Carlita saw me bringing this strain home, and wanted to get me away from it all. So we decided to have a family outing one evening. As we left with the boys, I received word that yet another child had been killed, and that the family was at Sinai-Grace Hospital. By now, the press had reported my presence at past scenes, and I felt obligated to go.
“I’ll just stop by for a minute,” I told Carlita.
“No problem, Baby,” she said. She understood and supported me in these types of things. She loved when I extended myself to people. Yet it would be the very thing that caused her so much anger later, our shared feeling that “the people” didn’t appreciate me for doing so, that they threw us away.
We arrived at the hospital, and I walked to the area where the boy’s family had gathered. Sadly, a part of these visits had become routine. The family thanked me for coming, and I offered my condolences. Routine was then disrupted. I went to view the body. The child bore a striking resemblance to my son Jelani. I was stunned and dazed. I lost my balance, stumbled backwards, but played it cool enough for the family. It took everything I had to pull myself upright, but I spun toward the child’s relatives, embraced the family, and said that I had to leave.
The hallway was hazy, so I walked deliberately, acknowledging no one. I made it back to the car and broke down crying as soon as I was inside. That was all I could take, and with the Police Chief’s concern for my well being, that was the last scene I visited. Soon after, another child was killed. That time, I didn’t go, but I watched the news coverage. The family, distraught, asked the press why I hadn’t shown up and accused me of not caring. I was shocked.
I often try to identify the point at which I began to truly feel the strain of being mayor, and I always come back to those child murders. I wasn’t quite myself after that. I should have talked to a psychiatrist.
It was also harder at home by now, because Carlita had disengaged from the job so much that I couldn’t talk to her about it. I felt no support at home. None. Things had quickly gotten to the point where it was them, and me. No we. I tried to do a lot to hang out with the boys, but they always came back at me, saying, “You weren’t there,” or “You missed that, Dad.” And me? I thought they were stingy. I was on this mission, trying to save a city and take care of my family. It was also important to protect my family by keeping them separated from the constant spotlight that shone on the job. I achieved that, absolutely. They were so separate that I created two separate lives.
I used to go home to my boys, hug them, tell them I loved them, and tell them about my day. But there was very little support from Carlita. I had pushed her away. I don’t even think that she knew how to support me. Nor did I provide a way for her to do so. She detached and I allowed her to do so, emotionally and spiritually. She didn’t like going to events with me, but those kinds of activities became an expectation, because she was the First Lady of the City of Detroit. Partnership between an elected official of a major metropolis and his or her spouse is important to both individuals’ well being. But we’d never thoroughly discussed the expectations that would be placed on us as a first couple. And neither of us was emotionally prepared to shoulder it.
I began to do the job without her. She began living her life without me. We’d get together when it was time to do family activities away from the job. I was now twice married. Detroit was a second wife. Carlita and I barely crossed paths at home. We hadn’t completely fallen out, but something about us had definitely changed.
I think Carlita was scared. She didn’t know what to do, either as First Lady or as a wife, about a city that was taking her husband. And I get it. Her outsider’s perspective of the city enabled her to see my situation objectively. She must have looked at how hard I was working for the City and thought, “What do y’all like about this damned city?” And she’s got a point. Detroiters have a thing about the D that we can’t get out of our system. The only thing I’ve seen that compares is the fanaticism New Yorkers have for Brooklyn. The chip on their shoulder, the way the pulse of the borough seems to beat on their sleeves. We boast the same pride. And I don’t hear it from any other place. People say they’re from certain places, but they don’t fight for those places the way Detroiters do.
People who aren’t from Detroit sometimes have a hard time seeing what we love about the place. And Detroiters sometimes fight for things that aren’t worth saving. While I headed out to work every day trying to take care of the city, Carlita saw me failing to take care of myself. I gained weight. I was eating horribly and wasn’t exercising. I was always stressed. I still didn’t have a full staff, and I was barely six days into the job when the press began writing stories, inquiring about my plan.
One day, Carlita checked me. “You’re never around,” she said, stating the problem plainly. “I’m miserable. And I’ve got this baby (Jonas) to care for.”
I knew I had to do something different. I remembered that during the campaign, I promised my wife that, if I won the election, I would set aside ten days every year, and we would go away as a family. Carlita actually reminded me of this promise after I became mayor.
“We’ll take the entire ten days away from the job, the City, the politics and the problems. I’ll just be Kwame and Daddy, and we’ll just be family.” We packed up and left town.
This was one of the very few promises that I kept during my time as mayor. And I thank God that I did. We were eventually able to reconnect, replenish and renew our energy and our family relationship. But with everything as a mayor in a major urban area, even the vacations would often get interrupted.
chapter 11
School of Duty
IN 2002, just before our ten days together as a family, I scheduled a few meetings before leaving Detroit to better educate myself about what other cities were doing, and to also try to recruit a public sector administrator from Florida. It was logical enough for my line of work, except that it flew in the face of the agreement I’d made with my wife. We did have a great time, despite my having to leave the vacation for a few days. But we had planned to do it again in August 2003.
And then the Great Northeast Blackout occurred. We went away, back to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, where we’d gotten married. That was special. On our second day there, I went to the room while preparing to take the boys swimming. I turned on the television as we changed into our bathing suits, and saw a news crawler flashing across the screen, highlighting cities that were experiencing a blackout. And then I saw images of people walking in New York.
While I was away, I’d always give one person from my cabinet the number to the place where I was staying, as well as a cell phone number to be used for emergencies only. As it turned out, the cell didn’t work in the Bahamas, so they couldn’t get in touch with me. And they had certainly tried. Fortunately, I happened to return to my room from the beach, and decided to check in about twenty minutes after the office had tried to call me. I used the hotel phone and received the news: “Mayor, it’s a blackout.”
I called about thirty minutes after the Northeast United States, Detroit included, lost power. I called everyone in by phone, and gave instructions on the steps to take. Zeke took the lead on the crisis management plan, along with the City’s Fire Chief, Tyrone Scott.
We were organized and ready for this situation. After the tragedy of 9/11, the world had changed, and so did the United States. The federal government took major strides to change the way it gathered and shared important and vital communications. In doing so, the Homeland Security Department was established. One of the first priorities of its new director, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, was to have all the states and major American cities submit an emergency plan to Washington, D.C.
We’d begun working diligently on our plan early in 2002. Detroit had unique qualities that presented gaping security threats. Whether it was border issues with our Canadian neighbors, the City’s incredibly large, conjoined water and waste system, which serviced more than nine counties
in Michigan and nearly half its citizenry, the global presence of General Motors, America’s largest automotive manufacturing corporation, or our hospitals, and universities, security was an issue. So we developed a plan that would assure our readiness in the event of an attack by weapons of mass destruction, chemical or biological outbreak, disease pandemics, acts of God, and yes, even a blackout.
Ours was a solid, smart and agile plan, and it was the first to be delivered to Homeland Security. I wanted Detroit to be the national leader in this new area, and we took a step toward that goal in delivering that plan. The development of the Emergency Operations Center, or EOC, was one of the key elements of that plan. This would be the nerve center for the entire plan, an offsite facility that could be set up in minutes and be a fully operational command center in the event of any crisis. We could uplink technology and effectively communicate with all the relevant parties involved, including the public, in real time. All employees would know their emergency assignments, and whether they should report to the EOC or another assigned post.
We even planned a way to set up a secondary facility if the EOC were ever compromised. We ran mock crisis and emergency response training modules, discussed assignments to the staff, and communicated our plan to City stakeholders. Hospitals, neighboring governmental entities, businesses and even the Canadian government offices knew that we were thoroughly organized and ready.
The EOC sprang into action when the blackout occurred. All parties reported to their assigned areas, and we were fully operational in twenty-eight minutes. Meanwhile, we found a private plane so I could fly back. I hadn’t even been away for a full twenty-four hours. Carlita and the boys stayed in the Bahamas.
The plane took me straight from Nassau to Detroit City Airport. From there, we went right to work. I walked the streets, inspected neighborhoods and conducted interviews. It was the biggest emergency of its kind, an entire region of the country losing power in one instant! Panic had set in throughout metro Detroit. Gas stations had no power, and the few that did have it had such long lines that many ran out of fuel. Food was spoiling on grocery store shelves. Television stations were temporarily knocked off the air. Water supplies were disrupted because the electric pumps failed. There were numerous threats to peoples’ health, including flood warnings due to heavy rainfall and broken sewage pumps. It forced some freeways to close.
It was August, the hottest time of the year, and the Detroit area was also enduring a mighty heat wave. Folks were already scrambling to parts of the state that still had power, crowding stores and filling hotels. They needed assurance before the panic became widespread.
Detroit shined in the midst of all of this. The EOC was very effective, and I was in the neighborhoods just hours after the lights went out. From making the call twenty-seven minutes after the city lost power, to finding a plane within thirty minutes, and making the two-hour trip to our city airport, which sits smack in the middle of a residential area, I was walking the East Side in little more than the time it takes to watch a movie.
I was up for two days straight. There would not be riots, looting, or any other foolishness in my city, on my watch. CNN reported a disturbance at one point. I ran to the news crew’s truck and told them that their information was absolutely erroneous, and to stop broadcasting. I assured them that people were active, but civil. I kept talking to brothers in the street. “This is our city,” I said to everyone who would listen. “Let’s show ‘em what we can do.”
The City was recognized nationally for its handling of the blackout, so in one respect, yes, we shined. People also got a chance to see that I knew how to operate as mayor. I was invited to speak at several forums around the country, including giving formal testimony in Senate Committee hearings in Washington, D.C. I also participated in several meetings directed toward raising awareness of the importance of police and firefighters in defending our homeland, and specifically our hometowns. Detroit did become a national leader on that issue, particularly in the areas of border security, law enforcement coordination and city emergency preparedness. Those efforts improved our ability to obtain more appropriations to outfit our police force, fire, water and Homeland Security departments. We got better equipment, radios, and capital for construction. Good changes were happening.
On the other hand, my wife was again left feeling deserted, knowing that I couldn’t keep any promise. Not because I was some horrible guy, but because I wasn’t in the position to make those kinds of promises. The City won every time. Carlita understood the magnitude of the blackout, but her sentiment still mounted. When would we be a family again?
It took four days to deal with the blackout issue, and then I flew back to the Bahamas. I got to spend four of the ten days with the family. It was enjoyable, but each call to duty was like a hammer, driving the wedge between us deeper and deeper, farther and farther apart.
However, our handling of the blackout, and my presence during those tragic times convinced the people of Detroit that I was not a novelty mayor. My youth, size and familiarity with pop culture had created that stigma, and I loathed it. For instance, comedian Chris Rock jokingly called me “the hip-hop mayor” when I was elected. He even said I influenced the creation of Mays Gilliams, the character he played in the 2003 movie Head of State. Flattering as it was, he branded me a gimmick. Hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons would echo that nickname soon after, when his Hip-Hop Summit came to Detroit in 2003. It was a tremendous event, but it also branded me.
I’d been quietly fighting the “hip-hop mayor” tag. Meanwhile, the Summit made history by registering 17,000 people, the largest number of registrants in its short history, to attend the event at Cobo Arena, downtown. Popular artists like Eminem, his group D12, Nas, Doug E. Fresh, Detroit rap group Slum Village and Simmons headed a panel to discuss voter registration and education. Khary Turner, this book’s co-writer, was also a panelist. I was thrilled when Russell invited me to speak. Not only did this happen early in my first term, but the young audience boasted a lot of people in my age group, and we were notorious for having some of the lowest turnouts in recent elections. I had a chance to connect to them and mobilize that part of my constituency.
Now remember, while it was true that I was raised on the streets of Detroit, I was also raised running the halls of the Michigan State Legislature while tagging along to work with my mother, which speaks to my diverse perspectives on numerous issues. But I am hip-hop. Damn, I said it! And I’ll say it for the thousandth time. I love all kinds of music, including rap. But that’s the beauty of being real hip-hop. You can flow to Coltrane or Jay-Z. You can listen to “Ready or Not” by the Fugees on your way to work, and “Ready or Not” by After 7 when you chill with your lady that night. The hip-hop generation is not some monolithic culture tied to any one genre of music. It is a multicultural, multidimensional plethora of sights and sounds, joys, pain, happiness, sorrow, hatred and love—an ugly, beautiful collage of the American landscape set to the world stage. It’s too big to be tied to any one thing, and it was a shortsighted disservice to American pop culture for anyone to think it simple to tie me to it, as if it were a shoelace. To the conservative media, it was a bad label. And unfortunately, many of my constituents believe anything the media tells them. Anything!
I did get to meet Russell Simmons at the Cobo Center, along with Eminem and his manager, Paul Rosenburg. Proof, Eminem’s friend and a member of his rap group D12, was also there. He was killed in a shooting years later, but I remember him as being very affable. I also struck up a friendship with Rosenberg.
On the dais, Russell introduced me, imploring the audience to lift me up because hip-hop had its own mayor. It felt incredible hearing everyone cheer for me. I thought to myself that these were the people who were going to change Detroit, make the city a world-class town. And they were depending on my leadership to get us there! I stepped up to the podium.
“Who remembers this song,” I asked the crowd. “I’m the king of… !”
“
Rock!” they all shouted, finishing the line from an old Run-DMC song. It was a rush, doing a traditional call-and-response with the crowd. I felt like I connected on a plane that few politicians get to experience. This experience transcended the restraints of politics… and branded me.
I had no way of knowing that the nickname “Hip-Hop Mayor” would stay around to haunt me, preventing large segments of my constituency from taking me seriously. The hip-hop stigma sometimes crept into my thoughts, but there’s nothing I would have changed. The hip-hop generation’s vote is just as valid as anyone else’s. The only thing I could do was work and maintain a presence in the city for child murders, blackouts, and fallen officers.
In retrospect, even if I had wanted to change my ways, there’s nothing I could have done differently during those times to assuage the tension between Carlita and me, except discuss the demands of the job with my wife before I ran, so we’d both have a better understanding. But I didn’t know. I was thirty-one, and I had never been mayor. I had no idea what I was getting into, and this job doesn’t come with a rule book or a job description. And I’ll back off the age reference, because I don’t care how old you are. You could be Coleman Young’s age, or Dennis Archer’s. No one is immediately prepared to be the mayor of Detroit. Nobody!
The mayor is seen as the savior by some, and as the barometer for failure by others. It’s like there’s no responsibility on the greater community’s part. Everyone points the finger of blame toward the mayor. I don’t know if there is any other community in America where the mayor is so personally connected to individuals’ attitudes, successes and emotional well-being. In many cities, residents often can’t even recall their mayor’s name. In Detroit, not only do you know the mayor’s name, you also have a very strong emotional response to that person’s position. It’s love or hate—gray areas just don’t exist. And while that passion drives the determination, perseverance and courage of Detroiters, it’s unfortunately the same passion that drives the culture of hate.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 12