Dear Kwame, Detroit City Council, and other Concerned Parties,

I am officially done with Detroit. DONE. I've lived here almost all of my life. I was raised downtown in Lafayette Park. I walked to the old Hudson's to do my Christmas shopping (before that was torn down.) I skated on Belle Isle (before that became a gangster hangout and the skating hut was abandoned.) I waited with anticipated for you to change these things; you could have made a nominal charge for admittance to the Island to help cut down the cruising (and drinking and drugs.) But you refused. Now, families are afraid to go there. You could have done lots of things, but you didn't.

But, I soldiered on. I bought memberships to the cultural offerings about the city; the Zoo, and Greenfield Village. I bought a house, I met my neighbors. I tended my garden. I knew I could never send my children to the school (because, come on, how many of YOU send your children to the neighborhood schools? wink wink- I'm looking at you John Conyers and you Kwame.) I became a defender.

But you local "leaders" have so fucked things up, I have now completely lost hope that the city will ever recover, and I've decided that I'm completely DONE being a sacrificial lamb. Why good people would continue to live in this city that does absolutely NOTHING for them is a mystery to me now. Government policy is driven by pandering to the Unions (whose members don't even live in the city), and to the poor. Soon the city will be composed of nothing but the criminal element and those dependent on the Government.

Last month, my mother's house was broken into. And Saturday night, while my dad stopped over for a short visit, his car was stolen RIGHT out of my fraking driveway. My daughter cried in fear, accusing her father of lying when he said that we were safe in our home.

I am done. I am done of living near people who don't give a shit how their children turn out. My neighbors are not such people; they are pretty much mostly black middle-class "normal" people. Married. Jobs. Children. They tend to their yards. They have barbecues.

But, I'm not far (enough) from the hood. They find their way into my neighborhood. And I refuse to exist on the same plane as these people. My only purpose, in the city, is to pay taxes. My vote is irrelevant (racial politics is at a fever pitch in this city, where only a black person could EVER get elected. Black city council members, black police chiefs, black school administrators. If they can't find a black person in the city to fill a slot, they'll seek out of state, just as long as they are black, they are right for the job. Oh, correction- black and liberal, because those black conservatives are just uncle Tom's who are beholden to the white devil.

I am done. I'm going to start packing boxes after Christmas.