- Hi, I'm Christy McDonald and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit, a closer look at the spike in gun violence in Detroit and across the country, it's an "American Black Journal" special report plus the election analysis with Nolan and Steven.

Also the future of work and growing the middle class in Detroit and the story of a family waiting more than 40 years to meet, it is all ahead, this week on One Detroit.

- [Female Advertiser] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Male Advertiser] Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV, the Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Female Advertiser] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan Focused Giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Male Advertiser] Business leaders for Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by and viewers like you.

(digital music) - Hi there and welcome to One Detroit, I'm Christy McDonald, so glad to have you with me.

All right, let's get to it.

Elections this week in Detroit and around the state, Nolan and Steven have analysis of the results for us.

Plus the future of work and growing the middle-class in Detroit, I meet up with Ian Seyal and Greg Wright from the Brookings Institution, we talk about the latest numbers they have and opportunities for growth.

Then the story of a family waiting more than 40 years to meet, Bill Kubota talks with Michigan filmmaker Justin Brown about his film called "Umoja".

It airs this weekend on Detroit Public Television.

But we're starting off with an in-depth report from "American Black Journal" on the growth in gun violence in Detroit and around the country.

Shootings have spiked in the last year and a half, what is causing the increase and what can be done to stop it?

The violence is leaving a lasting mark on Detroit residents, BridgeDetroit reporter Bryce Huffman, and "American Black Journal" producer, AJ Walker have the story.

- [Bryce] What does it mean to lose someone to gun violence?

Well, for Sherri Scott, it means never seeing her daughter Francesca again.

- Frankie was the life of our family.

You know how you had that one person, and she was that one person, she was there one.

- [Bryce] Scott says everyone called her Frankie from her neighborhood friends to her nieces and nephews.

On August 3rd, 2019, Frankie Marks took her seven kids to Rouge Park on Detroit's side for a day of fun and barbecuing.

A dispute broke out on the basketball courts then shortly after Frankie and her kids heard gunshots.

- Francesca was safe, but when they started shooting she ran to her baby to get her baby, that's how she got shot.

- [Bryce] By the time Scott learned her daughter had been shot, things weren't looking good.

She drove to the hospital, but it was too late.

- When I got to her, she wasn't cold and I just held her hand until her body stiffened up.

- [Bryce] Frankie was 30 years old.

Scott remembers trying to tell her grandkids that Frankie, their mom was never coming back.

- It was horrible, watching these kids, saying that they'll never see their mom, its just horrible.

- [Bryce] Scott wishes people took time to think before acting out in violence.

- I don't understand why people go to the park and start shooting or even contemplate shooting, anybody, how do you do that?

I don't understand it.

There are families up there, you go to the park to relax, you go there to enjoy your family, read a book or something.

- [Bryce] Frankie was just one of 102 people to die of gun violence in 2019 in Detroit.

And her family was just one of the many families in Detroit to lose someone to gun violence.

Two years later, Scott returns to Rouge Park.

There's a rally all about ending the senseless violence that took her daughter.

- The last time we did the parade, the Stop The Violence Parade was when Francesca was alive and she was doggone near leading the parade.

So it feels odd to be having this parade and she's not involved in it while she's alive.

Now it's because she was killed by the very thing she was marching against.

- [Bryce] Detroit Police Chief James White attended the rally.

He says these shootings rob so many families of great people like Frankie.

- It robs all of them, it robs us of Francesca, it robs us of her opportunities to not just live but we never know what she could have been.

And it's just very tragic when you have situations like this that happen all too often in our city where we're losing people.

And it's just very, very tragic.

- [Bryce] For some Detroiters, that feeling of loss stays with them for a long time.

Mia Reid lost her son, Charles to gun violence back in 2011.

- I can tell you that I was devastated, my daughters were devastated, my family was devastated.

And I think the community that loved Charles was devastated, that will not bring him back.

- [Bryce] Charles Reid was 24 when he and his cousin were shot and killed in Detroit.

After a long time of grieving, Reid decided she wanted to help other grieving parents, that's when she joined Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

- Many of them can relate to the experience that I have had with gun violence.

- [Bryce] Aside from being a good support group, Moms Demand Action works with organizations in various communities that are working to curb gun violence.

Reid says she wants to support those that are already doing the work.

- We have volunteers that work in Lansing and in Washington to help bring awareness to the Gun Violence Safety bills that we need to pass in order for us to be safe.

Moms Demand Action is all about safety.

- [Bryce] One piece of legislation Moms Demand Action is currently fighting for is the red flag law.

- The red flag law, knowing that somebody that has a gun and should not have it, that is going to flag the person that is selling it to them so that they can pause for a minute and do some background checking, so expanded background checking.

- [Bryce] Reid says, she's done a lot of research on gun violence since her son was murdered.

She says, communities can't fix the problem until they start at the root.

- Oftentimes people don't focus on the root cause.

Gun violence is just a symptom of the root cause which is poverty.

So when people feel desperate, when people don't have the most basic things that they need oftentimes they will revert to crime.

- [Bryce] Dujuan Kennedy is a Detroiter who understands the root causes of gun violence.

He knows firsthand because when he was young, he shot and killed one of his friends and spent 14 years behind bars.

Now that he understands the cycle of violence he was living in, Kennedy wants other people to learn from his mistakes.

- Like that's why it means something to me that's why it's something to me, 'cause I know why I was doing stuff, you know what I mean?

So I know why the next person may be doing stuff, and I know if I survive some, I have a responsibility as a survivor to make sure the next person is warned before they do what they do.

- [Bryce] Kennedy works with Force Detroit, a local nonprofit that works to build a freer and economically just future for black and brown Detroiters.

Kennedy spends a lot of his time talking to people who were dealing with the same cycle of violence that he was in.

- I know what I did, I know what was going through my mind so I try to share some of the things that helped me process things and use my best thinking in the future, so.

- [Bryce] Kennedy says doing this work, keeps him on the right track.

- Personally, it's been helpful for me and the people that I have relationships with that know how I was in the past.

It gives them a perspective or a point of view that they can dialogue, like I'm right here.

So you can talk to me about why I've changed, why I'm not doing this.

- [Bryce] He works alongside Alia Harvey Quinn, who is the Executive Director at Force Detroit.

She says, right now the team is looking to other cities for solutions to gun violence.

- It's fascinating when you get people who have been like exposed to violence, who've been shooters themselves or community leaders when you get them to be exposed to these programs that are in other cities and they're publicly funded, they're supported.

And then we realized like the absolute lack of resources that we have in Detroit, the absolute lack of infrastructure.

- Harvey Quinn says other cities are finding more success than Detroit because they invest in the organizations doing this work.

Why is it important that these things are publicly funded.

- When you prevent one person from continuing a high violence lifestyle, statistically, you save six lives.

- [Bryce] Detroit police expect the number of shootings to slow down as the weather gets cooler.

Meanwhile, lots of people are working hard to end the violence that has taken so many Detroiters away from their loved ones.

- For more reports from American Black Journal and BridgeDetroit, just head to our website at onedetroitpbs.org.

All right, checking in now with our One Detroit contributors, Nolan Finley of the Detroit News and Stephen Henderson of American Black Journal for a breakdown of election results this week.

- No real surprises out of the Detroit city election Tuesday but you're left with an interesting power dynamic.

- Yeah.

- We expect new council members will be joining that body in January.

Meanwhile, Mike Duggan goes to a third term and by a big margin.

He goes into office, fairly settled with his structure in place, this new council's gotta learn the ropes.

He'll have a very distinct advantage in the governing balance, won't he?

- I think he will.

There are a lot of people pointing to the idea that a lot of the candidates, the new candidates who were elected were elected with really progressive agendas, District four in particular and a couple others, you had these really progressive candidates win and look, that's great, but the rule of five of course still applies on council.

There are still five votes, I think, as I count them who are gonna be pretty sympathetic to Mayor Duggan.

I think Duggan has a distinct advantage, not just because of his electoral power at this point, but also because he's walking around with the $800 million falling out of his pockets and he alone really gets to decide where that money goes.

Those council members are gonna need to deliver results in their districts.

The only way to do that with this ARPA money is to play along with the mayor.

- He had two council members Gabe Leland and Andre Spivey who were taken out of the race after they were pled guilty to corruption charges.

Two others dropped out for lack of interest, Janee Ayers, who also was touched a bit by this doughy scandal, we don't know where that's going to go, finished first in the primary, third last night, voter seem to react to her being caught up in this but they elected Mary Waters who has no clean record herself.

- Detroiters, the truth is that they're very forgiving of politicians, especially African-American politicians who get themselves or find themselves in trouble.

A lot of it has to do with the disproportionate way that African-Americans are targeted by officials for wrongdoing.

- And councilman Benson, who was the other council person whose office was raided.

He was unopposed, so he'll be back- - He'll be back.

- But we don't know where this investigation is going.

Your old colleague ML Elrick, who I thought ran a pretty good campaign, you know, your Free Press colleague went down pretty hard in that east side yesterday.

- I think Mike Elrick was outclassed in the sense of the grassroots kind of politicking that is really key in that district.

His opponent Latisha Johnson, you know, really did understand that, she comes more from that world than he does certainly, and voters responded on election day.

- We did see more diversity in the suburbs, I think it was three suburbs elected first time muzzle mayors, including Dearborn is the country's largest Arab American population for the first time Mayor Elect Hammoud will take over there and Ghalib in Hamtramck, right, became that enclaves first mayor.

So you're seeing political power in the suburbs starting to broaden and diversify.

- Yeah, you are, and that's because the suburbs themselves are changing dramatically.

Dearborn may have changed more in the last 20 years than any place in America, if you think of the influx of Arab Americans to that community and the outflux of white voters.

The other dynamic that we'll start to see in next year's elections, in the 22 election, maybe mid midterm elections, I think because of the new maps, is the growing power of African-Americans in the suburbs, that will come with some new kinds of productive power that could see suburban African-Americans elected to post where they're representing the suburbs and the city representing African-Americans in both places, something we see in Congress right now, but don't see in the state legislature, I think you will start to see that happen.

This is becoming a less segregated area than it used to be and that's a good thing.

- We're taking a closer look now at the future of work and growing the middle-class, the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC has collected data on Detroit as part of its workforce of the future initiative.

We recently had live Facebook TownHall on the Future of Work and that's where I met up with Greg Wright, a fellow at Brookings Global Economy and Development Program.

And Ian Seyal, a Senior Project Manager and Research Analyst at Brookings.

Brookings just completed a report on job quality and job mobility.

And I'd love for you to give us a brief overview of your research and really how it was conducted, what your parameters were.

Greg, let me start with you.

- Yeah, so when people are in particular types of jobs, where do they go next?

And what type of career pathways are available to people?

And, you know, maybe more importantly, what type of career pathways are upwardly mobile to better work?

And these are difficult questions.

What do we do about the fact that sort of these middle skill and sort of good jobs have been hollowed out a little bit over the last few decades.

And Detroit is kind of at the center of that too, which makes it sort of a fascinating, but it's also a very difficult economic environment in Detroit, for all of these reasons.

So what we do is, yeah, we kind of have these data oriented maps of the way that people move through the workforce.

And you know, on the one hand, this highlights a little bit of where people get stuck in the labor market.

And on the other hand, it can provide some tools for workers or firms or policy makers to think about.

- So Ian what are we seeing specifically when it comes to Detroit?

- There's a number of trends.

I mean, I think as everyone knows, it's the decline of manufacturing jobs due to automation and increased global trade.

And as Greg said, Detroit has been a bellwether or in some ways on the Vanguard of experiencing these trends.

On the other hand, I think there's a few reasons for optimism for how Detroit might bounce back post pandemic.

You want a job to pay living wage and to be stable and reliable.

One of the other things we've seen over the last 10 or 20 years is declining economic mobility.

As the middle has been hollowed out, jobs that previously served as stepping stones, you know, as people progress throughout their career, have also been hollowed out.

And this in a way, I think, has led to some of the biggest social consequences.

People feel like they can't get ahead no matter how hard they work.

- What are the options Greg, that people can have to grow jobs here in the city of Detroit specifically?

- Yeah, and this is the big question, is sort of workforce development and economic development, what are the best strategies?

And so I think, you know, I mean the answer is sort of, that it's gonna involve everyone and we need public investments in skilling and employment services.

And I think US is something like second to last in OACD countries in job training and employment service funding.

And on top of that, it's been declining in recent years too so I think public investments in skilling and employment services are important.

And at the same time that we need to know where that money is going and where it can be most effective.

- Now we have this, you know what I think so many people are calling a once in a generation infusion of money from the American Rescue Plan and taking a look at what we can do now to help develop a different kind of workforce or have people feel that they are a part of something that maybe they haven't been before.

Talk about how Detroit maybe can best use some of that national funding.

- Yeah, and I think it's an awesome question, especially because Detroit, from what we've seen, is really uniquely poised to take advantage of some of this potential spending in infrastructure, green energy, transportation.

I think as everyone knows, one of Detroit's legacy strengths is in automotive manufacturing and its related industries.

But Detroit also has critical sort of density in several 21st century advanced industries, finance, design, architecture, engineering, healthcare, advertising, public relations.

And so it's easy to imagine how say investment in green transportation and electric cars could really suit the workforce of Detroit.

Well, maybe, you know, marrying the design and automotive capabilities of the city and the talents of people in the city.

- And finally, the story of a family waiting more than 40 years to meet.

It's a short film called "Umoja" by Michigan filmmaker, Justin Brown, and it's airing right here on Detroit Public Television this weekend.

It's the story of a black Vietnam vet and a son he's been wondering about for decades left in Vietnam.

One Detroit's Bill Kubota has a preview and talk with Justin about how he found the story and its powerful ending.

Take a look.

(tranquil music) - The film is called "Umoja".

The story of a French man, Frank-Antoine Marzin.

(man speaking in foreign language) Adopted living in France, a Vietnamese mother he never knew and an American father he'd soon meet.

The documentary directed by Flint filmmaker, Justin Brown.

Well, tell me about "Umoja", how did you get there?

How did you as a person, as a filmmaker, what took you to this story?

- Well, I was brought to it by my father, he and his production company were going to be interviewing this veteran who lived in Western Michigan and through one of his friends he found out about this guy and that he had this child that he had back in Vietnam but he didn't really know him because he was leaving the country in services over just as the person who he was with told him that she was pregnant.

So he never really knew this kid, never was able to be there because you know what Vietnam was at the time.

And through DNA testing, they were able to find each other, reconnect and they were going to meet for the first time in person.

- [Bill] Father and son together for the first time after more than four decades at Gerald R. Ford international Airport in Grand Rapids before the pandemic hit.

Brown's film crew there to document it while Marzin's family from France recorded it too.

- It was really emotional, was amazing to witness.

And then you brought up the idea of like, you know, using the footage that they shot for this reunion, everything like that to put together a short piece.

And I figured, yeah, I mean, I could do that, I could give it a shot.

So that was how I kind of came involved and then it was a matter of like trying to take all of this footage and all of these interviews and kind of edit it down to what it eventually became.

- [Man] Here it is.

- [Bill] As a baby Marzin would leave Vietnam in 1972 adopted by white parents in France, where he grew up being so different, back state side Asamu Johnson had no idea.

- [Asamu] Her name was Lahn, Nguyen Lahn she just took a liking to me and I kind of took a liking to her and we kind of formed a relationship.

- [Bill] Johnson new Lahn was pregnant, but couldn't bring her home.

- When I got back to the states, I met another lady and I ended up getting married, but I told her that there's a possibility that I have a daughter or son in Vietnam.

- From my earliest memory, he told us, he told us about this kid.

It was very casual the way he'd bring it up "You know, there's a possibility you got another brother or a sister in Vietnam.

- You know, the fact that he was so open and welcoming to it, I think is in a way a bit of a rarity.

- The connection, perhaps delayed.

Marzin's wife learned DNA testing was prohibited in France, then a workaround she ordered a test from a US laboratory.

(speaking foreign language) Onto the big scene, here's just a bit of it.

- When he walks in to like see his dad, he sees this huge family behind him, just the emotion that was released from that one moment where they connect, it was just so powerful.

Like I actually had to like walk out of the room 'cause I was just overcome.

(peaceful slow music) That was just the combination of 40 years of winning on both sides.

Like, who are they, where are they now?

Like, you know, now all coming together in this moment where Asamu and Frank, they finally come together.

You're like, you know, I guess in a way, spiritually and physically.

(peaceful music) Umoja is a word that means unity.

It kind of represents the unity that happens when Frank and his family come together, Asamu and his family and make their families whole.

(man speaking in foreign language) - The film air Sunday, November 7th at 5:30 PM right here on Detroit Public Television.

For more information, just head to our website at onedetroitpbs.org.

That is going to do it for us this week.

Find us on social media @OneDetroit, tell us what's on your mind.

And don't forget about One Detroit Arts and Culture, Mondays at 7:30 PM.

I'll see you next week.

Take care.

- [Female Advertiser] You can find more at onedetroitpbs.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit Newsletter.

From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Male Advertiser] Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV, the Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Female Advertiser] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan Focused Giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Male Advertiser] Business Leaders for Michigan dedicate to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by and viewers like you.

(digital music)