(No caption)
The sign over 8 Mile Road at the Lodge Freeway is jarring: "Black people are being pushed out of Detroit."
Alana Walker of BLAC magazine writes:
That may or may not be true -- the city still hovers at around an 80% black population, though downtown is a little more white than in recent years -- but the sign is meant to promote indie filmmaker Jason Black’s new film Gentrified – Ethnic Cleansing: American Style, which addresses the effects gentrification in Detroit and other cities has on the black community.
Black’s project raised almost $180,000 through an IndieGoGo campaign [last September], and is hosting screenings in cities around the world including London, Atlanta, Houston and Chicago, where a similar sign went up earlier this month.
Strangely, no screening dates are set for Detroit.
On his Facebook page, the filmmaker says of this billboard:
You all have no idea how much of a battle is was to get them to accept this sign. It was three weeks of negotiations and haggling. Maybe I'll go into it one of these days but it was not easy. . . .
We were outright refused in Cleveland, and that sign was much tamer than this one was.
