Soh Suzuki

It is hard to believe that it has been almost ten years since I was first introduced to community organizing initiatives in Detroit. I was still in East Lansing then, just months away from graduation and moving on to something else, though without a clear understanding of where to. I did not think of pursuing a career in my academic field, but my involvements in various Asian American student organizations fostered a deeper interest in continuing the work in the community. So, when I heard of the opportunity, I started commuting down to Detroit for planning events around the twentieth-year remembrance of Vincent Chin.

I was invited back to Detroit the following summer to help create a communitybased mural in Chinatown. The project was coordinated by Detroit Summer, an organization dedicated to rebuild, redefine and re-spirit Detroit from the ground up. It is not a secret that Detroit has seen struggles over the years, but I have learned that Detroiters have been creatively finding solutions to better the community from the grassroots level. The mural-making process involved working with a group of youth and engaging the neighborhood residents, as well as learning about the historical context of Cass Corridor neighborhood and envisioning its potentials.

I settled in Detroit a short while later. I was convinced that there was more that I can learn from taking a part in ongoing community organizing initiatives, and found the opportunity to reside at the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. My involvement in organizing and participating in a conference to explore the roles of Asian Americans in rebuilding the city provided the framework to start Detroit Asian Youth Project. The idea was relatively a simple one – to provide Asian American youth resources to engage in the community building process. Eight years later, the simple idea has turned into rewarding experiences of learning about complex lives of Detroit’s youth.

We learn a great deal of information within classrooms, but we also learn from firsthand experiences outside the campus. I may be able to learn about racial and class inequalities in a formal classsetting, but I would not know, for example, what it means to have an Emergency Financial Manager threatens to close my high school, unless a group of youth who are in that circumstance shares their experiences with me. I am grateful for the knowledge I was able to acquire in my years at MSU, which truly was the foundation of the path I have taken. But, I am also privileged to have the opportunities to continue learning from Detroit.