COMMERCE TWP, Mich. (FOX 2) – A man who feared treatment for Lung Cancer is now cancer free after receiving help from a team of health experts. 

65-year-old Glen Cannon from Detroit began smoking a pack a day since he was 12-years-old. He was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer in May 2023.

“In the black community we’re so ill-informed about what cancer is,” said Cannon. “It was like a gut punch from Mike Tyson.”

Cannon did not want chemotherapy, immune therapy, or radiation. He was told radiation would burn him up. 

Tammy Pouget is an oncology nurse navigator at DMC Huron Valley Sinai Hospital, who helped Glen overcome his fears by feeding him knowledge.

“Do you find it’s more prevalent, the uncertainty of medical treatment, in the black community than other communities?” asked FOX 2’s Charlie Langton.

“I would say it is more prevalent, but I believe most patients diagnosed with cancer really do not have a lot of knowledge,” answered Pouget.

One little weird remedy: Glen’s doctor was a big Prince fan, and Glen used to do promotional work in the 90s for Prince.

“He loved Prince. I worked for Prince, and we bonded. We clicked,” he said. “It’s kind of creepy.”

Creepy or not, Glen beat lung cancer as of September 2024. But he does have a message, especially during Lung Cancer Awareness Month.  

“To the black community, the best thing that you could do for yourself, whether you feel good or not, is go and get screened.”
 

DETROIT (FOX 2) – After 12 years of leading the city of Detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan says he is not seeking reelection in 2025.

Duggan made the announcement on Wednesday but di not specify what his plans are after completing his term in 2025. Politicos believe the outgoing mayor could run for governor of Michigan with Gretchen Whitmer’s term ending in 2026.

“Detroit’s story of resurgence is one of Detroiters who never gave up on their city,” said Mayor Duggan. “It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve as mayor over the past 12 years and I am incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished together-from emerging out of bankruptcy to becoming a vibrant, healthy city that is a model of resilience and transformation. This last year is about continuing the work we started and ensuring Detroit’s success remains rooted in opportunity for everyone.”

Duggan will speak during a press conference at noon on Wednesday. You can watch his announcement live in the player above.

A write-in candidate leads Detroit

Duggan was first elected in 2013 after winning the vote through a write-in campaign. 

After working as the president and CEO of the Detroit Medical Center, Duggan moved to the city in 2012 with intentions of running for mayor. However, he hadn’t lived in the city for a full year and subsequently filed his paperwork two weeks before he should have.

Even with the early hurdle, Duggan won the mayoral race with 52% of the vote in the August Primary and then 55% of the vote in the general election. 

He would win reelection two more times: in 2017 he was re-elected with 72% of the vote over Coleman Young II. Then in 2021, he was re-elected with 75% of the vote.

Duggan’s accomplishments as mayor

In the statement announcing his intentions not to run, Duggan highlighted improved EMS times, historic reduction in violent crimes, and the rebuilding of city’s neighborhoods. When Duggan was first elected, there were 47,000 vacant and abandoned home. Today that number is 3,000.

Over his first four years in office, Duggan focused on improving emergency services response times, getting the city’s streetlights back on, increasing park maintenance, and decreasing blight through the Detroit Land Bank Authority. 

Duggan’s administration also spearheaded Motor City Match, a program that provides grants to entrepreneurs in the city. Since MCM started in 2014, it has provided more than $19 million in grant money to nearly 2,100 small businesses. 

In the spring of 2018, Detroit was released from state oversight, marking the first time in four decades that the city was fully in control of its own future. 

However, his second term wasn’t as smooth sailing. In 2019, Duggan was caught up in a scandal involving the non-profit Make Your Date after he was accused of giving the organization preferential treatment. His relationship with the director of the organization came under scrutiny with accusations that Duggan had asked the staff to raise money for the nonprofit. 

Additionally, chief of staff Alexis Wiley ordered some employees to delete hundreds of emails related to the Make Your Date program as news surfaced about a potential conflict of interest.  

Duggan was ultimately cleared by the attorney general’s office of any wrong-doing. A few years later, Duggan and the director of the organization, Dr. Sonia Hassan, were married.

In 2020 and 2021, Duggan navigated the city through the COVID-19 pandemic including testing and the eventual implementation of the vaccine ahead of his third re-eleciton.

Even with the health crisis, the city continued to grow and in 2023 it experienced its first year of population growth in nearly 70 years – a goal that Duggan had set when he first ran for mayor.

“Today, Detroit is offering a roadmap to cities across the nation as an example of what can be accomplished when leaders put people over politics and build bridges instead of sewing division,” the statement from the city read.

Detroit’s future leader

With Duggan’s plans not to run, the city will look to its next leader. 

Names considered for the role are former Detroit City Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins, current City Council President Mary Sheffield, City Councilman Fred Durhal, and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig are among the possible candidates.

A newly released review of the planned reconstruction of Detroit’s Interstate 375 proposes several alternate designs, including making the area more walkable once the freeway is removed, minimizing displacement and economic impact, while recognizing harms done to Black neighborhoods by the original construction.

The analysis, detailed in a 104-page report for the Detroit Downtown Partnership and funded by the Kresge Foundation, includes several recommendations different from what the Michigan Department of Transportation has proposed. Among them: eliminating the currently planned median in favor of more pedestrian space along the road; putting trees in population-dense areas; and creating an interchange that includes room for homes and businesses rather than just vehicle traffic.

“The I-375 Reconnecting Communities project is at a critical moment of design development,” the peer analysis states. Testing alternative roadway and interchange designs, along with land use scenarios and economic and reparative impact, “has unearthed several near- and long-term opportunities that can inform how project partners and the community can maximize restorative, reparative and reconnective impacts and outcomes created by the removal of the highway.”

MDOT plans to tear up the sunken I-375, update the Interstate 75 interchange and replace I-375 with a street-level boulevard connecting Jefferson Avenue and I-75, lined with businesses and homes. The agency’s goal is to begin work late in 2025, and MDOT has held a series of public meetings about the project.

MDOT Spokesman Rob Morosi didn’t comment on whether the peer analysis will change any of the agency’s plans for 375 but said it appreciates the Downtown Detroit Partnership’s efforts. The partnership oversees the city’s downtown parks.

“Overall, this was a very positive process that yielded tangible improvements to the conceptual design,” said Morosi in an email. “We appreciate the efforts DDP and all our partners put forth on this endeavor. We are aligned in our goal for a project that prioritizes pedestrian safety and connectivity while providing equitable access to neighborhoods and downtown destinations.”

The analysis was conducted by three firms: Urban American City, or urbanAC; Toole Design Group; and HR&A Advisors.

When I-375 was built in the 1960s, 28 local street connections were removed between Mack and Jefferson that connected the city’s historic Paradise Valley and Black Bottom neighborhoods to downtown and adjacent communities. It displaced roughly approximately 2,600 residents and families.

Eric Larson, CEO of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, which ordered the peer review analysis of the plans for 375, said he recognizes the need to minimize losses for businesses in the shadow of the project’s construction, a concern raised at public meetings held by MDOT.

“You never, ever want to lose any ground, especially having come off of some of the really challenging years that we have not so distant in our rearview mirror,” Larson said. “And so from a partnership standpoint, we are going to be working just as hard as we do every day on making sure that the destination that downtown has become, the very robust opportunities that downtown represents, continue to be top of mind.”

The analysis details five key recommendations for the possible redesign of 375. They include: designing the boulevard that will replace 375 “for people and vibrant street life, rather than high-speed vehicles”; putting trees where people are; and considering eliminating the median in favor of enhancing pedestrian spaces.”

The partnership’s report also lays out three hypothetical land use scenarios along the reconstructed boulevard, with estimates for the economic and social benefits from each, in terms of measures such as job creation, income taxes and new housing units. One vision prioritizes housing, another focuses on a cultural heritage district and a third designed around sports and recreation.

The analysis estimates a housing-focused scenario, for example, could lead to more than 3,200 units in the heart of Detroit.

The report also includes a 2022 quote from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the historic harm done to Black communities by transportation projects, which the Buttigieg said has sometimes been deliberate, and which the downtown partnership said is critical to address.

“…Some of the planners and politicians behind those [transportation] projects built them directly through the heart of vibrant, populated, communities — sometimes in an effort to reinforce segregation. Sometimes because the people there had less power to resist,” Buttigieg said in the report. “And sometimes as part of a direct effort to replace or eliminate Black neighborhoods. … There’s nothing sacred about the status quo.”