Greening of Flint: Mama E and the city are in a conflict

Jun 9 2010 Great Lakes Echo One Comment

Michigan State University faculty and students are producing a documentary on a vision of Flint as a healthier, greener city. It will show the challenges of bringing fresh produce to a food desert, feeding schools, providing educational options and battling bureaucracy.

On Wednesdays through July, Great Lakes Echo will run a segment expected to become a building block of the finished story. You can help.

Post questions, suggest interviews, make comments or offer suggestions to help producers tell the story of a city trying to re-grow its roots literally and figuratively as a model for post-industrial revitalization. Links to all of the segments will end up on the Greening of Flint main page.

This week:

Mama E, a Flint resident, watches over urban farming projects in her neighborhood. In the summer of 2009, the city’s landscapers missed the “LB” (Land Bank) designation on the curbs of two lots on Mama E’s street, and mowed down butterfly and wheat gardens. Those lots were on the landscaper’s “To Do List.”