Hundreds of dogs were being abandoned. Families were afraid to let their kids walk to school. Nearly 80% animals brought into the facility were being euthanized — a heartbreaking reality of an under-resourced department that simply couldn’t keep up.
John,
I want to tell you a story from my time rebuilding Detroit’s Health Department.
When I first walked into the department, it was a shell of what it used to be. After bankruptcy, the city had handed its public-health responsibilities to an underfunded nonprofit.
By the time I took the job, Detroit Animal Control was operating out of a crumbling 1927 building, understaffed, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
I’ll be honest, taking on animal control wasn’t something I expected when I agreed to rebuild a health department. But public health is about people and animals, and this was a public-safety crisis.
Hundreds of dogs were being abandoned. Families were afraid to let their kids walk to school. Nearly 80% animals brought into the facility were being euthanized — a heartbreaking reality of an under-resourced department that simply couldn’t keep up.
This situation made one thing painfully clear:
When our government fails to meet its responsibilities, we all suffer. So, we got to work.
- We raised salaries so we could fully staff the team.
- We moved into a new facility.
- We rewrote outdated protocols.
- We partnered with community advocates instead of ignoring them.
By the end of my tenure, we had flipped the numbers, and nearly 80% of the animals we took in were finding loving families.
That experience taught me something fundamental: Good government isn’t abstract, and it only works when the people running it put human beings first.
Just like we turned around a broken animal care system in Detroit, we can turn around a broken political system in Washington, but it only happens when people power the work.
Will you pitch in $10 or whatever you can to help us do it?
Donate $10 ››
Your friend in the fight,
Abdul
