Bobby ChristianNov 3

Who Bobby is

A Detroit father who kept showing up.

Lifelong Detroiter, entrepreneur, husband and father. President of the Eastside Colts and an after-school programme coordinator across multiple Detroit sites.

Who Bobby is

Bobby Christian with families at a community gathering
With families on the east side.
Bobby Christian with a group of young men
Mentoring, most weeks.
President
Eastside Colts youth football team
After-school coordinator
Multiple programme sites across Detroit
Coach & mentor
Years on Detroit fields and in after-school rooms
Husband and father
Raising children in the district he wants to serve
Entrepreneur
Lifelong Detroiter

He has been doing this work without the title.

Bobby Christian is a Detroit father, coach and mentor who has spent years doing the unglamorous work of showing up for other people’s children.

He is the President of Eastside Colts Inc., a 501(c)(3) youth football and cheer organization on Detroit’s east side. Hundreds of children have come through it — for practice, for structure, for a hot meal, for somewhere to be on a Saturday and someone to answer to on a Tuesday. It is run by volunteers, mostly parents, mostly out of their own pockets.

That work is the whole argument for this campaign. Bobby has spent years on the receiving end of decisions made by people who never meet the children those decisions land on — and he has watched what it costs when adults get it wrong. He is not running to learn about Detroit’s young people. He already knows them by name.

The board sets the direction. Bobby has spent years on the receiving end of those decisions — in gyms, on fields and in after-school rooms, with the children the decisions land on.

Already doing the work

Classrooms, sidelines, and a lot of Saturdays.

He was doing this before there was a ballot to be on.

Young Eastside Colts players smiling together
The Colts
Bobby Christian with neighbours outside a Detroit barber shop
Out on the block
Eastside Colts players gathered on the field
Mid-season