So this summer I learned two things--
that I suck at Monopoly and that my younger brother Jonathan
is going to rule the world one day.
I learned both of these things as we
were playing what was supposed to be
a friendly game of Monopoly in Edgartown, Massachusetts.
And I watched my research unfold in this moment.
And it was so bizarre.
But this wasn't just any Monopoly game.
This was a blood sport.
It almost ended my mom's engagement
and drove two people mad.
And as the game gets going, we're
all buying property as we go along, creating strategy
along the way.
And we realize that Jonathan hasn't purchased anything.
But about 20 minutes in and several times around the board,
Jonathan buys Atlantic Avenue.
And I think to myself, maybe he's just bored
and being 16 and uninterested.
But he wasn't.
Jonathan had a strategy.
And next thing we know, Jonathan controls
80% of all the money in play, 70% of all the property.
People are making deals to try to avoid Jonathan's property.
My mom is trying to make a deal with her fiance.
Her fiance is making a deal with someone else.
All the deals go south.
And Jonathan still runs everything.
And to me, I'm going crazy.
Because this looks eerily familiar.
This looks like my research.
I watch as people are trying to maintain their property,
and they don't have the money to afford it anymore.
I watch as a doctor is negotiating with a 16-year-old,
because she has three pieces of property and $16.
And when the bank no longer has cash to mortgage properties,
they go to Jonathan.
In Edgartown, this is a game.
But in Detroit, this is reality.
Far too many people have gone through
and tried to maintain in a struggling
city-- in a struggling bankrupt city-- to maintain,
when the city should have understood
that people are the lifeblood of the institution, not
the markets.
Because when the markets leave, they often
break the institution in their wake.
And so this is what I study.
I study both the institution and the people.
And I study how the institution and the people
are supposed to be able to work together.
And I'm able to study how people are negotiating
for their fundamental human, social and civil rights
and how the institution is supposed
to be able to include these people that
built this city into the future of this city.
And while I study for the dissertation, Detroit, Flint,
Benton Harbor, Allen Park, and all the other cities
that have undergone emergency management,
I broadly study what happens in the face of economic crisis
to both the institution and to the people.
And I was told by a former Big 3 representative
that when elephants fight, ants get trampled.
And I watched this.
I watched as Detroit large businesses pushed out
small businesses that stayed in the city
even after the automotive plants left.
But this is just business, right?
Large businesses bring in big money, more businesses
and tourism.
And that's what we want lively downtowns
and broken communities, balanced budgets-- balanced budgets
and homeless citizens.
Detroit went through a bankruptcy,
and as they're going through their bankruptcy, people,
the investors that leveraged the crisis are thriving.
But as I watched my brother take both Boardwalk and Park
Place from my cousin because she landed
on his now prized Atlantic Avenue with a hotel,
and owed him $1,150, I was reminded
of the moment where their appraisers walked
into the Detroit Institute of Art
and say that the art was worth upwards of $4 billion,
but they would only get one billion at auction.
The value of an institution and the sanctity of the culture
didn't matter because the city was in crisis.
And I'm always reminded when I do this,
that nothing is sacred in times of crisis.
Everything about this game reminded me
that the work that I do matters.
It reminded me that the deals are going to happen.
The market is not going anywhere, it's going to stay.
But the slow demise of the players matters.
When you have no money and no hope,
and you're begging to go to jail instead of landing
on Atlantic Avenue, there's an institutional problem.
And I'm not saying the people in Detroit
are begging to go to jail, but I am
saying that they are begging for some sort of reprieve--
reprieve from outrageous water bills, reprieve from failed
school districts or from just having
to pay taxes on a property that they're not getting services
on.
The people don't want to play anymore.
The people can't afford to play anymore.
Because when we quantify an institution, either
through bankruptcy or financial restructuring,
we also quantify the people within it.
And by the end of the night, nobody
wanted to play Monopoly with Jonathan
anymore, because the game isn't fun when you can't win.
So we need to find a way to win again.
And so we the people understand that we make up the markets,
and we need to either make up a new game or a new set of rules.
Thank you.