Mainstream media coverage tells us that Detroit is a failed city, a story told through images of desperately unemployed people, abandoned city blocks, and crumbling factories, images that can provoke fearful speculations of people in Baltimore. Are we next? But the recent Allied Media Project conference in Detroit was filled with artists, youth leaders, media activists, students, teachers, researchers, writers, filmmakers, and community organizers who gathered to think about current and long-term solutions to seemingly intractable social problems. I was struck by the insistence that we learn our histories and tell our present stories in order to be able to imagine the future tales of these two cities--one where I was born and the other where I have lived for the last 25 years... (continue reading)