Detroit and Dearborn share more than a border. We share streets, families, businesses, and a future that will only be as strong as our willingness to see one another as neighbors who rise and fall together.
This Sunday, Sept. 27, we will come together for the fifth annual Dearborn x Detroit Community Block Party on Tireman Avenue. What began as an opportunity to celebrate our neighboring cities has become something more meaningful: a chance to strengthen relationships across a border that has not always brought our communities together.
Dearborn shares more of its border with Detroit than with any other city. For most of our history, that line was a wall. Former Dearborn Mayor Orville Hubbard wrote racial exclusion into city policy and kept Black families out of the opportunities their neighbors enjoyed. The consequences of that history extended well beyond Dearborn's city limits.
We cannot build a better relationship between our cities without acknowledging that history.
In Dearborn, that has meant confronting the legacy of discrimination, including removing Hubbard's name from city buildings. Detroit has worked to strengthen neighborhood safety through community-based violence prevention and intervention. Both efforts reflect a shared responsibility to build communities where dignity, safety, and opportunity belong to everyone.
Our work matters all the more in light of a recent incident in Detroit in which a Black woman was surrounded, threatened and harmed following a traffic crash involving an Arab American driver.
There is no version of that story where what happened is acceptable. She deserves justice, dignity, and the support of her community. And her community is both Detroit and Dearborn. We have a shared responsibility to stand with her, recognize the harm, and ensure that the actions of individuals do not become another source of division between our communities.
What gives us confidence is that our communities already know each other. Detroit and Dearborn families work together, worship near each other, run businesses side by side, and have shown up for one another many times.
Incidents like this can test relationships that have taken years to build. They also remind us why we must be intentional about building those connections throughout the year, not only when something goes wrong.
That is why this event matters more this year, not less.
Sunday's block party was planned long before this incident, and that is exactly the point. For five years, it has helped build the kind of relationships that hold when they are tested.
We know a celebration cannot resolve every challenge facing our cities. Nor should it replace the difficult conversations and meaningful work still ahead of us.
But there is value in creating opportunities for people to know one another beyond moments of conflict.
A conversation between parents while their children play. Neighbors sharing a meal. Families discovering new music, food, and traditions. People who have lived only a few blocks apart for years are finally learning each other's names.
These moments may seem small, but they build the familiarity and trust that allows us to show up for one another when it matters most
Our cities have been shaped by generations of working families, immigrants, entrepreneurs, and residents who believed they could build a better life here. We have distinct histories and cultures, but we share the same hopes for our children, our neighborhoods, and the places we call home.
There is far more that brings us together than separates us.
As mayors, our responsibility is to turn that shared belief into meaningful work throughout the year. We must continue confronting discrimination, improving public safety, expanding opportunity, and creating spaces where residents can engage across the boundaries that have historically divided them.
And sometimes, that work begins with something as simple as sharing a meal.
This Sunday, we invite residents from both cities to join the festivities on Tireman Avenue for an afternoon of food, music, dancing, and activities for the entire family.
Bring your children. Bring your neighbors. Meet someone new.
We cannot change the history of the border we share, but we can decide what it means for the generations who come after us.
We hope to see you Sunday.
Mary Sheffield is the mayor of Detroit. Abdullah Hammoud is the mayor of Dearborn. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it in print or online.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Neighbors can down the Detroit-Dearborn barriers | Opinion
