Detroit Remembers Loved Ones Lost to COVID-19
Together, across the neighborhoods, we grieve those needlessly lost in the pandemic. Community billboards honor the dead and remind us to continue social distancing.
Leader
Eno L with Make Art Work/Detroit .
Location
All across city neighborhoods Detroit, MI 48202
About the project
This is a renewed call for donations to place a public service announcement on 14 ground-level billboards across the city of Detroit (design attached). This project revision is offered as respectful public call to never forget loved ones we have needlessly lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Detroit, the social/economic divide is real. You can see the legacy of racism in our mortality data. In Michigan, African-Americans have suffered 40 percent of all deaths from Covid-19 yet make up only about 14 percent of the population.
This new billboard design displays portraits of Detroiters -- only a fraction of the family, friends and neighbors in the city we have lost during the pandemic. We greive. We remember. We call for continued social distancing.
The Steps
Over the past few weeks this revised billboard design was assembled from saved obituary photos. Displayed is a small crosssection of family members and friends we have lost. For the past 30 days we have been collecting photos from families and news reports. In the middle of May there were 1,257 Covid-19 deaths in Detroit. On June 20, the State of Michigan reported a total is 1,517 City of Detroit residents have died from the virus or complications related to it.
The numbers keep going up. Even though virus infections are not now surging in Detroit, people continue to catch the virus and die in hospital. Lamenting loss of loved ones is an important expression of our shared humanity. Pausing to grieve is essential for mental health. It continues to be important to mask up and keep social distance.
Why we‘re doing it
Having not met our initial fundrasing goal, this renwed call for donations is designed to accomplish two things:
1. Offer public mourning sites in the neighborhoods for those who have died. Shared grieveing is important therapy for community healing. Before we can create a future, we must come together in mourning, united across our differences to recognize and mourn every life lost. It's what makes us human.
2. Share an up-to-date count of lives lost as a reminder that safe social distancing remains important to stop a second-wave spread of the virus.
Our initail project, launched in April, 2020 was desgined as an urgent call on the street for Detroiters to heed the shelter in place order as the virus was spreading. By the beginning of May we had reached a third of our funding necessary to rent billboards. Sadly, no billboards were purchased because by late April we were already too late to help slow the surge of virus infection. Many Detroiters died alone in hospital without opportunity for loved ones to properly mourn the loss. As the infection rate flattened by the end of May the shelter-in-place order was lifted. Our urgent message became irrelevant to help flatten the rate of infection.