Overview:
-Marcia Spivey says her Detroit neighborhood, Regent Park, needs community engagement.
-"I just made the conscious decision and effort to be the change that I wanted to see in my community."
-Spivey is a member of Planet Detroit's spring 2025 Neighborhood Reporting Lab.
This story is published as part of Planet Detroit’s 2025 Spring Neighborhood Reporting Lab, supported by The Kresge Foundation, to train community-based writers in profile writing. This year’s participants will focus on highlighting grassroots leaders driving positive change in Metro Detroit.
Fall 2024 found attorney and Regent Park resident Marcia Spivey stepping back from some of her community work. Her many positions, functions, and titles suggest that she hadn’t had a break in a long while.
Spivey was secretary of the Regent Park Community Association while also holding board positions with Community Advocates of Detroit and the Black Male Educators Alliance. She was also a social justice co-chair for her college sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. She remains board chair of the East Warren Communication Development Corp.
Even as she steps back from several roles, she has taken on a new project. She is participating in Planet Detroit’s Neighborhood Reporting Lab, where she hopes to learn ways to improve outreach.
How did you get into community advocacy work?
I knew that this neighborhood [Regent Park] needed attention. I just made the conscious decision and effort to be the change that I wanted to see in my community.
But many people don’t make that decision. What is behind that choice? What makes you tell yourself and others, “I want to be here. I’m not leaving.”
Well, I moved back to Detroit in 2016. I understood the social challenges that my family and I would potentially be facing. And I knew what my family would be faced with in the education system. I felt that I would rather be in my community and make changes there.
How were you attracted to the law? What inspired you to become an attorney?
I didn’t have an attorney in my family, so I would say Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad [who portrayed a doctor and an attorney on the 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show”] inspired me. And I used to love “Matlock.” I was always a reader, and I talked a lot.
I practice primarily family law and education law. Most of my clients are either children in the foster care system or families. The law allows you to create opportunity access and remove barriers for disenfranchised individuals.
What issues are especially concerning right now in Regent Park?
We need lower crime rates and more educated students coming out of this neighborhood. We also need more homeowners. And we need community engagement, so that we can improve the quality of life over here.
What are you up against in making that happen? What do the challenges look like?
Lack of community togetherness: “I got your back, you got mine.” Residents out driving see kids out walking when it’s dark. But they’re not slowing down and putting on their beams, so the kids can at least see down the block. Residents are hearing gunshots and not necessarily calling the police. The biggest barrier is lack of engagement. Residents don’t come to the community meetings.
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What kind of engagement are you looking for with Regent Park residents? How do you build that engagement?
I would like them to be out there serving first and then asking us to do stuff as a community group. Residents won’t go and pass out flyers or leaflets about available services and opportunities. But they will email us when they want a complaint filed, or they want us to contact an inspector for them.
So, one way I create engagement is by warning them, “If you ask me for something, I’m going to turn around and ask you for something that serves not me, but the greater good.” They can serve by sacrificing the second Thursday of the month for community meetings, or giving up a Saturday to go and clean the neighborhood.
What would you like people to understand about Regent Park in District 3?
Our neighborhood probably has among the lowest average family incomes in the city. But we have the greatest spirit.
Where do you see that spirit?
We have an annual Christmas party with about five or six organizations. We eat good, we laugh, and we dance. All the generations are represented, and we don’t see that often in our community events. Almost every person or family ends up leaving with something. We give away almost $1,000 in gift cards.
The fourth one was in 2024. It has grown from 40 guests to over 100. Now every person that’s running for office, or even thinking about running for office, shows up.
We believe in recycling the dollars in our neighborhood, so all our vendors are either from District 3 or they’re from Detroit. The DJ is a retired police officer from this neighborhood. The music is awesome. The games are fun. The food is always good. And we just have a funky good time.