Looks Like We'll Have to "Fix the Damn Roads" Ourselves

A few weeks ago, a young man named Ali Chanine in Dearborn Heights decided he was tired of waiting for Big Gretch—and his mayor, Mo Baydoun—to “Fix the Damn Roads.”

He bought some cold patch at the hardware store and did it himself. You might have seen the video on TikTok or on the local news.

Sometimes, making politics local again means giving a speech. And sometimes it means getting your hands dirty, to make your city just a little bit better.

For the last 15 years, I’ve often traveled Grodan Drive in Southfield. Grodan is not so much a street as it is a pothole that’s paved in certain parts. You can start on 10 Mile and by the time you reach the AutoZone by Telegraph, you’ll need their help.

No matter who is the mayor of Southfield or the governor of Michigan or the president of the United States, Grodan is a problem. Rather than wait for the world to change, I followed Chanine’s example and decided to patch a pothole myself.

I started at the Lowe’s on Telegraph. I bought a 50-pound bag of asphalt and a shovel, and went in search of a pothole to fill.

It didn’t take long. This particular pothole was so deep it had become a type of bird bath for the Southfield blue jays.

After seeing that the birds had left, I applied the asphalt, and smoothed it out with a shovel. The pothole remains filled to this day, even as the road around it continues to crumble.

I can’t fill all the potholes on Grodan Drive, let alone all of Southfield. I am one man on a limited budget. But the need for everyday citizens to fill gaps in the road speaks to the gaps in our budgets in Michigan.

In 2023, with Democrats holding all the gavels in Lansing, Michigan started the year with a $9 billion surplus. Three years later, there’s not one Democrat who can tell you what became of that money, or how the 10 million people of Michigan benefited from it.

If any of it filtered to the “Damn Roads,” it was to subsidize the Road Work Theater we witness every summer.

I’ve traveled M-14, the road between Detroit and Ann Arbor, regularly for the past 25 years. Just about every year, the road is half-closed for construction projects. And a year later, it needs to be rebuilt again.

Grodan Drive—a local road in Southfield—continues to look war-torn. Whether at the state or local level, the government fails us.

After watching the government fail at its basic duties, it’s no wonder Ali Chanine stopped waiting and took action. In Michigan, if you want something done right, you don’t ask the government.

You do it yourself.