- [Announcer] Coming up on One Detroit, we'll check in with our One Detroit political contributors to get their take on how the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump could impact politics.

Plus, a future work report on the state of small business in Michigan.

Also ahead, we'll explore the rich history behind Detroit's Concert of Colors as it celebrates 33 years.

And we'll tell you about the festivals and other events taking place this weekend.

It's all coming up next on One Detroit.

- [Narrator] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Just ahead on One Detroit, a future work report on the successes and challenges facing Michigan's small business community.

Plus, we'll hear from Concert of Colors founder, Ishmael Ahmed, and music producer, Don Woz, about the importance of this year's Global Diversity Festival.

And Dave Wagner and Cecilia Sharp from 90.9 WRCJ have some ideas on how you can spend your weekend and beyond in Metro Detroit.

But first up, the fallout from the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

As Trump received his party's nomination at this week's Republican National Convention, questions remain about the shooting and how it will impact the presidential race.

One Detroit contributors, Nolan Finley of the Detroit News, Stephen Henderson of American Black Journal, and Zoe Clark from Michigan Public, weigh in on the repercussions.

(upbeat music) - Nolan, Stephen, I'm so interested in hearing both of your perspectives, particularly as we're talking about this idea of the country needing to unite, folks talking about civility.

How do you both see this attempted assassination playing in to these conversations for unity?

Nolan, I'm gonna start with you.

- I think it'll have a short-term impact.

I think there will be a genuine effort to stay off the extremes in terms of language and the word choices and what have you.

We know Trump rewrote his Thursday night speech to bring a softer tone, a less attack dog tone, if you will.

I don't know if at last, I think it'll be easier for Republicans to maintain a more civil tone because they have Democrats doing their work for them in tearing down Joe Biden.

For Democrats, I mean, their singular strategy has been to scare the heck out of voters about Donald Trump.

And I don't know how you do that with nice talk.

I think they're going to go back as soon as they can to being very aggressive in their attacks on Donald Trump.

- Well, I mean, look, it's one thing to be critical of someone's ideology and their policies, someone who poses an existential threat to democracy, which Donald Trump has proven that he does over and over again, including on January 6th of 2021.

I think people have an obligation to point that out.

People have an obligation to stand up and talk about that.

History will remember the people who were silent during this and who embraced Trump for the tax policies that he had for the rich, as opposed to calling out all of the things that he tried to destroy about this country.

That's not about civility.

The incivility was what happened when he incited an attack on the institution that certifies our elections.

A lot of what we're seeing is about the response to Trump himself.

He's the person who has raised the temperature in a way that we have not seen another politician raise the temperature.

Think of all the armed people who show up at his rallies.

Think of the things that he asked them to do, beating up people in the crowd, saying that they've gotta take out the other side.

No question that you have Democrats who are using inappropriate language, but from an action and a policy standpoint, this isn't even-handed.

This is one side that has essentially lost its mind in favor of a candidate who does not respect democracy.

That's what's at stake in this election and Democrats would be crazy to back away from that.

- So, Zoe, I guess the answer is no.

- (laughs) Right, absolutely not.

- Yeah, and it does seem short-lived, even though it feels like there's been, again, a lot of calls for this.

Nolan, you wrote a column this week about the U.S.

Senator from Ohio, who just on Monday was named Donald Trump's vice presidential candidate.

Tell us a little bit about J.D.

Vance and your perspective.

- Well, I'm not a big fan of J.D.

Vance.

On a personal level, I thought his book was slanderous and largely a fabrication, but he's gonna be judged on his politics now.

And I do believe he may help the ticket if that was the purpose, if that's the purpose of picking a vice president.

He may help the ticket in Rust Belt states.

He's been a strong voice for manufacturing and blue-collar jobs.

Don't know that I can confidently say that he's ready to be president should something happen to a 78-year-old Trump.

Of course, I don't think Kamala Harris is ready to be president either.

And I do wish these candidates would put more, particularly given their age, would have put more emphasis on the ability of their running mates to step in.

I would have rather seen someone like Nikki Haley on that ticket.

I think it was a mistake not to put a woman on the ticket.

He could have gone with Nancy Mace from North Carolina or any other number of female Republicans, but he didn't.

Vance seems to just be a younger version of himself and he's already got those voters.

- Yeah, I mean, I think this is an odd pick for a number of reasons, but the chief one that they will face in the fall is that this is not just a conservative candidate who toes the line on abortion.

I mean, this is someone who pushes up against the kind of diminution of women's agency and independence and liberty in the way that he attacks abortion.

I mean, this is someone who says that if a woman is raped by a family member and becomes pregnant, that the baby has an equal right to live to that woman's choice about her reproductive freedom.

There is such a small sliver of women voters who believe that kind of thing.

And who's gonna decide this election?

It's female voters and it's female voters who are independents, right?

They aren't Democrats.

They don't identify as Republicans.

They have to be won over by one of these candidates.

That's why the polls are showing what they're showing in this kind of very tight race with a lot of numbers not on the board yet.

I think JD Vance cost the Republicans some of those votes in the fall, there's no question.

You can see ads really soon starting to run about the absolute caveman kind of positions that this guy has taken on this stuff.

And that's not, I mean, Midwest or anywhere else, that is not going to help them in the fall.

- Nolan, in about 30 seconds, I think Michigan voters need to be ready for the influx of candidates that we have seen and are going to see now that this candidate, this VP candidate has been chosen.

Any preparation that we should be making?

- Well, they're gonna be here a lot and we should get used to that.

As long as Michigan stays tight and it is right now the tightest of the battleground states, I think they're gonna be coming in here.

Both parties need Michigan.

I think Michigan is the path to the White House in the election.

A lot of the other battleground states are trending a lot heavier for Trump than Michigan is.

I think it's probably deadlocked in Michigan right now.

So, the candidates and their surrogates are gonna be spending a lot of time here.

- [Announcer] Turning now to a "Future of Work" report on the status of small business in Michigan.

One Detroit producer, Will Glover, spoke with Ned Stabler, president and CEO of TechTown about what makes Michigan a great place for small businesses.

(upbeat music) - To find out how Michigan small businesses have been doing, I went to TechTown, a Wayne State nonprofit that has helped more than 6,000 entrepreneurs raise more than $400 million to start and grow their entrepreneurial ventures over the last 20 years.

There, I sat down with Ned Stabler, vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and president and CEO of TechTown Detroit.

If we were going to take the temperature of the overall health of small businesses, where would you start?

- There's a couple of ways to do it.

The first is the anecdotal evidence, right?

So, I look at the number of folks coming in through our doors and what I'm hearing from our clients.

So, last year we worked with more than 1,000 entrepreneurs helping them raise $23 million.

They started 25 new businesses last year alone.

And really importantly, it's really representative of the city of Detroit.

So, 82% of them were entrepreneurs of color, 65% were specifically black, 66% were women, 11% were immigrants.

So, we really are making sure that a representative set of Detroiters are getting served.

And we're seeing more of that as we come out of the recession.

But if you wanna look at data, which I'm a huge fan of, I think it's always important to get past the anecdote, Detroit Future City does a really great report on the state of small business in Southeast Michigan.

- [Will] The think tank and policy advocate Detroit Future City released a report looking at challenges and goals for small and micro businesses in the Detroit region.

The report says 37% of the 1,235 respondents' businesses are one to three years old.

- We're seeing stuff, people coming out of the recession, the pandemic and starting new businesses.

They're also really small.

So again, you're seeing about 85% of businesses being less than $50,000 in revenue.

The majority of them having fewer than two employees.

- [Will] The Detroit Future City report also highlighted that access to capital and navigating the cost of capital are the number one and number two challenges small businesses face.

- The cost of capital, I think is a relatively recent phenomenon.

We were very lucky for a long time nationally, but certainly here as well, that interest rates were really low.

But today we're looking at double digits.

- [Will] Access and the cost of capital aren't the only issues facing the region's small businesses.

- Specifically right now, we're seeing a lot of problems around staffing.

It continues to be a challenge for folks.

The cost of staffing and wages has gone way up, which in some ways is a really good thing.

And in other ways, it shrinks margins and causes problems for folks.

- Do we still have enough small businesses and entrepreneurs and people taking that pathway in the region?

- Yes and no.

The no is the important one, which is that small businesses are the lifeblood of an economy.

They would give it the vibrancy that makes a place successful.

And frankly, the number one economic development strategy that you can take as a city, as a state, even as a country is to build vibrant places, walkable places that businesses and people want to be.

Businesses don't follow money anymore.

Businesses follow people, they follow talent, because they need those folks as employees and customers.

- [Will] When it comes to placemaking, which is the development of public and private amenities like public parks, retail shops, and recreation options for local communities, the challenge is what comes first, the people or the place?

- There is chicken and egg, 'cause you can go and start up a whole bunch of businesses someplace, but if there are no customers for it.

So it's a yes and approach.

You gotta do the things that attract the people, and you gotta do things that provide support for businesses, and you gotta try to lift both of those up.

So people are looking for cultural amenities, they're looking for outdoor amenities like parks and public spaces.

They're looking for transit, transit, and they're looking for transit.

Did I mention transit?

They're looking for those kinds of things.

- What places are you aware of that are doing a better job than we are?

- Ooh, a better job, that's a tough question, 'cause we go to the national conferences with our peers to talk about who's doing what, who's got a food incubator in Nashville, or who's doing really good retail incubation in New Orleans.

I'll tell you, there's no place doing a better job of it than us.

And I don't mean to sound arrogant about that.

I just know that when I go to those conferences, I end up getting calls from all of those places saying, "Hey, loved your retail bootcamp, "where more than 40% of the businesses "that you've gone through in the last 10 years "are now open somewhere.

"That is a really great success rate.

"Come and teach us how to do that."

And we're not doing it alone.

The ecosystem here with Prosper Us, with the BUILD Institute, and some of those other folks that we partner with is really great.

It's really moved from a culture of competition to what we call coopetition, cooperation with some... How are we making sure we're filling the gaps in that ecosystem?

- What does a better, more healthy ecosystem for small businesses here in Southeast Michigan look like?

- One, I think, is a better coordination between technical assistance, like we provide, and capital, right?

So that we're making sure that along their entire continuum, they're getting support that they need.

They need lower cost of capital, obviously.

It just requires philanthropy.

It's gonna require investment by the state, but they get a return on that investment.

When you walk up and down the streets and you see businesses filled with people and storefronts filled with businesses, it makes Detroit the kind of place that people around the country are talking about.

"Hey, I've heard it's cool.

"Let's go back there and check it out."

But it's not easy and it's not free.

That requires an investment on the part of the city and the part of the state to continue that momentum that we have.

- [Announcer] Detroit's largest and oldest Global Music Diversity Festival is underway at various venues in the city's cultural district.

The annual Concert of Colors is free and runs through July 21st.

The event features dance, music, food, art, and films from around the world.

One Detroit producer, Chris Jordan, spoke with the festival's founder, Ishmael Ahmed, and music legend, Don Woz, about the Concert of Colors' history and purpose.

(upbeat music) - So this is the 33rd annual Concert of Colors.

Ishmael, tell us a bit about what the Concert of Colors is and a bit about its rich 33-year history here in Detroit.

- Well, the Concert of Colors was started by New Detroit after the rebellion in Detroit to bring in different communities of color and asked me, at that time I was a board member, and I suggested culture 'cause that's the most powerful thing in our communities and something that will bring us together.

And then Mary Young offered us Shane Park and that's when we started the Concert of Colors.

We had maybe 10,000 people the first year and we grew within 10 years to have over 100,000 people.

And now, 33 years later, it is one of the largest world music festivals in the country.

- The Concert of Colors is completely free.

We believe that all people should have access to culture regardless of their economic status.

So there's nothing like it.

In 2004, I got to play the festival and attend it for the first time.

I was playing bass with a singer from Algeria named Sheb Khaled.

Ishmael took everybody out to dinner afterwards and I ended up being seated next to him.

And it turns out we had very parallel lives and certainly childhoods in Detroit.

Both went to the Grandy Ballroom, both loved the same music and were at many of the same concerts even though we didn't know each other.

So he was instantly a brother from another mother and we've been close friends ever since.

- Tell me a bit about the Don Juan's Detroit All-Star Review.

- Well, every year we take a theme and then we draw on all local performers to do the songs.

It's a variety show, you could say.

This year, our theme is peace, love, and understanding.

More needed now maybe than any time, certainly in my lifetime.

And in addition to the great band, we have the Corktown Popes and Marshall Crenshaw, Herschel Boone, Caroline Strieho, Gretchen Gonzalez-Davidson, Milton Bennett, Stephanie Christian, Mike Ellison, all performing songs that somehow tie in to the theme of peace, love, and understanding.

- I read the Metro Times interview that you two did last week.

You talked about how initially there had been a different theme and then you changed it to peace, love, and understanding because of everything that's going on in Israel and Gaza and how Don, as you mentioned, that we need that now more than ever.

I guess, just tell me a bit about that, how that conversation happened that this needed to be the theme for this year.

- Well, we had a good theme, which I'm not gonna reveal 'cause we'll do it next year.

(Don laughs) But it just seemed timely.

Everybody's on edge.

I think even, you know, it's not just Gaza.

In this country, temperatures rise every day, literally and figuratively.

And I think we just need some soothing and a gentle reminder to, if you put love and compassion first, you're on your way to solving problems.

I'm not saying it's gonna solve all the problems, but it's a start.

- It doesn't matter whether you're Arab or Jewish or African-American, we all believe that the killing must stop and that we need to have true peace and it's attainable.

And so, you know, from our little corner of work, we wanna express that.

- I think the most important thing is that Jewish, Arab, I don't think that matters.

We're all human.

We all have basically the same emotional makeup, the same psyches.

And what we need to do is stress the commonality between everyone, which is far greater than the differences that we face.

And I personally think there's no better thing to bring people together than music.

Our inner emotional lives are more complex than conversational language can possibly express.

So we use art to communicate where language fails and that can be painting, that can be poetry, that can be music.

Musical intervals, we know, trigger the same emotional response in human beings all over the world.

Look at movie scores.

People score movies.

No, you play this scale, it induces fear.

Play this scale, it induces beauty, you know?

So music is great like that.

But I think you get all kinds of art and culture in the Concert of Colors.

- Don, something that I wanted to ask you about, another thing happening, of course, is the tribute to the MC5.

Tell me a bit about what's gonna be going on with that.

- It was a rough year, man.

We lost Wayne Kramer, Dennis Thompson, and John Sinclair.

All in a very short period of time.

And I think it's very important to keep their message alive.

They did something really incredible that impacted the whole world out of Detroit in the 1960s.

And we'll just be gathering together to talk about it and to keep that music going.

- Detroit is, you know, such a diverse city with so many different cultures and communities here.

And I always feel like the Concert of Colors seems like such a very Detroit thing.

- Yes, it represents the whole world.

But I think you have the whole world represented in the population of Detroit as a result of the auto business booming after World War II.

And people came from all over to live in the city and work there.

And they brought their cultures with them.

And I can't think of another city that I've been to that's got such a broad palette of colors to paint from.

And that creates such a cultural jambalaya.

♪ Just to be with the one you love ♪ - [Announcer] In addition to the Concert of Colors, there are plenty of outdoor summer festivals taking place this weekend in Metro Detroit.

So whether you're looking for music, food, flowers, or just a good time, there's something that will likely interest you.

Here are Dave Wagner and Cecilia Sharp of 90.9 WRCJ with today's One Detroit Weekend.

- Well, Cecilia, it's that time of week again where we get together and chat about all the cool things that are happening here in Metro Detroit.

So fill us in.

- You bet, Dave, I got you.

Blake's Lavender Festival runs Friday, July 19th through July 21st at Blake's Orchard and Cider Mill.

Visitors will be able to stroll through the lavender field, taking in the relaxing scent and view.

There'll also be over 200 vendors selling Michigan-made products, wellness glasses, and more.

- Yeah, and also tomorrow through the 21st is Festa Italiana at Freedom Hill.

This three-day festival allows for patrons to enjoy the sights, tastes, and sounds of Italy.

Plus, I'm ready for this, a cannoli eating contest and more.

- I think I might enter that competition, yeah.

Now in Old Town Lansing, the Damn Jam Music Festival will take place the 19th and 20th.

You can dance the night away to the music of Michigan-based bands.

- [Dave] And if you're looking to find some great books to read for the rest of the summer, look no further than Eastern Market Shed 5 where the 7th Annual Detroit Book Fest will take place Sunday, July 21st.

- [Cecilia] Now that sounds like a good time.

Then starting Monday, July 22nd, Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills is back hosting golf championships.

This time, it's the USGA Junior Amateur Championship.

The tournament is free to attend, so go watch the golf stars of the future right now in our own backyard.

- Very cool, that does sound like fun.

Stay tuned for a few more things that may just spark your interest and have a great weekend.

(soothing music) - [Announcer] That'll do it for this week's One Detroit.

Thanks for watching.

Head to the One Detroit website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

- [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(soothing music) (bright music)