Life is a series of stories, but they aren’t always clear while you’re busy living them day to day. When you look back, though, you realize how important it is not to miss any of the pieces. If a story isn’t remembered and shared, it leaves a blank space.

Let me start with my story before I try to tell everyone else’s. This is the story that explains why I live in Dearborn — and why I feel a deep kinship with my neighbors in a city that has become a haven for so many.

Finding a haven in Dearborn

My journey here began in 2009 with a 95-year-old woman. She had fallen in her apartment and fractured her hip. At the time, I was working as the admission coordinator at a rehabilitation and skilled nursing center. For her recovery, she came into our care, and over the course of her rehabilitation, her daughter and family became familiar faces.

Near the end of her therapy, it was clear she couldn’t live on her own again. It was Memorial Day weekend in 2009 — at the height of the housing crash — when I was out front planting flowers on a Saturday. Her family walked out after a difficult care conference. The daughter was in tears. They had just made the heartbreaking decision that Frances needed long-term care. On top of that, they were burdened with managing and selling two senior co-op apartments at Morley Manor in Dearborn amid a frozen real estate market.

While handling the transition paperwork, I offhandedly mentioned that I might be interested in an apartment, but the market price was completely out of my reach. I thought that was it.

Two weeks later, the family walked into my office. They had managed to sell one unit, and she looked at me and said, “You took such good care of Mom that we want to offer you the apartment at a bargain price.” And so it happened.

By late August 2009, I moved into Apartment 1101 at Morley Manor. I like to say I came to Dearborn on the wings of an angel — through the unexpected grace of a wonderful lady during a troubled time for her and the community. I didn’t expect to discover Dearborn. I ended up here not so much by choice as by opportunity, and I accept that grace. Yet it is one of the most blessed events of my life. An event chased me, rather than me chasing it.

A shared story of refuge and community: Whether Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq or Southgate, Michigan

I am not an immigrant or a refugee. But when I listen to my Arab American neighbors in Dearborn, I recognize a familiar thread.

In recent times, so many who have made Dearborn their home arrived here, fleeing war, displacement, economic collapse or political turmoil. They came seeking what we all seek: safety, stability, dignity and a place to build a life for their families. Like me, they didn’t come here by grand political design; they came seeking a haven.

Dearborn has always possessed a unique civic soul. Henry Ford, who invited Middle Eastern folks to Dearborn as far back as the early 1900s and into the 1920s, built an industrial empire here with the drive of a true capitalist who understood something profound about local society: an enterprise and a city only thrive when they care for the whole. Let me emphasize this: the entire community is the object of success, from the floor sweeper to the executive’s desk. From the factory floor to our neighborhood blocks, Dearborn was built on the idea that honest work and human dignity go hand in hand. American.

Standing up against dehumanization today

Because I came to Dearborn through genuine human connection, it breaks my heart to see how our modern public square treats people. Outside voices and partisan commentators often caricature Dearborn, using our city as a political talking point rather than recognizing the vibrant, hardworking community that lives here.

In politics today, we see a cheap, dangerous formula that strikes first with fear — “Look at what you have to fear!” —  and strikes second with hatred — “Look at who you should blame! Whom you should hate!”

When leaders, social influencers or the media rely on fear and hatred to advance their perspectives, they short-circuit our ability to think clearly, listen to one another and treat our neighbors as fellow human beings. To protect our community, we have to recognize the signs that our public square is being degraded by dehumanizing patterns. Here are a few dehumanizing agents to consider:

1. Treating people like price tags: When money or political power becomes the ultimate goal, people stop being treated as sacred human beings and are reduced to cogs, data points or disposable votes.
2. Losing the human scale: When we deal only with giant, remote, corporate systems instead of our actual neighbors, it becomes easy to lose our empathy.
3. Selling fear and hatred: Modern political rhetoric keeps people constantly terrified and angry, turning neighbors into enemies.
4. Looking down on honest labor: Trashing the quiet, hard work of everyday people — from entrepreneurs and civil servants to caregivers and factory workers — undermines the foundation of our society.
5. Isolating people on purpose: Stripping away real, face-to-face community leaves people alone behind screens, making them easy to manipulate.
6. The ivory tower blind spot: Too many leaders live insulated lives, completely divorced from the everyday struggles of working families.
7. Demanding blind loyalty over conscience: Tribal politics pressures people to throw away their personal integrity and moral compass just to stay aligned with a party or group.
8. Trading reality for comfortable lies: Swapping hard facts and common sense for comforting conspiracy theories damages our ability to solve real problems.
9. Silencing the soul: Reducing a complex human being down to a single political label ignores the deep questions of purpose and dignity every person carries.
10. The death of truth: The ultimate breakdown. When lying is normalized and basic facts are denied, trust shatters. As the old truth teaches us: We cannot live together if we cannot trust that we are being truthful with one another.

Preserving our common home

At 78, having served as a bartender in a family business, a printer, a priest, a nursing home administrator and a part-time municipal employee, I don’t write these words to score political points. I write them because our public square is worth saving and because true civic health not only begins right here in Dearborn — around dinner tables, across porch railings — but also turns us into a shining example for our state, nation and world.

A T-shirt slogan first appeared among our neighbors in Detroit: “Detroit Against Everybody.” It reflects an honest reality that people need to resist struggle and obstacles to stand tall in society as who they are. “Dearborn Against Everybody” — just go to the city’s website or drive the streets, either eastside or westside, to see what reminds an old-timer like me of neighborhoods in the 1950s, filled with Adam Smith-type businesses that actually meet the neighborhood’s material needs. A city of parks, fun and opportunities for fulfillment in schools, jobs and family life — that’s Dearborn standing tall.

If we want to protect our city, we must reject rhetoric of fear and hatred. We must insist on basic truth, honor honest work and treat one another not as ideological adversaries but as neighbors sharing a common haven.

Dearborn welcomed me on the wings of an angel. I pray that we keep the vision and experience of our blessings in our conscious minds so that we will stand up for the truth about who we’ve been, who we are and who we can become. Recognizing our shared humanity, we can ensure that Dearborn remains a place of grace, dignity and refuge for everyone who calls it home.

So, Dearborn, take a breath and perhaps accept the scriptural adage: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Therefore, let’s get today right; tomorrow has a better chance.

– Dennis Duggan is a Dearborn resident