Andrew Kemp, July 1st, 2024

Andrew Kemp, July 1st, 2024

Andrew “Birch” Kemp discusses his tree-planting nonprofit and his work to mitigate the effects of climate change and other environmental issues on a local level. He also talks about his experience living near the Detroit trash incinerator, and the physical and emotional impact of its closure in 2019.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

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Andrew Kemp

Andrew “Birch” Kemp was born in Detroit in 1969 and has lived in the Poletown East neighborhood since the early 2000s. He and his wife Kinga Osz-Kemp founded the nonprofit Arboretum Detroit in 2019.

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo

7/1/2024

01:02:42

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo: I'm Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo. It's July 1st, 2024, and I'm here with, please say your name.

Andrew "Birch" Kemp: Well, people call me Birch, B i r c h like the tree. My legal name is Andrew, A n d r e w. Kemp, K e m p.

DLT: And do you live in the city of Detroit?

AK: Yes.

DLT: What neighborhood do you live in?

AK: It's called Poletown East.

DLT: How long have you lived in that neighborhood?

AK: 20 years.

DLT: Where did you live before then?

AK: Mexicantown. Southwest Detroit, by the Ambassador Bridge.

DLT: Have you lived anywhere other than Detroit?

AK: I have, I've lived in Royal Oak, which is a nearby suburb, in my teen years, and another neighborhood in Detroit before that called Green Acres.

DLT: And when did you live there?

AK: From 1969 to 1979.

DLT: And do you work in the city of Detroit?

AK: I do.

DLT: What career are you in?

AK: Right now, I'm working in public parks. My wife and I started a nonprofit to build public parks on vacant land. So that's what I've been doing for the past five years. And also I taught high school for 25 years, which I stopped three years ago.

DLT: What's the name of your nonprofit?

AK: Arboretum Detroit.

DLT: Can you please spell that?

AK: A r b o r e t u m, Arboretum. Detroit, D e t r o i t.

DLT: How long have you had that nonprofit?

AK: Since 2019.

DLT: And where is it located?

AK: The office is actually in our living room, currently. One day maybe we'll have an office, but, the parks are all right around our neighborhood, and so the office is just central to that.

DLT: And what did it look like when you started this nonprofit? What was that early process like?

AK: Well, my wife did the legal stuff, so I didn't, I mean, I had to look at that only in so much as I had to sign stuff and be aware. She did, you know, she does a lot of the administrative stuff. So on that aspect, I, It looked like a mess to me. What the neighborhood looked like, if that's, I'm not sure which one you mean. Or you mean both?

DLT: Yeah, both.

AK: Okay. There's a lot of vacant space in our neighborhood and we had been planting trees there for a couple of decades already, but felt like there was enough space and we had enough energy to plant more trees, and there was enough space for it. So, we thought, let's make it a nonprofit so that we can plant trees in places where they'll be safe forever. Because sometimes you plant trees and then something's developed or, you know, it's just in a dangerous, precarious place.
So building that nonprofit allowed us to own land as a nonprofit until we can figure out a conservancy for the city of Detroit, which is also in the works. A lot more probably messy or legal stuff than actually just building a nonprofit, you know? But yeah, so, it looked like a lot of space that could use a lot of care, you know, how vacant lots sometimes are just mowed occasionally, and it's really just grass. And we thought trees would be a lot better than just grass.

DLT: And how did you go about improving these vacant lots?

AK: Always starts with massive garbage cleanup because most lots in Detroit are, at least illegally dumped on, if not already a landfill because of the way that the house was demolished. Often just landfilled into the basement, right? So we can't really dig those up and clean those, remove all that. Like, so, remediation is always like a moving target, a blurry line or something of like, how far do we go? You know, when you start cleaning up land and the land keeps giving up garbage, you eventually have to stop. So the first step is always cleaning up the surface garbage. And that can be a whole dumpster for a lot, but, hopefully not. Hopefully, you know, usually the projects are 2 or 3 lots, four lots. One that's 12 lots, and in that case, it took two 60-yard dumpsters. So you clean up and start planting trees, start digging holes to plant the trees, and as you dig the holes, you find more crap, garbage, detritus, urbanite.

And actually we shifted at a point. We said, let's not throw away everything. Let's start keeping what we're digging up as a sort of a truth window to what's under the soil. So. Because there's a big discussion about, I mean, there's a lot of discussions about land and about restoration and what does it mean when you buy land from the land bank and they quote unquote own the land, but they don't do anything to improve the land. They're completely environmentally immune. And then as soon as you purchase the land that you're responsible for all the cleanup and everything. So this is a really interesting question. And then also like, as much as I love Detroit and I'm a lifer in Detroit, I am sad to have to admit that a lot of Detroit is landfill because of the abuse of the land and the way that mostly home and businesses were demolished, like I said, into the ground. So that's a truth that is worth talking about.

And since we're working with land, we started building these stupas, which are like sculptures, cylindrical constructions that, can house all the stuff that we find in the ground. Just when we dig the tree holes, not even, not even on the whole site. But we plant a lot of trees, so there's a lot of that stuff. Bricks and foundational materials. So all over our parks are these stupas, these four foot tall cylinders of urbanite. So. What was that, the first step? Yeah. So that was first step and then you, hopefully you plant a meadow. Like in a lot of our spaces, we've seeded with 50 different wildflowers, basically a pollinator mix. And we do that and tend that meadow for a couple of years. You know, a certain cutting regiment. Watering regiment. Whatever. Put a couple benches in and start programming. Start bringing people into the space.
Obviously people have already been in this space because most of the trees are planted by volunteers, so it's not the first time people have come into the space. But I just think it's really important to note the difference between a park with and without a bench, or with and without programming. Yeah, so those are like the first five steps. Tend the trees, water the trees. Pull the weeds, the maintenance stuff too. Yeah. Any more questions about the first step? I mean, did I cover that?

DLT: Yeah, definitely. And what has the community response been to these efforts?

AK: Well, people walk through these spaces because there's a lot of pathways. I didn't really say that yet, but always either a woodchip path, a paved path across gravel paths, some way to invite people in and kind of signal that it's a public space and that you should come through. And so a lot of the spaces are actually connected. So the biggest effect is seeing people walking through the parks instead of on the street. So now you can walk a half mile on woodchip paths through forested and landscaped areas, very nice. And also coming out to plant the trees, coming out to tend the nursery. We have a tree nursery in the neighborhood and that's probably the most, in terms of like the local community participations with the tree nursery because if you ever want a tree, you can just come and dig a tree up and take it home. And, we have, in the fall and spring, we have specific days where everybody comes who wants one and does that. And then we ask that you come back and water the trees or some way care for them because we don't sell the trees. It's just a free nursery.

So that's pretty great. I think the response has been really good to that. We've actually given out 500 trees in our immediate neighborhood, and that's in addition to the 500 that we've planted in the actual park. So it seems a pretty good response. And I think people just generally, it's really beautiful and I think people appreciate that, how different it looks. Like, I've been there for 20 years and I have neighbors who have been there a lot longer, and some who've been there not as long. But, speaking from my experience living there, the first ten years that I lived there, the neighborhood was very, very different in terms of the amount of burnt and abandoned houses and even, you know, occupied squatted drug houses type of thing in the early 2000s. So it didn't really make you want to go very far beyond your own block, you know? And the spaces weren't there. You're walking on the street or you're walking in somebody’s, or from some vacant space. Some like vacant yard or a burnt out house. Anyway, I guess I'm just saying that in the past five years of living in the neighborhood, I walk four blocks in any direction almost every day. And I see that with my neighbors, too. And it is actually conspicuous to think like, who, why doesn't that person leave their house? Because so many people are walking the neighborhood. It’s interesting to think about people who don't like, do you not know that these spaces are here yet? So anyway. Yeah. People like it. It's nice to live around. It's nice to be able to walk out your door and be in a park already.

DLT: And would you say your nonprofit is affected by climate change?

AK: Absolutely. I mean, probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for climate change. I was born in 1969. I'm pretty sure that was the first Earth Day. And I was born on a street called Woodstock, in 1969, so that's kind of weird. It's going to make me a hippie, right? [Laughter] I mean, the street is in Detroit, but it's just ironic that it was the year of Woodstock. I've lived long enough to see, I mean, starting in the late 80s and becoming aware of quote unquote environmentalism and what that meant and what that looked like in the 90s and it was always a level of, like, anxiety and ecological grief, you know, that comes along with living in this modern world. And I sensed that very palpably early, probably, you know, as a teenager and started planting trees. You know, I mean, just to plant one tree is like it was a big deal. It's like, okay, here's something I can do, even though it's just a gesture.

But I've continued to plant trees since then, since I was 17. And just more and more, faster and faster. Like I said, I quit my job because I really didn't feel like I could plant trees fast enough. I was planting trees on my own, on my own time, in my own neighborhood, and with students in high school that I was teaching. We were building arboretum, but still it felt like we weren't able to do it fast enough. And also we were fighting against— Side issue, but like landscapers, like Detroit Public School Community District is like, they contract their landscaping out to a company who’s really shameful. I'm not even going to say their name because this is, like, on record now. But we were always fighting them about them killing the trees. Like, I plant trees with students. And it was great, it’d be like an Earth Day event. And it's a beautiful thing to plant a tree. And the students are very excited about it. And then within six months, we're out there wondering why the trees are dead. And you can see that it's because of the weed whips. This is the number one cause of tree mortality, in the city at least. And so, half the trees we plant would die. And now a kid who planted the tree and was high on that has to realize, you know, what happened to it. It was a landscaping crew and somebody’s ignorance and neglect and it's just too much. Anyway, I wanted to plant trees where I would knew they would be safe, right? So that's why we started the nonprofit. To own land and not let the city mowers, even though that's still an issue. Because the city mowers are, like, overzealous. They want to mow everything that they can. Same contract, City of Detroit contracts the same landscaper to maintain vacant spaces in Detroit. So it's really the same problem. So you have to really not just plant trees. You have to protect trees.

So going back to the original question, does climate change affect my work? Is that what the question was? Yeah. So. I started planting trees— Like, we came to the east side from southwest, because I had really planted a lot of trees in my neighborhood, and really, there was no more space to plant trees, even on streets. And the east side is very, very open. Like I said, there's so much vacant land in Poletown, so that was appealing to me. So we planted our yard. As we were working on the house, we planted the next yard, the next yard, and we did, you know, kept acquiring lots down to the corner until we had seven lots. And those were filled with trees and also had nowhere else to go. And I still have energy to plant trees. So we started the nonprofit as a way to, to accelerate the tree planting. And I'm saying that because a lot of the work, I realize, is motivated by the anxiety that comes from climate change. I know I love trees and I love to tend trees. Also, where does that come from? My parents didn't plant trees. You know, it's just something that I felt like I had to do, and I, after looking at my yard and seeing a couple hundred trees and people realizing that I had planted that many trees, it starts to seem a little bit obsessive to be planting that many trees. And maybe it is, but it seems to me the appropriate response and particularly, like, to climate change, but also to, I don't know, I guess I'd say climate abuse. It's not a word I've said before, but I'm thinking about a lot of the trees that I planted were directly to create a vegetative buffer between our neighborhood and the waste industry, which is to our west, which is now a hazardous waste processing facility and metal recycling, but was a trash incinerator. I actually wore this shirt today because this is the history of our neighborhood, is living with this trash incinerator. I don't know if you were here long enough, if you've been here long enough to know that for 30 years, a mile east of here was the Detroit trash incinerator. And so this is 2019. This celebrates the closing of the trash incinerator, which is like, a big part of what living in our neighborhood is, is fighting, you know, for environmental justice. So, I realize that part of that tree planting was just because it was on us to take control of our own air in any way that we could. And that seemed to be the only way to do it, is to plant as many trees as possible, to filter that air and create that shade, and create, you know, the space we want to live in. So my work then is directly, you know, I think, directly related to climate change. And now with the effects that we're feeling immediately. I mean that, you know, my life here in 54 years, I've seen, I've seen a lot of change. I've seen a lot of change in Detroit. And we've lost a lot of trees. We've lost a lot more trees than we've planted, so. And the immediate level, it's like fighting the immediate effects of climate change, which is the warming that we're noticing, right? So we need more shade, not just air filtration, but just generally cooling and stormwater uptake, like all these things.

And more recently, climate change is affecting my work because I work outdoors every day and ask other people to work outdoors every day. And with wildfires and air quality diminishing, it's not necessarily responsible to be out there every day. So it's interesting because now climate change is actually preventing us from doing some of the work we need to be doing. And I, I haven't really stopped doing it, but I realize that I'm putting my health in jeopardy, all over again, doing this work, in a couple of ways. And it reminds me of living with the trash incinerator where my health was compromised, like, full-time. And when the incinerator was demolished, my health improved greatly and I'm really grateful for that. But I had a flashback last year during the Canadian wildfires. I was working outside, not really thinking about it because I wasn't really, I didn't really understand how the air quality works and how the particulate matter can affect me. And I had a kind of like a throwback to those incinerator days and developed some new immune responses to that air quality that really kind of, you know, kind of like shook me up, but made it, like it called for some lifestyle changes, you know. And I'm not going to not work, but I'm going to have to wear a mask when I'm outside in those times. And I'm also going to have to take antihistamines, like, maybe forever. But I do every day right now. And that's climate change. I mean, yeah, I think some people live in an air-conditioned environment, jump in their car, they go to an air-conditioned building. I mean, I can see that a lot of people think that it doesn't affect them because they have these artificial buffers against it. But there are a lot of us who are really in it, you know, and really can feel it. Because we're not pretending it's not there.

DLT: And can you talk a little bit more about the history of the incinerator, and how it was eventually taken down?

AK: Yeah. I mean, it's a very long story, but it starts with something very relevant to our neighborhood also, which is the Poletown assembly plant. General Motors built an assembly plant in the late 80s that is just north of our neighborhood, between Poletown East and Hamtramck. And the city eminent domained 1400 people out of that neighborhood, and 16 churches, and hundreds of businesses. And they just bulldozed it to build this assembly plant. Which is, I think, on 80 acres, maybe more than 80 acres. And it separates, it's really like, it really broke up our neighborhood, separates our neighborhood from Hamtramck. The profile of the neighborhood was very similar. The demographic and the housing style and everything. You would have thought you were in Hamtramck. It's very similar. But now it was really cut off from that assembly plant. Well, that assembly plant really destroyed the fabric of the neighborhood and allowed people to think about the neighborhood differently. That's when our neighborhood became kind of a dumping ground.

And that's when Coleman Young built this Detroit trash incinerator, which to some people, oh, that's a great idea. You know, we don't have to landfill our trash. We can just burn it. And that's fine for everybody who doesn't live near the incinerator, downwind from the incinerator. But it was, a lot of people think it was directed at our neighborhood, that, I mean, it was political. But either way, it did destroy a lot of our neighborhood and it started to smell 50% of the time. Which isn't even the worst part. I mean, that was terrible to wake up and smell garbage. Like, in your face all day, on a hot summer day. God forbid you would be trying to have people over or have a party and it ends up that way. I mean, like, bad air days were just like a thing, like, unpredictable, but sometimes make you have to go in the house and be really sad, you know, like that, oh, wow. I live here. And this is what, this is the way it is.

But that's just the odor and that's a nuisance. But what was coming out of the stacks after you're burning everything that anybody threw away, like, you think about the most ridiculous thing you ever threw away, whether it was a plastic toy or a can of paint or whatever it was. And now that's being burned and we're breathing that air. It was devastating. And so lots of people had, you know, obvious health effects like asthma. So I developed asthma when I moved over there. And that was a shock to me. I was just playing basketball and staff versus students basketball game and had an asthma attack, and I'd never had asthma before, and that was, like, really a bummer and a wakeup call. And also, developed a rash on my torso that, for years, for 15 years I lived in the neighborhood, and I did, I changed my diet and a lot of ways to try and make up for it, you know, stop eating sugar or stop eating gluten. Different things that would reduce the load on my immune system because it was so taxed from the poor air quality. I would leave town to go camping, which I do several times a year, and the rash would clear up. If I went on vacation somewhere else, it would clear up. So it was very clear that it was being caused by something in our environment. And so, and a lot of people in the neighborhood experienced the same thing.

And it was a full-time job to try and cite the incinerator for violations, which, the only recourse we really had, besides going over there and screaming at people was to, like, call the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, which is now EGLE. Environment. Great Lakes, Energy. Great Lakes, Energy, Environment, whatever it's called, EGLE. So we can call them and say, you know, what's this terrible odor in my neighborhood? It's on a level ten. Can you come out and inspect? And they would come out and inspect. And if something was wrong, they would give a violation to the incinerator. Well, I think the number was something like one out of 80 calls would actually solicit that kind of a response. Like it was very hard to find somebody who was close enough to come and inspect, but it was really incumbent on the residents to make those calls and make that stuff happen.

So for a long time there were stacking up violations against the incinerator, which was a bad thing, but it was a slap on the wrist. They'd have to pay $1,000 fine now and then, but nothing really changed. But that added up to part of a lawsuit that Great Lakes Environmental Law Center initiated legal action against the incinerator because they found a weakness, a particular weakness in the stack and a certain emissions— I'm not a chemist. Nitrous something, I don't remember what it was that the stack was emitting. So they figured this out and they figured that was the Achilles heel of the incinerator. So they pushed on that and said, this needs to be corrected, or you need to shut down. And they said, we can't fix that and be a profitable business. So they closed down. I mean, just to, you know, bring their stacks up to code would be too much. So they're operating in a way that's not up to the environmental standards, because that's the only way to make money, right? Back to the whole reason there's climate change is this microcosm of the same thing that's going on the global level. You know, everybody finding loopholes and finding the weaknesses in the law, so they're not technically operating outside of the law. The environmental standards are so low. And, anyway, that resulted in the closing of the incinerator after 30 years. And happened to be the same year that we started the nonprofit. It was like, I'm not a religious person in any way, but I'm very, like, tuned into signs. I was like, this is so inspiring. It was— I was in the office of Detroit Future City, where we were receiving a grant to build a tree nursery when I got the news that the incinerator was closed.

And it was almost unbelievable because we'd heard stuff in the past about, you know, we're all so hopeful. So anything that looked like it was a blow to the incinerator was good news. But it wasn't like, I couldn't believe it was for real. Like, because it had had, like, decree orders to close the facility for a month at a time, you know, so we got to taste what it was like to have the incinerator closed. So it was unbelievable that this was going to be permanent. It was just like, okay, what is this going to be, a month? Is this going to be another summer or what? But it turned out to be for real. And it was kind of part of the whole reason we started the arboretum, you know, was to create, to expand the vegetative buffer, to clean our air. So it was really interesting and inspiring. It wasn't like we were going to be like, okay, now we don't need to do the work. You know, there's still plenty of pollution. But it was more, it was more inspiring. And also that was the same year that the Detroit Bird Alliance took on a park in our neighborhood. It was just an abandoned park and the city agreed to allow them to do one of their first, it was their first, I think, native pollinator meadow project. So they, they were in our neighborhood doing that and we were very excited about that.

So all this stuff is happening at the same time. It's a really, really cool year, 2019, for those reasons. And it was like, you know how when a cloud just, you know, it's kind of a cliche, but when a cloud lifts, you know, like when you think it's a gloomy day and all of a sudden the sun comes out? It was like, for our whole neighborhood, it was like that, but like, times 30 years, you know, you can imagine that. Everything looked different. You know, the work we were doing building the parks looked different. The reason we were doing it looked different. Our property value looked different. Raising our kids there looked different. Everything was like, now, it didn't make sense. Like, for a long time it was like, why are we doing this? Why do we even live here? You know, like, what's the point? Like, I'm, I'm rehabbing a house that's going to have no value because this is such a shitty neighborhood. Why am I doing this? Why am I raising my kids here? I could take them out of this harm. It’s really like, complicated, you know, but then also realizing that if there's nobody here to fight it, it's going to get worse. You know, I mean, not to glorify what we're doing there, but because that's part of, the more people who are there to have a nose on those violations and an eye on those violations and to call the EPA or to call EGLE and make those things happen, that's the reason those things happen. It's really grassroots environmental justice work.

And so, at least I assuaged my, you know, like, my misgivings about living there with the fact that, like, we are actually doing something and a lot of people wouldn't choose to live in our neighborhood still, a lot of people wouldn't choose to live in Detroit still. And that's fine. But I'm also, like, in that same— I'd love to live in a rainforest in the Pacific Northwest. I mean, I live for trees, you know. So why am I still here? Because I want to plant trees that everybody can enjoy. You know, like, it's the same, it's just like, it's just like what we do. So if we weren't here giving people the opportunity to plant these trees, they wouldn't be planted and these people wouldn't be planting them. And so if I just live in some beautiful rainforest like, what is that doing? You know, that's really not, it’s really not doing anything. So by living in the neighborhood we are doing something, and by staying in the neighborhood and continuing to do this work, I think we're doing something. And it might seem really small for somebody who lives in the suburbs or in another city. But to us on the ground in that neighborhood, that's 40 lots that are filled with trees that were not before. So that's super tangible on that level, you know?

DLT: And earlier you mentioned the effects of storm water. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

AK: Lots of flooding in recent years. Summer storms, people's basements flooding. Obviously this, you know, the sewer system in the city can't handle that much water. More and more impermeable surfaces being built. It's like, yeah. It's a load, right? Especially with a combined storm water and sewer system. So one of the answers is, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to rebuild the infrastructure, but we can plant the trees and the trees do a couple things. Obviously, they drink the water because they're sometimes huge, sometimes can drink hundreds of gallons of water in a day. There's a tree across the street from me that's 150 years old, and it probably drank 100 gallons of water the other day during the rain. So there's the uptake of the storm water, which reduces the need for the system to handle it, but also the trees slow down the water on its way down, so every raindrop hits a leaf and splashes into a bunch of directions. It hits another leaf, and this tree is carrying a lot of the weight of the water and slowing it down, so it's not inundating the system all at once.

So in that way, like, having all these trees in the neighborhood is a big game for that. So, you know, like these surfaces, a lot of them, even though they may look like they're permeable surfaces, if they're just packed with clay, which is often what the fill dirt was, and then driven over by tractors and, you know, continuously mowed, and that's a lot of weight, and the compaction of the soil means that when the rain hits in a storm event, it's just going to run off into the street anyway. It's not really going to be absorbed because it's coming down too fast. It's, clay is not a very permeable soil structure. So when you plant a tree or when you plant a garden and you either till the soil or you soften it up, or you put woodchips like we do on the trees, it just slows the water down so that it can be absorbed.

So, trees are superior technology for everything. And stormwater is not different. Cooling is not different. Air filtration is not different. Oxygen. All these things that we're trying to work complicated technological systems around, could just be solved with trees. And it's so simple that people don't want to believe it, because we want a new iPhone 20, we want something that's complicated, sophisticated, technological, digital, brand new and costs us money. But it's not really the answer. And I think that we're going to realize that, if you don't realize it already, that we're having to go back to much simpler things like trees. And a good, kind of a good metaphor for that is the city with these solar farms. Really believe in they're doing something great, to produce energy, boost electricity for police stations and whatever else with a huge solar array in the neighborhood. They tried to do this in our neighborhood, and they tried to do it in Kevin [Bingham]'s neighborhood, too, with Singing Tree. He probably told you about that. And it's just, I mean, I'm not going to harp on that, but the point is, it's much easier to keep some old growth oak trees and allow them to shade and cool the neighborhood than to cut them down to build solar panels, to run air conditioning, because it's too hot now. That's exactly the metaphor. And it's not even a metaphor, it’s literally what's happening. They wanted to cut down mature oak trees to produce electricity that, the electricity that would have been required to offset the warming of the neighborhood would probably have exceeded what those solar panels were able to produce. So we need to wake up to the fact that the solution is very simple. It's trees.

DLT: So would you say that combating or alleviating the effects of climate change are an important part of your work?

AK: Yeah, I mean I don't want to— It’s kind of, it's interesting because on the global level you're like, what is any number of trees that I can produce going to do? That we can plant going to do? So it's a little bit defeating if you look at it that way. Because there's so many trees being cut right now, so many trees burning right now that it's like, I could never make up for that. And that's a fact, right? So on the global level, in terms of combating global warming, it's not going to do that much. On the local level it is, because you can feel the cooling of the trees and you can feel the relationship with the trees, because everybody who enters the park now is in relation with the trees and becoming aware of that relationship. This is the bigger, I think the bigger byproduct is that, with signage and benches, education and programing, helping people understand trees and climate change, having these discussions, giving people an opportunity to do something about it, to feel like you're doing something productive when you have ecological grief and anxiety, which might allow you greater strength to carry on with your other work in fighting climate change, whether you're a lawyer or an activist. There's a gain there that's not really measurable.

And also just modeling. I think, hopefully, modeling the behavior of obsessive tree planting can inspire others to do the same and to see that it's possible, especially in Detroit. That we have a very unique opportunity to create public green space on a scale that no other city in the world could do. It's like, we are a great urban center, but also so country. Everybody who lives here knows there's meadows everywhere, there's gardens everywhere, and farms, and little forests. And if we can cultivate that aspect of our city, we'd really have a new identity and a really— I have a strong hope that we do gain this identity and we shift away from fossil fuels and auto industry as being our gift to the world. Like, it's really not a gift. Yes, it's a lot of jobs. Yes, it's a lot of cars. People love new cars. Not mad at you. Okay, you can have your new car. But I've never had a new car. I don't know what that is like. I don't want that. I don't want to get addicted to that [Laughter] kind of joy.

But, you know, I'm not the mayor and I'm not— I'm, like, totally financially inept, right? Okay. I don't know anything about economics or anything, but I know that if we capitalized on our green space to become a model for fighting the effects of climate change on the local level and for just quality of life and giving these riders access to green space and lifestyle that says, come and sit on a bench, come and plant a tree, sit and watch the trees, look at this beauty. Like, all these things that t the green space can allow us and often right next to our houses. Because, you know, we've all seen houses go down in our neighborhood, that becomes a place to expand into the green space and reduce the density and the urban pressure. It's just, it's a lot of people's dream, you know, and it might seem like, I don't know, like, you know how Ann Arbor is. You’ve probably been to Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is very green and there's parks everywhere, interconnected trails. It's like, for the Midwest that’s like the gold standard for, like, a green city. I mean, Ann Arbor has lots of problems and it's completely gentrified, and there's all of that.

But I'm just saying, like, in terms of space, available space for public recreation and trees and, you know, like, climate change mitigation, like, we're probably better off than Ann Arbor, I mean, in terms of that space, where we got 26 miles of vacant space. So, I don't know, I forgot what the question was, but I'm going back to modeling the behavior of planting trees in this way and building structures to do it so hopefully we can help other people do the same thing in their neighborhood because it just, it just changes the quality of life. It's amazing. I've always loved Detroit, but I love Detroit so much more now as we're building the Detroit we want to see. I mean, that's the thing about Detroit is you can build the Detroit that you want to see, literally, like, it's not, I'm not saying it's a blank canvas, I'm just saying there's opportunity— And it's changing. I mean, that's diminishing too, as more and more people get interested in land value. It's like, you know, it's like a race against that with the vacant land. What are we going to do with this vacant land? So anyway, hopefully we can inspire other people to do the same thing, and realize that you do have the power to do something on the local level. I mean, that's what we got to do first. We're not going to change the whole world. But we have to protect ourselves on the local level and build community doing it and learn a lot doing it, you know?

DLT: And how does your nonprofit, in its own way, educate people about climate change and other environmental issues?

AK: I’d say mostly the fact that we're often getting 15, 20 people together to plant trees. And obviously people who sign up to plant trees on Earth Day are going to be like-minded folks. So, we get a lot of people together talking about these issues, you know, and sharing their feelings about these issues. That's, it's educational, but it's also primarily therapeutic, but also educational because we all share information and knowledge about what we know. So that's kind of in an informal way. But formally, it's programming these spaces with, whether that's like, you know, climate grief support groups or fungi workshops or native plant workshops. The kind of programing that brings people together to actually, to talk about it. We've done podcast discussions where we pick really important podcasts to listen to and then get together and talk about around the fire. That's been really cool. Like I said, fungi workshops, plant workshops, signage. Some of our parks we were trying to have signage everywhere, but it cost a lot. But our Circle Forest project has 12 amazing signs that ask people to reflect on climate change and the plants that are there and the park itself and land, the question of land and land ownership and abuse of land and public space, questions of private and public land, questions of land back and stewardship of land. So, yeah, we're moving in that direction. At first I just wanted to plant trees, I just wanted tree parks, you know, like an arboretum. And I didn't even realize. I mean, silly me. Like, wow. Like when we first realized, well, the benches and the programming, like it was a big revelation, because I spent so much time planting trees, I didn't really realize there was time for anything else. Well, there's time to, like, sit with those trees and have, we have like qigong and yoga in the park for free this summer. Like, you know, bringing people in and bringing people together to celebrate what they've done. Like, it's so cool. That's just like, it's such an amazing aspect of it that I didn't really realize. So the education is there implicitly, because the park is there as a space for it.

DLT: And can you talk a little bit more about climate grief and climate anxiety, and how that affects different people?

AK: Well, I can't say, I mean, I can say from my limited experience, like I've always— When I heard the term climate grief, climate anxiety, when I heard these terms, I was just like, something, like, rang like a bell and I was like, oh my god, I didn't know there was a name for, you know. And that's kind of all I needed. Like, I'm kind of ready to read some books on the subject. Because then I would be able to talk more about it and in less of a, really I’m just intuitively, just from an understanding and from, you know, who I am and what I've lived through. But also, I guess I can say what I see in others, like I said, the volunteers have come out to plant trees and stuff, and what we share about that. It's just, there's so much, there's so much terrible news all the time about what we're doing to the planet. And even if it's just, it's not even got to be news. Like, I watched a movie the other night and it was set in a future LA. So they use Shanghai. And just seeing, like— I kind of live in a bubble in Detroit, right? Like a lot of us. But especially if I'm just like in my little, you know, kind of low density neighborhood in, in our little parks that we're creating, and I don't really, I haven't traveled in a while and I try not to go to the suburbs too much. So I'm kind of in Detroit, and I don't realize that most people in the world are living a completely different lifestyle than a lot of us here in Detroit. So I see a movie like that, I'm like, wow this is how people live. And, you know, like, my first thought is, really, this is what's wrong with the planet. This is really what's wrong with the planet, right? Like people are living in high rises and climate-controlled environments and traveling in climate-controlled environments to other climate-controlled environments. And they're not having to deal with the smog and the poor air quality and the warming and everything. And we just continue to do it because we're insulated from it, you know, many of us. But seeing that, I mean, even just, I'm supposed to be checking out a movie and it's supposed to be a mindless, you know, like, respite from the real world. And it can't be for me because I have to think about how disgusting that looks from a global warming and from an environmental perspective, what Shanghai looks like, you know. It's probably really beautiful in a lot of ways. Great architecture and, you know, awesome. But I can't really see that because it seems so wrong to me.

And I think that's, you know, that's an illustration of climate anxiety and grief. It's like, we can no longer— I think it's the proper response because we can't just go on, like, pretending that that's so cool that, like LA, I can't even think about LA. That's like, you know, you're living, all of you are on life support. In New York City, you're all on life support. Like it's so tenuous, what could happen to all these people, so quickly. And we're all pretending like it's not happening. We’re just sucking up resources, you know? And like, I don't even understand, I mean, people who are millionaires and people who are really sucking up resources at the, you know, but faster rates than we were, even though we know there's climate change and global warming, you know, and you keep hearing numbers every, every year. Like just heard on the radio, like yesterday, like expected record-breaking numbers of travelers for the holiday weekend. It's disgusting. It's like, how can you continue to report these numbers like they're, like it's an achievement, you know? And it's just—

So, all those things compound every day, and it's like, you want to live in a beautiful world, in a world that you know is going to be here for your children and you used to suspect it's not possible. Now I almost know it's not possible. Even though I do this work and I'm living my life the way I want to live my life, I’m so unsure about the future. But in a way, I'm so sure about the future because I see the way that people are living and it’s not working, you know? It's not gonna work. It's working very well for some people right now, at this moment, and unfortunately, those are people with no foresight, because they're selling out the world of their children and their grandchildren. So I'm just going into that to say, like, that's, if you're at all aware of those things, if you're a person who enjoys nature, who camps, who engages with nature you realize this. And you realize how wrong it is to—and I'm sorry to be using the word “wrong,” but I mean, how about not sustainable, not workable, not viable—to live the lifestyle that many of us are living. And it’s no surprise that those are people who aren't engaged with nature. People who don't love a forest and understand a forest and relate to a forest, don't have the same investment and understanding of how important forests are. And it's sad to me that most people don't. Because the more, because it just allows us to exploit the resources and extract things in a way that is accelerating and, you know— Like, I think about our political leaders, you know, our presidential candidates and, like, oh my god, I'm sure that nature to you is a golf course. You know, like, that's not sustainable. That's like— Anyway, you know, I'm just answering the question, like, I'm just saying, I'm just spilling this out because I don't know how to talk about climate grief. Just feel it, you know?

DLT: And could you talk a little bit about your Circle Forest and Oxygen Alley projects?

AK: Oxygen Alley was, actually, is a celebration of the closing of the trash incinerator. It's like, small trophy for the environmental justice warriors of our neighborhood. And it came at a time when the incinerator was closed and Great Lakes Environmental Law, awesome. environmental attorneys, donated their legal fees to Arboretum Detroit, and we took it and put it into this park. And so, it's like an air filter. It's an east-west corridor through the neighborhood that happened to be this one 500-foot-deep lot for sale that is in the middle of the block. Totally off everybody's radar. Everybody thought it was an alley because it's, you know, houses back up to it. But there's two alleys, and then this parcel in the middle. So we bought this one parcel and then three more on the corner and conceived it as like, let's plant the best trees for urban air filtration, and a lot of them. So that corridor is thick with trees and it's going to be a huge canopy. And, just an example of how, what can you do with 500ft as the air is passing through it? So, we have river birches and London plains and tulip trees and cedars and many others, but, understory hornbeams and dogwoods. So that is completely dense, and that as the air moves through, it hits all those leaves, and all the little hairs on those leaves grab all the particulate. And it's a beautiful space. It's a meadow, and there's a path and there's three benches and there's a tree swing and stuff. It's a really beautiful place. And it's really utilitarian, too, because it allows you to cross the neighborhood without walking on the street. So that's cool. So that's Oxygen Alley. And by the way, it was, in terms of environmental cleanup, there was grass there over a lot of it. There was a paved DIY driveway that somebody had made to their chop shop back in the, into the center of the space. And so we thought, no, some of this is asphalt. But it turns out 70% of it was asphalt. Once we pulled the grass up, we could see it was growing on a thin layer of soil over the asphalt. So we had to remove 20 tons of asphalt to even get into the ground to plant the trees. So it's kind of ironic and perfect that this is Oxygen Alley. This is our celebration of the trash incinerator. So there's a lot that goes into that. There's a lot more nuances with that project, because when you have 20 tons of asphalt, you're like, are we going to just put this in somebody else's backyard? What do we do with this now that it's here? Do we throw it away?

So we actually built a ring. We elevated a ring of boulders that's like a tilted ring, it's a circle. So it stands for oxygen, it’s 21 boulders that actually equal the weight of the asphalt we remove. So, 20 tons of boulders. And they sit on the asphalt. We covered it with topsoil and planted clover. So, you don't see it that way. But if you visit, I'll tell you that those boulders are sitting on 20 tons of asphalt that we just localized into those mounds into those mounds, into that, it's like a berm. So, also, it was incredibly dirty work and I think I set my health back a little bit, doing it, because we were using tractors and bobcats ourselves to pull up all that asphalt, and it was really dusty. It was nasty, you know, it's not just asphalt, but what's under there, what's on top of there, you know, typical Detroit soil on a dusty day. This is a whole ‘nother issue. But as a board, Arboretum Detroit's board has decided not to use herbicide on anything in our parks. Even in the establishment of a meadow, which is standard practice in the establishment of a native meadow is to use herbicide to kill all the invasives before you plant the meadow. So it's a, you know, like, it's a sacrifice in the short term to apply herbicide that one time for the establishment of a meadow forever.

But even so, our board is so against glyphosate that they said no, we don't want to do it. But as a result, like the alternative to using glyphosate or some kind of herbicide is to manually till the ground and to clean up the ground and, so, that's been me behind the tractor and behind the bobcat and so it's been really interesting to think about, like, wat am I doing? You know, I mean, you sacrifice your body [Laughter] planting trees in a way like your bones are, you know, rusty and everything, but that, like, when we're digging these holes and it's dusty and there's asbestos tile in the ground and stuff, just like, you know, it's just like the cost-benefit analysis of doing it one way or another way. And do we want to just, do we want to till and stir up all the dust and throw that through the neighborhood? Or do we want to apply the herbicides, like, lesser of two evils? Anyway, I just mentioned that to say that the cleanup of Oxygen Alley was a grueling, a grueling experience and a reckoning with the abused landscape, you know, all over again in a brand-new way.

Circle Forest was a, is a native restoration project which is beautiful 12 lots that were also very abused. I mean, let's start there, with settlement, completely clear-cut. You know, 200, 300 years ago. And then the system of grids and, you know, asphalt streets and then houses that were very densely packed houses, 12 of them. So then there's really no, you know, not too much living except for maybe a tree in the backyard. So I consider that abuse of landscape too. Then the houses were left to rot. Then they were burned. Then they were demolished, some of them into the basement. Some of them were taken away. But this continued abuse. Then turf grass growing for a decade. Sometimes mowed. Sometimes dumped on. The mowers often will just run over piles of garbage. It's really sad. And then it's just tiny part, you know, just kind of reduces the size. And every time they mow, they shred it again and again. I mean, talk about microplastics. Oh my god. So anyway, in that, and then there was a little forested section at the back, which was one of these volunteer forests which often arise because of illegal dumping. Because if somebody dumps garbage, the mowers will have to go around it if it's too big of a pile to run over. So now I've gone around it for five years. There's trees growing in it. Ten years, the trees are maturing. So at the back of this, the Circle Forest, there's a nice little forest. We had to clean out two dumpsters of garbage. That was the original source of the forest. But we were able to maintain a lot of those trees.
So, being that it was native restoration project, there was a lot to talk about with what does that mean? What are we trying to go back to? Is that even sensible in a future of global warming? I mean, why would I plant trees that I don't expect to want to live here in ten years? That was interesting. Why would I cut down trees that volunteered to be here 30 years ago and have been producing shade and oxygen for us? Because it's a native restoration project, I have to cut you down because you're a Norway Maple? Hm, you know, to plant a tree that's two years old, that's going to take 40 years to get where you are now? Let's like, that's not going to happen. That's not math. I mean that's— I'm not good at math, but that's obviously [Laughter] not a good idea.

So it was interesting to get people together and talk about these things. And like native purists, oh, you can only plant native trees. That's, you know, the Ailanthus is the devil and the Siberian elm is the devil. And I think a lot of people came to some different understandings. Like, you go to cut down an Ailanthus and you realize—this couple times happened—oh, there's a woodpecker nesting in that tree. I'm not going to cut that down today. Or another, actually, Ailanthus tree is the tallest tree on the site, and it’s probably the most invasive tree, that's for sure. But an eagle landed on that tree because it was the tallest tree. No way I'm gonna cut that tree down. [Laughter] It was a place for an eagle to land, right? So am I going to cut down this Ailanthus tree and not have an eagle land in my neighborhood? And those trees are like, they're very Detroit. That's part of Detroit's identity, now, you're not going to get rid of the Ailanthus tree. And they came up through the cracks and provided shade and habitat and cooling, oxygen in places that nothing else did. And for a long time. I don't know, it's really interesting, you know. So as a Detroiter, I value that, for sure. Because if it's out of an Ailanthus tree and nothing, bare blacktop? I'm going to take the Ailanthus tree. And so this project, while we did spare a lot of those trees—mulberries, Siberians, Norway maples—we also planted 200 native trees. And especially trees for whom this is the northern end of their range. Like for instance, an overcup oak or a tulip tree. They're considered native here, but this would be the very furthest north you would see them naturally. But because you can see them all the way down into Tennessee, the thought is that they're probably going to be safe here for 50 years. You know, whereas the birches and the white pines may not want to be here in that, you know, in that future. So that's been really interesting. It's a very cool project and I could say a lot more if you have specific questions. Otherwise, I would just ramble about it.

DLT: And was there anything else you wanted to discuss before we wrap up that wasn't brought up by any of my questions?

AK: No, I really liked your questions. And they got me talking and thinking. And, I don't know, I'm good at responding to questions. [Laughter] I don't really have anything prepared that I want to say.

DLT: All right, then that was all the questions I had for you today. Thank you very much for your time.

AK: Thanks.