In 2011, DTE Energy Company removed 1,200 street lamps from the town of Highland Park, Michigan. Highland Park, a black working-class neighborhood of Detroit that was once a booming auto industry city, was on the brink of bankruptcy. Unable to pay DTE the $4 million it owed, the city went dark.
The street lamps were removed as part of an agreement between DTE and city leaders to pay the debt. Literally without light, the residents had to find a solution. In the weeks and months following the decision, Solardarity, a local organization promoting “human-powered clean energy,” stepped up to the plate. The answer: solar powered streetlights with Wi-Fi, many of which the organization has placed in the city’s residential areas, with help from local businesses and the use of affordable technology.
On RE:WIRED Green this week, Sarah Shanley Hope, vice president of narrative strategies at The Solutions Project, and actress Regina Hall spoke about the importance of stories like Highland Park’s — and why the need for more of them is so important now .
“The people closest to the problems are also the first to find the solutions,” Hope said. “If you think about exacerbating crises – and the consequences of racialized capitalism – in our country and the world, you solve several problems at once. In community building, solar panel or renewable energy as a climate solution is also seen as a good strategy for job creation, as something to bring about more positive health in the community. That’s the opportunity we have – to see the multi-resolution taking place on the front lines of the crisis.”
For Hall, who is a creative partner and donor to The Solutions Project, it hits on the human level. In times like ours – with inflation, rising gas prices and many families struggling to pay energy bills – the least burden is lurking. “If you have alternatives out there, you can reap some of the financial rewards that help,” Hall said. “We so often feel like everything is out of our hands, and it’s so encouraging and hopeful to see communities say, ‘This has happened, but we can take power back into our hands.’ … It is triumphant.”
A big part of what The Solutions Project is working towards is reformulating stories around climate justice. The organization is helping to gain insight into the grassroots work change makers are doing in frontline communities, in neighborhoods like Richmond and Brooklyn, where Black and Latinx residents are often victims of climate inequality.
By solving neighborhood-level problems in seemingly impossible situations, Hope explains, it creates avenues to “build power” and “transform the state.” [and] federal policy” — like what happened with the Justice 40 Initiative and the Reduction Act, both of which aim to reduce the environmental damage being done to already struggling neighborhoods.
The story of Solardarity is not an outlier. There are thousands like it. Yet that does not stop the spread of untruths. “That’s a big misconception in the climate movement — that communities are waiting for others to come,” Hope said of the victim narrative often used. “But that is not the case.” The work, she said, is already done.
