Ty,
Thanks for responding about this very important issue that I called you about this past Wed. as soon as I learned about this DIBC Hazmat Issue resurfacing once again because I was quite surprised about learning at that same time you had signed onto Boyd's Letter supporting the DIBC desire to truck hazmats over their antiquated Ambassador Bridge where hazmats have never been allowed to travel over it for many numerous important reasons including its age, not having a built-in fire suspension system that the Blue Water Bridge has & the new GHIB will have, difficulties with direct accessibility to the Bridge Plaza & then the Bridge itself by our Detroit 911 Responders should a hazmat spill &/or fire emergency happen, & all of the safety & health issues for our adjacent residential neighborhoods, our Riverside Park right under the Ambassador & our Detroit River underfoot & disrupting one of our busiest border-crossing in North America for international trade.
You see if you would have thought to reach out to any one of the many active & vocal SWD resident advocates & some who even focus on environmental issues in SWD &/or who also happen to reside adjacent to the Ambassador, I &/or other SW Detroiters could have helped to give you the important history on that outdated 2012 MDOT Study & how the DIBC had already tried to be granted permission to have hazmat on their Bridge & therefore, already had their due process & how we, the People already fought against DIBC's greediness at so many others expense by testifying before MDOT (& possibly MDEQ I can't recall) but I definitely recall fighting to prevent hazmat on the Ambassador Bridge.
I definitely agree with you, that it is extremely important that all of our elected officials go out of their way to communicate & keep all of the People in their District updated on what they are working on & their results. I think most constituents appreciate our District 6 Councilmember Raquel's Weekly Newsletter keeping us informed & Newsletter from you, Ty, as well as Senator Chang & Commissioner Varga. However, I find your comments a bit odd: "I have been the State Representative for this district for over 18 months, and have never heard from you, or your community about any issue until recently" & then again, "I offer this as an example of my advocacy, and again I have never heard from your community". Your comments seem odd to me, like your scolding or being suspicious of my intentions for the timing of my reaching out to you more recently, in April when I reached out to all my elected officials once Mayor Duggan began COVID testing all of the seniors & staff inside the nursing homes within the City limits. That is when I reached out to you & others to help make testing happen in all of our other nursing centers in Wayne County & Statewide for that matter & yes, my 92 yr. old Dad was in a nursing center in Woodhaven & in Wayne County. That's when you shared with me that you were working on getting clear shields for all nursing center seniors to wear for protection when they are reopened for family members to visit their elderly loved ones.
I hope you can understand why your comment about not hearing from me or my neighborhood (community) seems odd & I surely thought you knew me, Ty & that I don't reach out to my elected officials unless there's a real pressing & important issue at hand that our neighborhood &/or our broader SWD community is facing. Some elected officials maybe even relieved not to hear from Deb Sumner so I guess you're lucky that I hadn't reached out to you often. When HR & HF & SWD Community fought to keep Ste. Anne's Street open in 2017, I may have copied you & others on emails about the issue but you were not in an elected office then..
I will have to figure out how to reduce the file of this outdated 2012 Study you have shared with me so I can share it with our HF List-serve because any attached files will not go through if they are not under 500kb.
Ok, later, Deb
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tyrone Carter <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: What Are You Going to Do Ty? Retract & Issue a Statement to Deny or Are You Standing By the Morouns?
To: Deb Sumner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >
From: Tyrone Carter <
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: What Are You Going to Do Ty? Retract & Issue a Statement to Deny or Are You Standing By the Morouns?
To: Deb Sumner <
Hey Deb,
As a person who has lived in this district my entire life, I have ALWAYS stood for the community. I believe in equality, equity and due process for all. I have been the State Representative for this district for over 18 months, and have never heard from you, or your community about any issue until recently. You reached out about issues concerning nursing homes, and I advocated for testing, PPE, and other changes that were implemented. During this term, Isaac Robinson (RIP) and I worked to several environmental issues, including the closure of incinerator. I offer this as an example of my advocacy, and again I have never heard from your community. No worries, my record is public.
The Detroit Delegation was given a study (attached) and a request for a public hearing. Again, I believe in due process, and signed on. I appreciate your emails and call, because I know more than I did about your community. In the future, please let me know the concerns as much in advance as possible.
If it ever gets to a public hearing, which according to Senator Chang, it will not, I know where the community stands, and you know where I do. I await the next email, as I have become used to these during election time.
On Saturday, July 11, 2020, 08:39:30 AM EDT, Deb Sumner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > wrote:
Ty?
What Are You Going to Do Ty?
Retract & Issue a Statement to Deny thus, Stand with The People & Protect The People, Our Riverside Park, Our Detroit River, & Not Put this Old, Antiquated Trade Border Bridge Crossing in Danger?
Or Are You Standing By the Morouns?
Let us know, thanks, Deb
TY,
A few other points of concern & history that you need to know regarding DIBC/Morouns come to mind that I forgot to state during my tiredness last night when I responded to your email that I had been waiting for since last Wednesday on this most important hazmat issue & I wondered how in the world you could sign-on to a Letter to support DIBC/Morouns that has now come up once again & they "already had their due process" on this issue but that's how the 2-headed snake in the tall weeds behaves aka DIBC/Morouns that I have watched for 40+ years performing these downright despicable & shameless acts upon our neighborhoods in our SWD Community especially, our fellow Hubbard Richard(HR) neighborhood such as use unimaginable block-busting tactics to be able to threaten & scare homeowners as they set out to buy up all of the beautiful historic homes & push out the established businesses btw WGB, W. Fort St., 18th St. & West Lafayette & what used to exist the street of Howard on the east of the I-75 & south of DIBC-owned land to monopolize more & more land as they have been planning for 40+ years to build 2nd Bridge west of the Ambassador, examples:
Mayor Young 1st sent out a letter to all residential homeowners & businesses to alert them that their properties may be taken via "condemnation" based on the eminent domain governmental powers that Mayor Young could exercise for the good of the City (but really for the private-owner billionaire Ambassador Bridge Owner!).
Then Eddie Robison (who had served time in federal prison for land fraud) is hired by Morouns to be their real estate guy under the fake name of "Mexicantown Real Estate" to try to throw off property-owners that it was our nonprofit, Mexicantown Community Development Corp.(MCDC) needing & wanting to buy their properties for the good of the broader HR Neighborhood & SWD Community!
Then the unscrupulous block-busting tactics are carrying out by Eddie R., once one house was acquired by Morouns & the HR homeowners moved out then mysteriously, in the night, the house would be torched, scaring the hell out of the dense housing stock owners occupying their homes! This did not just happen one-time, the fires of acquired houses by the Morouns continued & continued & thus, the property-owners felt they had to no other choice but to eventually sell despite that they had engaged the well-known Detroit Eminent Domain Attorney Al Ackerman!
During the beginning of Morouns take-over of HR neighborhood, Hubbard Farms(HF) residents sought & successfully secured historic designation by the City to send a message to the Morouns "to leave our dense historic housing the hell alone"!
Morouns also illegally close off public streets in this HR area & snuffed out the traffic of customers being able to drive to the existing businesses sitting in the middle of all of the land Morouns wanted such as the old Bait Shop https://www.metrotimes.
I could go on & on about the bad corporate actors & neighbors that the Morouns have been such as the "illegal" take-over, occupation & fencing off half of our Detroit publically-owned Riverside Park & erecting fake Homeland Security signs, & closing our West Jefferson Ave. (our riverside drive on the westside), & many of our other local public streets that were in the way within his desired acreage that he trying to amass, got control of a parking lot that was donated to Ste. Anne's Church from Bagley Housing Association(BHA) but swooped in when the Archdiocese of Detroit(AOD) was literally threatening to close Ste. Anne's Chruch bc of the debt that they had accumulated & then low & behold DIBC comes to the rescue conveniently to their debts & AOD sells the parking lot land to DIBC who had been wanting it for some decades, then we, the residents know that DIBC has always wanted to "move The Pink Wall" that HR & MCDC & SDBA & HF forced DIBC to build as a sign of good faith that DIBC would never encroach any further into HR but DIBC refused to sign an MOU to that effect & of course, we, the residents knew why! And sure enough, come 2017, the residents of HF & HR & SWD Community learn that DIBC had Petitioned the City ONCE AGAIN to request that the City allow for the vacation of the public alley just east of The Pink Wall & requests that Ste. Anne's St. be closed from Fort St. to West Lafayette to be able to join their Bridge Plaza to their property east of Ste. Anne's St. to 18th St. & requested that the dead-end portion of West Lafayette be vacated on the west side of Ste. Anne's St. that DIBC had already illegally fenced in with the rest of their property! Since Nov. 2017, we, The People, HR & HF & SWD Community, "all working together with all of our elected officials" implemented all of our strategies & was able to successfully get the 2-headed snake to go back under the weeds with the troll under the Bridge for now, until DIBC's snake & troll tries to get more of the public's land that they want! Know that DIBC is ruthless & never give up on want they want to do & will always try to rise-up once again to try to get what they want! Again, Ty, I could go on & on about who DIBC buses into our SWD community & pays to be at our public hearings & pretends to be concerned citizens & speak for what DIBC wants versus all of the real SWD residents speaking the truth/s! The list of despicable & illegal acts & behaviors of DIBC is so numerous to list here that surely, my email is too long as it is.
Anyway, Tyrone, know that I & many other advocate-residents (of whom many were also raised here & lived here all their lives & choose to continue to live here) are SWD Warriors that will always speak truth to power, stand up for what is right & just, will fight all of the good fights & so ALL of our elected officials representing & working for our SWD Community have extremely high standards to meet & are expected to meet them by our residents! I would believe the # 1 goal for any of our elected officials is to Never do things that would cause SWD residents to question their loyalty to them, always do their homework & reach out & ask their SWD residents about SWD history that they may not know about on whatever the issue/subject might be, always STAND with the People, our residents on the issues & don't accept $$$ from DIBC, Morouns, Marathon, Koch Brothers, Detroit Bulk Storage, AK Steel, etc.,...from any of the corporate industries that have been & are bad actors in our SWD Community!
Ok, Ty, as you may know, know me, I don't play games, I don't have time to play games, because there is always another whale to save in SWD, I have always been a straight-shooter & will always tell the TRUTH just like the nuns taught me to be during all of my formative years at Holy Redeemer Schools & to help make our community the best quality of life it can be for everyone because I believe SWD can always be better, we must always protect, preserve & improve SWD & never give up hope that we, as an amazing People can always work together & overcome our challenges & we must always act as a "village" for helping to raise up the kids in our community!
Sincerely, Deb