On Christmas Eve, I had the pleasure of  attending a mass held in  the oldest church building in Detroit. This was the 166th Christmas being celebrated in this particular church in downtown Detroit. For 166 years, Detroiters have come on December 25 (or 24th, like in my case) to this one building to join together in worship as a community. In 1847, when the inaugural mass was held Detroit was still the capital of Michigan. The following year that would no longer be the case. By 1900, Detroit would have a police department, a library and the Tigers as their baseball team. . In 1903, the Packard Motor Car Co. plant would be built.  When Christmas was celebrated in 1958, the plant would be shut down. No one knew then that the abandoned Packard plant would, over 50 years later, serve as the national media’s “money shot” in stories about the city’s decline. There was a lot the citizens of Detroit didn’t know then. They didn’t know Motown Records would find its home among them. They weren’t aware of the riots that would come, the inadequate and corrupt leaders that would run their city, or the fact that many of the citizens themselves would end up fleeing city boundaries and moving to the suburbs.  A lot can change in 50 years. A lot can change in less time. On January 17, 1985, I was born in the city of Detroit. At that time, The Tigers still played at Tiger’s Stadium, the Lions at the Silverdome. Coleman Young, the first African American man to be elected mayor of Detroit, would win his third term. Over the next few years, the people mover (our version of the subway) and I-696 would be completed. The American Motor Company would fold and our police chief would be sent to prison for embezzling millions of dollars from the city. 28 years later, on January 17, 2013, my nephew was born in the same city as me. He’ll never watch a baseball game at Tiger Stadium or a football game at the Silverdome though. The mayor elected during his first year of life is the first white man to hold the position in 30 years, though the position means very little at this point. He’ll grow up hearing a lot of complaining about the construction on I-696, the loss of the auto industry in Detroit, and the mayor who would find himself joining our former police chief on the list of Detroit officials with prison sentences under their belts. Things that just 28 years ago were inconceivable to the public, things that even 5 years ago, when that 161st Christmas mass was celebrated, were inconceivable to a city of people whose adopted motto was “Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We hope for better days; it shall rise from the ashes).

To start at the beginning of what happened to Detroit would be impossible (and probably pretty irrelevant to my purpose here). It was one thing as much as another and I’m sure you’ve seen enough articles pointing at this or that, at him or them, to gather its been a slow and desperate fall.  For our purposes though, it makes sense to call the beginning when the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, signed Public Act 436. The bill essentially tells struggling local governments in Michigan to work with the state to end the struggle or  an emergency fiscal manager will be put in place. Gov Snyder signed this law despite the fact that the Michigan Supreme Court had given Michigan voters a chance to repeal an earlier version of the same public act a few months prior and repeal it they did.  Regardless of the public’s actions, Public Act 436 took effect and Detroit’s government officials  found themselves at the bargaining table unable or unwilling (depending on who you talk to)  to bargain. Since no agreement was reached, Detroit’s emergency fiscal manager, Mr Kevyn Orr,  was appointed in March 2013. The city council appealed to the state, Detroiters traveled to Lansing to protest but they had no luck. The rights Detroiters had during the 165th Christmas mass in 2012, the rights they had when my nephew was born just two months earlier were gone. By the time I sat there at the 166th Christmas mass last week, our emergency fiscal manager against the wishes of many of the city’s residents would have filed for bankruptcy. The federal  Circuit Court would have said it was allowed and Detroit would feel very much like a place on the verge… but on the verge of what?