted to be slinging grain, carrying boxes, adding yeast, making cuts. The main thing we got out of it was the fact that we walked away with the utmost confidence in our ideas, and our ability to create a better brand and distill better spirits than most of the people in the class. We just saw some horrible grain applications and branding nightmares, and that really got us excited. (Laughing.)

MARK: I know very little about the distillery business, but, if I’m not mistaken, the laws in Michigan, at least a half dozen years ago or so, weren’t terribly conducive to running a successful distillery. Or, at least that’s what I’d heard from Todd Leopold, who, in 2008, moved his distillery, Leopold Brothers, from Ann Arbor to Colorado. His decision was in part due to his landlord jacking up his rent, but, according to Todd, it also had to do with the laws at at the time. “The laws governing spirits sales makes it so we couldn’t sell half of our product line at a new bar (our rum and whiskeys),” he said. “To top it off, self-distribution is legal in Colorado, and that makes all the difference.” So, I’m curious as to what the environment is now. Have things changed for the better in Michigan?

DAVID: I can’t speak to the exact laws in Michigan back then, but I do know that they were pretty prohibitive. First off ,the cost of having a DSP (Distilled Spirits Producer) license in Michigan at that time was much more expensive than it is now. On top of that (and this hasn’t changed), Michigan is a controlled state, which means that the state sells ALL of the alcohol in Michigan. They even set and regulate pricing. This is pretty tough on small distillers because the profit margins are so small. I won’t get into the nitty gritty, but, basically, if we sell a bottle of spirit at 30 bucks on the shelf in a liquor store, after the state and feds are done with us, we’re lucky to make 6-7 bucks. The one benefit that we DO have in Michigan, though, is that we’re able to make and sell our spirits on site, in the form of cocktails, or bottles to go. This is huge, as our profit margins are significantly higher when we don’t go through a middleman. The Leopold’s could have also done that, though, so I’m not sure what Todd was referring too. Maybe there was a law against barrel-aged spirits at that time, but I’m just speculating. There are other laws up for debate that could positively affect the small distiller in Michigan, such as being able to sell at farmers markets, etc. If this happens, we would be ecstatic. Oh, and I think Todd just really wanted to go home back to Colorado. I know those guys both grew up there, and I think that was always in their sites. I could make a distiller’s joke here about that old adage of “home is where the heart is” but only distilling geeks would get it, and it’s actually not really funny.

MARK: Go ahead and give it a shot.

DAVID: Alright, alright, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here’s the background. The result of any distillation, whether it’s corn or wheat or potato or apple, whatever it is, is divided into 3 separate parts. Heads, Hearts and Tails. Ethanol alcohol (what you strive for) evaporates at 78.3 degrees C at sea level, and water at 100 degrees C, but, when you mix those two together, it will evaporate in between 78.3 and 100 depending on the ratio. The more volatile components with lower boiling points will evaporate first (Acetaldehyde, Acetone, Methanol). These are called the “Heads,” and you DO NOT want these in your end product. Acetaldehyde is believed to be a major contributor to the severity of hangovers, Acetone is basically nail polish remover, and 10ml of Methanol will make you go blind and shut down your liver (30ml will kill you). The next part of the distillate is the “Hearts” (the Ethanol), and this is the good stuff. And the “Tails” are at the end of the run, and have the lowest boiling points. The main compounds here are Propanol, Butanol, and Fusel Alcohols. These basically have a range of (usually) negative flavors – bitter almond, petrol, vinegar, etc. Sharp, and sour flavors. These can also later be re-distilled into Hearts… but that’s a different story. So, back to my bad joke: “Home is where the HEART is”… get it? …Zanganuts, that was awful.

MARK: Maybe it’s a better joke after you’ve been sitting around a still for a few days, inhaling nail polish remover. I’m glad that I asked, though. I had no idea that’s how the precess worked… Let’s talk about capitalization. In order to pull this off, you needed a serious influx of cash, and, toward that end, you launched something called the Corktown 500. Essentially, you were looking for 500 people to give you $2,000 a piece, in order to raise $1 million. That $2,000, as I understand it, would get someone a five-year membership in the Corktown 500, valued at $1,750, with the remaining $250 going toward a “refundable barrel-reservation deposit.” And, as members of the Corktown 500, these individuals would get to spend a weekend with you, at what you’re calling “Camp James,” as well as an opportunity to make their own whiskey, discounts on products, events, etc. And, after five years, these folks would either get back $250 and their own barrel, or they’d get $500 in merchandise. Is that pretty much it? Or is there more?

DAVID: That’s pretty much it. The only thing I would clarify is that “Camp James” will be run by us as well as David Pickerell, our consultant and ex-master distiller of Maker’s Mark (he’s the real draw, I mean we’re great and all, but…). Also this isn’t to raise $ 1million, as our costs of hosting this will be at least half of that $2,000.00, and, on top of that, we either give back $500 in merchandise, or $250 in the form of a check. So now we’re basically looking at $500 to $750 in investment capital from each Corktown 500 member, which doesn’t include our labor, future discounts, etc. So, basically, Camp James isn’t seed money at all. It’s something fun that we can do to provide people with a very unique, educational experience, and make them think they’re part of something very special. To compare it, you could take a course at, say, Dry Fly distilling in Washington State, and pay close to $4000 for a couple days with basically no perks, or feeling of being part of the organization.

MARK: So, have people been receptive to the idea of the Corktown 500?

DAVID: People have been very receptive, however we expect it to take off even more once we actually open our doors and people can see how beautiful our space is, how great our product is, and really get a feel for what Two James is all about.

MARK: Do you have other funding outside of the Corktown 500? For instance, have you sought bank financing or the backing of accredited investors? Do you have a fallback plan, should you not be able to raise enough through the Corktown 500 campaign? Have you considered pre-selling product?

DAVID: As I said previously, the Corktown 500 offers nothing to us as far as financing goes. We already have our seed money, which includes some personal investments on both mine and Peter’s part, as well as a line of credit from a financial institution. There is a small investment opportunity left, however, but we expect that to close any day now, as we’ve had amazing support and interest from outside investors.

MARK: Let’s talk about your spirits. What do you intend to offer in your portfolio? And what, in your opinion, makes each distinctive?

DAVID: We will be making a vodka, gin and (what we are really hitting hard) an aged spirit line including a rye whiskey, a bourbon, and a single malt Scotch style whiskey. We also may end up playing with some spirits in-house that don’t make it onto shelves in stores, but you may find them in our distillery, such as Calvados and Absinthe. I have French heritage so I’m a sucker for all those delicious French liquors and liqueurs. As far as what makes them distinctive, you’re just gonna have to come down and taste them for yourself, and tell me what you think!

MARK: How long have you been working on your recipes, and are you confident that you’ve got them where you want them? Or, is there still tweaking to be done before you ramp up production?

DAVID: We are pretty much there with our recipes, but there is always room for tweaking. I think we’ll be tweaking until the day we stop making spirits…. hmm that sounded weird.

MARK: Is the plan still to open in spring of 2013?

DAVID: The St. Patricks Day Parade was our goal about six months ago, but time is drying up, and unfortunately we won’t be able to make that deadline. Sigh…. That would have been such a great time to showcase our spirits to the revelry in the streets, but we’ll just have to wait. We’re still projecting a Spring opening, though. Hopefully it’ll happen by the end of April, but, realistically, if it happened in the beginning of June, I wouldn’t be too surprised. We want it to open of course, but we really want it to be right, and, if that means more time, so be it… BUT DEFINITELY BY JUNE!

MARK: Why Corktown?

DAVID: Corktown was just perfect for us. There are like-minded individuals in the neighborhood that really want to revitalize the community and help beautify the area. It’s on the upswing and close to downtown, but still has the flexibility of being financially feasible as well as providing us with adequate space. (Distilleries need specific dimensions. They need tall ceilings, no adjacent domiciles, etc.) Besides it being the oldest neighborhood in Detroit, it’s on a major thoroughfare (Michigan Avenue), with fewer zoning restrictions, plenty of parking, etc. Plus, it’s called Corktown. It just sounds badass… Who wouldn’t want whiskey from a place called “Corktown”?!

MARK: You mentioned that you’re working with whiskey-maker David Pickerell, who used to be the Distillery Manager and VP of Operations at Maker’s Mark. How did that relationship come about?

DAVID: It was funny how it happened actually. Pete was talking to one of his friends from Chattanooga who was on an interview in Portland, Oregon, and she happened to be talking to him from this bar. As they were talking, she said, “Hey, there’s this guy next to me that says he’s a distillery consultant, and that you should call him.” Having heard a lot about people offering their consulting services who weren’t really worth a damn, so we just kind of dismissed it and said, “Okay, sure, take his card.” Later, though, we looked him up and started doing research on him, his expertise, and accomplishments, and realized that we needed to talk to him. We soon realized how great an asset he was, hung out a few times, and developed a great friendship. He’s definitely mentoring us and assisting us in our whiskey-making. He invited us to Mount Vernon to work at George Washington’s distillery, and it was priceless. Using the old techniques, with no motorized equipment, wood fired stills, etc. It was hot, humid, smelly, dirty, smokey and perfect… Dave’s worth his weight in gold, and, if you’ve ever seen him, that’s saying something.

MARK: You’ve mentioned in your materials that you’re attempting to source as much as possible locally. Are you having much luck with it? Are all the grains you need available in Michigan? And is the supplier network easy to access as new entrepreneurs?

DAVID: The short answer is no. Because grain is traded as a commodity it’s really hard to source it from a specific farm. We’ve been searching everywhere, and just haven’t come up with a small provider that has the means of harvesting, cleaning, and storing grains for us, especially because we have no track record when it comes to production demands. We can make sure that some of our products are local (like botanicals for gin), but, as far as the grain goes, the closest we can narrow it down to is making sure that it comes from Michigan (but it will probably come from all over the state). As we progress as a business, though, I’m sure it will be easier to narrow our search down, but right now it’s almost impossible. We actually have a potential farm to use in the future so we could actually be “Farm to Bottle” at some point, but the main problem is cleaning and storing. It costs a lot of money, and most small farms don’t have the capability. If you have any leads, though, feel free to let me know!

MARK: What the entrepreneurial atmosphere like in Detroit these days? As new people on the scene, are you finding that there’s infrastructure to support you?

DAVID: The business environment in Detroit is amazing. We’ve had such unbelievable support and enthusiasm about our project from everyone… from city officials right down to the bartender around the corner at the Mercury Bar, who bought us shots when we signed our lease. Honestly, we couldn’t ask for a better situation. Our landlord has been more like a partner than a lessor, the city boards worked with us for countless hours making sure that we knew the exact process of application and permitting, and it goes on and on. We owe a lot to the people that have helped us along the way, and can’t wait to give back to the community, employ people, and add to the revitalization. I couldn’t be more excited about the potential of Detroit.

Last night, I had the occasion to speak with world-renowned hip-hop provocateur Boots Riley on a wide range of subjects spanning from his childhood in Detroit, spent in a household of Communist organizers, to his current work, organizing people in his neighborhood as a member Occupy Oakland. And, of course, we touched on his equally ground-breaking and ass-shaking music, and the 20-years that he’s now spent “using hip-hop to empower people” and “destroy Capitalism,” in bands like The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club.

Riley and The Coup, as I suspect that most of you know, will be performing in Ypsilanti on Sunday night, headlining a fundraiser for Ozone House, to support their work with at-risk, marginalized, and LGBTQ teens. The show, which will take place at Woodruff’s, starting at 8:00 PM, is being hosted by Washtenaw Eviction and Foreclosure Defense (WEFD), and, from what I understand, a few tickets are still available. (Also on the bill are Japanther and Kev Choice.)

As for the interview, as you’ll soon discover, it’s not perfect. As I was picking Clementine up from school during the call, and as Boots was in the middle of a soundcheck, the quality of the audio isn’t great, and, as a result, much of what was said was garbled. And, because of that, I’m sure that I made a few mistakes in my transcription. I’ve also slightly edited both my questions, and his answers, in hopes of making the transcript flow better. Those of you who would like to hear the interview live and unedited, though, with all of the awkward pauses, blasting organ music, screaming children, and inartful, half-developed thoughts (on my part) that lead nowhere, can find the recording embedded at the bottom of this post… Enjoy.

MARK: I’ m curious about your background, if we can start there. I’ve read that you come from a long line of organizers… of “radical” organizers… I guess, in particular, your father. And I’m curious to know what got him involved in the Progressive Labor Party, and what took your family to Oakland, after having started out in Chicago, and then lived in Detroit for a while.

BOOTS: So, the exact details would be something you’d have to get from him, but he started out in the civil rights movement, in the NAACP, in the 50′s. He worked on the organization of the first sit-down strikes, at the coffee shops in Greensboro, North Carolina. And, later on, he was in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). And CORE moved him out to San Francisco. And he got involved in SDS and the Progressive Labor Party (PL) at that time, just before the San Francisco State strike, which led to the creation of the College of Ethnic Studies, and all of that happened. Then the Progressive Labor Party moved him and my mother out to Chicago to be involved there. And then they needed a full-time organizer for Detroit. So he moved, and took that spot, and was a full-time organizer for the Progressive Labor Party in Detroit.

MARK: Trying to organize inside the auto plants?

BOOTS: Yeah, that was some of it. I was very young, so I don’t know exactly, but there was some auto plant work, and some student work. All I remember is that there were a lot of parties at my house, which I found out later were meetings.

MARK: What do you remember of your time in Detroit? I know you were really young, but…

BOOTS: There’s a woman who’s still active around there named Barbara Ransby. She was a teenager who was always coming through. I remember my father coming hoome with his ribs bandaged up, because the Klan had tried to make a come-back in Detroit, or something like that. And they went out and fought the Klan. And he got billy clubbed by the police, or somebody got him in the back, while they were fighting. So I remember that picture of him having bandaged ribs. What I also remember is that there were a lot of big parties, with people talking a lot, with their legs crossed. I was six when I moved away from Detroit, but those are the things that I remember. I remember Ohio Players records being played a lot.

MARK: A lot of kids rebel against their parents, but it sounds as though you kind of followed in your father’s footsteps, at least with regard to your association with the Progressive Labor Party.

BOOTS: Well, to a certain extent, (joining the Progressive Labor Party) was something of a rebellion, in a sense… (My father, Walter Riley) left Detroit to become a lawyer, and he split with the Party. But some of the family friends were still folks in the Progressive Labor Party. There was a political split, but there were still friendships. And, so, by the time that that I was eight, he wasn’t in PL anymore. And I started getting involved with the Party when I was fourteen. And that’s like a lifetime, those six years between eight and fourteen. And he actually did not want for me to be involved, not because of the political differences… I think, later on, as I became more developed, it had to do with political differences… but, at the time, he was arguing with them, saying, “When I was leading the Party, we never would have let someone like him (me) in. He hasn’t read enough.” You know, he felt that they were being opportunist, for letting me in just because I wanted to be in. And, to be honest, it was in the 80′s when there wasn’t much going on. I think a lot of political organizations were happy with anything… so they were a little more liberal.

MARK: Yeah, you want young people with energy, so you bend the rules a bit, right?

BOOTS: Yeah… So I became involved in their summer projects, like helping to built an anti-racist farmworkers union (in California), an undertaking which was mainly being led by people who had been kicked out of the USW (United Steelworkers), for being Communists, and being militant… who then joined the Progressive Labor Party. So I learned a lot being there.

MARK: What’s your ongoing role with the Party now? Are you still involved?

BOOTS: I’m 41 and I haven’t been involved in about 21 years.

MARK: So you left at about the same age as your dad?

BOOTS: No, he was probably 30-somethng when he left.

MARK: You still identify as Communist, though, right?

BOOTS: Yeah… So, I had ended up being a part of (their) Central Committee meetings. And a lot of the people who I met through that were the folks who had created the Progressive Labor Party, who had split off from the Communist Party in the 50′s. And their take on how to organize, combined with some British folks who had been union organizers, who had moved to the U.S. and joined the Progressive Labor Party… They taught me a lot… My experience in the Party was… The way that they organized at the time – with the exception of the work with the farmers union – was more of a one-on-one thing. It was more like a religion. Our meetings would be about who we had talked to that day, and how close they were to the ideas of the Party. “This is not going to get anywhere,” (I thought). I was in there from the age of fourteen to the age of nineteen or twenty, and I was supposedly in the leadership, and I had ideas that were more about broadening things, and making us known to the people who lived around us. But my ideas were always sort of poo-pooed and argued against. What I realized was that a lot of those folks who were still around in the Party weren’t the folks that where great organizers, who had been involved before. You know, a lot of times, folks who are great organizers have an idea that tells them… they know that you have to shape the aesthetic of your message to best suit what works. That’s what great organizers do. That’s what good conversationalists do. They communicate the essence of the idea, and the details of the idea, but they don’t have to be stuck in one tactic, or one mode. So I feel like what was going on then, and it’s what’s been going on in a lot of organizations since then. People are tied to an aesthetic. They’re tied to a tactic. You know, I was told a lot of really strict rules for how organizing works. They weren’t really true. They were just basically what they did twenty years before.

MARK: Which I assume leads into why you adopted music. I mean, that was your new aesthetic, right?

BOOTS: Definitely. Yeah… I had been told in the organization that any art form that was created by Capitalism could not be used to make revolution, you know.

MARK: I read somewhere about you going around Oakland on a flatbed truck, doing guerilla hip-hop shows, on street corners… which, I guess, illustrates how you were getting away from the one-on-one approach that the Party had been pushing, and going into people’s neighborhoods and engaging them on their own terms, in their own language, right?

BOOTS: Exactly. There wasn’t a direct correlation between the two, though, because that happened in 2000. That was a development of a few circumstances… Prop 21 was being put forward.

MARK: That had to do with kids being prosecuted as adults, right?

BOOTS: Yeah. Exactly. And, I was teaching a workshop a the La Peña Cultural Center. So I decided to do something. The workshop was about art and organizing, so I decided to make it so that folks came and had to do something. We had a lot of young rappers involved, so that was the idea.

MARK: I’m curious as to how you balance stuff now. It sounds like, when you were coming up, a lot of the work that you did was really hands-on. You were in Oakland, working on really specific causes. You were drawing attention to specific cases of police brutality, and social justice issues, and making tangible contributions. And then you transitioned to a bigger stage, where the rewards are much different, and the pay off is a lot farther off. I’m curious as to how you juggle those two things. I know you’re still doing stuff on-the-ground in Oakland, but do you think you’ve got the mix right?

BOOTS: No, I don’t. I never have a good mix. It’s a struggle to figure out how to do both. Usually, I’m either doing one or the other. Like, when I was doing stuff with Occupy Oakland, I wasn’t doing music. Anything that you do right is going to take a lot of time. It’s hard to figure it out. I think the best way that I’ve figured out is just to have different time periods during the year where you work on different things. But it’s still not easy to work out. But, you know, I hear about people who can multitask and do those sorts of things, but, the way that I write, I’m not able to do that.

MARK: Do you think, over the last twenty years, you’ve kind of figured out how you’re of the most use to the cause?

BOOTS: It changes.

MARK: How’s it changing now?

BOOTS: Well, the world changes… What allows me to keep doing my music is the thought that, these folks (doing other forms of organizing) are only reaching a very limited number of people, and my music can reach way more folks, so I need to keep doing this music, to talk to more people… but we’re in a period where certain kinds of organizing actually can grab the attention of more people than it has in the past. It’s not the same kind of organizing… I think we went though a period in the 90′s where the idea of political organizing was anything but labor related. And, now, we have a certain amount of confluence in those two realms, that I think is lending itself to a new situation.

MARK: There are definitely positive signs with regard to labor organizing. What just happened a few days ago with the Walmart walk-out strike was encouraging. But, at the same time, I think union membership is at an all time low, isn’t it?

BOOTS: It definitely is, but that has nothing to do with where people are at, and what they want to do. The reason membership is an an all time low is that the unions aren’t militant. People don’t see unions as being able to win fights. Here’s an example. Occupy Oakland, a couple of different times, shut down the port. People, wether they agreed or disagreed with us, know that that we can shut stuff down… We broached the idea of a fast food workers union in Oakland, with it being connected to Occupy Oakland. We got a tremendous response, with people being in favor. Why? Because people thought that we could win. And the reason they thought this was because they knew, whatever the case, business owners knew that Occupy Oakland could shut shit down. So, therefore, it could win. I don’t think that a lot of people have faith that unions can win. They don’t think that unions will take militant routes that can win. Like, you have to be able to keep out scabs, which means a certain amount of breaking the law. In this day and age, if you play by the Taft-Heartly laws, you’re also going to have a hard time winning. You’re probably going to lose. So it’s going to take a different set of rules to win.

MARK: It’s kind of a difficult subject to broach, but I’m curious on your thoughts concerning militancy, and how far people should be willing to go. You’ve got songs like The Guillotine and Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO, which clearly allude to violence…

BOOTS: It’s symbolic…

MARK: Yeah, but it hints at a threat, right? It reminds people that, if they push folks too far, they’re going to pay a price.

BOOTS: Yeah, but militancy doesn’t only have that narrow definition. A militant movement is one that, at the drop of a hat, will shut things down… Let’s say this. The longshoremen are the most militant of the traditional unions that exist. The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union). Any time there’s a dispute, they’re down to shut the place down. That’s militant. They’re not waiting for it to be OK’d through arbitration. They’re showing their force, right away, and exacting a cost. Many of these unions will be involved in a fight and not want to strike right away. They’re scared about a number of things. Because of that, many people feel betrayed by their unions. They feel that they’re not going to be strong enough… that they’re not down for the fight. “Militant” implies that there are going to be actions, that may be physical, that allow one to win. And that means physically keeping out scabs. If you have a strike where replacement folks get brought in, the strike is usually over. Unions have to physically, forcefully, keep scabs out.

MARK: You mentioned that you were making some headway in Oakland with the fast food workers. What happened with that?

BOOTS: The main problem was convincing other folks in Occupy Oakland that it was something worthwhile compared to the other things that were going on. There are so many things going on with Occupy Oakland. People are spread really thin. So, it just wasn’t the time to bring this out. People weren’t down to dedicate the time.

MARK: It’s tough. It seems, with the Occupy movement, that so much time and effort is spent providing social services… like just recently, with all of the Occupy Sandy stuff. There are just so many needs that have to be addressed, that it takes up a lot of the bandwidth.

BOOTS: I think Occupy Oakland is different. It does provide services, but in the midst of campaigns. We’ve got the foreclosure defense stuff going on. And we’ve got various folks working on police brutality stuff. There are all sorts of things happening. Some people don’t want to do the service stuff and all, and, other people, that’s their thing. They like feeding people.

MARK: So it wasn’t a question of capacity. It was more a result of an internal discussion within the organization concerning priorities.

BOOTS:Yeah, a fast food workers union seems like a good idea, but the question is whether fast food workers would be down with it, and you’re not going to know unless you’re part of that outreach. And, at the same time, we had the school occupation happening, and a lot of people were involved in that. There were foreclosure defense actions. There were neighborhood assemblies. We were declaring moratoriums on foreclosure in certian neighborhoods. So, a lot of people were doing many different things. So, that was part of the problem at the time. Then there’s people that had experience organizing unions, and many of them wanted to be sure that it was their union that got to do it, and it was just too early to declare that. Let’s put it like this… It wasn’t for lack of wanting by people that were in fast food work. We actually had people that were down to do it, and we had a few things in place, we just didn’t have enough people to really carry it through.

MARK: Speaking of the plight of low-paid workers, your new album, Sorry to Bother You, is about telemarkting, and, in a broader sense, I guess, it’s about shitty, low-paying jobs in general. In addition to just being a good record, in the tradition of The Coup, is there a bigger message behind it? Are you trying to rally support for anything specific? Does either the album, or the movie that you’re working on, which uses the album as a soundtrack, touch on, for instance, the importance of organizing low-wage workers?

BOOTS: Not specifically around organizing telemarketers. The movie has some stuff about a union that’s being attempted at a telemarketing spot. Which is what was happening at the place that I worked at (when I was doing telemarketing). But it’s not specifically around organizing telemarketers. It’s around organizing people in the workplace in general.

MARK: So that message is in the movie?

BOOTS: Yeah. Yeah… Well, I don’t know that the “message” is in the movie, but the situation is in the movie.

MARK: Are you in pre-production yet for the movie?

BOOTS: I guess, technically, yeah.

MARK: Your producer, I’ve read, is Ted Hope, who produced movies like The Ice Storm, Happiness, American Splendor…

BOOTS: And 21 Grams. And the director is this guy, Alex Rivera, who did this movie called Sleep Dealer.

MARK: How’d it all come together?

BOOTS: I just kind of put a blast out to people I know, and Danny Goldberg, who was managing Street Sweeper Social Club, and also used to manage Nirvana and work with Led Zeppelin, read it and loved it. And he got it to Ted Hope. And Ted Hope was like, “I want to make this movie.” It probalby also helped that I had a soundtrack.

MARK: How did you sell them on the idea that you would be the right person for the lead? Or was that just part of the deal going in?

BOOTS: That was just part of the deal. I was like, “I’ve written this script. I have the soundtrack. And I will play the lead.” So, if somebody did’t like that, they just didn’t respond… It’s also a good marketing thing for them too. You know, if it’s going to be an independent film, there’s probably going to be more interest in it if the creator of it is part of it as well. I’m acting all the time anyway.

MARK: What do you mean… on stage?

BOOTS: Yeah, as a performer – it’s theatrical.

MARK: Had you attepted to do someting like this before? Didn’t I hear about a book that was being written from one of your songs, and the possiblity that it may turn into a film as well?

BOOTS: So a woman heard a song (Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night) and wrote a book based on it… I didn’t want the movie made. It had the potential to be a very terrible movie, if not done by the right person… I didn’t like the themes. She took the story and read things into that I…

MARK: With this new record, when you started writing it, did you know that you wanted to see it evolve into a dark comedy…

BOOTS: Well, I wrote the script first. I took like a year and wrote the script, while my manager, agent and record label said, “What are you doing?”

MARK: Because they wanted to keep you recording, and playing on the road…

BOOTS: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, “You’re not going to get a movie made.” They wouldn’t say it in exactly that way, but that was the thought.

MARK: So, you think that it will do well in the marketplace… that people will buy tickets and like it?

BOOTS: Oh, yeah. There are people that have read it that I trust, that think that it’s a great, new, and interesting thing.

MARK: I’m happy for you… You put something out on Twitter a few days ago. “I realized five years ago,” you said, “we’re never going to go platinum, we’re never going to get radio play, we’re never going to make money at this.” Is part of this movie thing because you want to reach a wider audience, or is it more about paying the bills?

BOOTS: I don’t think people are able to pay bills on independent movies.

MARK: I imagine that you’d get a cut on video sales, right?

BOOTS: Yeah, but think about the time that you spent on it.

MARK: I guess what I was getting at is that it’s probably a little more lucrative than the record business.

BOOTS: Maybe for somebody. But independent movies? No. It’s not like that. It’s a labor of love. But people want to make some money at it. And that’s one thing about Ted Hope. He’s an independent movie guru. He’s someone who’s able to make independent film turn a profit. But, again, like I said, the amount of profit, compared to the amount of time put into it… It’s not like some cash cow. But it’s possible, you know. Maybe it could be some breakout hit. But it’s not real likely to happen. And that’s the name of the game in every industry. “More work for less pay.”

MARK: I’m curious as to where you draw the line. You mentioned earlier that folks in the Progressive Labor Party had told you that no artistic endeavor could come out of the Capitalist system and have any meaning, or something along those lines. And you pursue this line as a career. But you draw a line at advertising…

BOOTS: I didn’t believe them (that nothing good could come from works produced within the system)… In reality, that’s where music comes in. It’s advertising. Music is licensed to TV shows. It’s advertising. TV shows are there to keep people watching, so they’ll watch commercials. So, the music that’s licensed to them helps that to happen. And we do that.

MARK: Yeah. You’ve done that. You’ve written music for the Simpsons, and done other stuff. But yet, when it comes to selling a song to Levi’s, you’ve said something like, “That’s a line that I won’t cross.” And I’m curious about that line, and where you draw it. Like you say, the TV show is there to sell ads, and you work with them. So, that line is kind of fuzzy… I’m just wondering what your thought process is. Do you consider, for instance, the good stuff you could do with the money that you’d receive from selling a song to a company, or the fact that it would get your music out to a broader audience? I guess what I’m asking is, how firm is that line?

BOOTS: Well… For instance, K-Mart offered us a bunch of money for the Magic Clap. They wanted to make it a part of their main commercial ad campaign for the fall. So, you’d turn on the TV, and you’d hear, “K-Mart, Magic Clap,” forever. And you’d think of K-Mart when you hear that song. And do I want to spend my life with that? Like, the job market is hard out there, but… That would erase a lot of shit, you know? If I were going to try to make money, I could probably think of some other things to do, that weren’t music-related. If I did that, though, I’d reach more of an audience, but people would be thinking of that song, or whatever it is, as connected to that group. So, you know, when they offer The Coup money, they’re not only offering The Coup that. They’re buying a group. They’re buying an idea, you know? The idea that, “Even these dudes, are behind this product.”

MARK: So they’re buying your credibility…

BOOTS: It’s the idea that people think that we represent (the company or product). They’re buying philosophy. If I was just an artist known for making… Let’s say that I had my same revolutionary ideas, but that my art, that I was know for, was acting, or making love songs, or whatever. Then, when I did something like that, it would just be about me. But for me to attribute those songs to a product, means to attribute those ideas… So, for instance, when I was in Portland, we did an eviction defense rally, people were marching down the street changing, “we got the guillotine.” So, lets’s say I turned around, and sold that song to Nike… It wouldn’t just be about me. It would be about a movement.

MARK: When I first heard about your band, it was right after 9/11, and the cover for your record Party Music became a news item. I’m just wondering if you were at all scared when that happened, when you saw what happened on 9/11, and then thought about the album cover that you’d just created, which showed you blowing up the World Trade Center using a guitar tuner… Were you afraid of a backlash?

BOOTS: You know, I got into the music to talk about ideas. So I really didn’t worry about it. It gave me a platform to talk about other ideas.

MARK: I know that Bill Maher gave you a hard time about it on his show, and he also, as I recall, said something about you being a Communist, like “people who sell records aren’t Communists.” Are you getting better at answering those kinds of challenges now, after having heard them for a couple of decades?

BOOTS: The idea of wanting to make a revolution… You have to be in the system to do it. You can’t say, “You can’t be a Communist and work retail.” If you work in an automotive factory, you’re participating in Capitalism, but how else do you organize anyone, if you’re not part of it? Folks that say stuff like that either don’t understand, or they’re looking for a quick retort. The reality is that what people are saying is not that they don’t want to participate, but that they don’t want other people to be affected. I don’t want other people to be affected by Capitalism. I feel that, in reality… and I may be deluding myself… I’m a pretty crafty dude. I can figure out how to survive. I could figure out how to be the crab that climbs up the barrel, or whatever. But I don’t want for there to be a barrel. I don’t want everybody else to get cooked. And that’s the point.

MARK: Do you think we’re making any progress? Things have gotten a lot worse in a lot of ways since you started in 1991. Wealth inequality, for instance…

BOOTS: Really? In 1991, we were having demonstrations with ten people. So, things have gotten a lot better. Now we’ve got thousands of people, all with the idea that we need a systematic change, with class analysis being a part of it. Things have gotten better.

MARK: I wasn’t thinking about the numbers of people in the street. I was thinking about wealthy inequality, the fact that our public schools are being systematically dismantled…

BOOTS: The numbers are the only thing that matters, though. What matters is not how the state is working, or how the system is working, but the point at which the movement is that could change the system.

MARK: I can see you point, and there’s potential there. A movement is starting to build. But, at the same time, you see the public school system being systematically taken apart, our wealth being siphoned off by for-profit charter schools, the growing, racist “patriot” movement in America…

BOOTS: Yeah, and all of those things are going to happen as long as we don’t have a movement. So none of that surprises me. As long as you don’t have a movement, any of the gains that you make are going to be dismantled. And that’s why a revolutionary movement that fights for reform, on the way to making revolution, and sustains the movement… That’s why you chart your progress relative to how the movement is growing, not on how strong the system is that is attacking you.

MARK: One last question… Were do we have the most leverage? Where should we be focusing right now, if we really want to make long term, systematic, sustainable change?

BOOTS: Well, it’s like we were talking about earlier. I think right now what people want are material gains. They need to see victories. And they need to see it done in a certain way. We need a radical, militant labor movement that uses direct action and work stoppages to gain some of these things. We need for it to be connected to the community, and not just built around wages. But using labor and work stoppages to effect change in other areas, that would normally be considered community things – community organizing. An example is how the ILWU shut down the port of Oakland in protest of the Oscar Grant verdict. They might have done it in a safe way, but that’s an example. And there need to be sympathy strikes. That’s got to become a tool. And union leaders are going to have to be down with going to jail, just like anyone else on the line is down for it…

Now here’s the recording, for those of you who either can’t read, or just refuse to.

A big thank you to my friend Jeff Clark for reaching out to Boots, and making all of this happen. And thank you to all of you who contributed via Kickstarter to bring the vision to reality.

See you Sunday night.

“Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”

Davontae, who read at a third-grade level at the time of his arrest, signed and initialed a typewritten confession given to him by a detective. No video of his questioning, which took place without the presence of his mother or legal council, exists. And, in his signed confession, Davontae claimed that he’d committed the murders with a different weapon than the one which was actually used by the killer. In spite of this, however, Davontae was convicted and sent to prison, where he’s been sentenced to serve from thirty-seven to ninety years. And, that’s not the worst of it. Just months after being sent to prison, an imprisoned hit man by the name of Vincent Smothers confessed to having committed the drug-related killings. Furthermore, he says Davontae had nothing to do with it.

Everyone, it would seem, knows that this young man is innocent, and yet he remains in prison. I’ve been in contact with his mother, Taminko Sanford, over the years, trying as best that I can to point her toward resources, like The Innocence Project, but it seemed, until recently, that nothing was working. While a few articles were written on blogs, like this one, and in the Detroit papers, it didn’t look as though anyone from outside of the region really cared. According to Taminko, though, that’s finally starting to change. Several months ago, in a comment left on this site, she mentioned that Dateline NBC had expressed interest, and just a few weeks ago, she told us about an article that was being written for The New Yorker. Well it looks as though that story is now out. While the article itself is only available online to subscribers of The New Yorker, or those willing to purchase an electronic copy, the author has a blog post about the piece, which can be found here… Here’s a clip.

…Over the course of several hours (with the police), he started talking and telling stories. At first he said that four friends had committed the crime. He was released in the morning, but taken back to the police station at the end of the day. This time, he declared that he had committed the murders himself and drew an accurate sketch of the crime scene. He was then transported to another station, where his second statement was videotaped.

In the videotape, he appears to have no sense of the stakes; he enters the room, smiles, and plays with what may be a one-way mirror until the detective interviewing him, Sergeant Michael Russell, comes in. When asked his constitutional rights, he rattles them off so perfectly that Russell says with a smile, “O.K., almost sounds like you’re reading it.” Then, in the clip shown above, Russell reads the statement, asking him questions. Sanford answers “yes” and “no,” rarely saying more and, once, putting his head in his hands. “I wanted everything to be right, because if it wasn’t right, he wasn’t going to believe me and he would keep me longer,” Sanford later told me. “I really wanted to go home.” After the videotape was played at his trial, six months later, Sanford pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree murder and was later sentenced to thirty-seven to ninety years in prison.

A couple of weeks after his sentencing, however, another man—Smothers—confessed to the same murders. Unlike Sanford’s interrogation, Smothers’s interrogation, as well as his confession, was taped. And in the videotape, as he is being interviewed about a different hit, he confesses to the Runyon (Street) murders, without prompting, recalling details specific to the scene. He names an accomplice, but he never mentions Sanford.

Which confessor was actually there? The hit man, or the fourteen-year-old with no real criminal past who had a reputation for making things up and talking big at school? Within weeks of his arrest, Sanford recanted his confession, saying he’d made up the story and that the police had told him key details about the crime. Smothers has stuck to his story. Ballistics evidence at Runyon Street has also been linked to Smothers and the accomplice Smothers named: a bullet fired at Runyon came from the same gun that Smothers had used in a different hit.

Perhaps Sanford was there with Smothers and his accomplice? That seems unlikely, since a witness saw only two masked figures fleeing the scene, and an investigator for the prosecution could not connect the kid to Smothers or the accomplice. To credit this scenario, you would have to believe that a seasoned hit man like Smothers, who took pride in his meticulousness and discipline, would rely on a half-blind, learning-disabled minor. You also have to believe that that fourteen-year-old, prone to braggadocio, would then exercise impressive discipline by not mentioning that he’d once worked with a hit man—street cred that could come in handy in prison. Sanford was recorded on many occasions without his apparent knowledge, yet the prosecution offered no evidence suggesting that he knew Smothers.

It’s hard to know what the Wayne County prosecutor believes, because her office never offered a coherent theory of the case, at times suggesting that Smothers wasn’t at Runyon and, at other times, that he worked with Sanford. She declined to discuss the case because Sanford is still trying to appeal his plea. Sanford felt hopeful when Smothers first confessed and Michigan’s Court of Appeals ordered proceedings to determine whether he might be innocent. His prospects seemed even brighter when a former homicide cop, who is close to his family, testified that Sanford was with him at the time of the shootings and a key witness testified that the shooters fleeing the crime were taller than Davontae was at the time. But later, the alibi witness was convincingly discredited.

The judge who presided over Sanford’s trial and subsequent “innocence hearing” rejected Sanford’s bid to withdraw his plea, and it is now up to Michigan’s Court of Appeals to decide whether that decision should stand. Even if the court finds in Sanford’s favor, the state has the right to prosecute Sanford again, with Smothers’s confession to the Runyon homicides as part of the record. “Davontae has been railroaded,” Smothers told me, adding later: “The police and the prosecutor can say whatever they want, but they knew he was innocent. They started the coverup from day one.”

And here’s the video which was mentioned above, of the arresting officer reading back the typewritten confession to Davontae.

Let’s hope, finally, this brings about some positive action in the case.

Our thoughts are with you, Davontae and Taminko.

note: For those of you who are so inclined, I understand from my friend Christine Moellering, who is also in contact with Taminko, that Davontae appreciates books and letters. His address is:

Davontae Sanford
MDOC ID: 684070
Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility
1576 West Blue Water Highway
Ionia, MI 48846

And the rules for sending packages to inmates in the state of Michigan can be found here.

And, just in case you didn’t find this story heartbreaking enough, here’s a Facebook update from Taminko this summer.

Here’s their call for submissions.

…What is design? A universal language? A problem solving tool? Your obsession? This is your opportunity to show the Detroit design community what design means to you. All you have to do is design a poster that fills in the blank: Design is ______________.

I don’t know how many people entered the competition. I’ve spent the past several minutes looking around the web, and, while I was able to find several responses to the question posted on the Detroit Design Festival’s Facebook page, I was only able to find evidence of one poster actually having been submitted. I did, however, come across what I’m assuming was a non-official submission while walking around Detroit this weekend. I found the following plastered onto the side of an abandoned building near the offices of the Heidelberg Project on Saturday, while hopscotching with my daughter.

This message isn’t anything new. I’ve heard it said before, several times, in different ways, in different contexts. For as long as I can remember, for instance, I’ve heard people saying, “Advertising exists in oder to convince people that they desperately need things which they could easily live without.” It only makes sense that someone would extend it from advertising to design. But, I loved the context of this, as it was right outside one of the stops on the Detroit Design Festival itinerary, and thought that I’d share it. As someone who appreciates good design, I don’t know that I agree, but I certainly think it’s worth discussing.

So, is design, like advertising, evil?

[Tonight's post was brought to you by the new iPhone 5. Order yours today!]

Celebrate MarkMaynard.com’s 10th anniversary party at Woodruff’s:

If you’re interested in Michigan politics and culture and have yet to visit Mark Maynard’s blog, you might want to take a look. The Ypsilanti resident’s posts range from local, state, and national politics to arts and entertainment, and his bitingly intelligent style places him among our finest local writers. Maynard’s now been in the blogging game ten years, and he’s celebrating the occasion with an anniversary party at Woodruff’s in Ypsi. The event features a set by hard-rocking minimalists Minus 9. Although Maynard’s keeping the evening’s other festivities under wraps, it’s a great opportunity to hobnob with Maynard and other local luminaries while supporting a good cause; the $5 cover fee goes to FLY Children’s Art Center. The party starts September 8 at 7:00 PM.

Sadly, the praise was offset by the fact that the article was accompanied by a photo of the moist, bloated shell that I currently inhabit… And, no, I don’t travel around with a giant “.COM” that I insist on setting up next to me whenever I settle my ass down onto a barstool. That was the idea of the talented young photographer Dave Lewinski, who was assigned the herculean task of making me seem interesting. (Among other things, it looks as though he used a filter that turned my shirt to denim.)

Oh, and in addition to listing our upcoming 10th anniversary party, the folks at Metromode also mentioned the Bike Ypsi-sponsored Taco Tour, which is set to begin, here in Ypsi, at 1:00 PM on September 16.

Nora and Hélène met while undergraduates at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, where they bonded over an interest in Poland. In 2009, the two shot their first “real” documentary together in a small Polish town near the Czech and German borders. Soon afterward, Nora left for the United States, to study filmmaking at UCLA, as a Fulbright scholar. Meanwhile, Hélène worked as a journalist, covering Central Europe. (She eventually settled down in Hungary, working as a foreign correspondent for the daily French newspaper La Croix.) While apart, however, the two continued to collaborate, planning their next film, which they thought would be a documentary on “urban utopias.” They sought money to get the project off the ground, and gained some traction with a grant from the City of Paris in 2009. Then, later that year, thanks to an Arthur K. Peters Memorial Travel Grant, Nora visited Detroit for the first time. It was there that the vision crystalized, and, in 2011, the two received a grant from the French Film Institute (Centre National de la Cinématographie) to create a documentary on the community-driven rebirth of Detroit. And, they’ve been working on it for the past year. The project goes by they name, Detroit je t’aime, and you can find out more at Kickstarter.

MARK: Would I be correct in assuming that you feel as though Detroit may serve, in some way, as a model for the rest of the world, as resources everywhere begin to constrict, communities re-localize, and government services become less dependable?

NORA: Detroit gives a clue as to where the Western civilization is going. Post-industrial societies are still looking for a model to follow. We believe that what some Detroiters have built in terms of self-reliant communities and DIY culture is an example for anybody else, anywhere else in the world. We’re thinking of urban farming, community-oriented bike shops, makerspaces, time banks, the crowdfunding “soups,” etc.

MARK: So, Detroit, in your eyes is a model for grass roots-driven, community-based, radical sustainability?

HELENE: We know a young French family who considered moving to Detroit with their kids after reading our blog… We’re aware that Detroit at large is facing many challenges, and everybody in the city isn’t necessarily trying to be “the change they want to see in the world.” But the efforts that are actually put into saving the city have constantly blown our minds. A place like Recycle Here, for example, offers many opportunities to practice a green lifestyle (while having lots of fun) — it’s a totally unique place where people from all walks of life come together. We’d love to see more places like that in other cities!

MARK: You are, of course, not the only foreign filmmakers who have taken an interest in Detroit. It seems that folks from all over the world are interested in coming to Michigan and capturing on film the parable of Detroit. Those of us in the area often refer to such work as “ruin porn,” which is a phrase I’m sure you’re familiar with.

NORA: Yes, we even wrote a blog post about it.

MARK: For those folks in the audience who aren’t likely to follow the link to your post, can you summarize your thoughts on the genre.

HELENE: For us, ruin porn is to the 21st century what Romantism was to the 19th century. If you look at Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, there’s an uncanny resemblance to “ruin porn” photography. The fact is, you can’t ignore the ruins in Detroit. Most of them are just really beautiful old buildings. They’re part of the landscape. For sure, the tourist who shows up at the Packard Plant with a camera on a Saturday morning will make ruin porn pics, that might look great on Flickr. The actual artist, who wants to capture a sign of our times, will come with the proper lens and will snap a shot at the right time of day. That’s what Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand did. We think that, in their own way, they paid tribute to Detroit’s history. When you look at their pictures, you can’t help but marvel about the past, and question today’s world.

NORA: We personally don’t want to focus on the ruins in Detroit because we want to tell another story about the city. As filmmakers, we use parables all the time to tell universal stories, be it in Detroit or anywhere else in the world. Detroit’s metaphor is what you want it to be. Some see the Motor City as a metaphor for hope, others as a metaphor for the failure of capitalism… For us it’s a metaphor for human ingenuity.

MARK: Would you agree that many in your profession are just interested in documenting the decline of America, as illustrated so clearly in Detroit, and not the heroic efforts being undertaken on the part of many to recreate the City? Do these discussions take place between filmmakers?

NORA: We can’t speak for other filmmakers. Ken Burns says that a great story is “1+1=3” because we just live in an irrational world. It happens that Detroit’s landscape is very irrational: you gotta admit that the decline of Detroit in itself is a “great story.” It requires little effort to come up with a narrative telling the Motor City’s rise and fall. However, finding a hero, meaning the right protagonist for your story, whom you’ll have to follow for a couple of months, if not a full year, is a different kind of commitment. But, at the end of the day, we believe that you have to judge the film, not the person who made it.

MARK: Your objective, as I understand it, when you first came to Detroit, was to create a film about “urban utopias,” with Detroit being one stop among many. Since then, however, it would appear as though your focus has narrowed a bit, with the entire film being about Detroit. Is that correct, and, if so, why? What did you find in Detroit that made you think that an entire documentary was called for?

HELENE: Urban utopias are a huge theme, and just sound very expensive when you work in a low-budget situation like we do. We needed a “point of view” to tell a universal story. During our research, we found that urban farming was often cited as the utopia of the 21st century — and Detroit has been at the “avant-garde” of that movement for many years now. Then, coming to Detroit, we realized that urban farming was part of a larger movement: the DIY, or rather the “DIO” (Do It Ourselves!). When we talk about urban utopia, we don’t think of something impossible, instead we mean the idea of a new society, built on new grounds in hopes of achieving harmony. We do still see this happening in Detroit. It’s definitely in the background of the stories we’ve chosen to tell. The bike shop Fender Bender, operated by women and LGBT people, for example, is one of the focuses of our film. They bring strong and rather revolutionary ideas to the “Motor City.”

MARK: Would I be correct to assume that there will be an English language version of your film, once it’s completed, as well as a French language version? And, if there are two versions, I’m curious as to whether the only difference between the two will be the language of narration. In other words, I’m curious to know if you think that American and French audiences want something different in a documentary about Detroit, and, if so, whether the film will have to be structurally different for those distinct audiences.

HELENE: Our blog itself has been 100% bilingual from the start. Today, half of our “fans” on Facebook are American, and half are French. Detroit definitely fascinates overseas! There’ll be French subtitles available, and maybe even other languages too, depending on the success of our project. The story will be the same for each side. We’ve met with Americans who knew less about Detroit than some French people who are passionate about the D! Again, what we’re trying to do here is to tell a universal story that can speak to anybody in the world who’s interested in DIY culture as well as urban renewal and sustainability.

MARK: How much time have you spent in Detroit? How much film have you shot in that time? And how many people have you spoken with?

NORA: Helene stayed for the first three months to assist with the research. I stayed on, from last August, and will be in Detroit until October 1st. And I’ve been filming since the beginning. The bulk of the production has been happening since this Spring, and will last until the end of September. Since the research period, we’ve spoken with a countless number of people… over 300, at least — but we don’t interview everybody! The dialogue keeps on going today through our blog.

MARK: Back to urban utopias… Now that you’ve been here for a while, do you think that Detroit qualifies as one? Has your opinion changed at all over time?

NORA: It definitely has elements of it… “pockets” of utopia. We like to say it’s a desert, and, if you look for them, you’ll find great oases.

MARK: You’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign. How much are you looking to raise, and what will the money be used for?

HELENE: We had been financing our film ourselves for the past few months, but, in order to finish it in a professional fashion, we’re looking to raise $25,000 by July 30th. The money will help complete the film production (we need to hire a DP and a sound mixer for specific scenes), and will especially cover the post-production (we’ll have an editor come on board, and we’ll also hire a crew to build our interactive website). As of today, we’ve secured 26% of our goal through Kickstarter, which means that we still have a long way to go!

MARK: As I’m sure you are aware, there is, for some inexplicable reason, a bizarre anti-French sentiment shared by many on America’s far right…

NORA: (Laughs) Old story! We have a maybe stronger anti-American sentiment in France!

MARK: I’m curious as to what you make of it, and whether or not you’ve encountered any of it first-hand while in Michigan.

NORA: Well, I’m not sure what their argument is… Are we arrogant, or trying to rule the world? We never had to face such a reaction in Michigan. On the contrary. We’ve always been treated very well and respectfully. We love when Detroit activists question French policies! We also discovered there are a couple of Frenchies in Detroit and around. See what PRI has released recently. And Detroit was a French city after all… Not everybody knows about it, but those who do, did ask us how to pronounce the original street names, like Beaubien, Lafayette, etc.

MARK: Can you give us a few examples of Detroit’s so-called “collaborative economy” that you will be highlighting in the film?

NORA: Fender Bender is a huge one as they’re working to start a bike lending library – the first of its kind in Detroit. We’re also focusing on an urban farmer and a hacker, who’s building a free wi-fi network in his neighborhood.

MARK: I’ve heard you both describe this film as “interactive.” In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I believe I’ve read that the film will somehow incorporate a “DIY Toolbox,” which will assist viewers in launching their own projects in this newly evolving collaborative economy of ours. I like the idea, but I’m having a hard time envisioning what that might look like. What exactly do you have in mind?

HELENE It means that our audience will be able to make its own story. Interactive films mix traditional storytelling with video games and social networks. At anytime, a “DIY toolbox” will be available in the corner of the screen. The “DIY Toolbox” will adapt itself to the story: guidelines and tools will suggest you to start similar projects depending on the story that will be unraveling on the screen (be it a community garden, basic bike repairs, or an LED light project.)

MARK: In poking around the internet, I found the following quote from you, Nora. “At a time of economic crisis, there’s no other place to look than Detroit. Detroiters have this urge to build the society of tomorrow – based on social, racial, food, environmental and digital justice.” I’m not trying to be confrontational, but is there really no place but Detroit to look? Are there not lessons to be learned elsewhere?

NORA: There are, of course, many other examples to explore and follow! We chose to focus on Detroit for all the reasons we’ve already outlined. We’ve both lived in and traveled to several different cities around the world, but there’s nothing like Detroit. The city also works as a great place to tell stories largely because of the car industry and the music history: the D already exists in people’s imagination around the world. Now, Detroit is less known for its grassroots initiatives. This is what we want to show… We want Detroit je t’aime to be a platform where people will exchange ideas and tips on the theme of DIY, urban renewal and sustainability.

MARK: While I agree with you that Detroit is, in a sense… like it or not… the world’s incubator, and feel as though there’s much to be learned from what’s happening there now, I think it’s probably worth noting that there are still significant barriers still in place. To name just a few, we have huge problems in the areas of education, poverty, crime, corruption and murder. And, I’m afraid that many of the people who are doing great work in Detroit may, as a result of this, eventually burn out and leave. I’m curious as to whether you saw any signs of this as you traveled through the city, talking with people. How precarious, in your opinion, is this movement, if at all?

NORA: In the past few months, I’ve had a handgun pointed at my dog, my house was almost broken into, and I saw a guy running after another guy who had apparently just stolen his bike. I’ve heard gun shots in different areas of the city. I’ve heard and read many “horror stories.” I’m more than aware that there are still a lot of significant barriers here. If you look around you can see that the city is shrinking down no matter what. It was interesting to follow the debate around the emergency manager taking over the city… We met a lot of young Detroiters who just want to leave and explore other places, but we’ve also met a lot of Detroiters who “came back” or who wanted to “give back” to their city. Last November, a “truth and reconciliation committee” was elected to work on the issues of racism in the city… A lot of work is being done, and of course it will take time. The movement that’s happening now in terms of rebuilding the city might be temporary, but no matter what, we think it’s impacting change, at a micro-level, and it’s inspiring to each and every Detroiter. What we’re really wary of is to see grassroots initiatives being turned into larger, corporate models — it’s on the verge of happening with urban farming. That would be the end of it, probably.

MARK: What do you want the people of France, in particular, to know about Detroit?

HELENE: We want to inspire our French audience to start DIY (and green) projects similar to what’s happening in Detroit. We believe this is what creates community, bonds people together and moves society forward. Such initiatives exist in France, but they’re not necessarily connected with a reflection on the city like it is in Detroit. Here people question their role in the community and how they can effectively impact change in their city. This is a unique approach that doesn’t exist at the same level in Europe.

MARK: Are you aware of any other recent initiatives by the French in Detroit? I believe I heard some time ago, from friends in Hamtramck, that a European art school had purchased a few homes in the city, which the intention of turning them into design laboratories. I believe, in that instance, it was a university in Denmark, but I’m wondering if there might be French initiatives afoot.

HELENE: No, sorry, we’ve been in Hamtramck a couple of times, but we don’t know about that. By “the French” do you mean French people or French institutions? As said previously we do know Frenchies living in the D. We know musicians, photographers… mostly an artist crowd. But also some scientists who work at Wayne State University! All of them definitely have the same opinion on the city as we do.

MARK: While you’ve been in Detroit, you’ve also been writing about the City for French magazines such as Glamour Magazine, Usbek & Rica and Les Inrockuptibles. I’m curious as to what you wrote about, and how those article were received.

HELENE: For Usbek & Rica and Les Inrockuptibles it was very similar to the spirit of our documentary: we talked about Detroit as a laboratory of DIY culture. We interviewed Grace Lee Boggs for that article specifically, among others. For Les Inrocks we covered the fascinating issue of digital justice in view of the Allied Media conference that recently took place. In both places, we provided visual and written portraits of relevant Detroit makers. For Glamour, we wrote about the “generation Y”, the young doers who move to Detroit from other American cities in order to get involved in a community at a deeper level. After each article got published, we received dozens of email and comments of people who had read them and wanted to get in touch to learn more, and even, visit (or move!) to Detroit.

And, here is their Kickstarter video. If, after watching it, you’d like to make a contribution, just click here.

[note: All photos accompanying this piece were by Nora. They appear with her permission, and they can be found, along with many others, on the Detroit je t'aime Flickr site.]