I live in a major suburb of Detroit called Southfeld. It is located just north of the city of Detroit and is one of the largest suburbs of the area. The area is now mostly made up of black middle class individuals, about 85 percent, and the rest are assorted white and middle eastern population.
We have an election in November in which Ken Siver, a former longtime city councilman who is running against city council president Sylvia Jordan to succeed Mayor Donald Fracassi who has been mayor on and off since the start of time, except for a period when now Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence was our Mayor.
Siver, who is openly gay and white, has had his campaign signs vandalized and defaced with homophobic slurs.
Gay rights organizations like Equality Michigan called the incident “horrible.”
“It shows how much work we have to do,” said Sommer Foster, legislative director for Equality Michigan. “We still have some hearts and minds we have to change as well as laws.”
Southfield resident Patricia Haynie, president of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Task Force Inc., called the vandalism of Siver’s campaign sign “a cowardly act” which was both despicable (and) deplorable.
“Unfortunately we’ve had too many occurrences like this this round of elections,” Haynie said Thursday, noting that “race baiting” fliers were stuffed in residents’ mailboxes a couple of months ago.
You might recall that story in which a small number of Southfield residents received handbills with photos of several white city officials and a message printed in large letters: “Let’s get the blacks out of Southfield.” which is still under investigation.
There is discussion that Jordan is behind the fliers and the sign damage but she states:
“This is a diversion,” Jordan said. “This is an attempt to divert from the issues and it’s unfortunate that those fliers were circulated in our community, and it’s unfortunate that my opponent’s signed were defaced.”
“However,” she added, “I’ve never been a part of any racial or homophobic actions and all, and so…it’s just unfortunate.”
Ok...you might think this is odd enough.
But the case gets even more strange when a suspect gets caught in the act.
More recently a person was caught vandalizing another sign of Siver.
“At some point in the past, this person was arrested for resistive behavior toward police officers, so there were outstanding warrants associated with that behavior,” said Chief Hawkins.
The suspect is also no stranger to Siver who had encounters with him when the suspect came before city council when Siver was a member.
The police are now investigating this whole mess and seeing what if any connections exist, to candidates, to the original mailings, to the original sign vandalism, etc.
All I know is that it is one huge mess.