Building a community is, in many ways, vastly harder than fixing a single immensely difficult problem. But they are trying, and in an era when cheap cynicism too often passes for sophistication. This year five dozen Detroit Summer volunteers ages 14-25 are swarming over the east side, planting gardens in the Cass Corridor and an entire orchard at Mack and Grand Boulevard. They have been cleaning up parks, restoring murals at Clark Park and St. Hedwig's Church and working on a youth coffeehouse. We become obligated to get off our asses and fix what we don't like.
Youth are the leaders.
This summer they have volunteers from Huntington Woods to New York to San Francisco. An Antioch College group came and pitched in for a week. Don't think Detroit Summer is a suburban do-gooder safari. Most of the volunteers are inner-city kids. Shea Howell, a professor of communication at Oakland University, serves as one of two Detroit Summer co-ordinators.