In 2009, I bought a house in Detroit for 500 dollars. It had no windows, no plumbing, no electricity and it was filled with trash. The first floor held nearly 10,000 pounds of garbage, and that included the better part of a Dodge Caravan, cut into chunks with a reciprocating saw.
2009 年,我在底特律買了 一間房子,價格是 500 美元。 這間房子沒有窗戶、 沒有抽水馬桶、沒有電力, 裡面還滿是垃圾。 一樓就有近 4500 公斤的垃圾, 其中包括一輛道奇 Caravan 比較好的部分, 但它被電鋸分割成了數塊。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I lived nearly two years without heat, woke up out of a dead sleep multiple times to gunshots, was attacked by a pack of wild dogs and ripped my kitchen cabinets from an abandoned school as they were actively tearing that school down.
我住了近兩年沒暖氣, 多次在沉睡中被槍聲驚醒, 被野狗群攻擊, 我的櫥櫃是從一間廢棄學校拿來的, 當時他們正積極地拆除學校。
This, of course, is the Detroit that your hear about. Make no mistake, it's real. But there's another Detroit, too. Another Detroit that's more hopeful, more innovative, and may just provide some of the answers to cities struggling to reinvent themselves everywhere. These answers, however, do not necessarily adhere to conventional wisdom about good development. I think Detroit's real strength boils down to two words: radical neighborliness. And I wasn't able to see it myself until I lived there.
當然,這是你們聽說的底特律。 沒有錯,這是真的。 但也還有另一個底特律。 那個底特律更有希望、 更創新, 或可提供一些答案 給各地正在努力自我改造的城市。 然而,這些答案不見得會 符合大家對於 「好的開發」的傳統認知。 我認為底特律的優點 可以歸結為五個字: 積極的睦鄰。 而在我住到那裡之前, 我都無法看見這一點。
About a decade ago, I moved to Detroit with no friends, no job and no money, at a time when it seemed like everyone else was moving out. Between 2000 and 2010, 25 percent of the city's population left. This included about half of the elementary-aged children. This was after six decades of decline. A city built for almost two million was down to less than 800,000.
大約在 10 年前, 我搬到底特律,沒有朋友、 沒有工作、沒有錢, 那個時候,似乎所有人 都在搬出底特律。 2000 至 2010 年間, 全市人口有 25 % 離開了。 其中約包括一半的小學年紀的學童。 這發生在長達 60 年的衰退之後。 這座城市是為了容納 200 萬人 建造,現在卻只剩下 80 萬人。
What you usually don't hear is that people didn't go very far. The population of the Detroit metro area itself has largely remained steady since the '70s. Most people who left Detroit just went to the suburbs, while the 139 square miles of the city deteriorated, leaving some estimates as high as 40 square miles of abandoned land -- about the size of San Francisco.
我們通常不會聽到的是, 大家並沒有走遠。 底特律市區本身的人口 在 70 年代之後就大致上穩定了。 大部分離開底特律的人 只是搬到近郊去, 但城市有 22 萬平方公尺的 面積都惡化了, 估計約有高達 6 萬平公尺 的廢棄土地, 這大約是舊金山市的大小。
Aside from platitudes such as the vague and agentless "deindustrialization," Detroit's exodus can be summed up with two structures: freeways and walls. The freeways, coupled with massive governmental subsidies for the suburbs via infrastructure and home loans, allowed people to leave the city at will, taking with it tax base, jobs and education dollars. The walls made sure only certain people could leave. In multiple places, brick and concrete walls separate city and suburbs, white and black, running directly across municipal streets and through neighborhoods. They're mere physical manifestations of racist housing practices such as redlining,
除了模糊且不負責任的 「反工業化」陳詞濫調, 底特律大量的人口外移 可以用兩種結構來總結: 高速公路和牆壁。 高速公路, 透過基礎建設和家庭貸款, 和政府對近郊的大量補助綁在一起, 讓大家能夠自由地離開城市, 把稅金、工作和教育基金一起帶走。 牆壁則是確保只有某些人能夠離開, 在許多地方, 磗頭和水泥牆阻隔了城市與近郊, 黑人與白人, 跨越過城市的街道、 穿過社區。 它們是種族主義的真實呈現, 比如畫紅線、 【拒絕提供服務、房貸給有色人種】
[Denying services to people of color]
限制契約 【屋主、建商和市政組織 達成共識,拒絕賣房給有色人種】
restrictive covenants and outright terror. In 1971, the Ku Klux Klan bombed 10 school buses rather than have them transport integrated students. All these have made Detroit the most racially segregated metro area in the United States.
和徹頭徹尾的恐怖。 【炸彈攻擊、縱火和謀殺】 1971 年,3K黨炸了十台校車, 只因為學生沒有實行種族隔離, 這一切讓底特律成為全美 種族主義最興盛的都市。
I grew up in a small town in Michigan, the son of a relatively blue-collar family. And after university, I wanted to do something -- probably naïvely -- to help. I didn't want to be one of the almost 50 percent of college graduates leaving the state at the time, and I thought I might use my fancy college education at home for something positive. I'd been reading this great American philosopher named Grace Lee Boggs who happened to live in Detroit, and she said something I can't forget. "The most radical thing that I ever did was to stay put."
我在密西根的一個小鎮長大, 我的家庭屬於藍領階層。 大學畢業後,我想要做點什麼── 可能很天真── 我想協助。 當時有近 50% 的大學生 畢業後選擇到其他州發展, 我不想要成為其中之一, 我想我可以用得來不易的大學教育 在家鄉做些正面的事。 我一直在閱讀偉大的美國哲學家 葛莉絲 ‧ 李 ‧ 博格斯的作品, 她剛好住在底特律, 她說了一段話讓我永遠無法忘懷, 「我所做過最激進的事情, 就是維持現狀。」
I thought buying a house might indelibly tie me to the city while acting as a physical protest to these walls and freeways. Because grants and loans weren't available to everyone, I decided I was going to do this without them and that I would wage my personal fight against the city that had loomed over my childhood with power tools.
我心想,買一間房子可能會 讓我不得不與這城市有所連結, 於此同時我也實際地向 這些牆壁和高速公路抗議。 因為補助金和貸款並非人人可得, 我決定不用它們來買房子, 我要展開一場個人的戰鬥, 對抗這個使用權力工具 讓我的童年籠罩在陰霾的城市。
I eventually found an abandoned house in a neighborhood called Poletown. It looked like the apocalypse had descended. The neighborhood was prairie land. A huge, open expanse of waist-high grass cluttered only by a handful of crippled, abandoned structures and a few brave holdouts with well-kept homes. Just a 15-minute bike ride from the baseball stadium downtown, the neighborhood was positively rural. What houses were left looked like cardboard boxes left in the rain; two-story monstrosities with wide-open shells and melted porches. One of the most striking things I remember were the rosebushes, forgotten and running wild over tumbled-down fences, no longer cared for by anyone.
我終於在一個叫做波爾鎮的社區 找到了一間廢棄的房子。 波爾鎮看起來好像是 世界末日降臨似的。 這附近是草原土地。 一大片開闊、雜草及腰的草地上, 只有少數殘缺的廢棄建築物 和幾間保存完好的房屋勇敢挺立著。 儘管騎腳踏車到鬧區的 棒球場只要 15 分鐘, 這區全然和鄉下一樣。 剩下的房屋看起來 像雨中殘留的紙箱。 兩層樓高的怪物,屋殼大開、 門廊傾頹倒塌。 我所記得最震撼的東西之一 就是薔薇花叢, 它們被遺忘,無節制地生長, 爬過殘破不堪的籬笆, 不再有任何人在乎。
This was my house on the day I boarded it up to protect it from the elements and further decay. I eventually purchased it from the county in a live auction. I'd assumed the neighborhood was dead. That I was some kind of pioneer.
這是我初登家門的那一天, 我去保護它不進一步朽爛。 我最終在一場拍賣會上 向政府買下了它。 我假定這個小區已死, 我算是某種先鋒。
Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. I was in no way a pioneer, and would come to understand how offensive that is. One of the first things I learned was to add my voice to the chorus, not overwrite what was already happening. (Voice breaking) Because the neighborhood hadn't died. It had just transformed in a way that was difficult to see if you didn't live there. Poletown was home to an incredibly resourceful, incredibly intelligent and incredibly resilient community. It was there I first experienced the power of radical neighborliness.
然而我錯到不能再錯了, 我完全不是先鋒者, 且我漸漸了解到那樣的 想法有多麼冒犯。 我最先學到的幾件事之一, 是要把我的聲音加到合唱團裡, 而不是把已發生的事情重寫。 (聲音斷續)因為這個小區還沒死。 它只是變樣了,而它轉變的方式, 若不是住在那裡是很難看見的。 波爾鎮是一個非常有資源、 非常有智慧,且非常有韌性的社區。 在那裡,我初次體驗到 「積極的睦鄰」的力量。
During the year I worked on my house before moving in, I lived in a microcommunity inside Poletown, founded by a wild and virtuous farmer named Paul Weertz. Paul was a teacher in a Detroit public school for pregnant and parenting mothers, and his idea was to teach the young women to raise their children by first raising plants and animals. While the national average graduation rate for pregnant teens is about 40 percent, at Catherine Ferguson Academy it was often above 90, in part due to Paul's ingenuity.
在搬進去之前,我花了 一年整修我的房子, 那段期間我就住在 波爾鎮裡的一個微型社區內, 它由一位狂野且正直的 農夫保羅 ‧ 沃茲創立, 保羅在底特律一所 公立學校擔任老師, 教導懷孕和帶孩子的母親, 他的想法是,若要教導 年輕女性養育她們的孩子, 就要先教她們養育動物和植物。 全國懷孕青少女的 平均畢業率是 40 % , 在凱瑟琳費格遜中學卻超過 90 % , 部分原因就是保羅的獨創性。
Paul brought much of this innovation to his block in Poletown, which he'd stewarded for more than 30 years, purchasing houses when they were abandoned, convincing his friends to move in and neighbors to stay and helping those who wanted to buy their own and fix them up. In a neighborhood where many blocks now only hold one or two houses, all the homes on Paul's block stand. It's an incredible testament to the power of community, to staying in one place and to taking ownership of one's own surroundings -- of simply doing it yourself.
保羅把許多創新的概念帶回到 他在波爾鎮的街區, 他在那裡至少服務了 30 年, 在房子被廢棄時將它們買下來, 說服朋友搬進去、遊說鄰居留下, 以及協助想要買自己房子的人安頓。 在這個小區,有許多街區現在 都只剩一間或兩間房子了, 但在保羅的街區, 所有的家園都還在。 這充分證明了社區的力量, 待在一個地方── 掌控自己的環境, 單純的靠自己動手。
It's the kind of place where black doctors live next to white hipsters next to immigrant mothers from Hungary or talented writers from the jungles of Belize, showing me Detroit wasn't just black and white, and diversity could flourish when it's encouraged. Each year, neighbors assemble to bale hay for the farm animals on the block, teaching me just how much a small group of people can get done when they work together, and the magnetism of fantastical yet practical ideas.
在那裡,黑人醫生家的隔壁 住著時髦白人 及來自匈牙利的移民母親, 或是來自貝里斯叢林的天才作家, 這讓我見識到, 底特律不只是黑與白, 當它的多樣性受到鼓勵時,它會興盛。 每年,鄰居們會一起將乾草打成捆, 供街區的牧場動物用, 這教導了我, 當一小群人通力合作時 能完成多少的事, 以及荒誕卻又實際的 想法有多吸引人。
Radical neighborliness is every house behind Paul's block burning down, and instead of letting it fill up with trash and despair, Paul and the surrounding community creating a giant circular garden ringed with dozens of fruit trees, beehives and garden plots for anyone that wants one, helping me see that our challenges can often be assets. It's where residents are experimenting with renewable energy and urban farming and offering their skills and discoveries to others, illustrating we don't necessarily have to beg the government to provide solutions. We can start ourselves. It's where, for months, one of my neighbors left her front door unlocked in one of the most violent and dangerous cities in America so I could have a shower whenever I needed to go to work, as I didn't yet have one. It was when it came time to raise the beam on my own house that holds the structure aloft -- a beam that I cut out of an abandoned recycling factory down the street when not a single wall was left standing -- a dozen residents of Poletown showed up to help lift it, Amish style.
「積極的睦鄰」是當保羅住的街區 後面的每間房子都燒毀, 他選擇不讓土地堆滿垃圾和絕望, 偕同周圍的社區一同 建造一座圍繞著果樹、蜂窩 以及花圃的巨大圓形花園, 提供給任何想要的人, 這讓我見識到,我們的 挑戰通常也會是種資產。 在那裡,居民正在實驗 創造再生能源和城市農場, 並提供他們的技能與發現給其他人, 這說明了我們不見得非得要求政府 提供解決方案。 我們可以自己開始。 在那裡,數月來 我一位鄰居的前門都沒上鎖, 在美國最暴力且危險的城市之一, 她不鎖門,以讓我上工前 能隨時去她家淋浴, 因為我家沒有。 當到了我自己的房子要把支撐結構的 樑柱抬起到高處時, 那樑柱是我從同條街上 沒有一面牆壁還立著的廢棄 回收工廠取得的── 波爾鎮十多名居民協助我抬樑柱, 門諾會艾美許人的方式。
Radical neighborliness is a zygote that grows into a worldview that ends up in homes and communities rebuilt in ways that respect humanity and the environment. It's realizing we have the power to create the world anew together and to do it ourselves when our governments refuse.
積極的睦鄰如同一顆 承載著美好價值的受精卵, 它最終會成長為以尊重人性與環境 為重建基礎的家園和社區, 我們了解到,我們可以 同心協力創造出新世界, 在政府拒絕的時候, 我們可以自己動手。
This is the Detroit that you don't hear much about. The Detroit between the ruin porn on one hand and the hipster coffee shops and billionaires saving the city on the other. There's a third way to rebuild, and it declines to make the same mistakes of the past.
這是各位很少聽到的底特律。 這個底特律,一邊是廢墟般的場景, 另一邊則是時髦咖啡廳 和拯救城市的百萬富翁。 還有第三種重建的方式, 且它避免讓我們犯下 和過去相同的錯誤。
While building my house, I found something I didn't know I was looking for -- what a lot of millennials and people who are moving back to cities are looking for. Radical neighborliness is just another word for true community, the kind bound by memory and history, mutual trust and familiarity built over years and irreplaceable.
重建我的房子時, 我找到了我不知道我在尋找的東西, 那是許多千禧世代 以及搬回城市的人在尋找的東西。 積極的睦鄰其實就是 真正的社區的同義詞, 連結著記憶與故事, 相互信任感與熟悉感, 建立在經年累月不可替代的基礎上。
And now, as you may have heard, Detroit is having a renaissance and pulling itself up from the ashes of despair, and the children and grandchildren of those who fled are returning, which is true. What isn't true is that this renaissance is reaching most Detroiters, or even more than a small fraction of them that don't live in the central areas of the city. These are the kind of people that have been in Detroit for generations and are mostly black.
你們可能有聽說過, 底特律有項復興運動, 將它自己從絕望的灰燼當中拉起來, 逃離者的孩子與孫子都回來了, 這是真的。 但有件事不是真的:這項復興 觸及了底特律大部分地方, 可以說它其實只觸及了底特律 非中心區域一小部分的人們。 這些人是世世代代住在底特律的人, 大多數是黑人。
In 2016 alone, just last year, (Voice breaking) one in six houses in Detroit had their water shut off. Excuse me. The United Nations has called this a violation of human rights. And since 2005, one in three houses -- think about this, please -- one in every three houses has been foreclosed in the city, representing a population about the size of Buffalo, New York.
光在 2016 年, 只是去年, (抽蓄聲)在底特律,六間房子中 就有一間遭到斷水。 抱歉。 聯合國稱之為違反人權。 從 2005 年起, 三間房子中就有一間── 請想想這一點── 在這個城市中,三間房子 就有一間的贖回權被取消, 這些人數大約等同 紐約水牛城的人口數。
(Sniffles)
(吸氣聲)
One in three houses foreclosed is not a crisis of personal responsibility; it is systemic.
三間房子就有一間的贖回權被取消, 這不是個人責任的危機, 是體制的危機。
Many Detroiters, myself included, are worried segregation is now returning to the city itself on the coattails of this renaissance. Ten years ago, it was not possible to go anywhere in Detroit and be in a crowd completely made of white people. Now, troublingly, that is possible. This is the price that we're paying for conventional economic resurgence. We're creating two Detroits, two classes of citizens, cracking the community apart.
許多底特律人,包括我自己, 擔心種族隔離又會跟隨著這波復興 回到這個城市中。 十年前, 在底特律,不論走到任何地方, 都不可能身處在全是白人的人群中。 現在卻有可能了,這點讓人擔憂。 這是我們為了傳統 經濟復甦付出的代價。 我們在創造兩個底特律,兩種市民, 把社區分裂。
For all the money and subsidies, for all the streetlights installed, the dollars for new stadiums and slick advertisements and positive buzz, we're shutting off water to tens of thousands of people living right on the Great Lakes, the world's largest source of it.
為了所有的金錢和補助, 街燈的安裝費用, 新體育館、浮誇廣告, 以及激勵人心的話題, 我們停止供水給 就住在五大湖邊上的數萬人, 五大湖是世界上最大的水源。
Separate has always meant unequal. This is a grave mistake for all of us. When economic development comes at the cost of community, it's not just those who have lost their homes or access to water who are harmed, but it breaks little pieces of our own humanity as well.
分離通常都表示不平等。 對我們所有人而言,這都是個大錯。 當經濟發展的代價要由社區承擔時, 受到傷害的人,不只是失去家園的人 或是被斷水的人, 我們自身的人性也會隨之被粉碎。
None of us can truly be free, none of us can truly be comfortable, until our neighbors are, too. For those of us coming in, it means we must make sure we aren't inadvertently contributing to the destruction of community again, and to follow the lead of those who have been working on these problems for years. In Detroit, that means average citizens deputizing themselves to create water stations and deliveries for those who have lost access to it. Or clergy and teachers engaging in civil disobedience to block water shutoff trucks. It's organizations buying back foreclosed homes for their inhabitants or fighting misinformation on forced sales through social media and volunteer-run hotlines.
我們沒有人能夠真正自由, 我們沒有人能夠真正舒適, 除非我們的鄰居也能。 對於我們這些進來的人而言, 那意味著我們要確保 我們不會不小心造成 社區的再次毀滅, 並要追隨多年來 一直努力在解決 這些問題的人的領導。 在底特律,那意著一般市民 要成為自己的代理人, 建立供水站以及輸水服務 給被斷水的人。 神職人員及老師 要參與市民違抗行動, 阻擋來斷水的卡車。 是組織幫居民把他們 失去贖回權的家買回來, 並透過社交媒體及志工服務熱線 對抗強迫讓售的錯誤資訊。
For me, it means helping others to raise the beams on their own formerly abandoned houses, or helping to educate those with privilege, now increasingly moving into cities, how we might come in and support rather than stress existing communities. It's chipping in when a small group of neighbors decides to buy back a foreclosed home and return the deeds to the occupants.
對我來說,那意味著協助他人 在他們先前廢棄的家園裡撐起樑柱, 或協助教育那些有特權的人, 越來越多這類人正在搬到城市, 告訴他們我們該如何 支持既有的社區, 而不是施壓於它們。 當一群鄰居決定要買回 一個失去贖回權的家, 並將方屋契約交還給居住者時, 與他們共同出資。
And for you, for all of us, it means finding a role to play in our own communities. It means living your life as a reflection of the world that you want to live in. It means trusting those who know the problems best -- the people who live them -- with solutions.
對你們、我們所有人而言, 那意味著要在我們自己的社區中 找到一個角色來扮演。 那意味著要把你們的生活 轉化成你真正喜歡的樣子。 那意味著信任那些最清楚問題的人── 活在問題中的人── 相信他們能解決。
I know a third way is possible because I have lived it. I live it right now in a neighborhood called Poletown in one of the most maligned cities in the world. If we can do it in Detroit, you can do it wherever you're from, too.
我知道有第三種可行的方式, 因為我親身經歷過。 我正在經歷中, 在叫做波爾鎮的小區, 它位在世界上最 惡名昭彰的城市之一。 若我們在底特律能做到, 不論你來自何方,你可以做到。
What I've learned over the last decade, building my house, wasn't so much about wiring or plumbing or carpentry -- although I did learn these things -- is that true change, real change, starts first with community, with a radical sense of what it means to be a neighbor. It turned at least one abandoned house into a home.
在過去十年我所學到的是, 建造我的房子 重點不在於電線、 抽水馬桶,或木工── 雖然我的確有學到這些── 重點在於真實的改變、真正的改變, 從社區開始, 帶著對於「鄰居」 含意的根本理解開始。 它至少能夠將一間 廢棄的房子轉變成一個家。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)