DETROIT FREE PRESS COSBY STORY
(MADALYN RUGGIERO/Special to the Free Press)
Bill Cosby, left, listens as Rukiya Shabazz of Detroit, right, tells him Saturday about losing her nephew to violence. Cosby and about 200 others made their way through blocks of boarded-up buildings and broken glass as he listened to residents' fears.
COSBY TAKES TO DETROIT'S STREETS
Will city answer his challenge?
Entertainer urges residents to tackle fear, report crimes
November 10, 2007
By ROBIN ERB
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
There was no pep talk. There was no cheerleading. And there was none of the comic relief for which he's so well-known.
Entertainer and philanthropist Bill Cosby came to Detroit today with a challenge.
Flanked by security as he stepped into the parking lot near the Walker Williams Community Center on Rosa Parks Boulevard, Cosby instantly was surrounded by a crush of people, many lamenting violence, poverty and fear within the community.
Cosby listened, then shot back questions.
"Do we have any kind of procedure set in place to be able to call and say, 'We saw who did this'?" he asked.
"Crime Stoppers," several in the crowd responded.
"And do we use that number?" Cosby asked.
Several said no.
"Why don't we use that number?" he pressed.
The prevailing answer: fear.
It was Cosby's fifth visit to Detroit in recent years. He has made it a mission to address issues such as crime, a disconnect between fathers and their children, joblessness and personal responsibility.
This trip was sponsored by ARISE Detroit!, a group made up of several grassroots organizations promoting volunteerism within neighborhoods.
For an hour, Cosby and a crowd that grew to more than 200 walked through blocks of boarded-up buildings and broken glass on Detroit's west side. He stressed personal choice and courage. He shook hands and hugged, occasionally pausing for emotional exchanges with residents.
At one point, Rukiya Shabazz ran into the streets sobbing.
"I'm tired of the young children dying!" she screamed.
Several people nudged her to the front, and Cosby took her hand.
"You sit around, and you don't want to participate in your life," Shabazz cried to the crowd. "This is about living."
Cosby later told the crowd that change begins with the simple things - hugging children, supporting teachers and refusing to give in to pimps and drug dealers.
"When the white man came with his hood on the horses, nobody said, 'I'm afraid to die.' They came out, and they fought and they died, some of them. But they protected the wife and the children," Cosby said, referring to the days when visits from the Ku Klux Klan were common in neighborhoods where African Americans lived.
Thirteen-year-old James-Marvin Robinson was surprised to see Cosby marching through his neighborhood. He grabbed a sign from another marcher that read "Free 2 B Me."
But Mary Cocanougher, executive director of the Northwest Neighborhood Health Empowerment Center, worried that Cosby's fame might overshadow his words.
"I just hope they're listening to his message," she said.
Contact ROBIN ERB at 313-222-2708 or rerb@freepress.com.