Nguvu Tsare, a 10-year resident of Detroit, is running for the District 2 City Council seat currently occupied by longtime council member George Cushingberry. He is a write-in candidate due to the fact that he changed his voter registration too late. His current fulltime job is as a flight attendant.
Why did you get in the race?
I never had any intention of running for office. I’m a lifelong activist, I’m 28, I’ve been in activist organizations since my early high school years. And my passion has always been community work. I think moving to District 2 from a different district last year (moved there in May of 2016) and realizing that we did not have the kind of political accountability or accessibility to our city council office that I was accustomed to in my previous district. It showed me that if you want to see things the way they should be, you have to get in there and change it yourself.
What are some of the issues you heard your neighbors talking about?
The main ones were; lack of accountability. Some of the people were upset about the scandals involving our current city councilman. People were very turned off by that. They felt it showed a lack of care or concern about them as constituents. People felt that the issues that mattered to them were being ignored. And they wanted someone who was not only going to listen to them but implement the types of initiatives and fight against certain things like the marijuana dispensaries. That’s very big thing that I heard a lot of people talking about. They were very upset at the push to allow these marijuana dispensaries to go unregulated, or underregulated in our district and in our city.
I also heard concerns about accessibility.
A lot of micro issues that you will rarely hear candidates talking about, such as Davison Freeway and how that’s one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the state. The lack of firetrucks on Livernois near one of our most famous business districts, the Avenue of Fashion. The concern residents have about parking tickets in the Avenue of Fashion and how that was negatively impacting our small businesses. And concerns from residents who live in neighborhoods that maybe aren’t as affluent as Green Acres or Palmer Woods or Sherwood Forest who felt that their neighborhoods were often being overlooked in terms of the progress that’s been happening.
What are your solutions to neighborhood problems?
My platform is one of decreasing crime and increasing economic opportunity and strengthening public services. And my hallmark program that I’ve developed to tackle the first two of those pieces is called the One Dollar One Dream Initiative. What the program will be is one that our small businesses can opt into to let their customers add a dollar onto their purchase, and that dollar will go into a District 2 account, and on an annual basis we’ll use that money to help residents purchase their first home, start their first business. And help our current business owners who’ve invested so much in our district, undergo innovation projects to either increase business or scale.
It’s a way that our residents can know and see tangibly how they’re contributing to the revitalization of their own neighborhoods.
What that will do, the first piece, is fill up the thousands of vacant homes that still exist in District 2. Driving down crime in a couple of ways; by putting bodies on these streets that act as a deterrent to crime, and by putting bodies in these homes, families in these homes, over time increases the property values of these neighborhoods.
The second way is by creating businesses in District 2 and strengthening the people who are the heart of District 2, and that’s our small businesses.
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