What we value is what we build – Detroit Metro Times

These are divisive times. Some people are questioning their long-held political beliefs. Others are experiencing a political awakening for the first time. Many are asking, “What can we actually do?” It is tempting to focus only on surface level strategies, policies, and quick wins. But every political campaign, every demand, and every new institution fundamentally rests on what we believe about whose lives matter, what kind of world is possible, and what we owe one another in Detroit. As institutions, organizations, and communities, we have to slow down long enough to name those beliefs, to treat values as the foundations of imagination and the blueprints for radical world-building. 

The work in front of us requires new ideas, new imaginaries, new theories, and new practices. At this moment, we are witnessing the convergence of long-term counter-revolutionary projects: the Tea Party, white Christian nationalism, and the merging of state and corporate power, political tendencies whose interests sometimes compete but often converge. Whether one agrees with these movements or not, they are based on clearly articulated values about who belongs and who does not. At the same time, we are also seeing the Left, particularly democratic socialists, build themselves anew, as we’ve witnessed in the recent elections of Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson. All of these political projects share a values-driven, affirmative vision for the future.  

The lesson is clear: building the world anew requires vision. And vision is never neutral. Values are the brick and mortar of radical imagination and of the political projects that accompany it. 

Those that want to build a better Detroit need to lead with a constellation of clear values. This is the pre-work of imaginative world-building. But let’s be clear, when we say “imagination” or “vision,” we mean something concrete, informed, interrogated, spacious, and daring. To quote James Baldwin, “When I say vision, I do not mean dream.” Vision demands the labor of our collective intellect, drawing on ancestral wisdom, and the leveraging of all our ways of knowing. It asks us to both think and feel our way toward a new reality. 

For that reason, organizations and individuals working to build a new world must ask: What and who do we value? What are our shared interests? How and with whom do we organize to realize those interests as part of a collective, world-building project?

At the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, we are guided by the belief that all living beings possess inherent dignity, worth, and the right to flourish, that all people have a right to life and to the things that sustain it: water, food, housing, safety, and a thriving environment, that all people should be free from domination, coercion, and extraction, that love is a real and powerful force in political and community life, and that everyone has an absolute right and a deep need to dream. 

Rooted in these values, we are committed to walking in lockstep with fellow Detroiters as we develop and sharpen a vision of what a new Detroit could look like as we emerge from this political crisis. We believe that the architecture of building this political and cultural project requires defined belief systems and values as its blueprint.  

When our efforts face inevitable losses, setbacks, or fierce opposition; when a policy or organizing strategy misses the mark; when conflict breaks out within our own ranks, it is our shared values, not identical ideology or perfectly aligned interests, that will keep our movement alive. If we move forward with community building, organizing, and political work without naming our values, we weaken the durability and efficacy of our project. 

Being clear-eyed about our values also acts as a signal flare for those seeking values-aligned community and as an indispensable recruitment tool to bring others with us. It also becomes an instrument of accountability for those within the movement and for those whom the movement claims to represent. So that if we stray from our values or allow ourselves to be overly preoccupied with trivial distractions, we can hold ourselves accountable according to the values we espouse.  

Finally, our values must emerge from collective struggle. They cannot be detached from a material analysis of the present and historical conditions in Detroit. They must propel a world-changing program and clearly demonstrate a commitment to life-affirming principles. 

In this era of cascading crises, our greatest resource is the clarity of our values and the breadth of our imagination. If we commit to life-affirming principles, organize around them with discipline and love, and stay accountable to the communities we serve, we can turn vision into infrastructure, policy, and practice. Into transformation. The future is not something happening to us; it is something we are building together, every day.

Angel McKissic, Ph.D. (she/her) is the Director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School. Peter Hammer, J.D./Ph.D. is the Faculty Director of the Damon J. Keith Center and A. Alfred Taubman Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School.

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