“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” Humphrey Bogart said in the movie Casablanca, “She walks into mine.”  As the owner of Rick’s Cafe, he was talking about the love/hate relationship he had with Ilsa Lund played by Ingrid Bergman who unexpectedly walked into his life again forcing him to sort out the relationship.  Of “all the towns in all the world” Detroit has that same love/hate dynamic for me.  My home town, my misspent youth, a lot of good and not so good memories are all coming back as a new project unfolds that just might take me home again.

Three weeks ago I was handed a copy of the first in a series of articles called Assignment Detroit a year long project initiated by Time Magazine.  The first article called The Tragedy of Detroit was especially gripping and included pictures of buildings and sometimes entire city blocks in complete decay.

Try to imagine life in the context of statistics that Time editor in chief John Huey describes.  “Not one national chain operates a grocery store in the entire 138-sq.-mi. city limits of Detroit. The estimated functional illiteracy rate hovers near 50%, the unsolved-murder rate is about 70%, and unemployment is around an astonishing 29%.” (Assignment Detroit)

It’s not hard to imagine why people (like me) left town and really difficult to imagine why anyone would want to come back.  But Assignment Detroit has changed the atmosphere.  This is not another media hit piece – the magazine bought a house in the city, set up as a bureau for reporters to research and file stories while they were part of a community – stories cross their entire platform of print including Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Essence and a newly launched Detroit Blog.  There is also the inevitable buzz going on Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo.

Nothing is for sure yet but we want to join in with four live Radio in Black and White shows from the Time Inc house, help develop a legacy DVD that would be used as a teaching resource for Detroit Public Schools and help produce a special smart phone app called Assignment Detroit.  All this aimed at keeping hope alive and directing energy towards a culture of innovation that will stay with the city when Time Inc. goes home.

“The hope is that through all these efforts, a narrative arc about Detroit will emerge over the next year that can somehow make a difference,” John Huey said.  “While we do not intend to be cheerleaders or apologists, we do have a point of view: we want Detroit to recover and find its way into the future.”

The most important element of that “narrative arc” is found in a culture of inclusion.  Our radio show is built on a long term friendship we have branded on the radio as the “most integrated hour of the week.”  As the nation’s most segregated city devastated by racism – Detroit needs that most of all.  We can be cheerleaders for that!